[BNW] France OCC - Emperor - fast wins?

I was messing around with France/OCC/culture on emperor level over the weekend, trying to get the fastest peaceful culture win, and was able to get my win time down to 218 turns on the third try. All 3 wins were under 250 turns, so this is pretty easy.

The basic strat was to get as much tourism as fast as possible, steadily increasing throughout the game instead of relying on a late-game slingshot. Instead of the internet being the end goal, it was radio and refrigeration.

Started with GL, ToA and HG. Took drama & poetry for the free tech while researching philo, immediately build writers guild before NC. This ensures a classical era great writer, and hence the earliest possible theming bonus on the GL. Then I built Parthenon which itself is not great, but the free artwork makes it much easier to fill both sistine & uffizi ASAP later on.

Opened Renaissance with acoustics because I had 2 great works of art ready for Sistine, then Printing press. Got Globe and then Uffizi with full theming bonuses really fast.

social policies were straight tradition (wonder bonus before monarchy) straight aesthetics (culture from happiness 1st, which is great in OCC). then rationalism (secularism and right side) and 2 in patronage, then freedom ideology.


Just curious, has anyone been able to get the win time down under 200? I think there is some room for improvement but not sure exactly where. Probably the timing of building the musician guild is the trickiest thing.

BTW these are pretty good starts I used, but not superpowered. They need good food and production potential (this is OCC after all) but I didn't have a mountain or Petra start or anything.

You sure Order wouldn't generate more tourism in this situation? 34% more tourism to civs that have less happiness should be easy street OCC. In addition, if you're just rocking on culture, you can also get the 34% to other order civs, which helps out quite a bit too.

Broadcast towers seem way slower, to me at least.

The only culture wins under 200 that I've heard of are Sacred Sites Strategies, which only work if you can find everyone really fast and the AI don't take that reformation belief or more than half the buildings, so it's by no means a "sure thing" like your strategy. With OCC? Impossible. The guilds will outperform SS in a single city. You need to ICS a bit.

On a smaller map where you find everyone quickly and buckle down on cranking out settlements and religious buildings you might win by turn 150 or so. But, this would never work above emporer level and be difficult even on emporer. You need at least 2 religious B's and the AI like them too much. I'd guarantee 2 Buildings only with Byzantines on lower levels, though sometimes you get lucky with pantheons.

between turns 0-->150 AI and everyone else are often stuck under 20 cpt if they go the standard 3-5 cities so you only need 10 religious buildings to match and a few more and some trade routes/religion to match and win in this period.

Chum said:

You sure Order wouldn't generate more tourism in this situation? 34% more tourism to civs that have less happiness should be easy street OCC. In addition, if you're just rocking on culture, you can also get the 34% to other order civs, which helps out quite a bit too.

Broadcast towers seem way slower, to me at least.

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in my fastest game, the ideology tenets didn't even matter, I didn't even have time to reach tier 3 before the game was over.

in either case, radio tech comes well before tier 3 tenets, so building/buying a radio tower is not a problem. I did reach that in my first two games. Would have been a wash with order on straight tourism, but the tier 1/2 freedom tenets are better for OCC culture IMO.

also no other AIs get ideologies this fast on emperor, so +tourism to order civs is not really helpful.

danaphanous said:

The only culture wins under 200 that I've heard of are Sacred Sites Strategies, which only work if you can find everyone really fast and the AI don't take that reformation belief or more than half the buildings, so it's by no means a "sure thing" like your strategy. With OCC? Impossible. The guilds will outperform SS in a single city. You need to ICS a bit.

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yeah that is what I'm aiming at...a "sure thing" repeatable strategy...

I suspect it is doable if I can do 220 and I'm far from the best micro-manager.

How many culture points did you have to overcome? Did you vote in world religion or world ideology?

budweiser said:

How many culture points did you have to overcome? Did you vote in world religion or world ideology?

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I can't remember the exact amount of culture to overcome, but compared to what I'm used to on immortal, it didn't seem like a lot. Especially since I got the tourism much earlier than usual. Just with GL theming bonus, I started making noticeable headway. I think my musician that won game 3 only had strength of 700 or so.

I did not vote in world religion or ideology in any of my 3 games. The first two, I only had time for 2 votes, and went arts funding/world fair. The last (fastest) game I only had time for one vote and that was arts funding.

World religion instead of arts funding might be worth considering, but I have a pretty weak army in this strat for the most part, and didn't want to risk getting DOW'd.

Interesting topic. I think I would try for 6 open borders and 6 trade routes while I used my diplomacy and military forces to snipe the two biggest culture builders.

budweiser said:

Interesting topic. I think I would try for 6 open borders and 6 trade routes while I used my diplomacy and military forces to snipe the two biggest culture builders.

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Open borders definitely. Trade routes wherever possible...with OCC options are limited. But I really feel like peaceful is the way to go here. There aren't enough resources to go around to build an army and all those wonders and stuff at the same time.

I got a 255 which included World Religion but lacked a few theme wonders. Tech was slow, finished it with a Hotel. But 6 tiles were plain desert and no Petra.

A 700 pt musician also got eaten by barbs.

If you get France occ with a traditional start and aesthetics with incoming food trade routes you could generate a good amount of cpt and make many great works. .. national and world wonders can also increase cpt.

Under T200 without SS, on Emperor or any difficult level beyond Prince ?

Further analysis is desired. For France, it may be possible to skip some theme wonders in favor of an earlier Museum, which for France, effectively is a theme wonder.

reddishrecue said:

If you get France occ with a traditional start and aesthetics with incoming food trade routes you could generate a good amount of cpt and make many great works. .. national and world wonders can also increase cpt.

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Soooooooooo

how are you managing occ and incoming food trade routes?

Puppet CS with Great Merchant?

budweiser said:

Further analysis is desired. For France, it may be possible to skip some theme wonders in favor of an earlier Museum, which for France, effectively is a theme wonder.

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Yep. I want to try skipping radio entirely, going straight for refrigeration which means faster archaeology as well. Also tinker with the number of academies I am building opposed to GS bulbs. Will probably do another couple tries this weekend.

Memoryjar said:

Under T200 without SS, on Emperor or any difficult level beyond Prince ?

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If you can do it on a higher level than emperor that would also be good

GL is pretty key though, and immortal+ AI puts up a lot more culture too.

chazzycat said:

Yep. I want to try skipping radio entirely, going straight for refrigeration which means faster archaeology as well. Also tinker with the number of academies I am building opposed to GS bulbs. Will probably do another couple tries this weekend.

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I bulbed all the way, 2 or 3, maybe 4. My tech path was not ideal. RAs would be good.

I want to finish with a GE to Broadway and one final music tour.

Somehow I had 6 votes to get the World Religion. I was hosting and had FP.

If we can get this down it will be a road map for Immortal.

budweiser said:

I bulbed all the way, 2 or 3, maybe 4. My tech path was not ideal. RAs would be good.

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Interesting...I went with 3 academies and 2 bulbs. Looks like I got my uni up faster

Not sure about RAs on emperor. Cultural city states to power through rationalism seems better investment IMO.

budweiser said:

I want to finish with a GE to Broadway and one final music tour.

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I'm still torn on whether broadway is worth GE rushing, or even building at all. With strong faith output it might be. But I would want to buy at least 1 GM with faith as well, and there is just not that much time between entering industrial and the end game in this setup. Makes timing the natural GMs much tougher as well. I suspect skipping Broadway is ideal in general but it could come down to specific situations.

budweiser said:

Somehow I had 6 votes to get the World Religion. I was hosting and had FP.

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This is another thing I want to try out, I've been going for arts funding because I've been afraid of getting DOW'd. I've been keeping a weak military for the most part. But there is no doubt if you can pull it off, the extra 25% tourism is huge.

budweiser said:

If we can get this down it will be a road map for Immortal.

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This, I'm not so sure about. But it's still fun

I tried another one and I will admit I reloaded after I saw Lake Victoria was within 2 turns march from the start.

I bulbed all the scientists, won World Religion, got Museums before Radios and finished with a GE> Broadway. Still ended up around 255 but the good news is I skipped Globe and Sistine on purpose when I could have built them. All along it 'felt' like I needed another theme bonus working and I could have gotten one or both of those.