Martinus said:
However, the more I think about it, the more the SE cultural victory option appears better. Consider this:
A fully developed town tile with a Financial leader, and Printing Press and Free Speech running, will give you 8 commerce. If you set your slider to 100% culture, this gives 8 culture.
An artist specialist, with Representation (from Pyramids) and Sistine Chapel (from Theology) gives you 6 culture and 3 beakers.
Actually, many of your cottage tiles will be giving you nine commerce (+1 for river). And you will have many more cottage tiles at 8 or 9 culture per tile than specialists at 6 culture per specialist.
In my 1556 AD Deity culture win, my three culture towns were working 14, 15, and 16 tiles respectively... most of these tiles were 9 commerce, some were 8, a few were 7. Total culture/turn per city from commerce alone (no other multipliers) was 144, 158 and 164. At 6 culture per specialist, I would have needed 24, 26, and 27
specialists in each city to match that culture. How can you build the gigantic population needed to provide enough bread to support 24+ specialists?
A single specialist will not provide as much culture as a single cottage. To make it worse, I can never have as many specialists as cottages.
Martinus said:
SE allows you to run scientist (or any other) specialists in your non-culture cities.
But if I run sci specialists too long, I will pollute my GPP totals with GS points. Other than an early GS or two to build Academies, I want all GA's. Yes, I see you are suggesting running sci specs in non-culture cities... but what's to prevent me from doing that in my cottage spam strategy?
Martinus said:
Consequently, you can keep up with research, production and budget income while you aim for cultural victory - something you are not able to do in a CE cultural victory gambit (essentially the commerce generated by your cities that are not among the 3 culture cities under a CE cultural victory gambit is wasted). Essentially, this means you are much less vulnerable.
I don't understand this comment at all. Commerce = Research. My three cottage filled culture cities get libraries very early. They also may get Academies. Basically, they are my research engines. Other than my GP farm, my other cities get lots of cottages too. Yes, once I am running my culture slider at 90-100%, their commerce is wasted, but until that point I need tons of commerce to cash rush religious buildings. By the time I am "wasting" commerce in my non-culture cities, I've turned off research anyhow. In a specialist strategy, without loads of commerce from cottages everywhere, how do you go about spamming religions and building religious buildings?
Martinus said:
Theology/Masonry are available much earlier than Liberalism/Printing Press so you can start working on the cultural victory much earlier.
I agree, but as one of the other posters noted, these early culture points are not multiplied by cathedrals. Your early specialists will put you ahead of my cottages in the early years, but since my cottages are becoming towns just about the time I am cash rushing cathedrals, I will absolutely zoom by you in the middle years.
Martinus said:
Running great artists rather than working cottages in your culture cities will yield you about 3-4 more great artists which will further speed up your cultural victory goal.
Yes, you will definitely get more GA's in the specialist gambit. Not sure you will get 3-4 since each succeeding GA costs more.
One other problem... at the end of my Deity culture wins, do you know how much culture my GA farm was running per turn from artist specialists? Exactly 8! Why? Because at higher levels, the AI will build UN and will force you to emancipation and free religion. All of a sudden, you GA-farms get very weak. If you are playing a specialist strategy and don't finish before UN is built, you will lose.
Martinus said:
The only combo where Financial is better for cultural victory than Philosophical, imo, is Incas' Financial/Industrious (but only because there is no Philosophical/Industrious combo, as it would be too powerful for an easy cultural victory).
I must admit, I am so convinced cottage spamming is faster, I've never tried specialist spamming. I can't imagine trying for a fast culture win without a financial leader. If you want to prove this wrong, I'd suggest you take a crack at beating some of the fast culture times in the HOF. In the HOF, the vast majority of the culture wins posted (above Noble) are Financial leaders. I'll bet most of these used cottage spam.