Cultural Victory

[iamnleth]

I've never had one. I want to change that. I read the War Academy, but it only posed more questions.

1. How late is acceptable to shoot for one (assuming you are in the position to/have a few religions, a nice GP farm set up, plenty of cottages, and a few wonders built)?
2. In what situations should I go for a cultural victory? I know isolation leads to a lag in tech, which makes it nice for cultural.

I don't particularly like starting a game in pursuit of one victory type. It seems more logical to observe your surroundings first, and from what I've noticed, that seems a bit hard with a cultural victory.

 

[The Rook]

How late is acceptable to shoot for one (assuming you are in the position to/have a few religions, a nice GP farm set up, plenty of cottages, and a few wonders built)?

The latest I decided to shoot for a cultural win was 1816. Before that point, I hadn't decided how I was going to win. I was a moderate power, but the rest of the world had been vassalised between two super powers. My diplomatic situation with the two super powers was very stable. I had three religions available, but only one of my cities had a substantial amount of culture. Prospective cities 2 and 3 weren't even influential. Even worse, I plonked 2 cathedrals and Heritage in a frontier city to maintain my borders (lack of food made this a poor candidate for legendary culture). Anyway, I founded a 9th junk city to unlock 3 more cathedrals. The capital had enough wonders to carry it to legendary without the aid of any mods. I built the NP in a high food city, farmed everything, built 3 cathedrals, and ran countless specialists for another legendary city. For city 3 I did the same, but without the aid of the NP, so there were less specialists. Broadway+RocknRoll made up for that though. I didn't run any cottages in this game btw, so there was very little culture through commerce.

In what situations should I go for a cultural victory? I know isolation leads to a lag in tech, which makes it nice for cultural.

It varies. I normally find that if I stand well in a game then cultural victory seems to be a quicker than shooting for space, even if I make the decision fairly late. If I don't stand well, then sometimes cultural victory seems to be my only option. I normally find cultural victory to be least attractive when I have powerful enemies, and war is inevitable. Or if an AI is clearly heading to victory, and I need to take action to stop them. There are so many ways of generating culture in BTS, don't kid yourself into thinking you need xyz. You can do it without Sis, without corporations, and without cottages, although I am not suggesting that you do.

 

[patagonia]

With the massive amounts of culture available from corporations (especially Sid's Sushi and Creative Constructions - Civilized Jewelers seems like a waste of a GA), you can make the switch pretty late on without needing to lag in tech or compromise the rest of your empire in the process. True, you may finish slightly later than a pure cultural beeline, but it makes it a viable alternative to a late game domination mop-up or space run.

 

[The_Reckoning]

I made the switch in my game as Pericles of Arabia in about 1910, when I had electricity first. I had two wonderspammed cities, Mecca and Medina, with about 50/turn. Built Hermitage and Rock and Roll in Medina, got Broadway and Hollywood in Basra. Had built the Eiffel Tower, though it's not paramount. I had a massive specialist economy, so I just pumped cash into the culture slider, popped 3 or 4 artists.

Another big factor was the Cathederals. I had access to 5 religions, though each city only had 3. But that translated, with my 9 cities, to +150% culture in each of them.

And then there's Free Speech. Also, playing into my specialist economy was the Sistine Chapel [IIRC] for the +2c per specialist.

 

[eewallace]

I've never tried to switch to one late in the game, but I did accidentally get one playing at a lower level one time.

Usually, I decide to go for a cultural victory by the time I've placed my 5th or 6th city, and 3 of them look good to go culture-wise. (Three on the same river with floodplains and stone was one of my favorites!) But because careful placement of wonders is pretty crucial, I would hesitate to wait too late in the game.

 

[Dubzilla8]

I think Ive won most of my games with culture. I never plan for a culture win, but sometimes it just seems to fit. I like culture when Im behind and I know I cant win a major war with stronger civs or I know that Im way too far behind for a space race.

I only go for culture if I have at least three religions. I think any less and you will have to start super early. Five, or even four, religions make culture victory very easy.

Pop out nine cities minimum. I stop at nine and usually control a small portion of land compared to the score leaders. This is so all three of your culture cities can have one cathedral/mandir/etc per religion (adjust to difficulty/map size). I usually hit universal suffrage and start buying temples all over the place to finish this process up. I suppose you could say thats the time at which you really start to take off in a culture win.

As far as tech goes, I hit Assembly Line and put the culture slider all the way up. Then I have my 6 non-culture cities crank out Infantry and seige units for the rest of the game (for the most part). Alternatively, you could tech to the broadcast towers and up culture% another 50%.

One of your three cities will probably be a GP farm, exclusively running artists. Save the artists until the end and bomb the one city that is lagging behind the other 2. If you get some artists early, you could do the math and figure out if its more beneficial to settle one or two.

I personally see two main ways to win culture: one way is to farm over all the land in your three cities and run caste system artists like crazy. Id start farming once you have AL and youre ready to settle in for the win. The other way is to use lots of land and large sums of money to pump the culture slider. Personally, I think of the culture win as the small civ's win, so if youre that big, you can win another way easier.

Also, something Ive never had the luxury to do but it could work if you PLAN to win by culture: lots of wonders in one of your three cities.

And, finally, Ive never had the opportunity to play with corporations in 19 games of BtS. I imagine they could help tremendously but I just dont understand the darn things.

Hope this helps. My longest post of all time; Im bored : )