Anybody achieved a cultural victory yet?

[baberg]

I've played a few games to completion on Prince (level 4) and have won by domination and science victory, but neither time was I anywhere close to winning by culture. My most recent win was domination but I had decided early on to focus on science and culture to try for that method but in the end I was forced to battle.

Has anybody been able to win through culture yet?

 

[Blitz66]

I've tried, but to me the allure of Civilization is to create a sprawling empire of many cities.

It seems like it is impossible to realistically gain policy unlocks at a fast enough rate with the larger empires I like to play.

I need to force myself to simply sit down and do the one city challenge.

 

[ozon]

Of course has this kind of victory been achieved - just have a look at the achievemnts on Steam.

I achieved one with Bismarck on a standard continent map on king difficulty and it was my last possibilty to achieve victory after i messed up all other before.

Thus I finished in 2040, no date to be proud of, but definetely a proof that it is possible to complete 5 social policies in time, even if you start very latel to focus on culture.

 

[AySteve]

My first win was a cultural with egypt on prince (love those burial tombs). I was going for it from pretty early on which helped. I was forced to war with and capture another civ. I should have just razed their cities but at the time I was worried about the potential diplo penalties as it was my first full game. Fortunately I did know that extra cities upped the policy costs so I turned them to puppet states. Unfortunately I was already low on gold when this happened and once they statrted building everything in sight the game turned into a race to see if I could win before my own cities totally destroyed me!

 

[CreepyD]

From what I've seen, it's really really hard.
I've played 3 whole games now, 2 small maps, 1 std.
1st go Prince, other goes Emperor. Victories by Domination the 1st two goes, then science on the std map.
I really really tried for a culture victory on the 3rd go, I was playing on archapelago and limited myself to 3 cities (4 later as I needed more production power and oil/coal that it provided).
I built pretty most wonders and had over 10 in my capital, went for all cultrual buildings and policies. In the end I needed another 15 policies, so was absolutely miles away from victory!
I even had 3 city states giving me a whole bunch of culture, made bigger by playing as Siam.

It looks like you need to limit it to 1-2 cities, but I'm not sure what else I could have done and would have been beaten to a science loss if not for the oil which let me take over an enemies capital as he was building his spaceship ahead of me.

 

[Auncien]

Yeah I'm having a hard time with cultural victory as well. I've tried four times now and failed. Once I got really close. I was within 20-something turns of the Utopia Project, but time ran out =|

EDIT: I would add that I'm completely okay with this, as building the 'Utopia Project' and uniting all of humanity in eternal bliss should be a difficult thing to achieve.

 

[baberg]

Thanks for the info all - I guess I tend towards the old strategies of "get as much land as you can as fast as you can" because I'm generally at 7-8 cities by the time I stop expanding and start looking towards the military/science options. But since that ups the number of required culture to get the next policy, I guess that's why it seems so far away to me.

 

[AySteve]

I think I had 5 cities on a small map when I did it, plus another 5 or so puppets. I won around 1950's could certainly have been sooner than that with some better planning and probably less cities. You get some pretty good modifiers to culture, especially the broadcast towers I think give +100%. Also I banked up my culture for quite a while before the renaissance to get the policy that makes subsequent policies cheaper, got about 5 policies in a single turn then after unlocking that

 

[waytofailself]

King trying to go 3 city with Ghandi. (fractal map) Started strong...almost there. Have about 5 or 6 policies left to get and on my way to attempt to beeline to the Opera House wonder after getting radio for towers.

I'm in the process of shooting for it and I feel like I'm pretty close. However, I've been at war with England for over 1000 years (no I'm not kidding, it's the 1950s now). I had Germany as a nice buffer state but of course England gobbled Germany up and has been knocking on my door ever since then.

I've done a bad job at trying to be peaceful. And now Greece has built a city where I razed one of England's right on my doorstep. They're way more technologically advanced and suddenly not very friendly with me. Ruh roh.

If the AI was good they'd invade me by sea. Instead, they're going over the hills one by one single file and their infantry is getting annihilated by my cannons. WTB AI upgrade.

 

[Zelig]

I was going for it from pretty early on which helped.

This is key, if you can save most of your SP points for when you have only 1 city, the freedom SP that gives -33% and the cristo redentor, it's pretty easy.

I got a cultural OCC win, picked up an extra 6 policies or so in the time it took my capital to build the utopia project.

 

[noodlecake]

I'm playing a game as Greece at the moment and seem to be doing pretty well with the culture. Just set up a decent money making city and bribed all the culture states with the money I was making. Playing on prince though and I still haven't won yet. I may have expanded too much too. :-S

 

[dorn]

Don't forget that puppet cities don't count. You can easily go a conquering everything in sight as long as you don't annex the cities.

 

[Ashka]

I just achieved the gandhi cultural victory with 3 cities (small map, prince)
I was going for it from quite early..but I did most of the policies in the late game.

I was production focused at first.
But then the harder part was strugling with gold at the end..
I had to switch all my 3 cities tiles from production (mine/lumber) to trading post.
I focused a lot on happiness to get lots of golden ages (always with the money in mind).

And then I had to switch back to prod (and gold at the same time) to finish the Utopia Project.

While fighting with bigger army than mine to keep my city states allies alive..

The cultural bonus from city states allies is nice..

A very intersting game, harder than a domination (prince/small) but less points in the HOF

 

[bjbrains]

This is key, if you can save most of your SP points for when you have only 1 city, the freedom SP that gives -33% and the cristo redentor, it's pretty easy.

I got a cultural OCC win, picked up an extra 6 policies or so in the time it took my capital to build the utopia project.

Yea. Stick to one or two cities, get every non-hostile cultural/maritime city state on your side (Patronage is so important to this strategy. Although mandate of heaven and free speech probably take priority because of the policy-speed increase). Get tradition-aristocracy-stonehenge asap. Grabbing the oracle/sydney opera house is also important, because the free policies they give do not increase the cost of policies, which means you 'skip' the most expensive policies.
The best nations for this that I've found are Siam (Crazy good if you can rush patronage), Greece (On larger maps with lots of city states), India (Great with Mandate of Heaven), and Egypt (There are a lot of wonders that you'll want). Other candidates include the Iroquois (Giving you the extra production that you sorely need), and the Persians (You'll be triggering golden ages anyway, and the 50% boost to length is really good with the Piety tree in general.

 

[shadowplay]

I am on the verge of achieving one as Rome, basically I just went nuts with production then built all the cultural buildings and wonders. I'm also only on my first game on the 2nd easiest difficulty level, so not a lot of challenge involved here.

 

[The Boz]

I did, Gandhi, OCC, Prince. I made a few mistakes, so I only did it in 2071. I think that time is against you on this one, and a lot.

 

[skrewler]

Yep, I did it as Ghandi. but, it was on an Archipelago map. It was actually pretty easy. I had four cities total.

 

[kmvoss]

I used egypt and gobbled up probably 85% of the wonders. Don't expand too much, I did... around eight cities but I still managed to build the utopia project by about 2000. Make sure you get stonehenge and the oracle. You need those early on. Burial tombs are amazing buildings. I really hate the building mait.

 

[gusstu]

I tried Ghandi, prince, standard size.

I got off to a good start, two cities, got a few wonders including stonehenge and the oracle and my four closest neighbors were all cultural city states and I got them all to ally status.

The problem started when the AI kept trying to attack my city states (mostly Warsaw. Everyone hated Warsaw). First Napolean, then Monty, then Cathy, then Al-Rashid joined in when I was still at war with Cathy.

What did me in was Al-Rashid having a HUGE tech lead on me. Even though I had all the tech buildings, two cities and one-two puppets was just not enough population to keep up (especially since Rashid had about 10-12 cities). I held them off for a long time, but in the mid-1700's Rashid pulled out 4 artillery and I gave up.

Mid-1700's I had about 20 policies, so 10 to go and the project.

 

[Coios]

I got my Bollywood and One City achievement last night on deity.

Got lucky and started with 4 out 5 city states on my continent being cultural.

Farmed EVERY single tile in the city, replacing only when i needed to with great artists tile improvement. Built every cultural building, and only needed 6 units the whole game defending due to horrible AI combat abilities and starting with an amazing choke defended by one of the city states. I saved my initial social policies for the piety and patronage trees. The great people gifts were crucial from the allies, as was their bonuses to science and constant support with culture. By the end of the game Delhi was at a city size of 25 and my empire was pushing out 200 culture per turn with golden ages aplenty. The percentage of happiness to culture social policy was huge and as such I went for as much happiness as i possibly could have; by the end of the game I was running at about 40-50 . The other social policy trees I went for were tradition, freedom and commerce (commerce over liberty as I felt the gold to keep my city states allied was more important than the +1 to culture in my capital.)

Almost lost to other victory types, but quickly pushing out workers to change every tile to production and golden ages for more hammers got me the clutch win building the utopia project.