Distractions in my culture games

[Jelster]

I love to play for culture, mainly because it does give you a challenge in view of choices you have to make and you also need to build science as well. I normally play at Prince/King level, continents maps, standard size with additional CS's.

However, my biggest problem is the in game distractions of other Civ's starting to run away, or being hemmed in to a patch of land and unable to grow. I also find myself trying to keep pace militarily, and often end up with the largest number of soldiers, which I shouldn't really be doing.

Is this just me, or do thers fall into the trap of losing focus on the culture game and realising you could have won 25-50 turns earlier ?

I'm thinking of working out a basic strategy and timeline so I know what I should be belonging, and by what time, maybe that will help.

 

[joncnunn]

There's three forms of cultural victory.

1. The Traditional, tall peaceful Cultural Victory: Playing this mode you shouldn't worry that there's not many city spots; in fact the lack of good city spots is what would triger me seeking a cultural victory instead of a science one.
You need enough units to defend yourself; but building an offensive military is generally a distraction

2. The conquest driven puppet empire Cultural Victory: This is most suitable for the Aztecs who get a cultural bonus killing anything. In this mode you designate one city to be your unit production city and that one builds military while your capital builds wonders. Your army puppets everything it captures. The gold is used to buy cultural buildings in that city that's building the army.

3. The Austrian diplomatic marriage driven Cultural Victory: This requires that you be playing Austria. Here you focus on city state quests that give you free ally status for 5+ turns and marry them right before you would lose ally status. (Exception: Don't marry cultural city state allies as those produce more culture than puppets) The cities you found will be like peaceful, but even more so since each marriage will bring military units and often a worker.

 

[RedFuneral]

One of my last games ended up that way. Of course, it was a small Amazon map and I did end up with one of the AIs as a massive warmonger. I didn't have the biggest military in the world but I was continually producing military units to 'keep the peace'. I even went against the warmonger to liberate some city states at a few points in the game.

I ended up just taking a domination victory though. The warmonger took the other civs capitals and had I given him a few more turns would have owned 75% of the map. Fortunately I had a puppet city right next to his capital from when I had gone in to save the CSs. It was an easy capture with most of his forces across the world cleaning up what was left of India. He was taking 3 cities a turn at that point so I didn't have much choice.

It really depends on your start and on what AIs make it into the game. I'm playing a OCC now where I've got myself boxed in with 2 of the worlds warmongers. I'm trying to avoid going the military route, and instead keeping them more concerned about each other. It's working out well so far, but I doubt I'll survive the whole game.

 

[Jelster]

Thanks guys,

So, I think my "strategy" for my next game should be:

1. Select a suitable Civ
2. Work out, and write down a list of target Wonders
3. As above, but a list of Tech's to beeline
4. Try and stick withing 10-15% of the leading military (never go below 50%)
5. Stick to the plan !!

So, I need to look through the techs and sort out items 2 & 3. I may just stick to 2 cities, with a few puppets, but annex any decent capitals so I can make use of the wonders etc.

I'd better start on my "master plan"