[R&F] Culture Victory Strategy

[DanQuayle]

T150 Peaceful CV

Spoiler :

• Never tried a Stonehenge start, so I gave this game a try.
• T3 Relic
• Friended Gilgamesh, leaving only France as potential early threat (who was not that close). This made this build viable.
• I also got a builder from a TV which I used to speed up Stonehenge.
• The start was however quite slow for multiple reasons: lack of hills, lack of ressources to sell to AIs in my first city spots and also didn't meet any early cultural or science CS. I also didn't find any new continent in time for the inspiration. Despite being a pangaea game, this game felt more like a continent game with shallow water access. And this was with knowing before hand about the northern strait which I saw in Victoria's screenshot on the minimap.
• I lost 2 GWs to Gorgo.
• If you want a fast peaceful CV, of course Gorgo, Pericles and Peter are AIs you want to avoid especially for peaceful play.
• Hattusa was already conquered by India when I found it. This left 1 cultural CS, 0 faith and 0 science CS on the map. (It was however liberated later by Japan just before the end)
• Chandragupta offered a cultural alliance which I accepted. My thinking was the following: there is no way we can get any early trade route between our civilizations and I deny him the opportunity to make any cultural alliance with any other civilization. This decision however backfired later when India and Japan went to war and I was dragged into it. Also, the probability of India making another early alliance was quite low.
• Gorgo also got wiped out by Nubia In retrospect, I should have sent units to circle her last city, but I sent my units there too late. Her fall triggered an emergency which I accepted. I liberated Ephesus. However, Gorgo lost Ephesus again this time to loyalty pressure as Nubia was in a golden age. It seems the AI loses its governors when it is resurrected or it is just too dumb to use them. I had to resurrect her again to get back my tourists.
• Main mistake was not settling the other continent to get more trade routes.
• Sumeria with a 100cpt output was the bottleneck in the end.

 

[playshogi]

You don't want Cyrus in your game, either. I would've won a peaceful culture game on T188 with, for example, Shaka, instead of Cyrus because at that point Cyrus had 80 more culture than the next highest AI.

 

[DanQuayle]

I would divide the leaders you want to avoid in three tiers
1) Leaders that can challenge you to get GWs: Peter, Gorgo, Pericles
2) Leaders that have a UI that adds culture (or other culture bonus)
3) Leaders that can snowball more easily to a large number of cities