Evaluate my chances for cultural victory

[Magnus of Borg]

I'm trying to achieve my first cultural victory. I'm playing as Saladin of Arabia on Prince / Fractal / Marathon. I must say, aiming for cultural victory is difficult:
- research-wise - I have to make detours to techs such as Priesthood or Music
- without Philosophical and/or Piraminds I can't use SE (which I prefer over CE)

Nevertheless I had quite nice opening (after a couple of save-loads), popped Agriculture from hut, snatched a Worker from Monty. and grabbed all three copper-powered religions (saldy, no stone or marble in sight, so no wonder-building). I am now in VII century and bumped into fallowing problems:
- Aside from my capital I fear my culture cities are not generating enough culture (they are to small and cottages are not worked)
- I don't have a dedicated GP-farm and very few commerce-generating cities (I recently had to go to war with Koreans to refill my coffers.)
- I have problems with spreading different religions through my empire (building missionaries is so hammer-intensive and quite often they fail to spread the religion.)

I would be grateful if you could look into enclosed save and evaluate my chances. Any suggestions would be helpful.

 

[Dnomal]

I've had a look at the save, you seem to be doing ok, but there's quite a bit left to do, firstly you'll need more cottages around your three culture cities, so you'll have extra gold to turn into culture.

Also, switch to organised religion, you won't need missionaries, so you can spend more production on real culture producing buildings.

I tried a similar game today, my last Warlords try at a culture win, i only got one city to legendary (capital), i think my problem was a i missed the early religions, ended up with Taosim, and Islam, i hoped my wonders and cultural trait might make up for it, but it just didn't...

Might be worth considering turning the capital into your GP farm, with Caste System you can assign loads of artists, and hope not to get other forms of Great People.

Oh also, for extra money, sell resources!
I don't think anyone else does this except me, so i'll brief, go up to an AI, offer a resource, but ask for gold not another resource (helps if your cities are healthy/happy already), and keep doing this, consolidating your deals, this works fantastically throughout the game, i can easily ring 100 gold per turn! from the AI's by 1,000 A.D, now i do play on Huge Marathon, but you can still do similarily.

Good luck...

 

[Magnus of Borg]

firstly you'll need more cottages around your three culture cities, so you'll have extra gold to turn into culture.

Yes. I should certainly do that.

Also, switch to organised religion, you won't need missionaries, so you can spend more production on real culture producing buildings.

Indeed you don't need to have a state religion to benefit from Organized Religion - I didn't know that. It seems you learn something new everyday.

Oh also, for extra money, sell resources!

Nice idea.

Good luck...

Thanks.

 

[pigswill]

Tenochtitlan with four food resources seems like an ideal spot for a GP Farm. If you're sticking with caste then it just needs to grow while building National Epic.