Gitarja/Indonesia [4] (7-3) - One of the best naval civs, but comes with the down sides of naval civs, even with the buff to coastal cities. In the early game, coastal cities on average don’t grow as well as inland river cities due to housing and have less good tiles to choose from (after getting a Harbor, this changes, but again, my comment is towards early game). More specifically for Indonesia’s approach to a Culture victory, though getting a consistent source of Faith (though not necessarily a large source, as not all of your cities may be coastal) and an early Pantheon is nice, it doesn’t really give them advantages with early Culture to get to the key civics fast.
As you might guess, I’m solidly in the camp that, in general, early to mid game Culture yields and getting all/most of the early Great Works of Writing are more important than late game Tourism (with a weak early Culture economy) for a fast Culture victory. You are building lifetime Tourists early before your opponents gets a strong Culture defense, you are depriving your opponents from getting Culture / Tourism of their own which would require you to get even more Tourism to compensate, and you are snowballing to get to the late game civics and techs that grant more Tourism faster.
Kampungs are a good source of Tourism late game with Flight and are highly spamable, but unlike the other UIs that do this as well, Kampungs don’t provide Culture. That means they are even slower at getting through the civics compared to those civs, all else being equal. The minor adjacency TS get from a Coast tiles is not enough to compensate, and doesn’t help to get to TS in the first place. They can get good Science yields in their Coast cities though thanks to the +2 major adjacency from Reefs helping to compensate for a Coast bias. The Coast minor adjacency can add a little more Science to this as well. Thus, you potentially can get to Flight in an acceptable time.
Their reliable (though not necessarily large) Faith production means they can go for late game National Parks and Rock Bands (not to the extent of Faith monsters like Russia, Ethiopia, or even Japan). However, given their coastal bias, they often don’t have a lot of spots for National Parks. If you decide to settle inland to get spots for National Parks, you then lose spots for Kampungs.
Indonesia can potentially get a decent amount of good Seaside Resorts, but they will often be competing with districts for placement.
Solid culture civ, and fun to play if you like yield porn, particularly if you get the Mausoleum in a predominately Coast city, but I think they and the other UI civs (save for Ethiopia; China too, but for different reasons) need to go now.
Hojo Tokimune/Japan [13] (2+1) - Now that Rome has been eliminated (too soon in my opinion ... see below the civ list for my concluding comments on Rome), I will support the three civs that can have a similar approach to Rome in a fast Culture victory: Japan and the two Greeces (I think Rome’s path is stronger as I mentioned in my earlier post, but they’ve been eliminated, so it’s a moot point). I actually think Japan is slightly weaker at this than both the Greeces, however, in my opinion, shouldn’t be eliminated before Indonesia, Egypt, and Brazil. I was going to vote for Greece - Gorgo, but wanted to prop Japan up.
Japan can build TS faster, getting GWofW faster. They can build HS faster, and thanks to their stronger adjacencies, will have a stronger Faith economy to support a Culture win. In addition, given that Work Ethic adjacency seems to have replaced Petra porn for the fascination of Civ players, they can also reliably go for this strategy and potentially use it in more cities than Russia, Mali, or Brazil (though admittedly it will be slightly slower going than those three civs until you can get at least 3-4 districts around your Holy Sites, let alone the full 6).
Until they get their TS up, they don’t have a good source of early Culture. This makes getting to Drama & Poetry for TS slightly more challenging, which is why I think Greece - Gorgo (and Rome) is better. Once they do, they will start getting going. Again, even though Japan doesn’t have a UI to get a Tourism at Flight, the early GWoW compensate for this, deny other civs from from building defensive domestic Tourists, and they will get to the late game civics and Techs faster than most to start generating Tourism that way as well.
Catherine/France (Mag) [19]
Cleopatra/Egypt [13]
Cyrus/Persia [17]
Gitarja/Indonesia [4] (7-3)
Gorgo/Greece [18]
Hojo Tokimune/Japan [13] (12+1)
Kristina/Sweden [20]
Kupe/Maori [17]
Menelik/Ethiopia [23]
Pericles/Greece [23]
Peter/Russia [22]
Qin Shi Huang/China [25]
Teddy Roosevelt/America (BM) [21]
Wilfrid Laurier/Canada [22]
==Warning - LONG and not directly related to above. Feel free to skip.==
Appreciate the kind comments on my earlier lengthy explanation about Rome. Im glad it convinced some to throw a few extra votes towards Rome, though I kind of accepted they would be eliminated (I still think too early though). I’m a long time lurker but only a recent poster. COVID self isolation has meant I have more free time to think about posting. As you can guess, Rome is my main civ, so when I saw them slipping, wanted to make an argument in their favor.
Even though they’ve been eliminated, I would like to clarify the reason why Rome is so (deceptively) productive in the early game thanks to the free Monuments and why this makes them a top tier civ (hopefully I’m not breaking any rules of the elimination thread).
Thanks to the Culture from the free Monuments, Rome can get the Agoge and Colonization policy cards so much faster than other civs, even if you don’t get the Inspiration boost (which can be hard for Agoge if you don’t spend Production / Gold on a builder or get one via a Goody Hut). Though a lot of players conceptually understand this, it is often not realized the actual number of turns saved compared to other civs.
For example, if beelining for a non-Inspiration boosted Craftsmanship, it will take Rome at most 19 turns, ignoring RNG from meeting a Culture CS (previously much more potent prior to City State nerf to first envoy) or having a tile that gives Culture yield (and you might shave 1 more turn off due to the 0.3 Culture per pop if you happen to grow your city to 3 or 4 pop really quickly). As other civs, this takes on average 50-55+ turns if you don’t build or buy a Monument in the meantime (again, ignoring RNG that gives you access to alternate means of getting Culture). That is a 30-35+ turn difference. That is a decent chunk of the length of a typical game. Again, this is for a non-boosted Craftsmanship, since if you are min-maxing, this is arguably the hardest of the early civics to get an Inspiration boost for; I often don’t build or buy builders until after turn 30 and normally I use / save 1 of the build charges for chopping.
This is why you will often have an army at least twice as large as you would normally have as another civ at the same point in the game, because you’ll be getting the benefits from Agoge sooner and applying it for longer. Same concept with Colonization when it comes to settlers, which as Rome further compounds the effect of the +2 Culture from free Monuments. In addition, if you apply Magnus chops to the units while running their respective policy card, this is further enhanced, helped by buying a Builder with gold you saved from not buying a Monument. Yes, other civs will eventually get these policy cards, but you will have been getting the benefits for longer, on average 30 turns longer.
For arguments sake, let’s say on average you collectively have 30+ production across your early cities producing these type of units. An extra 50% from the policy cards means 15+ additional production collectively across your cities. Multiplied by the 30 turns Rome has over another civ by getting the policy cards early, this is 450+ “extra” / earlier Production (and note, obviously your collective production won’t stay constant, it should be increasing over the course of those 30 turns as well; however, wanted to keep the math simple). Admittedly, this is a simplistic example and you may not get exactly this amount of production difference. However, hopefully this illustrates why the free Monuments is more than just +2 Culture a turn. Given that Rome is the civ I main, when I play other civs, I often find myself thinking “why do I have a much smaller army with fewer cities ... why does the game feel harder ...”.
“Well, I’m not just going to hard research Craftsmanship. Of course I will have built or bought a Monument in the meantime, maybe even another one in my second city. Or I will get a builder to complete 3 improvements to get the inspiration So really, it’s not 30-35 turns saved”. Sure, you can do this. In some situations, this might be a valid decision. However, the point is Rome doesn’t have to make that decision. Rome instead can use those same turns or gold to build or buy a military unit (or 2-3 if compared to the opportunity cost of a second Monument). In multiplayer, if we’re neighbors, that means that nice city you built a Monument is now mine. In higher difficulty games, that Monument isn’t going to defend you against 5 warriors and 2 archers from the AI.
Also, though true that Rome has no bonuses to mid-to-late game Culture yields, I would argue the culture from getting all the early Great Writers (if Russia is not in your game) and continuing to get additional Great Writers due to snowballing ahead is their “bonus”. Yes, other civs can compete with Rome for Great Writers, it’s not like this is unique to Rome. However, it is amazing how deceptively powerful being 30+ turns ahead can actually be when competing for Great People.
Lastly, I would like to comment that my discovery on how strong Rome is all comes from watching CivTrader6’s videos back in early 2018. Though I recognize that his “Deity Peaceful Science Victory in 157 Turns (as Rome)” is 2+ going on 3 years old and is no longer really applicable given changes and patches to overflow, late game Great Scientists, the introduction of RF and GS mechanics, etc., when I first watched that video, it got me into playing Rome (and there are some concepts he demonstrates that are still applicable). Previously, Russia and Greece were my favorite civs, as I too thought Rome’s bonuses sounded boring and underwhelming when I first got the game. I quickly saw how great Rome is thanks to CivTrader6. In addition, ironically, it was another player who goes by CivTrader who regularly posts on Reddit (CivTrader mentions he is not CivTrader6 from YouTube) who demonstrated the strategy for a fast Culture Victory. Though this was pre-Great Writers nerf, I’ve done games before and after the nerf, and though definitely slower post-nerf, the same concept exists. You are generating Tourism before other civs can generate enough defensive Culture and you are preventing those civs from getting Culture and Tourism from GWoW.
Admittedly, Rome is a superior Domination civ, for the same reasons I’ve described above and in my previous post, even with the Iron requirement nerf, much more than their ranking in the recent Domination elimination thread. My opinion is they are better than Ottomans, Macedon, Scythia, Mongolia, (arguably) Persia, and in particular Zulu. This would put them in the Top 5 of that elimination thread instead of #11. Zulu corps / armies are godly but they take so freaking long to get to under most circumstances that I’ve won the game already as Rome. Similar to how a lot of players are obsessed with Petra porn, I believe that a lot of players are hypnotized by the amazing Combat Strength of Zulu corps / armies that they forget that have to get to (survive to) Mercenaries first.
But I digress. This is the Culture Elimination Thread, and now that Rome has been eliminated, I’m going to try to argue that Greece - Gorgo is similarly a very strong Culture civ for a lot of the same reasons Rome is (and though more variable than Rome in terms of a Culture production, gains the benefit of the extra Wild Card slot and the amazing half cost Acropolis TS), in addition to Pericles and Japan to a lesser extent.
