Artist Wars

[KMadCandy]

i'm still playing that game where i got washington's national epic, didn't want it, and gave the city back. it's really fun. atlanta, aka national pain in the candybutt epic city, is hysterical. it keeps going into revolt sooooooo often. it can't flip back to me, since i owned it and gave it back to him, so he just has to suffer through it. on the victory conditions screen, washington has the 2nd highest 3 cities for culture, so i can see the exact numbers. atlanta's his 2nd highest and has just over 8k, so it's influential, one (very long) border pop away from the 75k legendary mark (this is epic speed). but he can't compete and i can't stop giggling. he has just 6 workable tiles .

freddy's on my other side. there are now three of his cities placed directly next to city ruins. the city ruins in each case are former small german cities that revolted to the glory of my empire and i razed them since they'd not add to the glory of my empire. so, he goes back and settles again, as close as he can get to where he was. the man does not learn!!!

he has spiral minaret and hagia sophia in the same city; he's in free religion and knows steam power, so neither one is doing him a bit of good. i'm hindu so that i can benefit from pacifism, and haven't learned chemistry/steam power on purpose so that i can keep the parthenon. i'd get much better use out of that city than he is! here's hoping it flips. hasn't revolted yet, but his percentage is dropping *giggle*.

 

[Wlauzon]

Tested this in Warlords with world builder and lots of great artists. Could not get a second forbidden palace or any national wonders via culture flipping. They were all removed if I had them in a second city but they were kept if they I had not built them. Also it took 40 turns (on Epic) before the city flipped even though it was drowning in my culture for the entire duration (they only had 1% of their own culture). I was able to flip the capitol with no problems in this scenario.

Hmm.. I played a game last night and got 7 cities to flip, and 1 of them had national wonder. But it definately took a LOT of culture to flip. That one was totally surrounded by my influence for some 35 turns before it finally flipped.

I finally won the game around 2030, but I think I can do a lot better - I had missed nearly all the high culture world wonders and had to rely on the generic and temples, and keeping the culture slider as high as possible.

 

[cabert]

Hmm.. I played a game last night and got 7 cities to flip, and 1 of them had national wonder. But it definately took a LOT of culture to flip. That one was totally surrounded by my influence for some 35 turns before it finally flipped.

I finally won the game around 2030, but I think I can do a lot better - I had missed nearly all the high culture world wonders and had to rely on the generic and temples, and keeping the culture slider as high as possible.

yes, I flipped national wonders too (and world wonders , in my latest cultural game I flipped versailles and the forbidden palace while I didn't have 8 cities! both at less than 12 tiles from my capital, how useful), but the test tazpn314 ran shows you just can't get a second national wonder of the same kind, even through culture flipping.
So no second oxford, sorry guys .

 

[The Navy Seal]

Question is, was this just an anomaly, or if you happen to get a lot of GA's, would this really be a strategy worth pursuing?

Well I normally try a culture win so if thats the case definately do culture bombs or just join the GA to the city.

Wow post #600!

 

[Wlauzon]

My best effort yet, playing Hatty - Won a cultural victory in 1978. all but one of Toku's cities had flipped, plus a couple from other civs.

My goal now is to figure out how to maximize culture early for the land grab - getting at least one and preferably more religions seems to help a lot. Also an early settler rush to get as much land tied down as possible, and spread out as much as possible early and then fill in later.

I try to get a town near as many different civs as possible, but you can only do so much before you start bleeding too much gold.

 

[cabert]

My best effort yet, playing Hatty - Won a cultural victory in 1978. all but one of Toku's cities had flipped, plus a couple from other civs.

My goal now is to figure out how to maximize culture early for the land grab - getting at least one and preferably more religions seems to help a lot. Also an early settler rush to get as much land tied down as possible, and spread out as much as possible early and then fill in later.

I try to get a town near as many different civs as possible, but you can only do so much before you start bleeding too much gold.

try it this way :
grab 3 good, largely separated cities asap.
Those 3 should have good cottage land or 2 with good cottage land + 1 super high food.
Then put helper cities next to those cities.
Each city should get 2 helpers.
What's the point?
to grow cottages!
you want as many grown cottages as possible for those 3 big cities, so the helpers should overlap a good chunk of the cottage land for each big one.
Example :
capital has mostly food and hammers, ideal for a good cultural GP farm.
so you settle 1 city at least 5 squares away (say north), then another at least 5 squares away (say south).
Improve those cities, then settle 1 helper 3 tiles W from the capital, then another 3 tiles E from the capital, then another 3 tiles W from the northern "good" city (say B1) then another 3 tiles E from B1, then another 3 tiles W from the southern city (B2), then another 3 tiles E from B2.
the helper cities overlap 6 tiles with the wanabee legendary.
This way, at happy/health cap of 8 for the big ones and 6 for the helpers, you can work 20 cottages (not realistic, you certainly want a few food tiles for the big ones) for the capital and the 2 other big ones.
Meaning that when you set your culture slider to 100%, those 3 big ones will have fully grown cottages .
That's the "classical" rush to a culture win.

 

[KMadCandy]

My goal now is to figure out how to maximize culture early for the land grab - getting at least one and preferably more religions seems to help a lot. Also an early settler rush to get as much land tied down as possible, and spread out as much as possible early and then fill in later.

I try to get a town near as many different civs as possible, but you can only do so much before you start bleeding too much gold.

grats Wlauzon!

even if you're going for the 3 legendary victory instead of domination, it's sometimes worth investing an early great artist in making a great work. that can seal off a lot of land for your borders quickly, giving you more time to make the actual settlers. if it's safe enough, sometimes it even gives you time enough to wait that it saves you a lot in gold, given how much expansion costs so early.

whether it's a good idea in a particular game depends on the map, whether you're philo, how early you get the GA, whether you need to get GSs first instead to get to lib first or an academy (i often don't bother with an academy, how's that for wacky?), etc. but sometimes it's quite beautiful and effective. every once in a while ... prepare for heresy here ... it can sometimes be worth "wasting" an artist doing this in a city that's not one of your big 3 ! i set up my GA farm late for example, and on high levels the landrush just keeps on happening and they always have settlers ready, sometimes i just have to use any means necessary to seal off the resources or territory to set up that city, since at monarch at higher especially they like to come settle in between my cities. yes i'll flip those cities eventually but it annoys me!! then again i'm playing a large map atm so i need 9 cities not 6, even with the larger amount of land available that makes a bigger difference than you might think, and the landgrab phase is more of a pain.

just a thought, and don't forget to read my sig and keep it in mind when you see any of my thoughts. keep having fun

ps i did get hagia sophia/spiral minaret combo city to flip to me. and it was the second city he built, so very old and quite cultured. and on the side of my land with none of my big 3 cities. i am still grinning over that .

 

[The Navy Seal]

Won a cultural victory in 1978

What did you do, have the culture slider at 100% the whole game?

 

[Heffling]

Most cultural victories I see work on the following items:

1) Get as many religions as possible. You don't need to have founded the religion, but you want as many different ones as you can get.

2) Found 9 cities total. 3 cities for legendary, 6 cities to support the other 3. Why 9? Because you need 3 temples to build a cathedral, so that gives you a 50% multipliers for each of your 3 legendary cities.

3) Make sure your running cottages to support cultural slider later. You want high food cities so you can also generate GA's through Caste System.

4) Be good at diplomacy and never fight a war. Your latest military tech may be Longbowmen and Macemen, so you aren't gonna hold up well to cavalry.

5) Shoot to get liberalism and go for nationalism. Get Democracy for the civics. Since you require music for cathedrals, you may want to get Military Tradition and gunpowder to have some defenders and power graph advantage. Place the Hermitage in your weakest of your 3 cultural cities.

6) Once you hit democracy (and possibly MT) run up your cultural slider. Try to trade resources for health resources (even if it's your only resource, such as copper or marble). With a 100% cultural slider, you can get 10 extra happyness from theaters, 6 from coloseums, so you can support huge cities allowing you to run lots of GA's.

Useful wonders: Any, for the cultural bonus to a specific city.
Any wonder that generates great artists. Early GA's should be settled. Late GA's should culture bomb.
Sistine Chapel, +2 culture per specialist. Extremely useful for settled artists and any specialists you run to increase economy. +2 GA also.
Pyramids, allows representation so your early settled GA's can help tech up.

If at all possible, you want to run one of your cultural cities under caste system as your great person farm. You will need secondary cities located with some overlap to work cottages for your GP farm, while your GP farm produces culture through running artists and generates GA's for your other cities.

Heffling

P.S. I've never won a cultural victory because I feel it's too abusive of AI weaknesses and not reflective of how things work in the world. Of course, I have won diplomatic (numerous times) and I feel that the UN shouldn't be able to gain you victory, since it barely works now.

 

[KMadCandy]

5)Place the Hermitage in your weakest of your 3 cultural cities.

6) Once you hit democracy (and possibly MT) run up your cultural slider. Try to trade resources for health resources (even if it's your only resource, such as copper or marble). With a 100% cultural slider, you can get 10 extra happyness from theaters, 6 from coloseums, so you can support huge cities allowing you to run lots of GA's.

Useful wonders: Any, for the cultural bonus to a specific city.
Any wonder that generates great artists. Early GA's should be settled. Late GA's should culture bomb.
Sistine Chapel, +2 culture per specialist. Extremely useful for settled artists and any specialists you run to increase economy. +2 GA also.
Pyramids, allows representation so your early settled GA's can help tech up.

i would add/change:

5: sometimes it's best to put Hermitage in your second best city, and just use all your GA culture bombs in city 3. takes some practice/planning/crystal-ball-gazing to know which option will be best.

6: trade for health resources, absolutely. health is everything, happy you'll be fine, even if all the world runs emancipation. i often trade happy resources while i still need them, to grab a healthy i don't need now. i know that i will someday, and if i don't get it now it will be gone (something i learned from playing OCC). things like wine/sugar in particular, which do happy now, health after grocers, i love to grab in cases like that. if i have a cow and they have a rice, grab it, rice is +2 with granary and cow is doubled with supermarkets which i will never have, so rice is more valuable. that sort of thing.

the only things i always always always hold on to are a source of copper, stone, and marble, since those are the production doublers for the religious cathedrals. so i don't ever trade my last source (and i generally only have one) of those away until all cathedrals are done.

if i build the pyramids it's not actually for representation. it's so that i can turn off research earlier--it gets me universal sufferage, to rush-buy culture buildings late game without researching constitution/democracy. big time saver, and the faster those buildings are up the earlier they start muliplying the culture you're putting out. without pyramids, i pretty much turn research off after getting nationalism from liberalism, hopefully trade for/get as gifts/handouts the demo prereqs then research democracy and rush-buy some buildings that i haven't hand built in the meantime.

my favorite wonder for cultural as of recent games is the parthenon, which you didn't call out by name altho it does give GA points. i don't ever research chemistry, so it doesn't go obsolete. it is simply beautiful. because parth, two of the cathedrals, the oracle, and sistine are all doubled by marble, i prefer marble near my start rather than stone. that's why i said "if i build pyramids". some people prioritize pyramids; i don't even try if i'm playing at a high level. i don't really want the GE points, it's a big investment when i need to be landgrabbing, which gets harder and harder at higher difficulties, etc.

 

[Wlauzon]

What did you do, have the culture slider at 100% the whole game?

Not the whole game no.

Usually around 1200 or so I start moving the slider up from 10%. By 1600 or so it is usually at 90 or 100%. By then I have all the techs that matter (any tech that does not give me some kind of culture thingy gets done last, if at all).

I don't make any military but one cheap one for each city. I don't build any buildings that don't either increase production, growth, or increase culture. As soon as I get those done, I change the city to culture (occasionally to wealth, so I can run the slider to 100 for interior cities).

Every new city started or flipped the first thing I do is make a theater or some other high culture, and just keep going.

Just for grins last night I played a game past 2200 to see if I could eventually take over the whole world with flips, but it slows down a lot once all the other civs buildup and change to the better civs. I got about 2/3 and gave up.

 

[Wlauzon]

Useful wonders: Any, for the cultural bonus to a specific city.
Any wonder that generates great artists. Early GA's should be settled. Late GA's should culture bomb.
Sistine Chapel, +2 culture per specialist. Extremely useful for settled artists and any specialists you run to increase economy. +2 GA also.
Pyramids, allows representation so your early settled GA's can help tech up.

I have found the pyramids to be very good for two reasons - early representation, and great engineers to fast build culture wonders.

Also, it seems to help a lot to put any of the +culture wonders in the border cities, even if that is not the best production.

Also, for important wonders that you missed, keep note of where they are - if you are lucky and the city is nearby, concentrate on flipping that one with GA and whatever else it takes.