A few cultural victory questions

[cherrysnowdrop]

Hello,

I've been trying to improve my cultural victories recently, and I've read a lot of the threads and strategies about cultural victories and they've been a great help. I have a general idea about my tech path, how many cities to have, how to handle diplomacy, ect. However I have a few more questions that I couldn't find answers to, and I'd appreciate some help:

- Should I just cottage my 3 cities and work them as early as possible? Usually this leads to low production when there aren't any hills to mine, so it becomes quite hard to get out cathedrals or other expensive buildings, and rush buying takes a long time. Are workshops worth adding after Caste System or are cottages better?

- Should my 3 cities stop working cottages and have a few GA specialists, or is it better if just my 2-3 GP farms produce GAs? My problem is that until I settle my last cities (I usually have 6) and get their population big enough to work specialists it's a little late in the game. Should I quickly settle all 6 cities?

- Is it worth building GE wonders in my 3 cities or are wonders that add GA specialists better? Or should my 3 cities switch to building culture at any possible time? I've never had a city that produced more than 500 culture a turn, even though I make sure to build religious buildings, libraries, ect. Should I be building more wonders?

- Around when should I start building missionaries to spread the 4-5 religions? I usually start around 1 AD but is that too late?

I play with Elizabeth, small and usually Pangaea so each civ's religion can spread to me. My best has been late 1800s with cottage spamming, usually Pyramids in my capital then rush builded Sistine and 1-2 other GA wonders in my other 2 cities (usually Parthenon). I try to have 4 religions in all 6 cities so I can have cathedrals in all cultural cities.

Thanks in advance!

 

[DaveMcW]

Late 1800's is pretty good. You probably need to improve your general civ skills rather than culture victory skills to be faster.

A cheap way to get faster culture wins is play quick speed.

 

[cherrysnowdrop]

I didn't know that the speed you play could affect your ending date. Thanks! So does that mean playing on Epic or Marathon could lead to a longer ending date?

I'll read more about how to play early on, I found about the videos on Youtube and they seem very helpful.

 

[Dragonxander PR]

That difference has to do with different speed scaling for different features in the game. For instance, cultural victory on Quick speed requires HALF the culture points needed on Normal, but Quick takes 66% of the time needed for Normal. This means that Normal speed requires the legendary cities to have 50,000 culture points; & Quick requires 25,000 points, when it should require 33,333 points.

 

[pollock]

Ive only every won one cultural victory. Massed river cottages seemed to be the way. Spread the relegions as soon as can. You wont be building a real army so should have plenty of production .
The pagodas/ catherdrals should be coming online just before go to 100% culture slider. Theres some debate around this but i think around the time of rifling. Some wonders are good.
From memory sistine chapel is good. Mids are good for early free speech i think. Any wonder helps really for the gp points and decent culture bonus.
It can be hard to predict which city will need great artist help. I was surprised when a purely riverside grassland cottage overtook my wonder great person capital

Edit: I did just read your questions and not your last paragraph. That last paragraph does just say what i said hehehehe

 

[cherrysnowdrop]

Yeah, I knew less culture was needed for quick and more for marathon and epic, but I thought it might be harder since you have less turns and less chance to make up for mistakes. But I'll give it a try.

Especially with Elizabeth I've been loving riverside cities for culture, but somehow with just cottages it takes 40-50 turns for one cathedral if I haven't got marble/copper/stone. But maybe I've been trying to build them too early on, so I'll try right before I switch to 100% culture!

This probably is a very basic and dumb question, but do the number of specialists in other cities affect how quickly a city generates a great person? I thought it just depended on how many specialists there were in the city. Thanks!

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

do the number of specialists in other cities affect how quickly a city generates a great person?

No, base GPP rate is calculated locally (remote multipliers - eg Parthenon - can come into play, but none of those are influenced by remote specialists).

However, the number of points needed to spawn another GP are global. So when Heresville spawns a Great Person, the number of points needed to spawn a GP in Theresburg go up right away.

 

[cherrysnowdrop]

I see, that's what I had thought, thank you! So getting a priest or spy specialist in a non-GP farm will slow my GA specialists coming.. nope, not worth it

I have a last question; should jungles be avoided for cultural cities even if I have iron working? The problem is that usually the 3rd city has to be in the jungle, but it takes a long time to clear and they don't really have much resources.

 

[Dragonxander PR]

In case it has some decent food (mostly grassland + 1 food resource) & some production (say, 2-4 grassland hills), you'd have to clear out the jungle ASAP; & for that it's best to have many workers.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I have a last question; should jungles be avoided for cultural cities even if I have iron working? The problem is that usually the 3rd city has to be in the jungle, but it takes a long time to clear and they don't really have much resources.

What's wrong with taking the third city from somebody else?

 

[Calouste]

I've never had a city that produced more than 500 culture a turn, even though I make sure to build religious buildings, libraries, ect.

Biology farms, Sistine Chapel and a sheer unlimited number of Artists via Caste System, and I have had cities produce over 1000/turn. The advantage of that is also that you can build a few workshops to boost production in your 3 cities to get all the multiplier buildings up, then farm them over when the time is ripe without having to endure the regrowth penalty that cottages get.

 

[barbertje]

I see, that's what I had thought, thank you! So getting a priest or spy specialist in a non-GP farm will slow my GA specialists coming.. nope, not worth it

I have a last question; should jungles be avoided for cultural cities even if I have iron working? The problem is that usually the 3rd city has to be in the jungle, but it takes a long time to clear and they don't really have much resources.

It can be worth it to run 1 or 2 merchants to keep your culture slider at 100%. Just make sure they don't overtake your artists cities. If you have a city with the national epic and 5 or more artists, and you start 2 merchants somewhere else at the moment you put the slider at 100% you will never get a GP from that city.

Building wealth in your non culture cities (After they're done with their temples) is a better option. Since you should be able to trade for guilds and you'll be running caste system, you get 1f3h or 0f4h workshops and they beat merchants.