Early religion-heavy Noble/Prince Cultural Win in Civilization IV

sandeman

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I'm playing only on Noble/Prince so this tactic might have some flaws when more difficult settings are used.

The settings I use are large map for fun, pangea for more tech trade options and otherwise normal options.

This method relies on +50% cultural modifier from multiple cathedrals in each of the culture cities. The key to this victory is in founding as many of the 7 religions possible, even all of them in some cases.

Ideal setup is with 9 cities and 7 religions, but the win can be achieved with less than that if required. The setup will produce a lot of commerce as well, so anyone using this strategy will probably be the tech leader as well. You won't be having a state religion for a long time so you'll have easy time managing the AI warmongers. Most of them won't be having a religion for a long long time

I'll first give a brief outline of the whole game and expand on details right after.

I) Founding the religions
1)Buddhism and Hinduism
Founding these is best done with a civilization starting with mysticism. They'll be the first thing you'll research. Often it can't be helped that an AI will research the other, in which case you'll just have to accept it or retry with another map. The AI probably had an oasis with +3 commerce in their first city and researched the required religion tech in top speed.
2)Judaism
There's chance to learn some early tech or two before going for Monotheism and Judaism. Good options are Wheel & Pottery for early cottages, which you'll be relying on for your tech superiority. Other possibilities are Mining/Bronze Working for chopping the Oracle for instant religion, or fishing&Sailing if your first city will need to use the coast.
3)Confucianism, Christianity
Ideally you'll research the tech needed to make the oracle and research writing, which enables you to oracle slingshot for Christianity. Meanwhile you'll research Code of Laws to get Confucianism. If you've got your cities in good order, you can probably afford to research Alphabet too to trade all of the early techs you skipped. Most of the time I'm afraid the AI might catch up, so I go immediately from writing to Code of Laws, and do Alphabet after.
4)Philosophy
By this time philosophy would take dozens of turns to research unless cottages have developed. With alphabet, you'll trade and get pottery if you don't have it already. Your safest bet to improve research time would be to quickly research monarchy and enable Hereditary rule in your biggest city, and to put at least one or two cottages in some of the good cities you have. Your city size is probably most limited by happiness in cities that have access to fresh water, and hereditary rule easily provides some of that with cheap warriors you'll stuff in your biggest cities. This is by far the fastest method to get happiness.
5)Islam
No-one is probably competing to get islam before you. AI just doesn't do that. You'll have plenty of time to research this one. Meanwhile, you can trade for all the techs you need. You'll be sure to have unique religion techs that you can trade for anything you need. You'll probably still turn out the tech leader even if you spent 50 turns researching this one.
II) Founding the cities
1.First city
The first city will have to take the maximum food & commerce at start to assure getting the first 2 or 3 religions. Once it's size is capped at happiness max for your difficulty setting, you'll put in on avoid growth. This city will need any health and food resources, and preferably cottages on grassland/flood plains/whereever else if neither of those are available.
You'll produce your first worker/settler only after the first city has reached the size when the next population would give it the first unhappy citizen. Watch out that this city never has any unhappy citizens.
The production in this time can be for example warriors for scouting, or scouts, if you have the required tech. Other possibility is a barracks. For a non-creative leader you would probably do well to construct a stonehenge. If you're low on production, make sure that building the stonehenge doesn't prevent you from creating the oracle. Remember, you can put the stonehenge on hold when you need to create your settler/worker, unless you haven't finished it already.
2.Second and third cities
Depending on whether or not you created units in the first city, you'll probably need to do units in your second city. You don't need barracks, you'll be just clearing the way for settlers to found new cities. You'll do better units later. The AI won't fight you as there will almost surely be no religion-inspired wars.
3.Cities 4-9
You'll need 9 cities to create 9 temples for each of the religions, to enable a total of 3 cathedrals for your culture cities, per 3/1 temple to cathedral ratio. 3 Temples are required to build one cathedral of that religion. If you can't quite make 9 cities, don't worry – You'll probably do enough to enable enough cathedrals for your civilization. Also, 6 of your cities don't have to be on good spots. You'll just do them to create temples, primarily.
These cities will have to produce their own buildings for starters, unless you can spare time (or chop) to create pyramids and buy the buildings with gold.
For easiest management, I tend to create one farm in a good spot per city, and a few cottages. If there's enough surplus food I can skip the farm.
When a city isn't needed for producing settlers/warriors, or in more advanced stage of the game axemen, they'll probably do best to create workers and libraries for extra commerce. Library will take long to create so you don't probably have time for that in all of your cities before you'll have to take on the phase III, spreading the religions.
Your top city (or two) is probably doing most of the research anyway.

III) Spreading the religions
1.Missionaries
Some of the first religions will spread to your first cities with no religion in them.
The later religions will come with a missionary. You'll do best to use the missionary in some of your own cities that have enough production to produce new missionarys. Organized religion is needed for this phase.
When the city has 4 or 5 religions you'll start to see the religion spreading attempts by missionarys to fail more. Don't worry about it, you'll probably manage without having all the religions in every cities.
In the missionary phase, most of your cities will be producing missionaries of all the varieties and spreading them to all the other cities. You won't be needing temples for happiness at this phase if you keep your city sizes reasonable. Remember that a warrior costs a fraction of that of a temple and provides +1 happiness under hereditary rule.
Creating temples is a waste of time in the missionary phase. You'll have all the happiness needed when you'll later switch to free religion. You'll get a +happiness in each of your cities per non-state religion, which will top at whopping +7 if you managed to catch them all. Them religions.
2.Diplomacy
If you produce excess missionaries of some religion, you can send them to the enemies. They'll wage war at each other for having different state religion. You won't be having a state religion at all, despite having founded (almost) all the religions in the game. Give all the tribute your enemies require of you – they'll probably ask techs, and being the huge tech leader and all, you can surely spare them – and even the occasional goal. Don't stop trading with any AI unless that AI is running their own religion. In the end, most of the world will be running one of the religions you've chosen. You can then convert to that religion to avoid most of the hate, if you feel it's required.
3.Buildings
After you've spread the religions to all your heart's content, you'll require all the temples you can build. If you've decided by now which 3 will be your culture cities and which will be the support cities (the rest), you can prioritize monasterys over temples in the culture cities to boost up research. 7 monasteries equals +70% research and a lot of culture.
4.Great people
Use all the Great Prophets to build a holy building in some of your holy cities. Those holy structures will give plus to great prophet, which will further help you create more prophets. You'll get money from all the religions buildings in the world, even those that aren't yours, so you'll never have to turn the tax/science slider away from 100% science, until it's time for your final culture phase.
5.Buying versus constructing
If you built pyramids, you can probably buy most of the religious buildings. If you didn't, you have to prioritize which buildings to produce. 3 temples enable 1 cathedral or their equivalent in that religion. 6 temples enables 2 cathedrals and 9 temples enables 3 cathedrals. Spiritual leader will build the temples faster. Also, if you feel the most of the world has settled on some state religion, you can probably afford to take that state religion and enjoy the +25% efficiency in building. One option is to research metal casting and build forges for extra production. The culture cities are most likely to benefit from forges. You don't need to care about the pollution they bring in. Creating culture is independent of the size of the population, and even an unhealthy population will bring tons of culture.
6.Total +%culture modifiers and base culture
It's possible to achieve +70% from 7 missionaries and +350% from 7 cathedrals in each of the culture cities, for a total of +420%. These add up linearily. The base culture comes from temples (+1 each), monasteries (+2 each), libraries (+2) and later universities (+3), and of course the culture slider you'll use at the end of the game. Culture slider converts part of the commerce in each of the cities to culture. Culture slider will easily become the most important source at the end. This is why you'll need cottages: they will provide you the research for your technological superiority (from a slider), money for buying your buildings, after you've gained universal suffrage, and culture, after you've gained drama. You won't probably need to use the culture slider in most of the game though.
Of course, then there's the +100% culture from free speech/liberalism, which really means double culture, not a linear addition to a city culture modifier. If a city would have +420% culture modification without free speech, it will have +840% with free speech. Now, this will be plenty. In any case, I guess it might be possible to win before researching liberalism, too.
7.End phase: bringing up the culture
All your cities (even the support cities) are now culture bombs waiting to explode. AI who sees your culture spreading to their cities, even causing them to revolt will be mad at you. If you've cottage spammed enough you'll have large enough technological advancement that you can hold off the enemy easily by now. If not, you have probably enough political power by now that you can turn most of their enemies against them. If they have a different religion to the target civilization and your trade relations have been good, they'll probably agree to fight for one or two techs, which are essentially free for you to give. You probably shouldn't need to bribe anyone to war with gold.

That's it, happy playing!
My favorite leaders to play this type of game are Incas, for mysticism/finance. Finance really helps with the cottage heavy tile improvement tactic. Aggressive helps to create few warrior-replacing UU's right at the start which I'll send in to scout & survive nicely. I can bring them back to home after they've gathered enough experience from killing barbarians, right before the barbarians have developed axemen.
Another nice leader for this is Gandhi. Spiritual helps to bring the cost of the temples down, so they never need to be rushed. Fast workers make it possible to start cottage spam & land improvement more efficiently. Industrious helps to secure win on the pyramids, which is a really good wonder for this type of game. It also helps to build forges faster to improve creating all the buildings you'll be doing.

That's it, I'll be happy to hear your comments, critizism, suggestions etc.
 
Welcome to the Forums! :)

Of course, then there's the +100% culture from free speech/liberalism, which really means double culture, not a linear addition to a city culture modifier. If a city would have +420% culture modification without free speech, it will have +840% with free speech.

I'd check that.

Spoiler :
This screenshot was taken from an old vanilla game posted on the forums by another 'CivFanatic' (sorry about the image quality). This city has Hermitage, Broadway, and a Broadcast Tower, and the nation's in Free Speech;



Base Culture = 60 + 3 = 2 = 65

Multiplied out if Free Speech is an additive multiplier ...

... 65 x (1 {Base Culture} + 2 {Building Modifiers} + 1 {Free Speech})

... 65 x (1 + 2 + 1) = 260

If Free Speech doubled the combined culture/turn as proposed, then

... 65 x (1 {Base Culture} + 2 {Building Modifiers}) x 2 {Doubling due to Free Speech}

... 65 x 3 x 2 = 390 , which is not what the game is indicating.

Free Speech is an additive multiplier.

Thanks for your contribution, and best of luck!

As Htadus suggests, the War Academy has some worthwhile articles that includes jesusin's Cultural Victory on the Higher Levels that might be of interest.
 
I'm getting so much culture this way that I feel I'll do best to minimize the use of great Artists, that pale in comparison to culture slider + base + modified city culture. I'm using some (for culture bombing in the end) But I feel there's use for other great people as well. Engineers for some world wonders, scientists for libraries, and even merchants for some of the commerce cities, so I can manage by with 1 less farm and 1 more cottage.

Okay, building the holy buildings in holy cities isn't probably a good idea - the religion spread won't work with 4-5 religions in the area's cities already. One exception is a wide-spread religion that 3-4 enemy civilizations have as their state religion. Second exception would be the second-most popular religion, and 2 of them probably cover 90% of the world population & religious buildings.

I like to hand-pick the city spots carefully in order to get same number of commerce in each of them. Also, my GP city (the capital) usually ends up one of the 3 culture cities as well.

I might do better by separating the GP farm from the 3 culture cities, so I can get more GAs - I still need some to win earlier, if I want to.

Thanks for comments!

edit:
on a large/huge pangea map, I can't probably afford to go to war on the other side of the world to get the religion I missed, so I'm better off by at least trying to get the 2 earliest religions first. Those 2 (hindu/buddhism) risk the highest chance of going to someone else.
On the other hand, I don't need all the 7 religions immediately. I could just capture one of a weak civilizations cities that has the religion I need, build the missionaries I need and give back the city to it's previous owner. (The AI will try to get it back after it gets more powerful, and keeping a distant satellite is costly.)
 
I'm getting so much culture this way that I feel I'll do best to minimize the use of great Artists, that pale in comparison to culture slider + base + modified city culture.You are talking about late game culture wins. I am talking about 13th thru 16th century culture wins. I'm using some (for culture bombing in the end) But I feel there's use for other great people as well. 1 or two academies and a GM for a trade mission about the only non Artist useful GM's for a culture gameEngineers for some world wonders, scientists for libraries (Academies), and even merchants for some of the commerce cities This is a poor use of a GM, so I can manage by with 1 less farm and 1 more cottage.

Okay, building the holy buildings in holy cities isn't probably a good idea - the religion spread won't work with 4-5 religions in the area's cities already. One exception is a wide-spread religion that 3-4 enemy civilizations have as their state religion. Second exception would be the second-most popular religion, and 2 of them probably cover 90% of the world population & religious buildings.

I like to hand-pick the city spots carefully in order to get same number of commerce in each of them. Also, my GP city (the capital) usually ends up one of the 3 culture cities as well. Nearly all captured Capitals are great culture cities. Food is the most important and a few hills to build needed buildings

I might do better by separating the GP farm from the 3 culture cities, so I can get more GAs - I still need some to win earlier, if I want to. This is not a bad idea but each game and map require modifications.

Thanks for comments!

edit:
on a large/huge pangea map, I can't probably afford to go to war on the other side of the world to get the religion I missed, so I'm better off by at least trying to get the 2 earliest religions first. Those 2 (hindu/buddhism) risk the highest chance of going to someone else. You really do not need all 7 religions to get an early culture date. Many experienced culture players can do it with just 3-4 religions.
On the other hand, I don't need all the 7 religions immediately. I could just capture one of a weak civilizations cities that has the religion I need, build the missionaries I need and give back the city to it's previous owner. (The AI will try to get it back after it gets more powerful, and keeping a distant satellite is costly.)

Yes that is definitely the right approach. Done it several times. You actually get a diplo bonus too for liberating a city.
 
hills really aren't necessary for a legendary city, as you'll likely want to switch to universal suffrage and buy all the buildings you need. e.g., in the current "diety graduate school" game, i had a legendary city that worked a grassland horse and 8 coast/ocean tiles total, and yet, because of rush-buying, i was still able to build 5 temples/monasteries/cathedrals (plus i think an aqueduct and harbour) within a few dozen turns. you can set up for a cultural victory very quickly despite little infrastructure preparation beforehand using this method. (although, it still helps a lot if you're able to get your state religion's temple and monastery up before 1 AD if you can land the sistine chapel)
 
I've tried this a few more times, only on prince this time. I'm finding that it's impossible to found all the 9 cities before discoring Islam, as the city maintanance will cost that much. So I'm founding about 4-6 cities before Islam, including all the culture cities.

Also, as some of you pointed out, founding all the 7 religions isn't necessary.. and spreading them all (sometimes) takes just too much extra time for it to be worth it. But, it still gets done, especially with incas & starting spot that has both +3 food tile and a +3 commerce tile on it.

I'm doing wonders that mostly give plus to great prophet, and I'm finding that building a religion's great building is a practical way of creating extra gold. On large map, one great building usually varies from +10 to +30 gold.

One thing I'm noticing that the AI still sometimes forces me to take sides in their quarrels, and the "refused to stop trading with our worst enemies" are cumulative and big enough to trigger a war unless I take them seriously. As I'm relying mostly on peacemongering for the first two thirds of the game, this is something I have to take into account.

Also, my religions usually spread unevenly to my neighbors if I don't take care of it - if I'm not active about it, the religions get all wrong and the diplomatic relations as well. So, I've learned that I can't rely on luck in spreading the religions.

I'm trying to decide on two religion spreading strategies. One is spreading one religion to most of the world and aiming for everyone, including me, to take that as the state religion. There will be wars but at least most will be on my side.

Other option would be to spread different religion to different rival nation as unevenly as possibly, and hoping that the enemies won't make alliances (or they'll fight for it). I'm not completely sure.

Theoretically it would be great to make enough units to scare away the competition, but I haven't found the opportunity to do anything like that in this kind of a cultural game, until perhaps the late game.

I'm exploring ways to keep peace, primarily. I'm thinking of keeping my cities far enough from the enemy cities, and placing my temple-producing cities in polar areas, if needed. Also, I'm thinking of giving up unwanted trade relations in favor of peace.

Also, I'm beginning to wonder if pyramids is almost mandatory in this kind of a game, for the number of buildings I need to build in all the cities and the rush buying I'd need to do.

Also, I've found it's easier to make 12 cities and all the temple-producing cities with just a few religions, as opposed to 9 cities all with full 6 or 7 religions. Building a few extra settlers is far faster than creating extra 20 missionaries due to failed religion spreading attempts.
 
Also, I've found it's easier to make 12 cities and all the temple-producing cities with just a few religions, as opposed to 9 cities all with full 6 or 7 religions. Building a few extra settlers is far faster than creating extra 20 missionaries due to failed religion spreading attempts.
That's what the conventional wisdom says for culture wins--only need three religions (not nec. ones you've founded.)
 
Report of one prince win.

Ok, this wasn't an early win. It was in 1980 ad. Made 7 religions as inca, 7 x cathedrals in culture cities. 2 of 3 cities had over 1k culture/turn with slider at max, and cities producing just culture. Used 2 or 3 great artists during the game.

In the end it required aboout 6-8 turns to produce a great artist in my GP city when I was starving it.. but great artist only amounts to 4000 culture, and my 2 most needing culture cities were able to do that in about 4 turns.

I'll try a next game with more difficult setting, less religions, more carefully chosen culture city spots, and I'm separating the culture/gp city this time.
 
Btw.. is any tile good for a maximized commerce city if it has 20 grasslands or other cottageable terrain in it's radius?

How to create a maximized commerce city if it's not with 20 cottages (and no special resources)?
 
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