Beating Deity: A Peaceful Cultural Victory

[walkerjks]

There is a tradeoff going for GEs. Since getting a GE as your 1st or 2nd generated great person (as opposed to the Meritocracy freebie) sets the GP costs up a level, you set subsequent great artists back a bit. So the GE comes at the expense of, very roughly, half a landmark during most of the game. So that early GE is probably costing you 1200 or so potential culture.

And then what are you going to spend it on if you are trying to get the earliest win? Building something that give you no culture, but more GE points is a loser as you further delay GAs. Building the Sistine is ok, but looking at my last game (1675 AD deity win), Sistine got me about 2275 in extra culture. That probably is worth the delay in GA production, but in the end, Sistine only shaves off 3-4 turns from the win.

And then there's the possibility of saving it for Cristo. In that case, you probably have to keep the GE around for 100 turns (so gold cost), which indirectly affects other stuff. If you happen to shave of 10 turns from build time, however, you probably save 25% on 2 semi-expensive policies (say roughly 1600 and 1800, for a total culture savings of 850 culture). That minimal savings is also a reasonable argument against generating 2 GEs (using the 1st on Sistine and the 2nd on Cristo). A 20 turn Cristo build feels really, really painful, but it's not quite as brutal as it seems in terms of culture cost.

 

[apotheoser]

There is a tradeoff going for GEs. Since getting a GE as your 1st or 2nd generated great person (as opposed to the Meritocracy freebie) sets the GP costs up a level, you set subsequent great artists back a bit. So the GE comes at the expense of, very roughly, half a landmark during most of the game. So that early GE is probably costing you 1200 or so potential culture.

And then what are you going to spend it on if you are trying to get the earliest win? Building something that give you no culture, but more GE points is a loser as you further delay GAs. Building the Sistine is ok, but looking at my last game (1675 AD deity win), Sistine got me about 2275 in extra culture. That probably is worth the delay in GA production, but in the end, Sistine only shaves off 3-4 turns from the win.

Well there you go. If Sistine only shaves off 3-4 turns, then the 1200 culture you're losing costs you what? 2 turns? Besides, the early GE wonders (Pyramids/Great Wall) do provide 1 culture. So we're really talking closer to 1000 culture, not 1200.

How do you think it plays out you get Hagia Sophia? Wouldn't you get more GAs eventually with the bonus to GPP, and more than the replace the one you gave up for a GE?

 

[walkerjks]

How do you think it plays out you get Hagia Sophia? Wouldn't you get more GAs eventually with the bonus to GPP, and more than the replace the one you gave up for a GE?

Maybe. I haven't run the math on this, but the one caution would be that Hagia's bonus is additive, rather than multiplicative. So once you account for National Epic, a (potential) garden, and Democracy (from the Freedom tree), the +33% becomes something closer to +16% in GPP. And +16% GPP != +16% GP, as we know. But yeah, that probably does mean 1 extra GA (and earlier, the bonus is bigger as get Hagia well before Democracy).

So, perhaps, 1200 culture opportunity cost for the GE to gain 2400 culture from an extra GA (which would come late, but all the earlier GAs would have popped earlier - hence, more or less, +1 landmark for most of the game).

 

[EditorRex]

Hearing mixed things from those who are experimenting with this post-patch. Would those of you who have actually won with this strategy recommend Egypt, France, Siam, Arabia or someone else for a first try for this win? Also, since CS beakers and gold may be less at lower levels, any recommended changes in strategy to play this at King or lower, or is it just so insanely easy at those levels that it doesn't matter?

 

[apotheoser]

Hearing mixed things from those who are experimenting with this post-patch. Would those of you who have actually won with this strategy recommend Egypt, France, Siam, Arabia or someone else for a first try for this win? Also, since CS beakers and gold may be less at lower levels, any recommended changes in strategy to play this at King or lower, or is it just so insanely easy at those levels that it doesn't matter?

It's totally doable still, with most of the civs you mentioned. They will only vary a little in policy choices. Siam is probably the best overall, though it's hard to compare to Arabia as it'll depend on how many luxuries you have. Also depends on the map and start. If you fiddle with the map settings enough, you can make Incans and Aztecs extremely powerful at it.

The only thing about difficulty levels: if you go too low, the AI isn't going to have infinite gold to buy your luxuries and make research agreements, which is kind of what makes this strategy work. Although I guess on the lowest levels you can just research yourself, but it'll actually be slower than harder difficulties.

 

[snarzberry]

Yeah I've been meaning to get around to editing the OP since the patch. The opening is the biggest difference, once you're in mid game with your RA's signed it would play out the same, I guess.

Starting build order should now be scout - monument (possibly sometimes even scout-scout-monument? on high hammer starts when you're not in a corner). Ruins have gone way up in value and finding a culture ruin is your main desire for the very beginning of the game.

And I open with liberty-worker-great person to build stonehenge. This is very hit and miss, but it also was prepatch hardbuilding it anyway.

Build Stonehenge first then use RA blocking for those two paths - ending in Acoustics and Archaeology in order to build Sistine Chap. and the Louvre and then use more RA's to get to the Cristo tech is the plan in a nutshell. That hasn't changed, just how you go about it.

 

[EditorRex]

It's totally doable still, with most of the civs you mentioned. They will only vary a little in policy choices. Siam is probably the best overall, though it's hard to compare to Arabia as it'll depend on how many luxuries you have. Also depends on the map and start. If you fiddle with the map settings enough, you can make Incans and Aztecs extremely powerful at it.

The only thing about difficulty levels: if you go too low, the AI isn't going to have infinite gold to buy your luxuries and make research agreements, which is kind of what makes this strategy work. Although I guess on the lowest levels you can just research yourself, but it'll actually be slower than harder difficulties.

Yeah, I started a game as France last night on King. Not a great start location (no coast nearby, only close CS is military, lots of Barbs). But once I got past a few years of Barb intensity, it seems to be going pretty well. The issue of less available gold is as predicted. On the other hand, I seem to be ahead of most of the other civs in tech. For some reason I've stirred up more hostility than I would have expected and had to barrage a Siamese invasion for a few turns, but survived. No problem getting the key wonders early, though I did get beat on Wat.

Question: Should I have held onto my starting warrior and, if so, garrisoned and upgraded it over time? I gifted it to a CS, but it didn't get me much cred.

In a start where I had a lot of Barbs early on, I had to use a lot of turns to repair damaged plantations. In that situation, would I have been better to invest in some kind of defensive foray unit that I could have disbanded later?

Ram keeps giving me the "You sure are puny" message. Is that normal or a sign of impending war? (In case you are wondering, I'm an experienced Civ 1,2,3 and 4 player, but am only on my fourth game of 5)

 

[walkerjks]

Question: Should I have held onto my starting warrior and, if so, garrisoned and upgraded it over time? I gifted it to a CS, but it didn't get me much cred.

Personally, I always keep my warrior. Explore in the immediate vicinity early to pop a ruin or 2 and scout for a potential 2nd city site (rare that I settle a second city in culture games, but I will do it under certain circumstances) and use them as barbarian defense (protection for worker and completed improvements) later. After the barbarian threat is done (when the AIs have settled around me), I still keep it garrisoned for that possibility later that someone invades (it happens in maybe a quarter of my OCC culture games). I don't upgrade it until said invasion comes and it most games it doesn't come (so it feels like wasted gold per turn), but it's cheap insurance.

My scouts (usually 2), on the other hand, will get disbanded eventually to save on the maintenance.

 

[tmarcl]

MYTH 2: Peace with your neighbors is impossible without a strong military.

Snarz,

I've tried your strategy several times now, with only once being able to avoid DoW on me. To get that, I had to reduce the amount of starting civs by half in setup (to give them more room to expand). Assuming that this isn't what you're doing, how do you avoid having people DoW on you? In every game other than the one I mentioned (where I basically cheated), the AI will go from Friendly to Hostile to declaring war often in a small amount of turns. And this is on Warlord (I can only imagine it gets worse closer to Deity). Can you give me some tips on this?

Marc

 

[snarzberry]

Hi Marc.

The reason, funnily enough, is that they are actually much more likely to declare war on you on warlord level. I know it sounds crazy, but there is rhyme to the reason. On deity level, what this guide was written about, the AI's get loads of bonuses and will be outstripping the player in score, science, military, you name it. This all goes into the computations of how much of a threat the AI views you as. And this contributes to if they will start to target you for a DOW.

So on deity level the human player can sort of fly under the radar as the AIs usually find more suitable targets that they have more reasons to fight against. However even on the highest level you may still get attacked. On a lower level this effect is reduced so, ironically, you will have a higher amount of grumpy neighbours on warlord than deity.

Now, what I think you should do as you're playing on warlord level is to just invest some resources into your defence. You probably have some extra time on your hands as it is likely difficult to raise the cash, and find rich enough trading partners, in order to fund all those RA's. Spend some time setting up a good defence. If you get to parity or are yourself the tech leader then you should have no trouble defending your land from an invading civ. Once you have a treb/cannon in a castle it will take a serious attack to bring you down. Only a handful of well positioned fortified units will be needed to make your land safe on warlord I assume.

This guide is actually quite out of date since the last patch so I hope you're ok with filling in the blanks of how it has to be altered under the new conditions. Good luck with your game.

 

[askia53]

wow great guide but even if u are nice to other civs wont they declare on u because u are so weak and easy to destroy in order to get culture, points, etc?

 

[SatanasOz]

wow great guide but even if u are nice to other civs wont they declare on u because u are so weak and easy to destroy in order to get culture, points, etc?

No, they don't. That is, if you behave nicely all the time and pick your friends carefully. Only Napoleon went from friendly to hostile after I took his crown of social policy leadership. But no DOW, even though we were in the industrial age and my army consisted of one spearman and a frigate.


Thanks a lot to snarzberry for the guide - nice work and still applicable!

The Game
Settings:OCC, maptype random (Archipelago), speed: standard, size: standard, difficulty: immortal
Other Civs: Greece, Germany, France, Aztecs, Russia, Ottomans, Siam

Victory: on turn 314

SPs: Tradition, Liberty, Piety, Patronage , Freedom
GPs: GE, GE (free), GA, GA, GE, GA, GA, GA

 

[snarzberry]

Yeah, I started a game as France last night on King. Not a great start location (no coast nearby, only close CS is military, lots of Barbs). But once I got past a few years of Barb intensity, it seems to be going pretty well. The issue of less available gold is as predicted. On the other hand, I seem to be ahead of most of the other civs in tech. For some reason I've stirred up more hostility than I would have expected and had to barrage a Siamese invasion for a few turns, but survived. No problem getting the key wonders early, though I did get beat on Wat.

Question: Should I have held onto my starting warrior and, if so, garrisoned and upgraded it over time? I gifted it to a CS, but it didn't get me much cred.

In a start where I had a lot of Barbs early on, I had to use a lot of turns to repair damaged plantations. In that situation, would I have been better to invest in some kind of defensive foray unit that I could have disbanded later?

Ram keeps giving me the "You sure are puny" message. Is that normal or a sign of impending war? (In case you are wondering, I'm an experienced Civ 1,2,3 and 4 player, but am only on my fourth game of 5)

Can't say I'd ever gift my starting warrior away and usually would bring him back eventually to act as home defence. As I'm sure you know, ironically, having your lux improvement pillaged usually works to your advantage as you get extra cash for a renewed deal. But I always make a good faith effort to defend my land and I wish the game was tweaked to change this fact.

Ram getting up you about being puny is a sign that he wants to attack you/doesn't like you so organizing someone to attack him should be the plan once he disses you like that, especially if he is near by.

 

[cambasonso]

Just did it with Askia (I wanted early gold from barbarians to buy out a city state and also for the culture building). My piece of advice: don't dare dreaming of not being attacked with the new patch! Search for the perfect settlement on a hill nearby some mountains to avoid being attacked on all sides. First great general to appear use it for a fortress, you will need it. Also, you won't be able to build those fancy wonders... only one you can have almost for sure is Stonehenge, then if you have some luck you might get 2 or 3 more with great engineer but that's all, no matter how fast you can build! Your policy order has to be: Tradition for +3 culture and quick border expansion, then liberty-worker-great engineer, happiness for the bonus to culture, then freedom as soon as you can. I never fail at building Stonehenge that way! My setup was Askia: Pangaea: small: standard speed: deity Opponents: Greece, India, France, Ottomans, Arabia. My first DOW at 30 turns against Greece, I survived because I was able to buy out my neighbor CS! Good luck if you decide to try and please comment your experience!
Can we attach a save game? I'm new on the forum! Victory at turn 360.

 

[snarzberry]

Just did it with Askia (I wanted early gold from barbarians to buy out a city state and also for the culture building). My piece of advice: don't dare dreaming of not being attacked with the new patch! Search for the perfect settlement on a hill nearby some mountains to avoid being attacked on all sides. First great general to appear use it for a fortress, you will need it. Also, you won't be able to build those fancy wonders... only one you can have almost for sure is Stonehenge, then if you have some luck you might get 2 or 3 more with great engineer but that's all, no matter how fast you can build! Your policy order has to be: Tradition for +3 culture and quick border expansion, then liberty-worker-great engineer, happiness for the bonus to culture, then freedom as soon as you can. I never fail at building Stonehenge that way! My setup was Askia: Pangaea: small: standard speed: deity Opponents: Greece, India, France, Ottomans, Arabia. My first DOW at 30 turns against Greece, I survived because I was able to buy out my neighbor CS! Good luck if you decide to try and please comment your experience!
Can we attach a save game? I'm new on the forum! Victory at turn 360.

The citadel is actually a cool idea for OCC culture, makes for a fun set up. Just curious, what turn did you win on and were any of the AIs close to space race?

You said you missed out on some wonders, I'm assuming you missed the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre but got the others, is that right?

I haven't played a OCC for ages but am thinking about adding it to my repertoire again so info on the current patch is appreciated.

Also, you can upload saves in the advanced options. Welcome to the forum

 

[Knut_Are_M]

Personally if you want a culture victory, i would just recommend you to kill all civs but 1.
play songhai, and your culture vicory should be achiveable by the 1300 ad.

Honestly going for a none puppet culure victory solution is like asking to get crushed unless the players ignore you. Winning a puppetmaster culture victory is much more consistent!.
100 culture by 200 bc is achiveable if you manage to win the wars!

 

[Morningcalm]

Nice strat idea, but it's too reliant on luck in my experience. Luck as in the chance that all 3 civs you want RAs with are willing and able (250 gold+). Luck in that you're hoping no AI has denounced or declared war on you (I built no cities, allied with no CSes, and had no Pacts of Friendship or wars going on, but was denounced and had war declared on me in the first 50 turns regardless). Luck in that the first RA will net you CS. This being the chanciest one, since the early game does have a LOT of techs to get through. =|

 

[snarzberry]

Luck in that the first RA will net you CS. This being the chanciest one, since the early game does have a LOT of techs to get through. =|

There is zero luck in this.

On the others yeah I admit there is luck involved in winning a peaceful one city game on deity. But most players would admit that luck plays a role in any deity win, it's just more in-your-face in a peaceful game where you have limited to no military as you are constantly aware that 'if they decide to attack I AM SCREWED'.

But in an expansive, warmongering game you have things like the lay of the land, your access to resources, your neighbors and they're actions to other civs early in the game, whether or not one civ goes runaway on another continent etc. All of these are outside your control and play a big part in what happens to your attempt at victory.

 

[cambasonso]

The citadel is actually a cool idea for OCC culture, makes for a fun set up. Just curious, what turn did you win on and were any of the AIs close to space race?

You said you missed out on some wonders, I'm assuming you missed the Sistine Chapel and the Louvre but got the others, is that right?

I haven't played a OCC for ages but am thinking about adding it to my repertoire again so info on the current patch is appreciated.

Also, you can upload saves in the advanced options. Welcome to the forum

Hi Snarz, I achieved victory on turn 360 which correspond to 1940. I could have lost to diplomacy since the UN was built already but luckily the powers at play where struggling for diplomacy control. I was quite ******ed technology wise, so almost all wonders were built before I could even research them... but I was lucky enough to get two of them: the Taj Mahal and the Brandenburg Gate! It's still is a touchy win but anyway I know I am not still able to win a domination victory on deity so it was fun to be able to win that way. I have trouble keeping up on immortal on domination, so I'm really not deity material yet! Here I join my save game from my win if you want to check it out. Daniel.View attachment Askia one turn before Deity Cultural victory 1939.Civ5Save

 

[Misterboy]

Holy crap, I finally did it . Siam Cultural victory on diety with one city. Thanks Snarzberry and others. What a tense game. Wasn't sure if your strategy would ever work for me. I tried several times and each time got invaded in the last few turns, or lost by a Diplo victory from some nation with infinite gold. I also had a lot of trouble with RAs, always getting Banking for example on my third RA instead of Acoustics, and there's nothing that can be done about it. I also think it's nigh-impossible to RA directly to Cristo Redentor, because you can't successfully block techs without the game giving you previous era techs...Metalurgy etc. Cleaning those up works, but then it's a crapshoot which techs you get and I find it kept giving me the darned military ones.

I got Cristo Redentor in each game, which was great until a Diplo Victory or Invasion ended my run. The game I finally won, I *didn't* get CR, but pushed through anyway. I had to endure 4 UN votes, and thankfully the two great powers split the vote with me taking 1 or 2 CS depending on whether the AIs would let me have them that round.

I should note that I tried this on a Tiny map, which always ended in me getting beat. I think too few Civs makes it hard because you need ones with the cash, and you also need to play them off each other too much. I only won my final game because I constantly pushed nations to declare war on each other. That aspect was a lot of fun. The whole map was in constant war in some way or another and I was pulling a lot of the strings.

China got halfway to launching, but got thumped by the Incas and Persia in the end. Persia was persuing a CV, which is why I lost CR. The last 20 turns were nail biting.

So thanks again for a great strategy. It really breathed some new life into the game for me and I enjoyed this challenge immensely!