Culture war, specialists vs cottages

[Ibian]

Some of you followed my Zara game in the latest PYL where i used cultural border pressure to flip my opponents cities, ending in an unintended culture win. Since im terrible at war, i have been pondering how to improve on this particular playstyle.

What i did in the PYL game was to run specialists in border cities and cottages in the rest of my cities. But this has some disadvantages. For starters, i wont be running cottages for the first half of the game and my oracle/bulbed tech lead will only last for so long, and artists are really not the most productive citizens even under representation - which takes me back to the pyramid addiction i thought i had kicked. Artist cities are also completely useless after they flip their designated city, at which point i need to spend time growing cottages before they become useful.

Which brings me back to the culture slider. Previously i had messed around with the culture slider as a replacement for HR. The result was not convincing back then, but in a culture war things might be different.

First, how do specialists compare to cottages for culture pushing?
In the early game where each specialist represents 3 pop and before sistine chapel, an artist is giving us 1.33 culture and 1 beaker/pop. A riverside hamlet or a non-riverside village running at 40% culture almost matches the culture output and gives nearly double the beaker output.

In the lategame, with biology and sistine chapel and PP and FS, each specialist represents 2 pop so each artist is giving us 3 culture and 1.5 beakers/pop. A non-riverside town at 40% culture gives almost as much culture and almost 3 times the beakers.

Using the culture slider also gives some added flexibility. I can go all out culture if i need a quick push somewhere, say to claim a food resource in a new city, or i can crank up the science slider if im in a tech race. And it means i dont have to worry about the sistine chapel. Trade routes also count towards culture now.

It also means happiness will never be an issue. Drafting and whipping becomes easier. Not that it is much of a problem to begin with, what with having at least 3-4 temples everywhere and later free religion. This means i can skip right past HR and representation and hop into US as soon as it is available.

The only downside i see is that i will get less great artists. Not sure how much this matters in the grand scheme of things.

Your thoughts please.

 

[DaveMcW]

Is there a reason you can't use conventional war?

 

[Ibian]

I suck at it/its boring/takes longer?

Culture pushing is also a lot less risky.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Conventional war might take longer in real time, but not in game time. I saw your other game. While interesting, in the time it took you to culturally eliminate Survayaman you could have gotten a domination or conquest win through traditinal military means.

 

[Iranon]

Assigning any inherent value to the 'output per population point' is a mistake. It is much more sensible to consider the output you can have with a given amount of land.

Unless you are willing to accept scientific stagnation, you can't use cottages alone for culture. The prime benefit of using cottages for culture - no happiness concerns ever - goes to waste when you're doing this as a way to avoid war. Many happiness buildings are good for culture anyway; not needing to build them is hardly relevant.

I think you did exactly the right thing. I strongly disagree with one of your statements though: Artists are extremely efficient if you need culture but are still researching something. Up to 64; a pre-Biology farm supporting half an artist can yield the equivalent of 5 commerce. After Biology, towns can't compete at all.
All of this doesn't even take into account GPP.

For generating culture pressure, you also won't mind the tighter city placement Farm Cities might require to avoid running into growth caps: Every building that produces culture also helps what you are trying to do.
Furthermore, you don't waste the commerce generated in your core empire where culture will have no effect you care about.

 

[tycoonist]

I suck at it/its boring/takes longer?

Culture pushing is also a lot less risky.

practice makes perfect. it really is true in the case of war. culture, IMO should only be used to assimilate your close friends cities that you need. plus once you start playing at higher levels, it becomes impossible to take cities by cultural methods so you need to use military.

 

[Ibian]

Perhaps it mainly applies to the early game. With almost all my cities being on someones border, using the culture slider should be more effective than specialists. But after i manage to set up a big commerce city inside my border it might be better to forget the culture slider and run artists on the border. But only if i have the pyramid.

 

[Ibian]

I missed something blindingly obvious.

If im running 40% culture i only have 60% of the slider left. If my expenses are 30-40%, and they will be at least that with the kind of city spam needed, then im left with 20-30% science. On a good day.

Using the culture slider instead of specialists requires that i can pay my upkeep without touching the slider, and by the time thats possible i have expanded enough to have some commerce cities inside my borders.

 

[oyzar]

Just build more troops to take cities.. Put those artists on mines/workshops and crank out units. Just like a CE is stronger lategame in teching so is the culture slider better at flipping for conquest(in an always peace game or through selfimposed limitations) in the later stages of the game(and culture flipping is never going to get anywhere close to any "fast" wins) than using specialists. Seriously though you should prolly learn to war before you try such a weird tactic.

 

[Ibian]

I very specifically do not care about conventional war.

 

[oyzar]

If you don't care for conventional war you are better of winning culture victory or sometimes going for space or diplo....

 

[Grey Fox]

Why do you guys advise him to fight a conventional war when this is obviously not how he wants to play?

But I'll chime in and agree that you are not gonna win a domination victory using only culture. If you go for culture, win peacefully. Cultural (Probably), Diplomatic or Space Race.

 

[Lucky Charms]

But I'll chime in and agree that you are not gonna win a domination victory using only culture

*Ahem**Cough one*

*Cough Two*

Cough three*

 

[Roxlimn]

I think that using Artists for pushing culture in border cities is the most efficient plan. I've done that many times in the past, and can attest to its efficiency vis a vis Culture Slider.

The problem with using the culture slider to push culture in your border cities is that you are also pushing culture in your central cities which don't need it.

So really, pushing the culture slider means that you're not only losing the potential science in THAT city, but also in every other city you have that may benefit more from a lower culture slider.

Now that you know about HR tactics, this will make more sense to you: you should not be tracking production in early games with pop. You should be tracking them on a per-tile basis, because there are ways to increase happiness beyond the point where you'll be worrying about it.

What flexibility you have with the culture slider is illusory - you can't tailor culture output because you're affecting your civ globally with each move. With Artists, you can assign population to work "the artist tile" only in those places where you need them, and work other tiles whenever you need something else. For instance, you can work Merchants or Scientist instead of Artists if you need money or culture, and you can adjust that on a very small scale, even down to the last pop-for-gold requirement.

You can do this by "point-effect" without affecting your global science output, especially if most of your science is coming from a core of highly developed commerce cities (which could include a Bureau Capital, even). You know what going 40% Culture is going to do to your Bureau Capital's Science output, and that would be grossly inefficient if all you want to do is push culture on a few border cities. Better to use culture buildings and Artists.

After they finish flipping their target cities, you can do one of two things.

If your culture-flip city has an inherently small footprint, then you can turn it into a generic Specialist City and runs Specialists in it for profit.

If your culture-flip city gains a significant footprint, then you can run Specialists in it while growing Cottages, which isn't that bad a deal under Emancipation, really - it's just typical transition state stuff.

 

[Grey Fox]

*Ahem**Cough one*

*Cough Two*

Cough three*

I didn't mean to say it was impossible. I should probably have added a "will probably not" instead of "not".

And to the above poster: Could use artist farms in the central cities, and commerce heavy cultural slider cities on the border.

 

[Ibian]

The problem with those games is that they are under always peace and on noble difficulty. That makes it roughly a few thousand times simpler than the standard monarch settings.

 

[r_rolo1]

Not noble, not always peace ... in fact Always Peace makes cultural flip harder, because of the huge effect that garrisons have in the flip formula.

 

[Roxlimn]

Incidentally, flipping your opponent's cities doesn't lead to a culture win. Getting 3 cities to Legendary Culture does, and that's really a whole 'nother can of worms.

 

[Ibian]

Yah, but thats what happened in my PYL Zara game. Lots of fun flipping cities, and before i knew it i had 3 legendary cities by accident.

Rolo, what difficulty is that? Also i notice they had barbs off. I can never seem to settle close to an enemy capital before their 3rd ring, and i blame it on the barbs.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It seems like using artists is the best bet, so you don't stagnate research. Also, it takes less time to set up newly flipped cities and new cities for more culture using specialists than cottages (which take time to grow). I'd cottage the home cities to use for science, and run artists in border cities to overwhelm the AI with culture.