Cultural Victories (Newbie, have some questions/want advice)

[Telicis]

Recently got Civilization IV (Vanilla, don't have nor will I be picking up the expansion any time soon whether I want to or not ).. Never got a chance to play Civilization III but I LOVED Civilization II, so playing this was a huge change.

Anyway, after flipping through the manual/reading the Civilopedia and messing around once or twice, I managed to pull off one very close Cultural Victory. Going to supply information about the game as best I can in case it helps... Want as much advice as I can get.. This is going to be long-winded, hehe.

(Did it as Frederick, he seemed the best.. Ended in the 1970s/1980s with 6 cities at the end.) Tokugawa launched an attack finally (I choke pointed him between mountains and closed borders so he couldn't get to me until he declared, and I kept friendly with him) and I put my Culture Slider to 100%/made the Citizens for all my cities into Artists (got a couple Great Artists)/spammed the Cathedrals/Mosques/etc in my third city (2 were already Legendary) and made it by the skin of my teeth.

It was just the two of us and I went with a seemingly normal map (think I went with Tiny.. Rest was Balanced/Temperate/etc) except no Barbarians .

I feel like I could improve a LOT, just not sure how.. My biggest problems seemed to be Maintenance costs and Health (besides lowering the slider/leaving a lot of Forests, I couldn't find a way to really fix these problems quickly).. I left my Science at 100% for most of the game (and even then felt strapped for Technology.. Barely kept up with Tokugawa).

I did manage to do a few things I felt were respectable (founded all the religions/got all the Great-People Technologies except the highest-one that's at the end of the tech trees, and never lost a Wonder to Tokugawa), but in retrospect (and after reading some other peoples posts) I don't feel like they were so impressive all things considered.

I founded my cities in 4000, 1280, 450 (BC), 1090, 1595, and 1685 (AD)... I originally thought this was too spaced out/late, but the Maintenance costs seemed like such a problem even then.

Improvement wise I used a mix of Cottages with some Farms (my cities always seemed to be starving) and one or two mines (the Wind/Watermills and.. Something else later on, forget what it was, think it was a mill as well) not counting resources.

I think I built too many Workers (I really didn't seem to ever need more than 3) and just felt very strapped in general the entire game, even though I had to build no Military beyond 1 unit per city (for happiness) and focused on just growing..

Health, Food, and Maintenance Costs (to a point; it only rose it's head once or twice, but usually between religions and stuff I made out fine) ALL seemed to become a problem at some point, but even with my Science at 100% I was still struggling to stay competitive with Tokugawa a lot.

Any advice? Civics/Researches to rush for? Huge differences between Civ2 and Civ4 I seemed to miss? Wonders to beeline for? Any other information I could supply to help explain myself?

Like I said, I had pretty much no need for military the entire game AND controlled well over half the map, so there must be something very wrong with my growth and how I do it, just can't figure out what. Help would be greatly appreciated for my next attempts at Cultural Victories.

I never thought a Cultural Victory with so much luck (choke pointing, getting all the religions/never losing a wonder/all the Great People techs) on normal difficulty would be so hard!

 

[vsipinen]

I have not have much success with earlier cultural victories either (my earliest cultural victory was about 1920 - 1930 - if remember correctly) and I am not expert of that, but to me it seems that perhaps you should have built cathedrals at lest in one of the other main cities (the second best) - and anyway earlier than when two cities were already legendary, unless you did manage to achieve that really early (before or roughly when cathedrals became available).

 

[Softnum]

Some things, just from reading your review.

Did you build Courthouses? What about other City improvements? You didn't mention them at all, but they're very important to build. One big difference from Civ 2 / Civ 3 is that RCP isn't the winning strategy anymore. Cities tend to be further apart (But not too far apart.)

The AI uses the 'Power' rating to determine when it attacks. You'll want to keep an eye on this to avoid surprise attacks.

What difficulty were you playing? Noble?

Honestly you didn't seem to do too bad, though, for your first game. Especially if you started on Noble. Screenshots or replays generally help judge your game better.

 

[Telicis]

Couple corrections.. I played on a Small Map and Noble.

I got Courthouses ASAP, but like I said, they weren't as much of a problem as Health/Food (to a lesser point) was..

Setup a quick replay with one change (isolated Tokugawa a bit more so he stopped trying to land in places, which drove me nuts). One way or the other, I ended up not having him attack this time and got the victory a little later (1987). Essentially it really is the same game overall though... I just figured out how to put replays up so I hope this works.

Didn't think to take screenshots.. No clue when I should have anyways.

 

[Softnum]

I'll peek at it once I'm not at work...

 

[Cam_H]

Telicis,

1. Welcome to CivFanatics, and I'm glad you're enjoying Civ4.

2. I think that you might get better advice by posting a game rather than the replay. I can make some observations from the replay, but in fairness I'm not sure that I'm getting the whole picture. Some questions I'd put to you would include; Did you build a Great Artist farm? Did you really need all those Wonders? Why were you so slow in getting your fourth, fifth and sixth cities founded?

3. Two of the better known Cultural Victory guides are; The Beginner's Crash Guide To Cultural Victory and Cultural Victory: Notes and tips. There are plenty of good general suggestions in these two threads (they are also posted in the War Academy).

4. Not for me to tell you how to play your game, but more 'normal' settings will allow for a better learning process. A large part of the Cultural win is handling Diplomacy - so sticking Tokugawa in a small isolated pocket in a 'two horse race' really takes trading and diplomacy out of the equasion, which I imagine would deliver a less than whole experience. My advice would be to drop the difficulty by one and play a Warlord level game with the default settings (incl. Barbarians), and try to focus on finding the right balance between getting religions spread and supported with buildings, managing diplomacy, and in the meantime growing and protecting your empire.

Best of luck.

 

[Telicis]

1. Thank you very much!

2. By posting a game you mean the 4000 BC start? Like I said I'm new, not sure what you mean. Is there some type of replay that's more player-based rather than overhead (like in, say, AoE?).

I didn't build a GP farm, really didn't know how to structure one well without adding more than just the Artists into the pool. The Wonders I built were all ones Tokugawa either attempted to build, or ones I felt were Cultural enough to be worth shooting for.. I didn't build EVERY Wonder I could, of course. I built the 4th/5th/6th cities so slow because I was trying to stabilize the other 3 as well as my economy.

3. I'll check those out, thanks!

 

[Cam_H]

1. That's OK!

2. I would say save and post a game at about 700AD, which should provide insight on where you've come from and what opportunities lie ahead.

A Great Artist farm is generally a city that has good health (near fresh water, Granary, Aqueduct, Grocer, etc.), food surpluses (thanks to tiles such as irrigated grasslands, irrigated floodplains, and/or food resources), and has The National Epic Wonder and ideally other Wonders that can contribute points to Great Artists. You'll have a Theatre there that can support running Specialist Artists, but if you're in the Caste System civic, you can have 'unlimited' Specialist Artists. Most of your Great Artists will be spawned from this city, and they can join cities as Super Specialist Artists in your target cities in the early- and mid-game, or used to create great works (culture bomb) towards the end.

I hope that's fairly clear!

 

[Macadami]

I've recently made it a point to try for a cultural victory on every level of difficulty on default settings, continents, and standard size and time (just finished prince) and from what i've experienced the key is to not start too early nor too late for stacking the culture in your 3 cities. Research whichever techs you need first based on what's around you. There is no point to go up a tech path that doesn't directly help your goal but make sure you have what you need before aiming for religions/mass media. Furthermore attempt to switch a city to culture or GA's before your commerce or military is adequate enough and you could find yourself well behind in just a matter of turns. It's a good idea to try and plan your culture cities from the beginning though, and don't be afraid to include a city you plan on taking. On the easier difficulties you can pretty much balance military, tech, and cultural boons fairly easily which would give you a chance to experiment with the different civics and how You want to use them to better fit a cultural victory.

As previously noted, your GPA farm should have a good bit of food and a few hammers to speed up the GA and national wonders, one of my 3 first cities i turn into a wonder farm with lots of production nearby and include it and the 3rd is usually whatever will benefit me the most by having a huge cultural border. In my noble game, i had caeser as a very close neighbor, bribed him with a few trades and some gold to keep him pleased and managed to culturally steal 3 of his cities, including rome which i made into my 3rd culture city just for grins. (i hate that guy btw)

 

[rainmaker]

I am playing my first attempt at a cultural victory. I am playing at warlord level and epic speed. It is 1742 and if I use my 4 GAs I can put all three cities over 50,000. I know that is the cultural level for normal speed. Can someone tell me the amount of culture I will need for epic speed? I don't want to use my GAs untll I canuse them to put me over.

thanks
rainmaker

 

[oyzar]

there is no reason to build courthouses in any great number unless your doing extencive warmongering on any level under monarch imo. Libraries/markets etc just give way more return if you take properly care of your economy. Cottages is easiest for beginers.

 

[AnitaGaribaldi]

I am playing my first attempt at a cultural victory. I am playing at warlord level and epic speed. It is 1742 and if I use my 4 GAs I can put all three cities over 50,000. I know that is the cultural level for normal speed. Can someone tell me the amount of culture I will need for epic speed? I don't want to use my GAs untll I canuse them to put me over.

It's 75000 for Epic speed. I use a Excel spreadsheet to help me. You can get it at this forum.

 

[cabert]

cam is right, if you want to learn something about the game, try more normal settings.
If you really don't want to handle too much battles, leave out the barbs, but by all means get yourself some neighbours : trading for health resources and money can easily solve your difficulties, but for this you need neighbours!