BNW: Possible to win cultural without key wonders and high cultured civs?

I am playing standard king polynesia. I am in the mid 1600s and my tourism is below average compared to most other civs despite investing heavily on culture and building the all the guilds relatively quick.

I have the GL, Oracle and Sistine Chapel. I was not able to get Ufizi. I am about to discover Archeology.

Is it possible to still win a culture victory if your early tourism is low and if you dont get the important wonders like Ufizi, Louvre and Broadway? Louvre and Broadway are not built yet but I fear that one of the 3 top scoring civs will beat me to them at this point.

Another reason why my cultural victory efforts seem dismal is because it appears that most of the other civs are investing heavily in culture, something that had not happened in my last game (this is my second BNW match)

I am going up against Siam, Egypt, Venice and Germany.

 

Sounds like you need to start building units. You can capture great works. Every cultural I've won, I have been influential with at least one Civ by the mid-renaissance.

 

You're gonna have a hard time dealing with Egypt on wonders and especially if ur behind. Id go war as the other person suggested.

 

It is absolutely possible to win without any of the wonders. I won a cultural game where I mass expanded, got to archeology first, and stuffed all my museums with themed artifacts.

Goes without saying that ideologies help a lot too -- some more than others depending on the size of your empire.

 

If you concentrate on science you can get to archaeology, hotels, airports, national tourism center, and the Internet faster. I won on Immortal with Polynesia last week with a CV and My wonders were Porceleon Tower, Broadway, The Louve, and the Statute of Liberty. Not exactly wonder spamming but I did spam the archeologists once available. I also won 1st place in the international games and that's when civs started to become influenced. About 10 turns later I hit the Internet used faith to purchase Musician and bombed the remain 2 civs.

 

This is a good strategy. The key tech you need is Refrigeration for Hotels. Once you get this, your Tourism really starts to take off, so you should beeline this tech. If you're going for culture, you should have a few AI friends you can make research agreements with to get there faster, and station your spies in enemy cities to get techs from the militaristic side of the tree (I can usually steal Steel, Gunpowder, that sort of thing).

If you're playing vs Egypt then the best course of action is probably to wipe them out ASAP and steal all their GWs and wonders for yourself.

 

I'd say he should ideally take out Siam and Venice too - which unfortunately kinda makes it a Domination Victory Light.

 

Last night Pacal managed to get world leader and world religion. I atleast managed to get a trade embargo on Siam.

I am going to try to build another city (total 4) keep going tall and focus on science. Going to war against Siam could work in theory but they are in a far off continent and it would piss everyone off.

 

Cultural victory does not mean you aren't allowed to go to war.

 

But you lose all the multipliers like open borders, propaganda, trading etc ...
In general, I'd suggest you play nice with the cultural leader and avoid denouncement at all costs. Unless you plan to take his wonders and great works, of course. That can always help.

Anyway, without wonders, you need to invest in archeologists and science. You also need quite a few cities with enough museums. If you can't rush to internet technology fast, you will lose the race against AI culture, at least on Immortal+. Hotels certainly aren't enough. In fact, without wonders or landmarks they hardly do anything at all.

 

Polynesia has Moai which are their Tourism secret weapons. Beeline to get hotels and airports, and your Tourism will jump.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Polynesia is an exception. That's true.

Also, do hotels convert cultural pantheons into tourism? I'm pretty sure they do, so cultural pantheons are a lot stronger than in G+K.

 

My question is whether it's possible to win a culture vitcory EVEN WITH key wonders.

Here's what I currently got:

Great Library
Parthenon
Uffizi
The Louvre
Oxford U
Hermitage
Sistine Chapel

I have full theme sets on all but one (Hermitage, IIRC). And in the industrial age, I'm still no better than Familiar with any civ, and still Exotic in quite a few. I don't know if that's normal. I haven't gotten hotels yet, and the only ideology in Freedom that will help me is Media Culture, which I'm a ways from having.

 

You'll win with no other world wonders if you now concentrate on tech

 

It's not just tech, you have to concentrate on the acquisition of great works - by means fair or foul.

The hotels and airports won't do much for you if your museums and opera houses are empty.

 

You're doing fine. Try to get Hotels and Airports. It will help a lot. Try to get Broadway. When you have Broadway's Theming bonus, start using Great Musicians to do concert tours in whichever civ is the most resistant to your Tourism. 20% will overflow to the rest of the civs.

And remember that Open Borders, shared religion, and Trade Routes act as multipliers for Tourism.

 

The wonders that require art for their theming bonuses are not that great. Hermitage is available for everyone, and needs 3 art for the theming. Uffizi needs 3, Louvre 2, Sistine 2. No one is going to generate that many artists, so hoarding all the art wonders is worthless, especially since a museum can also theme art easily.

Parthenon is a weird wonder, completely useless until 100+ turns after you built, when you can transfer the art to some good themed wonder/museum.

The wonders that house music (Broadway, Sydney Opera House) seem even more useless to me, as musicians should not be generated until late game concerts, which are the key to culture victory.

The wonders that house writings would be nice, since the only way to theme writings without world wonders is the Oxford, which would hold two of your texts. So Great Library or Globe Theater. The problem of course is that Great Library is hard to get, and you have to sacrifice a lot for a small chance to get it, especially on high difficulties. Globe Theater on the other hand has to compete with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and Pisa is better for culture victories as well.

So my opinion is that Museums and National wonders are enough, and it is a waste to build more than one art housing wonder.

And diplomat in their capital if they have a different ideology. Is that all the multipliers possible against others? I didn't notice a list of them in civilopedia.

 

Er... seems rather easy to get enough artists to me. Aesthetic tree gives +25% artist generation plus a free artist, Garden, National Epic, Art funding proposal which the AI seems to love, Tenets which boost GP generation by another 25%, plus faith-buying artists and various other means (Patronage finisher, Lourve gives a free artist, Long count etc), I've found it rather easy to load up the wonders with art in practice. This means you're free to stuff your museums full of artifacts, which you can get in abundance if you land early archeology and spam archeologists.

While certainly it's possible to do so without wonders, I don't know if I'd go as far as to call it a waste of time to try and obtain 3-4 of them. I can certainly attest to filling up the Hermitage, Uffizi, Lourve, and Sistine fairly quickly after building each of them, and it really paid off as France.

 

It's possible sure, but to call generating 10 artists "rather easy"? You won't be filling all of them with themed art until very late game.

 

The question of whether museums, hermitage and oxford are enough for a tourism victory is answered by how many cities with museums you will have. If you don't get Uffizi/Globe, you need 3 more cities with museums to make up for the lost theme bonuses. Miss Louvre? Two more museums will make up for that. So my answer is, if you have 6 cities or so that you can fill with themed museum artifacts, it shouldn't be a problem after you add hotels, airports, NVC and the internet. If you've only got 2 or 3 cities though and none of the big cultural wonders, I'm not sure you can make enough musicians to make up for that.

eta: unless you are brazil, win the international games, and time 30 turns of golden age to start when the IG bonus kicks in. Top it off with a musician near the end if you have one.