Winning a cultural victory (for noobs)

[AnyKeyz]

Finally won my first Cultural victory on Noble.

If you are the type of person who read threads on this forum, trying to figure out cottage economy and to decrypt +2 -1 +3 +2 topics by veteran players who beat the game one hand on Prince level, then giving up, because all this sounds like Chinese for you, well, maybe this thread will be helpful.

First of all, Cultural win seems like the easiest to achieve once you figure out how to.

1. The most important point : To win a cultural game, you need to have 3 cities with more than 50,000 cultural points (these points can be seen, clicking on the little fist icon). So, all you need to do is to focus on three cities.

2. Try to grab as many religions as possible. So aim for bouddism, polytheism, build the Oracle to get some prophets and grabd Code of law, then aim for philosophy and the other one (in my french game called Droit divin, giving you the last available religion). Spread the religions, build temple, shrine and so on. Try to choose your three cities where religions had been founded.

3. Try to aim for liberalism, then change for cult liberty (not sure of the english word). At this point, your cultural slider is at 0%. After liberalism, set it to 40%.

4. Then, aim for mass media. The Eiffel tower for one, will pratically give you the win for sure (50% cultural production in every city). Once you reached mass media, put your cultural slider to 100% (if you can afford it).

5. Always give tributes to opposing Civ. Don't give a **** about being late in the tech race.

6. And, once again, concentrate on three cities only

I am expecting to see a bunch of geeks (no offense ) to reply to this post, saying that this point or this point is wrong, that my strategy suc***, but I am only posting a very easy post that I would have liked to read on this forum, when I had no clue about cultural victory.

Hope it helped. If not, too bad. We have to help each others among noobs

 

[Echo of Celts]

I actually used to think winning a cultural victory was hard, but once I sat done and tried to focus on it, it is actually easier than I thought.

I played my 3 city cultural challenge last night and am going to post some screens and details when I get home later tonight.

My keys to victory were though, as suggested in my tips thread, I had 1 GP Farm Specialist City, 1 heavy production city and 1 Cottage City.

I founded Juadism early, and built the oracle (very important, for code of laws = cast system = unlimited artists), son after I switched to Caste System and began adding artists to my GP Farm.

In total I founded 4 Religions, Built 3 Shrines and 4 Cathedrals.

My GP Farm Built a series of Great Artist Wonders, only diluting my GA Pool with my Jewish Shrine and later, the Hanging Gardens.

My Production City built random wonders, including the Oracle.

In total I created 13 GA's, 2 GS's, 3 GP's and 1 GE

1 GA was settled early in my 3rd city to give it a boost, the other 12 were saved.

I also kept a rule, since I only had 3 cities, each city had to alternate, 1 Building, 1 Military Unit, to keep my Army a decent size, I also spent thousands keeping it upgraded to the highest level.

I kept my Cultural Slider between 0% to 20% until I teched Biology/Medicine to keep my cities healthy as they grew. After Medicine I cranked the slider to 100% and bombed my cities with GA's, picking the one slated to hit legendary last to bomb.

I had 3 Legendary Cities by 1804 ad.

My Keys to Victory I believe:

1) The Oracle - Cast System was very important in my massive GA generation

2) Keeping the GA Pool in my GP Farm as pure artist as possible. My farm popped 1 GE, 1 GP and 13 GA's, that is pretty pure

3) Alternating Buildings and Military/Keeping up on military techs. I researched Gunpowder, Replaceable Parts and Rifling first.

4) Hereditary Rule - When you have a GP farm over 30 Pop and still growing, keeping them happy is not easy, especially when you can't build the Globe Theater. Loading it with Military was important.

5) National Park - Equally as important for health as above.

6) Fouding Religions - Shrines bring in cash, cash allows a 100% Science/Cultural Slider at all times. It also brings in enough money to keep your army top notch.

Thats about all I can think of right now. Once I post my detailed report I will get more into the specifics I used in each city.

 

[madscientist]

All good plans for culture victories IMO. Culture victories are actually pretty damn flexible, any one thing is not critical. You can do it via religion, a good CE, artist spam, wonderspam, or corps but a combo and any or all is the best. You can be a start diplomat or a ruthless barbarian warlord, as long as you pay attention the those three prize cities.

Two items are essential for a cultural victory.

Switching the Free Speech (cult liberty????) and upping the culture slider at some point (depending on how the game rolls along.

 

[AnyKeyz]

Yes indeed, in french it is called "Liberté de Culte", that I translated to liberty of cult in my own words.

Having a french version is a bummer when trying to match terms from the game with the ones on the forum. BUt at least, instead of a geeky voice describing the technologies, we have a deep, Morgan Freeman like voice (I noticed the diffence, installing an english BTS expansion over my original french game)

 

[Viala]

These all sound like excellent ideas and indeed, are what I do. However, I keep getting slaughtered by the AI civs, who gang up on me and invade my nice wonder-filled cities. I've not yet worked up how to build up enough defence to stave off a triumvurate of aggressive invaders, while still putting up temples and universities.

 

[Refar]

Try work diplo instead. Try be freind with your neigbours - if they ask something - give it to them, they will be happy.

Obviously - because of the "stop trading with XYZ" etc. you cant be friend with everyone - choose who you want to be your freinds, and try to please them - 2 or 3.

You will still need some military - even friends will attack you, if you look like a easy pushover. But good relations make it a lot easier.

 

[Viala]

I'm really nice to everyone, and they come and beat me up anyway. *sigh*

 

[Zanttu]

I'm really nice to everyone, and they come and beat me up anyway. *sigh*

You can always try another approach to diplomacy. Pick a attack dog for yourself, and bribe him going into a war with others all the time. If the AIs are fighting against someone else, they won't attack you.

 

[JDR]

I always try to have at least one city, not one of the "big 3", build nothing but military. The unit costs do grow, making it harder to move up the culture slider, but when I'm ready to go into "culture mode" I offset this cost by having other none "Big 3" cities build wealth.

I play on marathon, so I need 12 cities minimum to get cathedrals in the Big 3. My final push often looks like this: Big three building culture, 2-3 cities building units. 1-2 cities building research, if military upgrades are close. And the rest building wealth.

I've found that having huge stacks of units defending your borders makes the AI much less likely to attack.

 

[Beagle7]

Do all of the cities have to have legendary culture or just 50k culture points. Please help me out.

 

[The Rook]

Do all of the cities have to have legendary culture or just 50k culture points. Please help me out.

legendary culture == 50000

That is "each" city needs 50000 culture.

 

[Cer]

"Liberté de Culte",

Doesn't "Liberté de Culte" mean "freedom of religion"?

"freedom of speech" correctly translates as "liberté d'expression"

 

[vicawoo]

Go Bouddism! Worship the Celtic queen!

 

[RationalLime]

BUt at least, instead of a geeky voice describing the technologies, we have a deep, Morgan Freeman like voice (I noticed the diffence, installing an english BTS expansion over my original french game)

That isn't just any geeky voice we hear, it's Spok!

 

[Benford's Law]

It's 75,000 for each city at Epic speed and 150,000 for each city at Marathon, right?

~Benford's Law

 

[jesusin]

It's 75,000 for each city at Epic speed and 150,000 for each city at Marathon, right?

~Benford's Law

Right. And it is 25000 for Quick Speed.

I am expecting to see a bunch of geeks (no offense ) to reply to this post, saying that this point or this point is wrong, that my strategy suc***, but I am only posting a very easy post that I would have liked to read on this forum, when I had no clue about cultural victory.

I am one of those geeks. But I will refrain and point out only 1 thing that I missed in your post: Great Artists (GA).

When you hire artists (the + buttom in the right of the city screens, along with the faces) you start accumulating GPPoints (just bellow the faces). When you reach a certain level of GPPoints a GA is born.

In a cultural game you should use your GA in one of two ways:
- Settling him in the city (he will add 12 culture every turn).
- As a Great Work (he will add 4000 culture instantly, 2680 if Quick, 6000 if Epic, 12000 if Marathon).
The optimum way is to settle the early ones and use as Great Works the rest in the city that is going to take longer to reach the required 50000 culture.



@everybody
If you have never tried a Cultural Victory, go and try it now. You'll find you love it.