20k Culture Victory woes

[Raijer]

I'm playing vanilla CivIII as France on regent. To get out of my Space Race rut, I decided that I'd try for a 20k city Cultural Victory. I honestly thought I had played fairly well, as Paris is now home to two Ancient wonders (The Pyramids and Colossus), three Middle-Age wonders (Sistine Chapel, Magellan's Voyage, and Shakespeare's Theater) and two Industrial wonders (Hoover Dam and the Theory of Evolution). I had built the city's temple almost immediately, and as a result it is second only to the Pyramids in cultural value. I built every single cultural building as soon as possible. Culture was the number one priority in Paris!

That said, it's currently 1810 AD in my game, and Paris has a measly 8909 culture points. I'm 20 turns away from 10k, nevermind the 20k I need to win! I figured I'd have a cultural powerhouse in my capital, but no! Hell, the Russians, who don't have a single wonder to their name show up in the cultural section of the Histograph as stronger than France!

What gives here? I'm obviously not going to win this game, but I'm at a loss understanding why. What did I do wrong? What aren't I taking into account? Are there other factors that play into culture besides culture generating buildings? If so, what? Population? Happiness?

Oh, and while I'm at it, can anyone provide a definition of exactly what the numbers mean on the Culture screen (F5)? For example my improvements are given a Cultural Rating of 20 and my wonders have a rating of 36, giving Paris a Cultural Rating of 56. This is the paltry number of points that the city earns towards its score per turn. But how are these numbers arrived at? How do the various cultural values relating to the buildings and wonders on the right hand side of the Culture screen translate into the culture ratings per turn of the city in question?

Thanks in advance!

 

[CommandoBob]

At your current rate, Paris will reach 20K in 199 turns or so. It all depends on what turn this is. I don't think that Vanilla's Victory Screen shows the turn number, but CivAssistII can show it. There is also a Year to Turn Converter floating around here someplace.

 

[Tone]

That said, it's currently 1810 AD in my game, and Paris has a measly 8909 culture points. I'm 20 turns away from 10k, nevermind the 20k I need to win! I figured I'd have a cultural powerhouse in my capital, but no! Hell, the Russians, who don't have a single wonder to their name show up in the cultural section of the Histograph as stronger than France!

The culture rating on the histograph represents the total culture of all cities, not just the best few. The best culture cities are shown on the F11 page. The Russians therefore have a lot of cities with some culture in them which is always going to gain more culture than just a single city with a few nice wonders. It does not mean that you will not win. What is does do is give an indication of who is likely to win via 100K culture. This could be an important factor if the Russians are more than double the culture of any other civ and are closing in on 100K but otherwise they will not stop you via culture. CommandoBob has given you a projected finish date. You just need to ensure that no one else wins via one of the other VCs first so don't allow any civ to build the UN, build a completed SS or dominate the world!

Oh, and while I'm at it, can anyone provide a definition of exactly what the numbers mean on the Culture screen (F5)? For example my improvements are given a Cultural Rating of 20 and my wonders have a rating of 36, giving Paris a Cultural Rating of 56.

These numbers do not affect your score as shown on the histograph page. You currently are gaining 20 culture points per turn (cpt) on improvements. Every culture improvement nets a set number of cpt, although once the building has been around for more than 1000 years the cpt value doubles. Your temple was originally giving you 2cpt but it must be more than 1000 years old by now so it will be conributing 4cpt. The other improvements are Library (3), colosseum (2), cathedral (3), university (4) and research lab (2). To get 20 I suspect that you have a 1000yo cathedral or library but no research lab. The same idea applies with respect to wonders for your 36cpt rating. The spreadsheet that I link to below will give you details as to how this value is calculated as long as you type in the date that you have built each wonder.

As CommandoBob has already said, CivAssistII has a culture tab that can predict the 20K victory date based upon current culture per turn. SirPleb constructed an excel sheet a few years ago that AlanH has improved that enables you to project your victory date by including projected builds-something that CII cannot do AFAIK. You can download the spreadsheet from here but go down to post #6 for the updated version.

Finally the quickest way to get a 20K victory when playing vanilla is (strangely enough) by waging constant war. Great Leaders can rush a complete wonder in a single turn. Every time one of your elite units wins a battle, there is a chance that you could get a GL. Wage lots of wars and you can build every wonder from the middle ages onwards in the weakest of shield producing towns! (Note that each elite unit can spawn only one GL-it will then have a star by it to indicate that it cannot generate another GL.)

Good luck in completing you first 20K victory. It sounds like you have a winning game there.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Listen to the Tone... he is wise.

Pyramids and Collosus are ok for a 20K game...

But what you really want (in Vanilla) are Collosus, GLib, Great Wall, Oracle (if you can) and Hanging Gardens.

In the Middle ages, you want Copernicus and Newtons, and then Sistine Chapel. Plus make your temple/cathedral/colloseum/library/unis build, too.

Why do you want these things? Because they give the best culture/shield ratio - Glib is as many shields to build as the Pyramids, but gives more culture.

 

[Spoonwood]

I play Conquests, but the guys here seem right on... especially about having constant wars... I certainly like Scientific Great Leaders (only available in Conquests) in my 20k games. The Great Library pays off in a 20k game even if you don't need it for the techs. I know that in Conquests you only want only revolution to The Republic and forget democracy, as anarchy has negative effects on your culture. I think this holds in Vanilla. Also, don't mobilize for war, since that will kill your culture. For leader farming, I think it works best to plop some elite units down on a moutain next to opposing units (or hills or other rugged terrain for better defense) with some catapults or artillery units of some sort. Bombard down the enemy unit first, and then have the elite finish it off once it has gone red-line or yellow-line.

 

[Kumquat]

56 a turn is not bad but I think you must have gotten a bad start The 1000 year double is critical to a 20K city and I am talking wonders like a 12 per Glib or Sistine. I never go for a 20k unless I got a crazy start like 3+ Cattle.

 

[del62]

I achieved a vanilla culture victorty on regent with the babylonians in my capital, wowards the end I was generating around 120 culture per turn in that city, finished in late 1900s and i couldnt build costal wonders, obviously you get lots of culture buildings cheap, so i got temple early, established a few support cities and hooked up luxuries and belined literature, used pyramids as pre build for gl,

i didnt get the heroic epic till near the end when i waged a war for leaders

i mined all grassland round the city and had plenty of workers to railroad when the time was right, fast buy factory and coal plant are also good.

 

[Raijer]

As CommandoBob has already said, CivAssistII has a culture tab that can predict the 20K victory date based upon current culture per turn. SirPleb constructed an excel sheet a few years ago that AlanH has improved that enables you to project your victory date by including projected builds-something that CII cannot do AFAIK. You can download the spreadsheet from here but go down to post #6 for the updated version.

This is fantastic! Thanks much for the link. Using the calculator for the game in question - as things stand, I'll only be at 17,447 cp by 2050. Oh well.

Finally the quickest way to get a 20K victory when playing vanilla is (strangely enough) by waging constant war. Great Leaders can rush a complete wonder in a single turn.

I'm such a freakin' peacemonger that sometimes I forget GLs even exist!

Thanks all for the great information. I can see I had many holes in my strategy. I'm going to give this another shot with all I've learned here.

 

[Whythat]

The culture rating on the histograph represents the total culture of all cities, not just the best few. The best culture cities are shown on the F11 page. The Russians therefore have a lot of cities with some culture in them which is always going to gain more culture than just a single city with a few nice wonders. It does not mean that you will not win. What is does do is give an indication of who is likely to win via 100K culture. This could be an important factor if the Russians are more than double the culture of any other civ and are closing in on 100K but otherwise they will not stop you via culture. CommandoBob has given you a projected finish date. You just need to ensure that no one else wins via one of the other VCs first so don't allow any civ to build the UN, build a completed SS or dominate the world!

These numbers do not affect your score as shown on the histograph page. You currently are gaining 20 culture points per turn (cpt) on improvements. Every culture improvement nets a set number of cpt, although once the building has been around for more than 1000 years the cpt value doubles. Your temple was originally giving you 2cpt but it must be more than 1000 years old by now so it will be conributing 4cpt. The other improvements are Library (3), colosseum (2), cathedral (3), university (4) and research lab (2). To get 20 I suspect that you have a 1000yo cathedral or library but no research lab. The same idea applies with respect to wonders for your 36cpt rating. The spreadsheet that I link to below will give you details as to how this value is calculated as long as you type in the date that you have built each wonder.

As CommandoBob has already said, CivAssistII has a culture tab that can predict the 20K victory date based upon current culture per turn. SirPleb constructed an excel sheet a few years ago that AlanH has improved that enables you to project your victory date by including projected builds-something that CII cannot do AFAIK. You can download the spreadsheet from here but go down to post #6 for the updated version.

Finally the quickest way to get a 20K victory when playing vanilla is (strangely enough) by waging constant war. Great Leaders can rush a complete wonder in a single turn. Every time one of your elite units wins a battle, there is a chance that you could get a GL. Wage lots of wars and you can build every wonder from the middle ages onwards in the weakest of shield producing towns! (Note that each elite unit can spawn only one GL-it will then have a star by it to indicate that it cannot generate another GL.)

Good luck in completing you first 20K victory. It sounds like you have a winning game there.

Great post BTW

 

[darski]

There is an "Apollo" download which will guesstimate your likely year of Cultural victory for your Civ and one city

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=21814

I have it but have not used it yet as I am still getting used to my C3C

I found that CAII was completely unreliable for this task - it guesses wrong and then says - on every turn--- This is the one.. it'll happen this time fer shure... Um...I meant this next turn

 

[Mursi lives]

I found that CAII was completely unreliable for this task - it guesses wrong and then says - on every turn--- This is the one.. it'll happen this time fer shure... Um...I meant this next turn

I think CAII just calculates the year you reach 20k, assuming you dont build culture anymore. Since you will build more culture, it will never guess right except at the very end.

 

[darski]

But it will say that you will win by culture in (say) 1874. Well 1874 comes and goes with no war losses or anything and you are building more stuff and it still just keeps picking the current CA II date.

 

[krakedhalo]

Great Leaders are a good way to go, but by no means necessary. I recently played a fun (and FAST - 3 hours total) warlord 20k game.... where I didn't build a single unit. Original worker made the necessary improvements at the capitol, and I bought slaves from the other civs. Two culture flips gave me two spears, but I marched them out of the cities. By not building a single unit I could concentrate only on Wonders and culture. I had every wonder until missing Shakespeare by 3 turns, then missed US and Adam Smith's, with the game ending in 1826 in the mid-IA.

Warlord, obviously, so not terribly difficult to do, but fun! I had to bribe the main power to hit some other people first, and MPP'd with them so they wouldn't come looking my way.

 

[Tone]

But it will say that you will win by culture in (say) 1874. Well 1874 comes and goes with no war losses or anything and you are building more stuff and it still just keeps picking the current CA II date.

Is that for 20K or 100K?

I find that it sometimes gets the date wrong by one turn for 20K but I'll get it the turn before it predicted.

I remember that there was a problem with '100K' for conquests in that it was not recognising the different limits needed for the different map sizes. i.e. it would be predicting a 100K win for a huge map on reaching 100K, rather than the 160K required. That would explain your situation but I thought that this was fixed in one of the later versions of CAII though. Maybe this fix 'unfixed' it for vanilla and you are talking about one of your vanilla games?

 

[darski]

it was Vanilla where this happened.

haven't even considered a cultural win with my C3C yet. I have only Just gotten a single victory with it at warlord. I don't think cultural is going to be on my list for a good may years yet.