Can i win this and general cultural victory clues

[edgarina]

Hi,

First time I have uploaded a game so go easy!!

Trying to win Cultural on Monarch. Can often win Domination and space race but only once cultural.

I don't think I can win this game. Someone just built broadway and I think thats it.

I figure Louis is a good leader to try with?

I guess for me an important question is, whats the minimum number of cities you can win cultural with. I know quality is important. Usually as a golden rule on monarch if I havne't got 8 cities by macemen time its all over.

I seem to do well early on trying cultural with Louis and then just seem to lag behind tech wise in the middle game. Having said that I have never persisted to see what happens figuring its a dead loss.

I am playing for cultural from the start and my usual tech path is very different and I am slightly less aggresive. Should I just play normal to begin with so I stay ahead and then go all out cultural from the mid game or is the loss of that early culture a deal breaker. I think I am concerntrating on culture too early and end up lagging behind.

all hints and tips appreciated.

 

[lymond]

Minimum # = 3
Ideal # = 9

In culture wins you are going to lag behind in tech eventually. The most important techs to focus on is Music and Liberalism. Once you win Liberalism, take Nationalism, switch to Free Speech and keep the culture slider at or near 100% for the rest of the game. Anything after that really doesn't matter (unless you decide on Culture much later in the game)

As for early game, it is situational really. You can certainly play it somewhat normal...that is, expand to your requisite number of cities or conquer them. On lower levels, earlly rushes are quite effective for culture wins to grab more caps. On Monarch above, it really depends and you don't always have opportunities. However, it is nice to "steal" a religion or two, plus their luscious caps, if the AIs are close. Still, if you have enough good land to settle, expanding to 6 or 9 cities and grabbing Conf and/or Pac, plus any other religion spread, is more than enough.

Try to get at least one heavily cottage L city and one super GP farm and a secondary GP farm or two. The other GP farms don't need to be L cities. Just grow them large and them abuse them (starve) to get out as many Great Artists as you can.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Here's the answer to the first part of your question:

Spoiler :

What I did:
Switched research to 0% and seeing as you had over 3,000 in the bank I was able to push culture up to 100%. This dropped Babylon (the lowest culture of your 3 legendary cities) to under 100 turns.
With the additional happiness from 100% I traded around some happy/extra resources for gold or health. Any city not in the hunt for legendary switched to building wealth so at 100% I was in the black.
In Orleans you had the Globe Theater so I started running as many artists as possible there without starving. I also farmed or windmilled any tile around Orleans.
I moved the majority of troops from Akkad to the city north of Qin's city. With 1 city Babylon wasn't going to attack me and do any damage plus even if an attack came from here it would have given me enough time to bring troops over to Babylon. My main concern was NOT to lose a legendary city.
The first great person was a scientist so I fired off a Golden Age with him. After that I got 3 or 4 Great Artists (1 from an event) which I used to culture bomb either Orleans or Babylon (depending upon which one had the lowest culture at the time)

You are a better man or woman than me btw as with the scarcity of food on this thing I would have re-rolled a new start!

Attached is the save one turn before Babylon goes legendary in case you want to look around and see what I did.

Do you use the BUG mod?