A strategy for consistent cultural wins on Monarch

[Puzzlinon]

In the late game, if you're in a cliffhanger game, one vulnerability to watch out for is the U.N. Not for diplo victories so much, but the "global civic" votes.

If Global Civic/Emancipation passes the U.N. you lose your unlimited artists from Caste System, and there's nothing you can do.

If Free Religion passes, then you lose the 100% great people bonus from Pacifism.

If Global Civic/Enviroment passes, it can hurt your finances. (I've found that as a Kulture in the late game, one of the stats you're usually #1 in, is foreign trade, since you're being so cooperative with everyone. Enviroment loses you a trade route per city compared to Free Market, so the trade loss can really cut into culture production.)

I just lost an interesting nailbiter from this happening. GP rate tanked, cash dropped, and Elizabeth stole a space race win. I don't know how to prevent it... maybe vote for the most war-like candidate available as secretary.

It was an interesting way to get kneecapped, having the numbers turned against me like that.

 

[IronKnight]

I am currently playing my first game that implements these culture strategies. Some of the questions that I have are:

1) What do you build in your legendary cities? I've built temples, theaters & cathedrals where I can. What suggestions are there for other useful builds?

2) How many of you use missionaries to spread the various religions in your empire? What's the quickest method to spread the religions? I've found it pretty easy to spread 2 religions in all cities, but it's a little harder to get 3 different ones in each.

3) I don't have a lot of food bonuses in my current game. I'm finding that I need a lot of farms to produce extra food to support the artist specialists. Any other suggestions on how to support the specialists?

 

[walkerjks]

1) What do you build in your legendary cities? I've built temples, theaters & cathedrals where I can. What suggestions are there for other useful builds?

+happiness buildings are key early. In the late game, health is often a problem, so I tend to build any health improving building I can. Harbors are great for culture, parrticularly if you have built The Great Lighthouse.

In my mind, the most important buildings at the end of the game tend to be (in this order): +% culture buildings (primarily cathedrals), theaters (no unhappiness once you go all culture), harbors (one harbor can easily provide 12 base commerce - that will give you more culture than any other non-wonder), +health buildings (getting to work another tile, even if it's a +3 coast tile is as good as most other culture producing buildings), and all other culture producing buildings (temples, monasteries, libraries, etc).

Note that some of the buildings that are not terribly important in the end game (temples and libraries in particular) can still be very valuable for growing.

2) How many of you use missionaries to spread the various religions in your empire? What's the quickest method to spread the religions? I've found it pretty easy to spread 2 religions in all cities, but it's a little harder to get 3 different ones in each.

Almost always. Every once in a while, I'll have a game where the AI will flood my civ with their religion. I love it when it happens, but it's rare. So I generally have to spread the religions myself. What I don't do is spread the religions too early. If I have 2 religions by 1 AD, I may only spread a state religion (and even then I might leave a couple cities without any religion) in the hopes of coaxing another religion to spread to my civ. Around 1000 AD, I go into full religion spread mode and start building the temples needed for the cathedrals.

2 religions per city is probably fine, even if you have more options. I generally try to spread all religions to my core 3 cities (more temples and monostaries to build for the culture), but if I get too carried away with building temples in the other cities, I often find myself with a weak defense, or more cathedrals than I can actually build in time to do any good. If I can get 4 total cathedrals built (plus the Hermitage, so +100% culture bonus in all 3 cities), I'm pretty happy. Any more than that is gravy.

3) I don't have a lot of food bonuses in my current game. I'm finding that I need a lot of farms to produce extra food to support the artist specialists. Any other suggestions on how to support the specialists?

This happens sometimes. The best thing to do is find the city with at least 3 high-food resources. Maybe it's a pair of 5 food sea resources with a 5 food grain resource. That's +15 food from 3 tiles. With the extra 2 food from the city, you can support 5 specialists in that city, which is enough to generate 7 or so great artists. Not great, but you work with what you have.

If farming really helps, go for it. Just remember that a farm only adds half a specialist (pre-Biology). That may be enough to get you another great artist, but in the end game, a tile with a town will produce more culture than half an artist specialist.

 

[sir_q]

I just finished a gruesome cultural win on Monarch as Gandhi. Started on an island by myself and won with Cyrus two parts away from a spaceship victory; everyone else had built Apollo and at least a couple casings.

From it I learned a few important lessons.

Mercantilism is suicide. Due more than anything to luck and a serious Great Artist drought, Bombay was about eight thousand culture behind Delhi and Madras. Cyrus had begun his spaceship and Bombay was chugging along at about 480 culture per turn with roughly 20 turns until 50,000 (Delhi and Madras were already legendary). I grew worried as the messages regarding Cyrus' spaceship started coming up faster, and took a look at my civics to see if there was any way to speed my culture; I'd been on Mercantilism since I discovered the relevant tech. On a gamble I switched to Free Market, hoping the free artist I lost would be compensated for by trade routes. Immediately upon switching Bombay was now producing 585 culture/turn. The lesson? As soon as Culture goes to 100% (I didn't do it until Mass Media), commerce is king.

I have this Stonehenge addiction I need to break. 75% of my great people all game were prophets, even when the % chance of great prophets was down in the twenties. I find building obelisks manually to be incredibly irritating, so I try for Stonehenge whenever I can - and Gandhi certainly makes that easy, it was my first build in Delhi - but that's kind of a self-defeating decision.

Defense matters even when you're all by yourself. Without a single war until the nineteenth century, I was happy to defend my cities with a single warrior each. Isabella, that wench, landed a dozen infantry next to a fairly high-commerce city, declared war and burned it with no trouble. Fortunately, my cities were widely spaced so I could upgrade and build a few infantry of my own before she did more damage; nonetheless, the eight turns I spent fighting her with both science and culture at 0% for upgrade/rush money nearly cost me the game.

I founded Judaism and Hinduism myself but - again thanks to Stonehenge - missed out on all the other religions. After finding I was on my own island, I stunted my own growth to finish Stonehenge. My tech pace suffered as a result. Founding religions does seem awfully useful in a cultural game; +5 culture/turn from the 2 or 3000's BC is really a great deal of culture, and not having to wait for natural spread in order to build temples lets your cities grow larger sooner.

Next time, I'm probably going to try a monarch pangaea cultural with a different civ, and if I remember, I'll come back here and revise my ideas with whatever knowledge I gain.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

This is a "so close" victory type. I was playing a Prince game as romans. Epic length. I had a nice lead on the computer at 1640ish. But wasnt aiming for a cultural victory. But i thought yawn another spaceship win. So i saved the game and went for a cultural victory. I wasnt really to good at it. I started off with a 90% culture. Then went to a 70% culture. Then 60% for a bit and back up to a 90% then to a 100% when i saw spaceship parts

On epic you need 75k culture in 3 cities btw. I needed about 30 turns more. The computer won by spaceship in 1927. Which im not sure what to think about a 1927 win by the computer on Prince seems pretty fast. The computer doesnt normally pressure me that much. Maybe i got lucky in previous games. It could be because they got all the wonders after i turned off research. That might speed the computer up. Or maybe the computer is scripted to do stuff when it can project your cultural victory.

Getting religions is absolutely crucial for this victory type. You need 9 cities. It seems like its going to help if you see more then a couple of religions in your empire before 1600. Seems like it would be really nice if you can have 3 types of cathedrals in place before you hit the switch.

 

[IronKnight]

@walkerjks - Thanks for your original posts (extremely helpful & thought provoking) as well as your response to mine.

Well, I completed my 1st culture game...I lost. It was close. I lost a spaceship race. I should have won if I wasn't as careless. 1 city was at 60k+, one was at 51k+, and the 3rd was at around 47k. I think the method that walkerjks has outlined is very good. I plan to start a new game right away and try it again. I think I can win this time. I was Elizabeth in my 1st game, playing at Noble. I may try Catherine in the next one. I haven't used a Creative leader yet. Do you get the +2 culture right off the back? If so, this would be great for early city expansion!

+happiness buildings are key early. In the late game, health is often a problem, so I tend to build any health improving building I can. Harbors are great for culture, particularly if you have built The Great Lighthouse.

Yeah, health became the problem in my larger cities. I was fortunate to have many trades for food resources which helped my health somewhat, but I did need to build aquaducts in others.

In my mind, the most important buildings at the end of the game tend to be (in this order): +% culture buildings (primarily cathedrals), theaters (no unhappiness once you go all culture), harbors (one harbor can easily provide 12 base commerce - that will give you more culture than any other non-wonder), +health buildings (getting to work another tile, even if it's a +3 coast tile is as good as most other culture producing buildings), and all other culture producing buildings (temples, monasteries, libraries, etc).

How about marketplaces and the other economic buildings? I started building marketplaces in the late game because I didn't know what else to build. Plus, aren't banks the double production speed build for the financial civs? These will provide more culture via the economy.

If farming really helps, go for it. Just remember that a farm only adds half a specialist (pre-Biology). That may be enough to get you another great artist, but in the end game, a tile with a town will produce more culture than half an artist specialist.

Good point! Because I had mostly farms & cottages I was fairly hammer poor (single digit hammer totals in cities). Do you build a few improvements for hammers, say work some mined hills? Cottages that grow to towns produce 1 hammer in the later game?

I think you kind of eluded to this an a few earlier posts, but what civics do you recommend. Do you beeline to any? For religion I used Pacifism for the +100% Great Person rate. Economics I ran Mercantilism for the extra trade route. Labor I ran Caste System for the unlimited artists. For legal I eventually got to Free Speech for the extra culture. Government type was the one I really wasn't sure of. I don't see where one of these really helps a culture win in any way. Maybe representation to get some beakers after going 100% culture?

What percentage of your games do you build shrines? You mentioned in earlier posts that you don't make it a priority to found a religion. Is it that hard on higher difficulty levels? It just seems that shrines can really give a huge boost to your economics which will transfer into culture.

 

[walkerjks]

How about marketplaces and the other economic buildings? I started building marketplaces in the late game because I didn't know what else to build. Plus, aren't banks the double production speed build for the financial civs? These will provide more culture via the economy.

Firaxis created a lot of confusion by using the same symbol for gold income and commerce in all their help. Harbors, for example, increase commerce income from trade routes. Therefore, they increase science (early) or culture (late), depending on where your slider is at. Markets, banks, and groceries, however, increase your gold income. Nice, but a relatively small factor in a game where you run 80% science early and 90% culture late.

There are only two situations where I will build these structures. First, if I need the secondary benefit (+happiness or +health based on resources I have). Second, mid-game when I have nothing better to build. Though you may be better off building military if you are truly out of culture/happiness/health buildings. Very late in the game, I would rather build "culture" than a bank in my core 3 cities, and I build cavalry (or cossacks) and catapults outside my core 3 cities.

Good point! Because I had mostly farms & cottages I was fairly hammer poor (single digit hammer totals in cities). Do you build a few improvements for hammers, say work some mined hills? Cottages that grow to towns produce 1 hammer in the later game?

It's definitely easy to end up with a very low production city (particularly in jungled areas). Having a couple hills can make a huge difference. But if you don't have any hills, you still can either really on production from towns or by using cash to rush in truly critical building (a cathedral, for example). Both require either Democracy or The Pyramids.

 

[walkerjks]

I think you kind of eluded to this an a few earlier posts, but what civics do you recommend. Do you beeline to any? For religion I used Pacifism for the +100% Great Person rate. Economics I ran Mercantilism for the extra trade route. Labor I ran Caste System for the unlimited artists. For legal I eventually got to Free Speech for the extra culture. Government type was the one I really wasn't sure of. I don't see where one of these really helps a culture win in any way. Maybe representation to get some beakers after going 100% culture?

I switch into caste system/pacifism once my great artist city is ready to go. I occasionally switch into organized religion before that, but only if I'm playing a continents game where all my immediate neighbors share the same religion. The only other early game civic that I use situationally is hereditary rule. If I have lots of health resources and few happiness resources, I'll pick up monarchy (often through trade) and control happiness through military. Can get a bit expensive with pacifism, but does solve both happiness issues and keeps you from looking weak.

What percentage of your games do you build shrines? You mentioned in earlier posts that you don't make it a priority to found a religion. Is it that hard on higher difficulty levels? It just seems that shrines can really give a huge boost to your economics which will transfer into culture.

You absolutely can get an early religion on Emperor if you really want to. If you don't start with mysticism, you can get Judaism by making a beeline for it. Alternatively, you can set yourself up to chop-rush The Oracle and get either Confucianism or possibly Theology (requires some extra tech). In both cases, the problem is the techs that you are bypassing early in order to get the religion. Also, The Oracle tends to create a situation where you get more great prophets than you really want and great prophets are about the worst great person to have when you run out of shrines to build (though the +2 shields can be nice for your lowest producing core city).

An alternative is to get to Philosophy first. This happens reasonably often in my games (maybe 30% of the time?) and I could probably increase this percentage to a near certainty if I wanted to. Again, you may need to bypass some techs that you really need earlier to deal with other situations, such as Code of Laws, or Monarchy, or Calendar. That said, Philosophy can get you most of that other stuff in trade. Still, I don't think it's normally worthwhile to stretch for Philosophy just for the religion. The exception to this is when you are playing a Continents game and find yourself alone on an island. In this case, you may not see any religion until 1500 AD or so (generally 1200 AD or so) if you don't found one yourself. That means no pacifism before then and little time to prep the temples for cathedral building. My worst games always come in Continents games when I am isolated on an island (custom Island games are another story entirely).

Is a shrine worth it? Certainly if you have the religion and a great prophet (from The Oracle, for example). I need to do some analysis to see when it's worth generating a great prophet (instead of a great artist) in order to build a shrine. It's a nice culture boost in it's own right, and the income obviously allows you to produce more science and culture. I'm not sure the end result is as good as an artist, but it's worth taking some time to figure out.

 

[Khaim]

Firaxis created a lot of confusion by using the same symbol for gold income and commerce in all their help.

There are several graphics mods that fix this problem. I like this one myself, but that's just a matter of taste. I strongly suggest getting one of them, however, since the difference between gold and commerce is important.

 

[IronKnight]

Firaxis created a lot of confusion by using the same symbol for gold income and commerce in all their help. Harbors, for example, increase commerce income from trade routes. Therefore, they increase science (early) or culture (late), depending on where your slider is at. Markets, banks, and groceries, however, increase your gold income. Nice, but a relatively small factor in a game where you run 80% science early and 90% culture late.

Hmmm...maybe I don't understand. Is it different from Civ3? If you have a bank and it increases your gold by 50%, doesn't that potentially offset any increases to a slider, or are they totally seperate now? If I adjust the culture slider, and say put it too high, that's going to deplete my gold reserves, right? Perhaps I have to do some more reading to understand this concept.

 

[walkerjks]

Hmmm...maybe I don't understand. Is it different from Civ3? If you have a bank and it increases your gold by 50%, doesn't that potentially offset any increases to a slider, or are they totally seperate now? If I adjust the culture slider, and say put it too high, that's going to deplete my gold reserves, right? Perhaps I have to do some more reading to understand this concept.

No, you are correct. But look at the gold being produced by your cities sometime when you have the slider at 90% (science or culture) during the mid-game. Your city may only be producing 5 or so gold. Instead of building something that gives me 1.25 more gold (market, grocery), I would prefer to build something that lets me work another tile (3 to 9 extra commerce) or adds 2 or more base culture. So +% gold buildings are certainly useful, they are just a very low priority for this sort of strategy.

Where they do make a big difference is in very large empires (conquest games), when your science will probably dip to somewhere between 40% and 70% or games where your end game strategy is based on rushing things with money (so you run very low science or culture in order to maximize income).

A major exception to this, which should be mentioned is any city with a shrine in it. You will notice that the shrine income applies to this one city only. So regardless of where your slider is, this city will be making a lot of money and would benefit significantly from +% gold buildings.

 

[Bezhukov]

I've enjoyed playing around with cultural strategies in pursuit of various victory types (I have emperor and above wins on over half the civs so far - yes, I've been playing too much civ!). A couple thoughts:

1. The most effective way to delay AI spaceships is to give them wars to fight instead. This doesn't require a huge military on your part, just enough to defend your holdings.

2. Commerce+cathedrals is indeed the key. Great Artists are a red herring. Great scientists and engineers are more effective in developing your civ. If you get an artist accidentally, they don't suck, but the other options are stronger.

3. Depending on your traits + availability of stone/marble, wonders are a viable source of culture/GPP/unique effects. My earliest actual cultural win featured Asoka getting Pyramids and Hanging Gardens early, and riding the Great Engineer train to a virtual wonder monopoly. I went ahead to Flight in this game before the switch, so the 1904 win date probably could have been improved upon.

The darkhorse candidate is the infinite Great Merchant strategy (each two super specialists will feed a regular). I got a city to 19 Merchants and 2100 culture per turn (312 GPP/turn) with this approach.

 

[IronKnight]

I'm nearing the end of my 2nd cultural game. It's going well, but I'm not sure if it's going well enough. I'm in the early 1800's: 1 city is producing +/- 550 cpt, the other 2 are producing +/- 440 cpt. I'm playing on Noble and don't know if I'll beat the space race.

I'm trying something slightly different than walkerjks' original startegy. I'm using some of my great artists as super specialists in my city #'s 2 & 3. Once I knew for sure which ones they would be, I brought in the specialists. I only added 3 each to #2 & #3 culture cities. I added 2 at a time to one city and found that those 2 added 70 cpt in 1 city. I was very surprised, that's 35 cpt each I guess it has to do with the multipliers?

I played on continents. I ended up with just the Aztecs on my land mass. I did a fast expansion and paid for it for quite a few turns. I was down to only 40% science at one point. On the flip side, I have many temples built. I also have 3 different religions. I expected that I would be able to build multiple cathedrals in my 3 culture cities, but I'm not able to, even though I have enough temples built. Can you only build 1 cathedral per city

 

[IronKnight]

@Bezhukov: Thanks for the info.

...Great Artists are a red herring...

How so?

Depending on your traits + availability of stone/marble, wonders are a viable source of culture/GPP/unique effects. My earliest actual cultural win featured Asoka getting Pyramids and Hanging Gardens early, and riding the Great Engineer train to a virtual wonder monopoly. I went ahead to Flight in this game before the switch, so the 1904 win date probably could have been improved upon.

Are you able to complete most wonders at Emperor level? Do you use the engineers to complete them? Do you typically use Asoka as your leader?

The darkhorse candidate is the infinite Great Merchant strategy (each two super specialists will feed a regular). I got a city to 19 Merchants and 2100 culture per turn (312 GPP/turn) with this approach.

Wow, quite impressive! If you had 2100 cpt in 1 city, how much did you have in the others? How long did you have to wait for the other 2 cities to catch up achieve your victory?

 

[walkerjks]

Great Artists are a red herring. Great scientists and engineers are more effective in developing your civ. If you get an artist accidentally, they don't suck, but the other options are stronger.

I will admit that great engineers and great merchants might be more useful in some quantity. I haven't done enough analysis of the numbers to fully determine this. There is no question that 3000 or so gold in the last 50 years (from a very good merchant mission) is better than 4000 culture from a great artist. The extra gold lets you push up the culture slider from it's natural 80% or 90% to 100%. A more typical (at least on standard maps) 1800 gold merchant mission is not as good as a great artist.

Just curious - what will a great engineer do for me post-1500 AD (when most of my great people come)? As I see it, I can finish a cathedral or The Hermitage instantly. If I don't have the correct resource to halve the time, this might save 30 turns or so. +50% culture for 30 more turns is 3000 total culture, at best, so I don't see how that's a good use. Are there specific late wonders you are using them for? And as good as a great engineer is as a super specialist, I can't see how the bonuses truly put me 2.67% closer to victory as a great artist clearly does.

I'm not discounting the usefullness of merchants and engineers, I just haven't seen their usefulness for long-term culture. Yes, development = culture (indirectly), but I'm not sure it's enough. Now in other games, likes a one-city challenge, super merchants and engineers flat out rock (and artists stink).

There are two main reasons I love great artists -

1) The AI won't know you are winning, so you get attacked less. The AI seems to attack you as soon as it thinks you will beat it to victory. By storing 8 to 12 great artists, the AI never really thinks you are that close to victory. You may have cities at 49.5K, 38K, and 27K on one turn, and 50K, 50K, and 51K the next.
2) Great artists are the best city culture equalizers. I don't worry so much if one city produces +600 culture/turn, another is at +500 culture/turn and my thrid is lagging at 350 culture/turn. Great artists will equalize it in the end. I By spreading out the artists properly, all 3 cities will be at 50,000 culture before any of them hit 55,000 culture. So I waste very little

 

[IronKnight]

I found this thread and thought it was appropriate to be linked with this discussion:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3416871#post3416871

The Parthenon topped their list of important Wonders. I've found it fairly easy to build (at Noble) before the AI if I start it right away. I think it's been proven that it isn't a must build, but I would think that it is worth trying get in all games?

 

[ElderVogl]

Anyone have a cultural win in a multiplayer game? In games versus the AI, you can get away with having a weaker military (to a certain extent and depending on the difficulty level). Human players are much, much different.

Human players can also check out the victory conditions screen to see who has the cities with the next highest culture to theirs. If they see one of your soon-to-be legendary cities up there, you can probably expect an invasion. You may be able to trick them into thinking they can wait to attack by hording Great Artists for a last second culture grab, but if I was playing against someone with three cities at 30k culture I wouldn't wait...

 

[Petey the Great]

Hi everyone.

I started off trying something pretty similar to walterjks' strategy and have played around with it over a few games. Certainly the early priority on deforestation and the preference of cottages over farms, especially when combined with a financial leader provide a great platform for all forms of victory.

Whereas population was power in earlier versions (especially Civ2), in Civ4 wealth seems to be the real key to success. I've just won a close-shave space race in a duel on monarch after playing pretty much the whole game for a cultural win but picking the wrong third city. It's a higher level than I usually play on and it says a lot for the power of the money, money, money approach that I could still win after dropping such a major strategic clanger and having to switch targets.

As to the great artist debate, the maths are overwhelmingly with the super specialist as far as I can see - culture gets lots of potential multipliers and they can clock-up some serious points. Obviously, later in the game it's more tempting to use the great work but early-doors it's no contest for me. The point about the AIs not knowing you're winning is an interesting one, though, so I might well give this a go next time and let you know how I get on.

The Parthenon, The Great Lighthouse and Eiffel Tower are priority wonders for me in a cultural game. The Colossus and Sistine Chapel are nice if they're gettable. I'll look to produce a great engineer to produce the Eiffel Tower if I think there's any danger of being beaten to it. I'm also a big fan of shrines - they really do generate a lot of wealth and add a great deal of power to the science and culture sliders. My favourite civics, currently, are free speech (bureaucracy until it's available); serfdom early on then caste system; free market; free religion following a spell of organised religion to get as many religions as possible in all cities to allow lots of Stupas/Cathedrals/Mosques etc. in the big three; and I just plain can't decide between the government civs, I just about lean towards representation at the minute.

Thanks for an excellent article walterjks, I can definitely say that I'm a far better player for having read it.

 

[maddog1]

Thanks for this. Good stuff.

I tried this approach on Noble for the first time last night. Things went OK, but some rookie mistakes meant I wasn't close to winning until around 2000 AD.

About 2000 culture points from victory my neighbors went from pleased to declaring war in what seemed like two turns. I may have misplayed, but am not sure what I could have done better. Things ended really ugly.

I'll try again tonight!

 

[petey]

I have this Stonehenge addiction I need to break. 75% of my great people all game were prophets, even when the % chance of great prophets was down in the twenties. I find building obelisks manually to be incredibly irritating, so I try for Stonehenge whenever I can - and Gandhi certainly makes that easy, it was my first build in Delhi - but that's kind of a self-defeating decision.

Stonehenge shouldn't have been a factor in getting those Great Prophets. As I understand it, the GP points it produces go away when it becomes obsolete with Calendar. So after the early game, it wouldn't have been contributing to what kind of GP yougot at all.