[GS] Can someone help understand the culture victory?

CivAddict2013

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I've been trying to go for a culture victory lately; but I'm struggling. I always end up with in the same situation; I have twice as much culture and tourism than any other Civ yet can't seem to get the victory. For instance in my last game as India, I have around 1300 culture and 900 tourism. The closest other Civ is Russia with 700 tourism and 500 culture. I should be easily getting a lot of tourists from Russia. What am I doing wrong? I have twice as much culture but can't seem to get the victory.
 
To win a culture victory, the number of foreign tourists you have must be greater than the number of domestic tourists any other player has. Each civ generates one domestic tourist for every 100 culture accumulated. You can "steal" another player's domestic tourist and add to your foreign tourist pile by generating 200 tourism times the total number of players at the start of the game toward that player. Note that you don't win a culture victory by racking up culture, so the fact that you're generating more than twice the culture Russia generates is irrelevant.

In your case, Russia is generating 5 domestic tourists per turn. You didn't include much detail from your game, so I'm just going to make up bits that are relevant. Let's say there are four other players in the game. That means you have to generate 200 * 6 = 1200 tourism to take one tourist from Russia. Assuming your tourism multiplier toward Russia is 1.0, you're stealing 900 / 1200 = 0.75 tourist per turn from Russia. If we also assume that no other civ is taking tourists from Russia, Russia is generating 5 - 0.75 = 4.25 net domestic tourists per turn. Let's also assume that you're generating the same amount of tourism toward every other player. That mean, in total, you're generating 0.75 * 5 = 3.75 tourists per turn. You will never win the game at this pace, because Russia's gaining domestic tourists faster than you can gain foreign tourists.

Now, let's see how the numbers change when we change the multipliers. If you're generating 50% more tourism toward everyone else, you'd take 1.125 tourist per turn from each player. Russia would be running away at 5 - 1.125 = 3.875 tourists per turn, and you'd gain 5.625 tourists per turn, meaning you'd be closing the gap on Russia by 1.75 tourists per turn. Increasing tourism multipliers is very important in winning a culture victory. Some multipliers apply to all the other players. These bonuses get applied to the tourism number you see at the top of your screen. These can be unlocked through techs and civics like Computers (+25%) and Environmentalism (+25%). Some multipliers apply to specific players. Getting open borders and doing trades with another player will improve your multiplier toward that player by 25% each. Having a different government from the other player will negatively affect the multiplier. The policy card Online Communities further increases trading bonus by +50% and the Great Merchant Sarah Breedlove increases it by +25%. If you go into the culture victory tracking screen (from one of the menus in top right corner), you can see what bonuses are active by hovering over the brown suitcase symbol next to each player's name.

If you're really struggling to catch up with another player generating way too much culture, you can try to reduce the culture they generate. You can do this by either buying up or stealing all their great works or by going to war. Note that you won't be able to get open borders or trade with someone you're at war with. If you completely eliminate the domestic tourist leader, you can reduce the total number of tourists you generate, but this comes at the additional cost of losing all of the foreign tourists you have thus far generated from the player.

As a general rule, you want to try to be diplomatic with everyone else in a culture game. Commercial hubs (and harbours to a lesser extent) are more important than you'd think because they give you trade routes, and racking up culture isn't as important as you'd think, although it's still important because it helps you unlock key civics quickly.
 
For culture you have to make a lot of tourism. Think of tourism as your offense and culture as your defense. You will get a cultural victory when the total tourism you made throughout the whole game is greater than the culture of the largest culture producer in the world. There's a cultural victory guide in the game that lets you know how much turns it takes until you finally get the cultural victory.
Likewise, other civilizations that want a cultural victory can win against you if you don't make a lot of culture. Culture sometimes has the tourism count as culture as defense which can take a longer time for a cultural victory. Internet can also take longer, open trade routes, etc.
 
@rocksinmypath already gave a really good summary. But the tourism victory is imo the most complicated in civ 6 and there is LOTS more to talk about and consider. A while ago I wanted to post a small guide for cultural play in Civ 6 in the german civforum - it ended up with around 7500 words and 14 pages.
My general tips (additional to the ones already mentioned):

- focus on one or two methods (tile improvements, great works, national parks, wonders, relics and so on) to generate tourism and try to max out any bonus (GPs, wonders, Cards etc) you can get for those rather than doing everything
- build up a faith economy to buy GPs, naturalists and/or rockbands, it also helps to speed up your early game with monumentality, you dont need to get your own religion for this to be impactful
- NEVER ever kill a civ in a cultural game, the ammount of tourism you need to generate a tourist is based on the number of major civs that started the game, if you kill a civ this wont change the ammount you need but you have one civ left where you can get our tourists from, if you need to go to war at least let them live with a few small cities, if a major civ dies it might even be a good idea to go to war to revive them, in general wars should be avoided though
- if there is just one civ with lots of domestic tourists you can use rock bands in their territory to not only generate lots of tourism yourself but also lower their number of domestic tourists
- pick a civ that suits cultural play well
- practice cultural play alot, the faster you can bump your tourism up to significant numbers, the less time the AI will have to get their cultur up
 
Also there are policy cards that do things like increase tourism towards civs you have a trade route to. If you are trying to up your score vis a vis a particular civ, you can use this and send your traders there.
 
NEVER ever kill a civ in a cultural game, the ammount of tourism you need to generate a tourist is based on the number of major civs that started the game, if you kill a civ this wont change the ammount you need but you have one civ left where you can get our tourists from, if you need to go to war at least let them live with a few small cities, if a major civ dies it might even be a good idea to go to war to revive them, in general wars should be avoided though
I don't understand it. I need tourism of other civilizations?
I can't just dizimate who has more culture in the game and become the most culutural?
 
I don't understand it. I need tourism of other civilizations?
I can't just dizimate who has more culture in the game and become the most culutural?

Yes to win a CV you need tourists from other civs. As many of them as the one with the most domestic tourists has at home +1.
Basically the more civs you kill the slower you will generate tourists yourself. If there are 7 civs you apply your tourism to you will obviously get more tourists than if there are just 4 of the 7 left. So every killed civ slows down your progess. And infact its even worse because once you kill a civ you will lose all your tourists you already earned from that civ. So in the late game you can lose a few hunderd tourists from killing a single civ. And that is still not everything since killing a civ gives you major diplomatic penalties which might result in less open borders and even more wars in the future which also slow down your tourist "production".

Ofc you can still kill all but one civ you leave at a single city and then go for a CW as well but I would not consider such a victory a cultural but a domination one.
 
Yes to win a CV you need tourists from other civs. As many of them as the one with the most domestic tourists has at home +1.
Basically the more civs you kill the slower you will generate tourists yourself. If there are 7 civs you apply your tourism to you will obviously get more tourists than if there are just 4 of the 7 left. So every killed civ slows down your progess. And infact its even worse because once you kill a civ you will lose all your tourists you already earned from that civ. So in the late game you can lose a few hunderd tourists from killing a single civ. And that is still not everything since killing a civ gives you major diplomatic penalties which might result in less open borders and even more wars in the future which also slow down your tourist "production".

Ofc you can still kill all but one civ you leave at a single city and then go for a CW as well but I would not consider such a victory a cultural but a domination one.
So in a cultural victory is more hard to achieve a golden age, since destroy all cities of a civ give a big amount of points to achieve the golden age.
But thanks for the explanations, I will try someday a cultural victory, propably in a easy mode because it's sound very hard.
I can't even build an archeloger in civ 6. What I noted if I build an archeoligica center in my cultural district I can build one archeologer, but after I build one I can't build other... So I need to build more one archeological center who take a lot of turns...
 
Actually GAs in a culture game should be easy since you will build wonders or get lots of GPs. Later on you will build nationalparks which grant insane era score as well.
Playing on an easier difficulty to get to know all the mechanics in a cultural game sounds like a good plan :) Imo its definitely the hardest victory to learn in Civ 6 because of the many mechanics and bad explanation ingame.
Yes, there can only be one archeologist per archeological musem. If you plan on using them you can build up/chop your theater disctricts early, hard build the amphitheater and then go buy the museums since you should have lots of gold because you want to trade with every AI in the game.
 
Actually a CV is so easy that it is quite possible to win it by accident while trying for some other victory type!
 
@rocksinmypath already gave a really good summary. But the tourism victory is imo the most complicated in civ 6 and there is LOTS more to talk about and consider. A while ago I wanted to post a small guide for cultural play in Civ 6 in the german civforum - it ended up with around 7500 words and 14 pages.
My general tips (additional to the ones already mentioned):

- focus on one or two methods (tile improvements, great works, national parks, wonders, relics and so on) to generate tourism and try to max out any bonus (GPs, wonders, Cards etc) you can get for those rather than doing everything
- build up a faith economy to buy GPs, naturalists and/or rockbands, it also helps to speed up your early game with monumentality, you dont need to get your own religion for this to be impactful
- NEVER ever kill a civ in a cultural game, the ammount of tourism you need to generate a tourist is based on the number of major civs that started the game, if you kill a civ this wont change the ammount you need but you have one civ left where you can get our tourists from, if you need to go to war at least let them live with a few small cities, if a major civ dies it might even be a good idea to go to war to revive them, in general wars should be avoided though
- if there is just one civ with lots of domestic tourists you can use rock bands in their territory to not only generate lots of tourism yourself but also lower their number of domestic tourists
- pick a civ that suits cultural play well
- practice cultural play alot, the faster you can bump your tourism up to significant numbers, the less time the AI will have to get their cultur up

The number of "points" you need to win though depends on who the next best civ is. So sometimes killing the next best civ actually can help you.

For example, let's say there are 6 civs total in the game. If you have 20 tourists from every civ (so you are 100/X). If the best civ has 155 domestic tourists, then you need 100/155 to win. If the next best after them has 90, if you kill that first civ, then you would drop to having 80 tourists, but your requirements will be 90 tourists now, so a lot closer to victory. Yes, i think you will technically generate tourists slower, but your target has dropped by a lot.

But for me, if I start down a culture victory, I just try to get as much culture as I can, add as many bonuses and multipliers as I can (open borders, trade routes, policy cards, etc...). If you focus that way, the victory should come, especially if you pick a civ with a natural bonus. I find a good way to help is to simply make sure you're building theatres in most cities, and then the ones with better production go Archaeologists, the ones with worse go Art Museums. Use your cash to buy them when needed, and then add in some random tile improvements like seaside resorts, natural parks, Collossal Heads, Great Wall, etc... depending on civ and city-states and terrain, and then just watch your tourism number. If it's not going high enough, then spamming rock bands usually is enough to push it over the top.
 
Actually a CV is so easy that it is quite possible to win it by accident while trying for some other victory type!
I don't think so, I never achieve a cultural victory in civ6. I was reading this thread and believe it is a bit confusing by the way
 
Actually a CV is so easy that it is quite possible to win it by accident while trying for some other victory type!

Might be true on small maps. I always play huge maps, and culture victory on huge maps with 11 ennemies is quasi impossible unless you go total domination and get CV before killing the last one.
 
Actually a CV is so easy that it is quite possible to win it by accident while trying for some other victory type!

I guess this depends on playsyle/settings alot. Personally I barely win it accidentlly (unless I am playing with monopolies ofc) because if am not going for a CV I just dont care to get all the tourism bonusses.

The number of "points" you need to win though depends on who the next best civ is. So sometimes killing the next best civ actually can help you.

For example, let's say there are 6 civs total in the game. If you have 20 tourists from every civ (so you are 100/X). If the best civ has 155 domestic tourists, then you need 100/155 to win. If the next best after them has 90, if you kill that first civ, then you would drop to having 80 tourists, but your requirements will be 90 tourists now, so a lot closer to victory. Yes, i think you will technically generate tourists slower, but your target has dropped by a lot.

[...]

In some (rare, at least in my games) you can be faster with killing a civ. But even in your example I can make up a case where you were faster without killing the big one. So for inexperienced players my advice is not to kill anyone to keep the advice simple.
 
I found a CV to be kind of difficult on Deity. Ever since I got back to playing (I think it was June) I was unable to get a CV. I had in the past, but I don't believe I had played since the last patch and things got changed or nerfed and I've been trying to get used to it. Since I've been back, I could only get science and domination wins. Even when I played French Eleanor, it was domination, not culture. A lot of people say they get CV before domination with her, but I did not. Anyway, so my last game was as the Khmer. I was determined to get a CV once and for all. I didn't see much combat, besides a surprise war from Gaul at the start and I wiped him out. I was allies with Kongo (my closest neighbor) for the whole game but all the other AI hated him and he was at war a lot. Australia was one of the two biggest cultural civs. I bought as much artwork as I could until they wouldn't sell them to me anymore. I built national parks, built some wonders, got archaeologists, spammed rock bands, but what ultimately got me the win was when I got dragged into a war through my Kongo alliance. Australia had declared on Kongo so I took the opportunity to raze one of Australia's cities and captured another. Reducing the amount of cities Australia had helped a lot. I didn't really see much combat for most of the game, other than being called into alliance wars here and there. I also had alliances and open borders with other civs, but it was taking out a couple of Australia's cities (Oh right I remember now, the other cultural contester was the Zulu)) and spamming a highly promoted rock band all over the Zulu territory was what got me the win. I try not to wipe out entire civs if I'm going for CV, but reducing their empire size (and rock bands) were what gave me the winning edge.
 
Well, just as an example - one may build a lot of wonders for their own value, and at the same time incidentally generate a lot of tourism. Granted I always play standard size maps, not huge.
 
I guess this depends on playsyle/settings alot. Personally I barely win it accidentlly (unless I am playing with monopolies ofc) because if am not going for a CV I just dont care to get all the tourism bonusses.



In some (rare, at least in my games) you can be faster with killing a civ. But even in your example I can make up a case where you were faster without killing the big one. So for inexperienced players my advice is not to kill anyone to keep the advice simple.
I kind of agree with this because when I used to kill whole civilizations and there were other players in civ 5, and they found out. (!) They would simply all gang up on you. If you do want to dominate, just take the capital.
This also might happen in civ 6, I think.
 
If you occupy the original capital of a civ, you get a substantial dfiplomatic penalty. It is rather weird that for a domination victory you have to occupy capitals, but are punished by the game for doing so.

Then there is the completely arbitrary rule that capital cities may not be razed. This is so artificial that it stands out as appalling game design; a nonsense rule that has been forced onto the game. One result is that barbarians and city state units cannot capture a capital (because they always raze any city they capture). They can reduce its health to zero, and keep battering at a zero-strength undefended city, but they're not allowed to capture it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
 
If you occupy the original capital of a civ, you get a substantial dfiplomatic penalty. It is rather weird that for a domination victory you have to occupy capitals, but are punished by the game for doing so.

Then there is the completely arbitrary rule that capital cities may not be razed. This is so artificial that it stands out as appalling game design; a nonsense rule that has been forced onto the game. One result is that barbarians and city state units cannot capture a capital (because they always raze any city they capture). They can reduce its health to zero, and keep battering at a zero-strength undefended city, but they're not allowed to capture it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I think not always the city state raze the conquered city.
 
If you occupy the original capital of a civ, you get a substantial dfiplomatic penalty. It is rather weird that for a domination victory you have to occupy capitals, but are punished by the game for doing so.

Then there is the completely arbitrary rule that capital cities may not be razed. This is so artificial that it stands out as appalling game design; a nonsense rule that has been forced onto the game. One result is that barbarians and city state units cannot capture a capital (because they always raze any city they capture). They can reduce its health to zero, and keep battering at a zero-strength undefended city, but they're not allowed to capture it. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The thing is that this could benefit a player ambitioning domination victory because a few penalties are better than a lot of penalties. What I mean by that is that if you take the capital, stay at war and don't kill the civilization, you will still be attacked by others but not as severe as to where everyone attacks and gangs up on you-at least for civ 5.
Taking a capital is an opportunity to further domination, the war declarations will be there like you said, and that opens up an opportunity to dominate the next civ-the one or two that declared war on you are next and it keeps going until you take all the capitals. You don't have to take all the capitals though, there are some civilizations that won't touch you and by that time you will be powerful enough to allow yourself to pursue another victory if you get tired enough to not push for full domination.
 
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