Can cultural victory happen before a spaceship?

[Dragon2]

At Monarch level, I got up to 70,000 culture points on a map where I controlled slightly more than half the world, and I thought of trying for a culture win. I had already had to take out one opposing civ that was building a spaceship.

Before I could get to 80,000 another civ built its fourth SS component. Rather than fight another war, I just went ahead and built a spaceship myself.

I can't imagine how you can get close to 100,000 culture points without having the industry and technology to build a spaceship in about 20 turns.

 

[Nanook]

Lots of Wonders/cultural buildings EARLY. Early is the key, culture points go up over time. You need lots of cities, and build lots of temples/libraries in those cities asap. Wonders like the Pyramids(they can be built VERY early), Great Library and Colossus are also very good for this strategy. If you don't get those wonders, you're pretty much out of luck for cultural victories, early or late.

 

[pilferman]

See my post in the "Culture Wins" thread. In a nutshell, you need to forget about wonders, build as many cities as you can (very close to each other), and immediately build cultural improvements. It is certainly possible.

 

[BurnPoodle]

I won in a game recently with culture... and you DON'T need to have 23409812734 cities all in a big chunk like the "Culture win" thread... the only thing you have to do is to have a good early production to make libraries and temples!!! 50 turns later (or so) they'll be making so much culture.. its incredible.. I wasn't even checking my culture going up, I wanted to do a world conquest and I made those libraries for science first... and then when I was killing everyone on the map, it wrote in my screen : You've culturally won the game

HAHA!

 

[Dragon2]

I didn't make my point very clearly in my initial post. My conjecture is that if you are doing well enough for a culture win, then you can win even faster by building a spaceship. Could someone post a saved game to refute this conjecture -- say one where you have 60,000 points and it's faster to win by culture? I'd like to see it and try it out.