Fast Cultural Wins

[philip101]

Hi,

I'm new to the forum and I have some questions about Cultural victories. I've read through all the guides here, and in my last game I played as close to jesusin's guide as I could. (I thought this guide was really helpful, btw).

I chose Ghandi (I was sick of Lizzy), and played BtS, Prince, Continents, Standard, Normal, peaceful opponents.

One of the main problems I had was no real good food resources anywhere. I wound up making my capital my GP farm and then Cottage-spammed two others. But because of the lack of food I could only run 5 specialists max and got 9 GA's total in the game . I got Oracle but missed the CoL slingshot, was the first to Liberalism (around 1000 AD) and managed to get four religions. After Liberalism, I chose Nationalism as the free, researched DR for Islam and then stopped teching. At this time I had 6 cities, but it took me forever to get my Cathedrals up.

I was slow getting Culture.. all three cities ran at only 400/turn. I won around 1812 AD, but I really am interested in getting a faster victory. Anyone have any tips for improving my play? I'd really like to get a pre-1700 Cultural win- and I'd like to do so without early war.

Thanks

 

[dankok8]

A few things you can do to speed up:
1) Convert to Free Speech as soon as you hit Liberalism
2) Convert to Pacifism if you are safe from attack for extra GA's
3) If you are safe from attack (the earlier the better), put the Culture slider to the max; don't do it too early or you'll be defending against Tanks with Longbows
4) Build Culture (this is usually minor help)
5) Build the Hermitage in your slowest city as early as you can (enabled at Nationalism)
6) Don't be afraid to rush those Temples, Cathedrals (whip, buy with US, chop with Slavery w/e)
7) Try to get all 3 cities done at the same time; since GA's give fixed amounts of culture, keep them as late as possible and help out the weaker cities

 

[smitsk00]

5) Build the Hermitage in your slowest city as early as you can (enabled at Nationalism)

You might sometimes want to put the Hermitage in your second city instead and use GAs to bomb the third. It depends on how far behind your your second city is from the first.

Also, sometimes food/production in one of your three is very low (lots of grassland for cottages, but not much else). Whipping away citizens working towns (or worse hamlets and villages that need to be towns in this slow growing city can be a bad idea. You may also not have time to build/whip all culture buildings (particularly cathedrals) in your third, so concentrate your buildings in the other two and bomb the third. It is all fairly situational though.

If you are not Spiritual, you will need to time your civic changes. Spending some time in HR/OR/Slavery is usually necessary to get Temples/Monastaries up quickly and to spread religion. Once they are up, get into Pacifism/Caste pronto to pump out GAs.

 

[cabert]

A few extra hints :
- a strong GP farm or many lesser GA giving cities will help greatly
- with the pyramids, you can stop research at nationalism, $ rush the temples and cathedrals, then go for 100% culture (and build wealth)

 

[Crusher1]

Get the Mids early so you don't have to tech Democracy to rush buy. The Mids also help with early research and happiness. Cottages are your friend. After Liberalism or PP (my choice) turn the culture slider to 100%. Hit enter until you win. Damnt Cabert, you beat my post by 2 seconds.

 

[AndrewN]

Your main problem seems to be the map. In civ the best method is to play the map and not to preselect a strategy. In this case you don't seem to have a map suitable for a culture win in which case I would have gone for a different victory condition or abandoned the map and started again. When you are learning there is no shame in rerolling for a good map for the win condition you want. Once you are better then play these suboptimal maps.

When I play I get Printing Press from Liberalism, the +1 from towns and villages help when you switch to culture which I do immediately on researching Liberalism. I don't normally tech Nationalism and so don't build the Hermitage, the extra 100% culture doesn't make a significant difference in cities that are already getting +250% culture.

The pyramids are useful, but don't build them in your GA city, in a secondary city the GPP from the GA city will mean you never have a chance to get a different type of Great Person. I noticed you built the Oracle, not good, it produces Great Prophet points and you don't need them, but a useful wonder is the Sistine Chapel for the extra culture and the GA points.

9 GA seem to be OK, I got 11 (one from music, 10 at 100% probability) in my last culture game but I won in 1540AD (this was Prince so it is comparable). I assume you got the one from music as well. Liberalism was teched in 840AD, not a lot before you. The other thing to consider is settling the first few GA you get, over a few hundred turns the culture from the settled Artists will be more than the culture from the Great Work.

 

[philip101]

Hmm.. thanks for all the replies. I think one of my main problems is I didn't whip any of my temples or cathedrals. I hadn't though of not going for Hermitage though. I did get my Oracle up in my non-GP farm so only 1 Prophet the whole game, and I've tried the Prymaids->US->buying religious buildings but it doesn't seem as fast to me. I think another problem is it took me awhile to get my GP Farm going so I was only able to settle two of my GAs.

In Prince I am still able to Tech faster than the AI to most things- so yeah I got the GA from Music and free tech from Liberalism, but I'm also aware this may not be the case at higher levels. Either way, I'll give it another shot and see if I can get a faster victory. Thanks!

 

[Crusher1]

Prymaids->US->buying religious buildings but it doesn't seem as fast to me

That's because it isn't as fast, it's faster.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Read jesusin's guide, he runs fast culture on deity.

Also, he doesn't usually go mids.