Cultural victory mechanics question

[Agramon]

I recently won one of the few emperor games so far. Playing Lissy I was aiming for culture. Heard she is quite suitable for that kind of victory. Early rush on gandhi who founded Hindu + Judaism. Couldn't kill him and he soon vassaled to saladin (pleased to me). So his cities actually were a perfect buffer state ;-). Used the method described by jesusin. Rush build all religious and culture buildings and turn up the slider when money infrastructure is in place (2 Cottage cities + Specialist city).

1)Afterwards I asked myself if money -> culture conversion is done on a city basis or empirewide. You also get quite fast border pops with the culture slider up in new conquered cities quite fast. I might have done better with more cottaged cities instead of the food heavy whipping/scientists cities (stayed in rep for slow research).

2)Is there specialist approach available?

Here is another thing that happened to me this same game. I researched music and the same turn saladin(has marble and was wonderhogging) shows up and asks for it. He is pleased (same religion). My military is disaster. BW vs feud+cats. What would you do?

Spoiler :

I gave in.

 

[Paperbag_Hobo]

It's cultural. Do whatever is necessary to keep the AI off your ass. You should be winning early enough for it not to matter.

 

[Cam_H]

Agramon,

Congratulations on your win.

Commerce to Culture is empire-wide. Your cities with Cathedrals / Hermitage will better leverage what commerce is produced in those cities due to their multiplier effect, so while an empire-wide move, some cities (ideally your culture targets) will capitalise on it better.

"Scientist cities"?

 

[Agramon]

I suspected that. Maybe i got something wrong. I only cottaged the 3 cultural cities and built banks markets and grocers there, while I whipped and run scientists(+rep for research) in the other ones. As it seems I have to do it the other way round. I should run specs in the culture cities and finance culture with cottages?

 

[Cam_H]

It can be difficult to say without a better look at the map, but it's not uncommon for; one culture city to be your National Epic Great Person Farm churning out Great Artists (although some production capacity within it is good too), the second a solid cottage city with Hermitage, and the third being your cottaged Capital. The rest of your empire should be pretty balanced.

Circumstances may dictate alternative methods though ... for instance; you may have one city that's a production site that's got a heap of established culture through early-game Wonders that may make a better city (one that will go Legendary faster) than a cottaged site. The Reign in Spain succession game that I was involved in had such a city in Madrid.

 

[Agramon]

For me that basically boils down to the question. Should you cottage the majority of the culture cities?

If culture is spread on an empire basis every city getting the same amount (?, bias to population? or commerce?) of culture, the cottages are probably not the optimal way. As their commerce is shared with other cities.

It seems more logical for me, to let the greatest part of the empire be cottages to finance culture explosion, but in these cities you should run Artist specs to have max individual culture per city.

Actually the strategy described by jesusin works for me so far, but IF culture is distributed without a certain bias empirewide, there should be ways for optimization.

 

[Cam_H]

If culture is spread on an empire basis every city getting the same amount (?, bias to population? or commerce?) of culture, the cottages are probably not the optimal way. As their commerce is shared with other cities.

My apologies ... I meant that the percentage of each city's commerce allocated to science, culture, espionage, or gold (cash) is an empire-wide decision, as per the commerce slider. That is, you can't allocate 20% + 80% to Hastings, and 40% + 60% to York for instance.

The example below of how Madrid yields its culture might clarify this ...

This city has a pretty unimpressive 38 / turn haul, and the (empire wide) commerce slider is set to 50% + 50%, therefore it's yielding 19 / turn out of its commerce haul - although this 19 in this case does get enhanced with the help of multiple Cathedrals and Rock n Roll, and Spain running Free Speech. On top of this is from buildings (e.g. temples, a library), State religion, Wonders, specialists (which also get the benefit of culture multipliers). Finally some extra is generated through 'build culture' (just to make things even less clear; 'build culture' gets production multipliers from forges, factories, Ironworks, etc., rather than culture multipliers from Cathedrals, etc.).



So the commerce haul of each individual city does count towards the / turn of each city, but the percentage of commerce converted to culture is an empire wide decision.

Sorry - even this explanation appears a bit confusing!

 

[Derakon]

One question: why is the icon for your garrisoned spy the ancient-era one instead of the modern-era one?

 

[Cam_H]

It's a very old Spy!