Culture Game

[Killimano]

I've been playing a lot of civ 6 lately both against AI and a group of friends and while I've sort of more or less figured out some of the other victory types I can't help but feel I'm playing the culture game very unoptimally when going for that victory type.

Upon searching the internet I've found essentially zero guides or walkthroughs or helpful explanations of how to best play a culture game versus deity AI and most importantly multiplayer.

As such I would like it if some strong players could tell me how they usually play culture in a multiplayer setting. Such as:

What is your early game plan? Do you go for any wonders? What's your starting build order? Tech and civic order? What do you have as a general early game plan?

What are doing in the mid game? What techs are rushing for? What powerful wonders or anything are you aiming? What are you doing to try and push for the win?

What do you do in the late game? How do you close out a win?

Any suggestions are good thanks

 

[hhhhhh]

I think one tricky thing about culture game in multiplayer is that players tend to kill each other. So in a game of 8 initial players, you need 1600 tourism against a Civ to convert a domestic tourist of theirs to one of your foreign tourist, this number won't change if any players are killed. If the player with most culture have about 200 domestic tourists, if everyone is alive, you need to attract about 29 tourist from each Civ to win. If some of them got unlucky on the military side, say only 5 Civ left including you, then you need to attract 50 tourist from each to win, which is 70% harder.

For your question on game plan. In multiplayer you don't have an option of befriend everyone and just do things people typically do in a culture victory, survival is important. Your opponent will find chance to kill you if you ignore military as long as they know how to fight. Anyway good wonder to go are the Pyramids, Oracle and Great Library (the first two are generally good, GL is only for culture victory).

Unless your opponent is dumb enough to cooperate with you on getting relics for a quick win, you generally need to get to Flight - Radio - Computers on tech. If you get oil that also help you defend yourself.

And I think having a too obvious victory goal is kinda bad for PvP. Maybe you need to pose as a general competent Civ first. For example pushing science hard enough (you need to get Flight-Radio-Computer anyway, and Steel for Eiffel Tower, Combustion for Golden Gate Bridge) to convince some Civ to kill some science CS so it's harder for others to win science.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

Honestly, I don't think Culture Victory is even viable in multiplayer, unless you are playing against very low level players. Human players will always be making too much culture than you can generate tourism to catch up in the late game. On Deity, the AI starts out ahead but often stagnates on the amount of culture they generate, making tourism victory easy enough to achieve. Also, as said above, human players will rarely give open borders or send trade routes (something which you can easily secure with AI).

The CPL multiplayer group has their own mod which makes tourism more viable in multiplayer. Tourism output is increased for writing/art/artifacts/wonders etc and the mod also reduces the amount of tourism required to accumulate foreign tourists by about 1/4. Link to the change notes: https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/discussion/1980274246/1734384427833461418/

I would play with this mod, but my playgroup doesn't want to learn all the extra changes to Governors and Civs etc. However, the fact that this mod exists highlights that Culture victory is not balanced for multiplayer. It's the same for Religious or Diplomatic Victory, they are not balanced for multiplayer. Against good opponents you should never be winning by CV/RV/DV. I wish this wasn't the case as it does water down the multiplayer experience somewhat.

If you want advanced info about Culture Victory Strategies, probably go and look in the GoTM forums and see what the top players are doing for the CV games, but don't count on them working perfectly in multiplayer.

TLDR; In multiplayer there are only two victory conditions, Science and Domination.

 

[hhhhhh]

However, the fact that this mod exists highlights that Culture victory is not balanced for multiplayer. It's the same for Religious or Diplomatic Victory, they are not balanced for multiplayer. Against good opponents you should never be winning by CV/RV/DV. I wish this wasn't the case as it does water down the multiplayer experience somewhat.

I somewhat agree. But cultural victory in MP without BBG is not impossible, as long as you survive. You can play as US and get your base tourism to 2000 late game, with Film Studios and trade routes you send it's like 4500 per turn against a Civ and no one generate enough culture to defend against that. You can see in BBG mod Film Studios bonus is reduced to 50% from 100%. That also tells something. I think the bigger problem is people kill each other, reducing the number of Civs you can gain tourists from.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I somewhat agree. But cultural victory in MP without BBG is not impossible, as long as you survive. You can play as US and get your base tourism to 2000 late game, with Film Studios and trade routes you send it's like 4500 per turn against a Civ and no one generate enough culture to defend against that. You can see in BBG mod Film Studios bonus is reduced to 50% from 100%. That also tells something. I think the bigger problem is people kill each other, reducing the number of Civs you can gain tourists from.

This is unrelated to Civ6 but related to winning an MP game with CV.
Very rare but years ago I was playing some public 6 Player FFA Civ V game.
A player had a perfect setup and won through Culture Pressure before turn 100.
The player was far away from me and his neighbors were playing "peaceful" lol.
I thought it was funny and it is the only time I seen that happen in an MP game for Civ V or VI.
It did happen to me once playing Civ Rev on the Playstation 3.
Those games were always 1v1.
This guy built a bunch of cities very close together and crushed me with Culture Flipping lol.
That was funny too as I couldn't stop all my cities from constantly blinking!
I couldn't see that ever happening in a No Quit League game but sometimes goofy things happen.

 

[GrumboMumbo]

I somewhat agree. But cultural victory in MP without BBG is not impossible, as long as you survive. You can play as US and get your base tourism to 2000 late game, with Film Studios and trade routes you send it's like 4500 per turn against a Civ and no one generate enough culture to defend against that. You can see in BBG mod Film Studios bonus is reduced to 50% from 100%. That also tells something. I think the bigger problem is people kill each other, reducing the number of Civs you can gain tourists from.

That's something I hadn't thought of, maybe a good strat for the OP to try. I'm sure in the right circumstances anything is possible, but I just wish all the victory conditions were more viable and balanced in the broader spectrum.

I guess in most multiplayer games, the primary goal is to survive and create a powerful empire overall, then victory condition is a secondary concern. Often players just conceding the game before any actual condition is met. However, personally I do like to see games out until a victory condition is met if possible.

I think it could be possible for Firaxis to give some more thought to victory condition balance in multiplayer without ruining the single player experience, something I hope they consider in civ7.