Cultural Victory Question

[GenocideBringer]

Hey. I'd like to try for my first cultural victory, but I'm curious.

All the guides suggest that you should get 100% culture slider by the late industrial era. However, I play on aggressive AI. That is, if your military isn't up to snuff you WILL get your ass kicked.

So my question is...how do you get by with 0 research? I doubt industrial-era troops will do anything if a modern enemy comes knocking.

 

[CCRunner]

You don't need to put it on 100% culture if you feel you need the research. It will make it harder but it's doable. You can use corporations, definitely cathedrals, artist specialists, the late game culture wonders, great artists and Hermitage in addition to the culture slider to win culture. Obviously, the late wonders and corporations you'll have to wait a little bit for.

Alternatively, you could play without aggressive AI.

 

[timmy827]

CCRunner makes good points, I would separate those into two categories. The multipliers (hermitage, cathedrals, broadcast towers and the Hit wonders if the game goes that long, and FS of course) are always good regardless of where you're getting your base culture.

For base culture, let's assume major wonder-building is out due to aggressive AI. BTS corps are a godsend although they require some planning; also their value depends on the map script, your empire size, and who you can trade for excess resources with. I really like caste system and max artists - you can farm a flatland and run an artist for 6 base culture which is competitive with mature cottage + slider for 7 base culture. Granted that assumes Biology, Sistine, and sufficient health/happy to run those specialists but there are some major benefits; you get more great artists to even out your cities with bombing. Your tech pace is slowed as 3 of your best cities are doing all culture, but its nowhere near as bad as a cottage/full culture slider approach.

The other key issue is that it doesn't hurt to play it safe. Although the AI does for culture now it's not particularly fast at it, and you should be able to get culture long before an AI threatens space. So you are free to keep some of your slider to research as long as you can beat the AIs to their victory condition, trading a potentially fast win for a more sure one.

Cultural victory with aggressive AI should be doable, but if its your first attempt at culture I would also suggest considering leaving aggressive AI off.

 

[MrBrown]

Cultural victories that rely on turning commerce->culture should always run commerce->science until they've got their cathedrals and stuff ready, and then switch for the last spurt.

So, ideally, you're running with 0% tech only for a few dozen turns in the end (on normal speed), up till then, you should be on par with the AIs.

The rest of your cities could be production cities, thus making up for lack of tech with production.

Ideally, the AI won't get far ahead enough, and won't have enough time to produce advanced units, to actually threaten you.

 

[rddc05]

Found Sid's sushi and get as many of the resources as you can (should be able to get around 30+). Get 3+ Cathedrals in each of your 3 cities. Build the industrial era wonders. This should get you pumping upwards of 500-600 CPT in your cities running a little bit on the culture slider. Voila, you will have 3 legendary cities in time to win. Won't be early, but it should beat the AI space race win.