Going to War while shooting for Culture Win?

[Sherlock]

I'm working on my first culture win. Only two cities. I've built up an army for defense.

Any reason I shouldn't just pluck that Japanese city across from me and puppet it?

Then sue for peace and wait for the inevitable DOW from Japan?

 

[Hustapha Thool]

No reason not to. Puppeted cities will only accelerate your progress.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

No reason not to. Puppeted cities will only accelerate your progress.

Just make sure you never annex it.. but yeah, it's a good strategy, as long as you can do it.

 

[ahte]

In my experience, having a puppet empire makes culture wins ten times easier than just turtling up in your own cities because puppet cities generate culture without increasing SP costs, can give you a nice gpt boost (and slight bpt boost), and waging the occasional war makes culture victories a lot less dull than the usual 'keep hitting enter, choose a policy, keep hitting enter, choose a policy...'

So yeah, give in to your bloodthirsty tendencies as often as you like!

 

[smallfish]

If annexed, make sure you got three natural cities from the start and get monuments/opera houses and radio towers there ASAP.

e: you will also be in a much better position to enforce atomizations of anyone who is close to any sort of victory before your Utopia.

 

[Sherlock]

Yeah, that worked out good. Unfortunately I chickened out after taking one city and took his 'kitchen sink can we have peace' deal.

Maybe I'll reload and keep going until he's gone. If you can only DOW once, I suppose I should make the most of it.

No one else is very close to me so I'm not too worried about my other neighbors. Until they get tanks, anyway.

 

[The Peacekeeper]

I find that I get into some of the most interesting battles in cultural games. It feels like in science/domination focused games that I just steamroll everybody, but playing with only one or two cities gives me little room to grow a military.

 

[Bandersnatching]

Try not to take his last city, though.
The endgame for culture victories, without warfare, is really, really dull; so definitely do go on a little domination streak to enhance the fun and speed things up.