Culture victory changes - thoughts?

[enKage]

You can, but it requires to have a very strong culture output. Otherwise, you won’t get to that civic long/at all before building the world’s fair. And Mughals have -25% culture. I guess they can finish around turn 45 if everything goes well. Which isn‘t much shorter than the 47 that I had in my second to last game.

But still they can buy more explorers than anyone and with cost of them increased you can be prepared to collect all artifacts needed without reaching hegemony (five from natural wonders, some from events, at least 8 digged. You just need 2 civics from general tree and buy your way via museums to Mughal tree if not able to hard build world fair earlier

 

[Siptah]

But still they can buy more explorers than anyone and with cost of them increased you can be prepared to collect all artifacts needed without reaching hegemony (five from natural wonders, some from events, at least 8 digged. You just need 2 civics from general tree and buy your way via museums to Mughal tree if not able to hard build world fair earlier

I currently am in a game that is near the end of exploration, and I should have Mughals unlocked. I'll make a save and try it once with Mughals and once with Mexico or France to see how much of a difference there is. Mind you, it's a good running game, I'll end exploration age with +20k in the bank, which (even when reduced during the transition) should be enough to buy the 4 core explorers right away. I'm also present with settlements throughout the map, and have universities on most continents, so it should be a good indicator.

 

[Sagax]

For Mughals specifically, I’d also recommend trying out the Lotus Blossom, unless you’re fundamentally against using mementos.

 

[Siptah]

I tried to get a fast cultural victory with Mughals now, and it wasn't faster than the same game with France.

Here's some info on the Mughals run:
- unlocked natural history on turn 6 (boo!), and immediately bought 3 explorers (yay)
- bought additional ones on turn 7 and 10, then 15, and later with hegemony (see below)
- natural history revealed 8 total artifacts on the map
- of these, I got 6
- I also got 3 from natural wonders, and 1 from city states.
- I got one from events/overbuilding
- that's the state at turn 35, when I unlocked hegemony: 11 artifacts in my museums.
- at turn 40, I had enough. I actually hardly needed hegemony, as I got 4 more from overbuilding in these turns.
- my production was bad: it would have taken till turn 55 to build the world's fair. I unlocked the civic to buy it in turn 54.
- it was the fastest victory for Mughals, I only had 170 economic points in that case. Although, if I hadn't invested so much in museums and explorers, I would have had 30-50 more, but still not enough for a quicker victory.

With France, I unlocked hegemony in turn 27 (I believe, I forgot to take a note), and had all needed artifacts by turn 36, and could have built the world's fair by turn 48.

I know the comparison isn't bulletproof. While the map (and thus artifacts on the map) and previous game was the same, there's a lot of luck involved with how it plays out with the AI. And the overbuilding/events artifacts seem very random. It's kind of funny that I got 4 "free" artifacts between turns 35 and 40 with the Mughals, but only 1 before turn 35. With France, I also got the free ones from explorer research (which I believe you get if you are the first to unlock natural history and hegemony, but I'm not sure), which I didn't get for Mughals.

 

[Disgustipated]

Last game 2 continents didn't have any places to research, so I buy 2 settlers, settle, and buy 2 museums all to watch the AI get most of the artifacts I went thru the trouble of revealing. Kind of annoying. If I knew where they would have spawned, I would have had my explorers in better positions. I had 3 explorers at the time. Don't get me wrong, I got maybe 3 artifacts from those 2 continents, but I wanted them all. . After all, it was me who put the work in.