Best Civ for OCC/4 Cities Culture Victory? (Opening Tech/Builds appreciated)

[darksun45230]

Alright, so I'm a total Culture noob and need someone to hold my hand. I've tried playing Siam, Egypt and Ethiopia but could never manage to grab the early wonders without investing heavily into Science first. What I know about each culture so far:

* Ethiopia has great early culture and early religion with Stele. Tried the early Desert Folklore strat but my limited Settling powers limited my faith gain plus it's hard finding all Desert tiles. So, four cities Tradition opener even though it hurts my culture gain?

* Tried the above with Egypt. Didn't know what to build/beeline.

* With Siam I had a hard time earning other City State's influence early on. Feels like I need to either build Wonders or build units to gift to City States and before Patronage it feels I'm wasting Units.

* Tried France but feels like ICS oriented Civ. I'm doubtful their Culture bonus would expansion penalties.

* Wondering how Perisa is supposed to maintain Golden Age and how effective it actually is in comparison to other Civs. I tried an Archipelago strat with Raging Barbarians for spawn camping beelined Immortals upgrade and sat two on the island waiting for camp spawn. The idea was to speed Golden Ages by abusing Immortals UA and reap the benefits. Sadly, my capital ate up the island surprisingly fast and Barbs never spawned.

Thoughts?

 

[tommynt]

the civ bonuses are overrated - just cause france get culture per city doent mean u gotta spam cities and so on - just cause siam got some cs bonus doesnt mean all game should reveal about CS.

Its just bonuses .. you could win without any bonus at all same good.

For a culture win the best civs are the religious civs ... u ll need lot of faith as you reli civcs should be all the buildings - pantheon just depending on starting land ..

in my last cult win i had like 200+ faith per turn in end with 4 cities

 

[chazzycat]

+1 to using religion. Ethiopia is a pretty good choice for the 4 city approach due to obvious synergy with tradition and the steles. The bonus for your troops is nice too. You'll get first or second religion so pick a pantheon that makes sense for the geography. If you have a lot of wine/incense around, goddess of festivals can be great, same for gold/silver and religious idols. Of course there's desert folklore for a flood plain start. Generally you'll want to go tradition-->piety-->freedom. work all artist slots ASAP and shoot for the important cultural wonders. Chitchen Itza is key, you also want Sistine and the Louvre. Those are the only essentials I would say. working the artists you should have around ~10 landmarks in your capital towards the end. At some point stop landmarking and start golden aging (after completing freedom the rest of your game should be in golden age). Cathedrals is a key belief because you get an extra artist slot. For tech generally I try to RA through electricity and use Oxford for Radio, then after that I don't care. Christo and Sydney are just too late to really matter except on the lower levels.

For the one city approach, IMO Egypt is the best. You can literally just wonder-spam to victory, especially if you have marble and a decent production location. In that case, try to build at least 2 wonders before the NC, (stonehenge & oracle for example) bang that out real quick, then back to wonders. Build all sorts of wonders even if you don't really need them (without endangering yourself of course). Hanging gardens is a must if you're not on a river/lake (only way to get a garden). Chitchen Itza is super important still and Alhambra is another really good one. Ideally you do this in a semi-isolated location so you don't have to build too many troops. the policies are pretty much the same as 4-city except I'd make sure to take Commerce at some point (for the extra 25% gold). the key beliefs are different though - you really really want divine inspiration if you go for the wonder approach. Now with freedom you're getting +2 faith and +2 culture for every wonder you built...not bad considering you can crank out wonders at a ridiculous pace. I also like religious art, +8 culture from hermitage, as a backup for the 2nd follower belief, in case cathedrals gets picked. You might be tempted to take world religion, and it might work out, but I prefer to take tithe and use the extra money to ally cultural CS. Gold can be pretty tight in OCC since you need a lot of RAs to stay up in science. With OCC you can generate insane amounts of happiness and so golden ages should be a critical part of the strategy. Learning to time them well can shave off a good number of turns from your victory since they give you a lot of culture now.

 

[Syntax Error]

My favorite OCC civ is the Aztecs. Managed to churn out a sub-300 cultural victory from them (turn 299 )

In OCC's you really have to make the best of what you start with, so Aztecs are great because they can get taller, faster because of the Floating Gardens. Leverage religion to get Fertility Rites and Swords into Plowshares and you can get a size 35 city even before turn 150 and We Love the King Days. Now why is this an advantage? In OCC's you get all of your things done by using your citizens. More citizens=more tiles worked and more specialists. More specialists=more production/beakers/gold/culture.

 

[Tachii]

Almost any civ can do decent in a cultural game excluding war oriented civs like Ottomans, Huns, Mongols, etc.

The best at it would be Siam, Persia, and maybe Ethiopia.

In early game the scout is always the first priority. He will allow you to get a better sense of the entire game, pretty much. The next production is usually a worker.

Religion is not a must and it's actually not optimal to spread it as far as you can. Just get Itinerant Preachers/Religious Texts if you can and let them to their natural work while you get Cathedrals. The founder is preferable Tithe. You usually need the gold and in a typical game you can probably net 50+GPT by the end game.

I highlight the importance of the scout because he will tell you if you need a religion or not. Unless you're Ethiopia, I'd just skip religion if you have a religious civ near you. I'd still get the Pantheon, but competing with an religious AI for religion will hinder your game process.

Tradition > Liberty in most cases, unless you have at least 2 warmonger civs near you or something and you happen to start with jungles. In that case I'd just settle 3 with Liberty, or even 2, and just puppet a few cities.

Tech-order focuses on getting Philosophy rather early, after you got the luxury techs. Then I'd get Construction, if you haven't already, then beeline into Education. Do not build the Chichen Itza if you have poor production (takes more than 15 turns to build) with Immortal+ difficulty, since you'd rather build the University ASAP and get RAs.

Skip every early wonder except Oracle. I'd try for Stonehenge if you have good production and don't have to build 4 archers for defense. Maybe Pyramid also if your production is amazing. On Emperor and below you can sneak a bunch in, but I'd still try to get national college up soon before you reach education or civil service.

I'd also recommend getting 3-4 cities by turn 60. This means you can usually finish NC before Education or Civil Society if you're that quick. To do this just buy a settler and produce one yourself after shrine/archer/warrior.

Beyond Education the game will become a lot more situational. Get RAs, head for Chivalry and hope Alhambra is still there (doubt it), or you could instead head to Chivalry before Education if you have no friends. But usually you can get friends just by selling embassies to everybody. Start producing Sistine Chapel ASAP (before Opera Houses and rush buy them if you don't need the money for ally CS or RAs).

In my current game I happen to build the Stonehenge and Oracle in the capital, and timed it so I popped a great artist, great engineer, and great scientist at the same time - which effectively allowed me to set a landmark, bulb into Pisa, rush that with GE, and have another GE so another city can get the 33% culture bonus. And oh yeah, finish Tradition once you have the number of cities you want (3-4), then head for Piety, get a Patronage opener if you have good ally CS.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

If you want to play the culture game, keep one important thing in mind:
More cities = higher culture cost EXCEPT for puppets.

That means you will want to play a tall empire. OCC is completely viable and I actually like it more than 4 city tradition, so I will briefly show my OCC strategy (for difficulties up to emperor) here:

(0) Map choise and starting location:
With OCC, you want as many tiles as possible to place your great persons, so water-heavy maps like archipelago aren't a great idea. One of my favorite picks is Great Plains, because if you start in the middle you have plains, rivers and TONS of bonus ressources like wheat or cows - perfect for OCC. If you haven't any experience with OCC I recommend to re-roll if you get tundra or small coastline starts. It is also necessary to have at least one production tile within reach, so if up in flat grassland you will have a rough early game. Doable, but painful.

(1) Some good OCC civs I usually use are:
Aztecs: +15% food from floating gardens will speed up growth significantly. This UB alone makes them a great CIV for OCC.
Egypt: Their wonder bonus is quite neat, desert bias is great thanks to Petra.
Inca: Terrace Farms are very good to get extra food. Hill bias guarantees good production, defence and a good chance for a mountain tile near your starting area. Ignored hill movement cost will further improve defence and speed up your workers, slingers are actually decent units against early AI rushes. Overall a very versatile CIV that can adapt to almost any enviroment (except maybe flat open tundra).
Korea: Their UA is great if you rush the Great Library, and +2 science from GP improvements and specialists will guarantee that you stay competetive in regards to science during the whole game (unlike other civs, that will usually start to lag behind from the industrial era onwards in OCC).
Netherlands: The Polder is an insanely powerful improvement, but VERY situational. If you manage to roll a desert start with the Netherlands (try "Sandstorm" map type), you have the perfect OCC starting spot.

(2) Tech order: Pottery -> Writing -> Calendar + Mining (order depends on luxuries and amount of forests) -> Mathematics -> Currency (ONLY with a desert start for Petra) -> Theology -> Education -> Acoustics -> Chivalry -> Metal Casting -> Machinery -> Architecture -> Scientific Theory -> Industrialization -> Archaology -> Electricity -> Radiot -> Biology -> Replaceable Parts -> Plastics -> Ecology or Nuclear Fission (depending if you have a desert location) -> Satellites
Early war will force you to research Masonry to build/buy walls and jungle may force you to get bronze working early on. Be adaptive.

(3) SP order: Tradition opener -> Aristocracy -> Legalism -> Monarchy + Landed Elite (depending how much food is available) -> Oligarchy -> Piety opener -> Organized Religion -> Reformation -> Mandate of Heaven -> Religious Tolerance -> Theocracy -> Freedom opener -> Constitution -> Civil Society -> Free Speech -> Democracy -> Universal Suffrage -> Two SP trees depending on your situation (commerce opener + patronage if many good city states are around, honor if you have eternal wars against the AI). It can also be a good idea to open commerce if you finish piety before you enter the industrial era.

(4) Build order: Monument -> Shrine -> Great Library -> Hanging Gardens -> Petra -> National College -> Oracle -> Hagia Sophia. In general the build order will change a lot of times depending on the amount of you have. Grabbing the Hanging Gardens is very important. Other great wonders are the Oracle, the Hagia Sophia, Chizen Itza, Alhambra, Leaning Tower of Pisa, Louvre.
Use your warrior to steal a worker or two from city states around you. Connect all luxuries asap and sell them for 240 a piece, then connect strategic ressources and sell them for 45 a piece. Use the money to buy the buildings (granary, water mill, market). Buy all poduction buildings asap (workshop, windmill, factory).

(5) Religion setup:
Panthon: +10% growth OR whatever fits your starting location.
Founder: +1 gold/4 followers
Follower 1: +2 faith for each wonder
Follower 2: +8 culture from eremitage
Enhancer: -25% prophet faith cost, +25% prophet power
Other valuable follower beliefs: Cathedrals, Feed the World, Religious Community

(6) Use all artist slots ASAP. Settle all artists you get, use 2 prophets to found and enhance your religion, settle the rest, settle any scientists you might receive. Use engineers to rush important wonders. Use merchants to trade with city states.
Once you have finished Freedom, burn all artists for golden ages. Try to time the Louvre so you can use these two artists, too. With some planning, you should be able to finish the game around turn 280-320 with dozens of rounds of golden ages left.

(7) In case of war build walls and castles ASAP. Get ranged units to wear down the attacker. If pressure gets too heavy, drop a citadel with a great general next to your city. If that isn't enough, place two additional once next tot the city to create a death zone. Don't be afraid to negotiate peace if necessary. With OCC, the AI will usually only demand all the money you have. Just spend it on buildings and city states, and sign peace with Attila for the remaining 25 gold.

 

[darksun45230]

Thank you for the replies, I'm going to try them out tonight after work.