Forcing a Cultural Victory

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Okay, comatosedragon has inspired me to make a resolution. My resolution? Supposedly nothing too difficult-I've never achieved a cultural victory. Not in any addition of Civ or it's offspring. So I RESOLVE to achieve a cultural victory. I'm not looking to post a game or anything, what I need from you guys instead are pointers on how I can force myself to achieve a cultural victory. What techs should I research? I know I need an artist farm, but should I still have a scientist farm as well?

I understand the mechanics of a cultural victory for the most part. I've read many threads. My problem is I always end up going dom/con/space/or diplo in the end, as my cities always seem too far away for me to continue chasing cultural. What can I say, I guess I have ADHD or something

So what I need to know is what I can do throughout the game to keep me focused on the goal of a cultural victory, but not focusing TOO much to where I'd lose the game.

 

[shulec]

For any victory, the level you are playing greatly effects your strategy. If I was playing monarch, I would try to run a hybrid ecomony. Try to get the Pryamids and try to pop an engineer in one of your first few GP. Plant him in a secondary GP city. Run the caste system once you can (meaning comfortably based on your economy) and double up on scientists and artists. You will still get 3 beakers for great artists under representation.

Diplomacy is huge at higher levels. I would probably try to found a religion, but go with the flow of my neighbors to keep up good relations.

I would say play your regular game and drop off your military research at Rifling. You should eventually get to assembly line to get Infantry, but its not a priority. Try to push along the Scientific Method-->Physics-->Electricity string.

Pick up as many culture wonders after Electricity as you can. Hopefully you popped some great engineers along the way to help with these.

I personally would not waste my time with the Sistine Chapel unless you have a Great Engineer sitting around. Most games I play I feel that going for most early to mid-game wonders usually slows me to my ultimate goal, not helps me to it. Honestly, I think you don't have to commit to a cultural victory until you get to Electricity.

The simplest answer to your question is beeline to Electricity to get Broadway, the Eiffel Tower, Rock 'n' Roll and Hollywood. You can play a straight up game until Electricity.

One more thing that I think helps. When your three cultural monster cities are pulling away, I make sure my workers convert to as much food as possible to run max Artists near the end. This give you your big final push.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Thanks a lot! That's pretty much exactly what I needed to hear! I think my problem w/cultural is every guide I have read is a guide not just for a cultural victory, but for optimum, fast-as-possible cultural vic. So I've been trying to focus on it too early I think. I don't care about optimum this first time, I just want a stinkin' monarch cultural vic on my HOF

 

[ParadigmShifter]

I posted a monarch game cultural walkthrough, it has a lot of screenshots though

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=294931

 

[UncleJJ]

@ shulec, I don't understand what you say about Sistine Chapel. It makes little sense to advocate getting the Pyramids and running lots of artists under the caste system and NOT make every effort to build the Sistine Chapel (or at least capture it). Every artist and other settled GP in the eventual Legendary cities will get a 2 boost. The +5 for the temple and cathedral of the state religion is not insignificant either. I guess the Sistine Chapel is worth the equivalent of 1 or 2 great artists in each of the three cities, well worth getting as it shortens the game. It is probably the most significant wonder in a cultural victory.

 

[DMOC]

The Sistine Chapel is probably worth it for a cultural victory.

As another tip, try to aim for Music first. When you get the free GA, settle in the weakest of your three cultural cities (or what city will LOOK like the weakest in the future).

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

When is a good time to stop settling artists, and start stockpiling them to bomb your last city over the top?

Thanks for the walkthru PS I actually likes lots of screenies.

 

[DMOC]

As a GENERAL rule, you should probably settle any Great Artists you get before 500 AD. If you really wanted to find out, you can do the math on how much culture your cities will get from a settled Great Artist verses a culture bomb and choose whichever option will get you the most culture by the time you get a victory.

 

[shulec]

@ shulec, I don't understand what you say about Sistine Chapel. It makes little sense to advocate getting the Pyramids and running lots of artists under the caste system and NOT make every effort to build the Sistine Chapel (or at least capture it). Every artist and other settled GP in the eventual Legendary cities will get a 2 boost. The +5 for the temple and cathedral of the state religion is not insignificant either. I guess the Sistine Chapel is worth the equivalent of 1 or 2 great artists in each of the three cities, well worth getting as it shortens the game. It is probably the most significant wonder in a cultural victory.

Point taken JJ. For my personal play level, I have a hard time giving up the hammers to build most earlier wonders. I generally take them from others.

I was not aware of the added culture benefit for state religion buildings. That being said, you are correct that you can get a very large cumulative bonus for you specialists.

 

[oyzar]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=298093 here is a decent place to start. An academy is nice most of the time, and a GS to bulb edu might be more useful to winning than an extra artist, but other than that you just want artists. There are a boatload of useful wonders depending on what level you are playing. The first one is probably sistene chapel. It helps tremendously if you can get enough buildings up of your state religion fast enough(remember culture doubles after 1000 years). Pantheon helps quite a bit with getting a lot of artists empirewide(as does philo), NE helps a lot in one city. MoM and Taj can both help a bit(with mom you want to burn at least one great person, perferably a non-artist obviously, on a golden age, maybe even 3 depending on your speed and how much turns of anarchy it saves you), oracle for CS or edu is obviously nice(obviously only works with a high commerce start, and most likely not on the higher levels), however it is the least useful of the mentioned wonders, it does not even generate artist points. Finally pyramids might sometimes be nice allowing you access to some civics earlier than they otherwise would be available(both representation and universal suffrage can be useful). If you want to make the settings in your favour, just pick peaceful opponents and it is pretty hard to lose...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

If you're not planning on it from the start, you can go late culture easily.

Just use towns, whatever culture wonders you can get, free speech, cathedrals, broadcast towers, and whatever you can get in terms of Sushi and Civ Jewelers.

1000 culture/turn with those things isn't unreasonable, and will get you a victory faster than many other VC's.

 

[Skallagrimson]

My one and only culture win was a sort of accidental religion-rush in the early game when I conquered a double-shrine city, hit Confucianism when I decided I needed courthouses to help with mx costs, and then later popped taoism when I decided I was militarily strong enough to focus on my Liberalism race.

Four shrines, one a double, hmmm... sounds like gold to me! Flipped priests for GPs and build Versailles in the double-shrine, then founded Sid's Sushi and Mining inc there (although Mining inc was hard because I wasn't getting enough Engineer points with Railroad coming 'round the bend!)

Anyway while I was on that quest primarily for gold income to boost either more expansion (conquest) or a sick tech rate for space race, I started to notice I was the CULTURE lead, with three cities already about halfway there to Legendary. I thought okay, this will be interesting, let's see about this whole culture thing.

I went to war only when it proved impossible to resist the temptation, and "almost by accident" the empire doubled in size. It was weird though because one of the culture cities was my GSS, and I made the difficult call of producing culture out of there rather than research.

Anyway, the religion cathedrals each added 50% to the culture and my three future Legendaries all had each of the four. Corps brought in more culture. And the double-shrine I'd captured had Sistine Chapel in it, so even when I was going hard for Engineers (for Mining inc) and prophets (for shrines), they were still blasting out culture--it wasn't until the late game that I flipped to Artists.

One thing I didn't like about it was the waiting game toward the end. There comes a point where you really can't boost the output toward Legendary and just have to let the points accumulate. It gets boring, not moving military stacks around or strategizing the builds for space ship parts.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Well, one resolution put to rest! Thanks for all of the input, it helped me pull off my first cultural win! I chose Huyana because I figured he'd make things easier. As it turns out, I actually got beat to many wonders by Ramsses, but I did manage to get Sistine. It helped a lot. I did indeed turn off research after I got Rifling + Electricity. Then all my cities (except the 3) spammed Rifles for awhile to spike my power; then I just had them produce wealth.

I did as someone suggested and settled about 4 artists I got before 500 AD, and I just saved the rest until the end of the game. I used 8 to bomb my last 2 cities over the top. I have to agree that the endgame was rather monotonous and boring...but I had a good time getting there. It took me through an entire different portion of the tech tree at times, which was fun.

It was also an odd feeling to actually want artists.

I didn't have to bother with corps or anything, but I can see how you could go that route late game instead of space.

 

[futurehermit]

Cultural is my favourite victory movie

 

[UWHabs]

I'm trying for my first cultural win now. Wasn't originally planning on it (I decided to start a game as Augustus). Praet rushed a protective civ, with a capital that founded a religion, on a hill Damn those things are good.

Now, since I didn't try for a cultural win right from the get-go, I'm only now popping artists. Popped one, and got one for free from a random event and my buddhist stupa. I've got 3 pretty decent production cities outside of my main 3 culture ones, so they should be able to pump out rifles until the cows come home.

One thing I might try is the other continent is completely backwards (when I explored there, the English still didn't have Code of Laws, and I had just finished Liberalism), so I might build up a big stack and try to grab some land out that way, while trying to appease Willem and Mansa back home.