20k culture victory

[justanick]

Another way to think of this is tall vs. wide. To get a 20k victory, you need to treat one city like a diva, building the best culture buildings there. It's helpful to have the diva city *not* be your capital so that you can use the palace as a pre-build. As soon as a wonder finishes, start building the palace. Those shields can be transferred into the next wonder that the city wants to build. All the other cities are playing supporting roles. Making troops to conquer cities, to secure luxuries and resources. Making workers to ensure that all the tiles around the diva city are improved. Full disclosure: I've never achieved it, but I haven't tried very often.

I wonder if it is really the better idea to use anything less than the capital city to achieve 20000 culture in one city. My intuition tells me that in most cases the best approach would to start the game a one city challange. No settlers are built, instead the ancient age is used to build as many cheap wonders as possible. Only after the Statue of Zeus or Knights Templar have built you a power army you leave the path of the one city challenge. If no culture building is still availble to be build you may of course also built settlers. This approach of OCC at first, but pragmatism later could be fun.

 

[Lanzelot]

I usually use the capital as 20K city, at least on the lower difficulty levels. With a decent empire, your research rate is fast enough, so that your capital always has something useful to build, so the palace prebuilt is rarely ever needed. (That's why the first 1-2 settlers from the capital should not be delayed too long.) Also you need a decent empire in order to build an army for leader hunting. Once you have built (or preferably rushed) the Military Academy, you can always use a 400s Army as prebuild. And the Heroic Epic is of course a very useful culture building.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I wonder if it is really the better idea to use anything less than the capital city to achieve 20000 culture in one city. My intuition tells me that in most cases the best approach would to start the game a one city challange. No settlers are built, instead the ancient age is used to build as many cheap wonders as possible. Only after the Statue of Zeus or Knights Templar have built you a power army you leave the path of the one city challenge. If no culture building is still availble to be build you may of course also built settlers. This approach of OCC at first, but pragmatism later could be fun.

That's a valid point. I've not played an OCC before, at any difficulty level. My last attempt at 20k culture had a capital which was more food rich, off the coast, and a decent site (hills, coastal, river) for my second city. Without disagreeing with you, I would add "play the map." If the capital location has the right ingredients to be a 20k city, then use it.
Something I've always wondered about for attempting one city challenge is what does one do when Monty or Shaka sends a crew to invade while you're half-done with a wonder like Colossus or GL. If I switch, I lose a lot of shields. If I don't switch, I could lose the game. Those two civs have fast-moving ancient age units.

 

[Spoonwood]

I wonder if it is really the better idea to use anything less than the capital city to achieve 20000 culture in one city. My intuition tells me that in most cases the best approach would to start the game a one city challange. No settlers are built, instead the ancient age is used to build as many cheap wonders as possible. Only after the Statue of Zeus or Knights Templar have built you a power army you leave the path of the one city challenge. If no culture building is still availble to be build you may of course also built settlers. This approach of OCC at first, but pragmatism later could be fun.

As I recall, almost all HoF entries on Deity or lower use the capital for the 20k city. There might exist some reason to consider using the second city for a 20k game on Deity without a high shield start. Perhaps even more so, if attempting such on a pangea map.

On Sid though, my experience (and my entries), focused on using the 2nd city. There was a Large Sid 20k gauntlet a number of years ago where someone won by using the 2nd city, and it seemed like the most powerful strategy to me once I had read it. Research on Sid is very, very costly, and using the capital would result in long periods of time where a cultural building just wasn't getting built. So, I definitely do think that using the 2nd city instead of the capital city can be beneficial.

I don't agree that usually the best strategy consists in starting out a 20k game a one city challenge. I think Sanabas made some useful notes a while back, and his strategy seemed to work best to me. The capital city puts out a scouting unit and/or a settler. Then the capital city focuses on culture after that with the 2nd city putting out workers/warriors/scouting units/settlers.