This topic is purely about the culture that a civ can produce, not the tourism - Great Works still produce culture so these will still be considered. I'm basically asking what is the best civ to produce culture. I want to play a game where I'm a real culture powerhouse because I normally struggle for culture with my style of gameplay. Below are my opinions, but I'm assuming that there are things that I've missed, and if not then I'm still struggling to decide what is the actual best civ to produce culture.
We all know that Poland have a huge bonus when it comes to culture, getting the equivalent of a whole policy tree for free. But, this is spread out across the whole game, so some of the later policies come at a time where they'd make very little difference to the game.
France are obviously another cultural powerhouse with their bonus meaning that you're likely to be wanting to produce as many Great Works as possible. This means their culture boost is going to be largely mid-game, but you'll be a pretty standard civ in the early game for culture, meaning you could fall behind the likes of Poland and a couple of other civ's.
Morocco are a civ I'd never really thought of as a cultural civ until recently. That +1 from each trade route isn't much late game, but early game it's a huge bonus when you think about it. At the point you have 2 caravans, I personally would normally be getting around 10 culture per turn, meaning those 2 caravans would possibly give me a 20% boost to my culture, which of course snowballs to everything else as you get to the policies a bit quicker than the rest. On top of this, you're likely to be trying to get Petra, giving you another caravan and free culture later in the game. Honestly though, the bonus that Morocco get is evened out by the Renaissance/Industrial era by most other civ's, so they're there just to give you the early boost.
Aztec's offer a completely different style of cultural game, making it almost necessary to be a warmonger. These may offer a large amount of culture at any point in the game as long as you're warring, but of course you also face the negatives of constant war and the diplomatic penalties. Added to this is the fact that if you're building military units, you have less time to build culture buildings/wonders.
Brazil offer a very nice culture boost when you get to the mid-game with Brazilwood camps. At their height, Brazilwood camps can produce 2 food, 2 culture, 2 gold and 2 science, an incredible yield when you think about it - a self sustaining tile that produces 2 culture and 2 science. A block of these for Brazil can mean they pull far ahead by Industrial. Of course, that means you have to get to that point in the game, and with those jungle tiles taking up a large part of your land, there's a good chance that you haven't had the food or production to build any culture wonders before that point, and so it becomes a period of 'catch-up' for Brazil, rather than pulling ahead.
Polynesia are often overlooked I feel, but a line of Moai can create an amazing amount of culture. Polynesia can also take advantage of those lovely early culture boosts from ancient ruins on lands far away that noone else can reach. The downside of Moai is that they limit your food production and it can be very difficult to get a group of them large enough to produce a nice amount of culture.
I also want to include the likes of Sweden and India in the discussion, Sweden due to their increased Great Person rate and India due to Mughal Forts and their ability for larger cities with more happiness, leading to more golden ages in the long run. However I don't think either of these really compete with those above.
We all know that Poland have a huge bonus when it comes to culture, getting the equivalent of a whole policy tree for free. But, this is spread out across the whole game, so some of the later policies come at a time where they'd make very little difference to the game.
France are obviously another cultural powerhouse with their bonus meaning that you're likely to be wanting to produce as many Great Works as possible. This means their culture boost is going to be largely mid-game, but you'll be a pretty standard civ in the early game for culture, meaning you could fall behind the likes of Poland and a couple of other civ's.
Morocco are a civ I'd never really thought of as a cultural civ until recently. That +1 from each trade route isn't much late game, but early game it's a huge bonus when you think about it. At the point you have 2 caravans, I personally would normally be getting around 10 culture per turn, meaning those 2 caravans would possibly give me a 20% boost to my culture, which of course snowballs to everything else as you get to the policies a bit quicker than the rest. On top of this, you're likely to be trying to get Petra, giving you another caravan and free culture later in the game. Honestly though, the bonus that Morocco get is evened out by the Renaissance/Industrial era by most other civ's, so they're there just to give you the early boost.
Aztec's offer a completely different style of cultural game, making it almost necessary to be a warmonger. These may offer a large amount of culture at any point in the game as long as you're warring, but of course you also face the negatives of constant war and the diplomatic penalties. Added to this is the fact that if you're building military units, you have less time to build culture buildings/wonders.
Brazil offer a very nice culture boost when you get to the mid-game with Brazilwood camps. At their height, Brazilwood camps can produce 2 food, 2 culture, 2 gold and 2 science, an incredible yield when you think about it - a self sustaining tile that produces 2 culture and 2 science. A block of these for Brazil can mean they pull far ahead by Industrial. Of course, that means you have to get to that point in the game, and with those jungle tiles taking up a large part of your land, there's a good chance that you haven't had the food or production to build any culture wonders before that point, and so it becomes a period of 'catch-up' for Brazil, rather than pulling ahead.
Polynesia are often overlooked I feel, but a line of Moai can create an amazing amount of culture. Polynesia can also take advantage of those lovely early culture boosts from ancient ruins on lands far away that noone else can reach. The downside of Moai is that they limit your food production and it can be very difficult to get a group of them large enough to produce a nice amount of culture.
I also want to include the likes of Sweden and India in the discussion, Sweden due to their increased Great Person rate and India due to Mughal Forts and their ability for larger cities with more happiness, leading to more golden ages in the long run. However I don't think either of these really compete with those above.
