Help with a deity win with culuture!?

[starrywisdom]

I don't know what it is, I seem to be able to win random leader / random map with almost every victory condition with the exception of culture. I don't know if it's just due to the fact I use random or that I'm improperly playing 'for culture'. It seems in the majority of my games that I try to win specifically by culture I get out a lot of wonders early and keep up the 'culture lead' but the longer the game goes on that lead dwindles due to lack of teching(even with RA's from everyone). When I start to get outeched by a bit I lose the ability to build said wonder as they complete it before I'm close - lol.

Any general helps/tips would be greatly appreciated

 

[GreatJustice]

Stop worrying about wonders, and just build culture buildings. A ton of the wonders only give you 1-5 culture anyway, so only worry about the big ones.

This is pretty inconsistent with my understanding of Civ V: I am awful, but pulling out a culture victory is the easiest thing I've ever seen. Trying for other kinds of victory on higher difficulty gets me killed around AD 1800, but if you just sit tight in your territory, make buddies, and AFK build culture, you auto-win.

It's a pretty stupid victory condition. IMHO it should not be in this game.

 

[Temo]

Stop worrying about wonders, and just build culture buildings. A ton of the wonders only give you 1-5 culture anyway, so only worry about the big ones.

This is pretty inconsistent with my understanding of Civ V: I am awful, but pulling out a culture victory is the easiest thing I've ever seen. Trying for other kinds of victory on higher difficulty gets me killed around AD 1800, but if you just sit tight in your territory, make buddies, and AFK build culture, you auto-win.

It's a pretty stupid victory condition. IMHO it should not be in this game.

On harder difficulty levels, that strat seems like a good way to lose the game when an opponent builds the UN building. At least that's what happened to me on Emperor. Was about to finish my culture victory when someone (forgot who) got the diplo victory.

 

[spider1]

Build all the culture buildings, including radio towers, in as many cities as you can, and you'll be producing a ton of culture. You can win a culture game without both wonders and the piety branch if you build all the culture buildings and bribe some cultural CS's.

 

[snarzberry]

don't over-produce beakers
use RAs to help you get the techs you need
focus on production and high pop in 3 or 4 core cities
generate gpt from a small puppet empire (you want friendly relations so don't warmonger too much, 2 - 4 puppets will do)
Time legalism to give you opera houses and build the hermitage asap (landmark the hell out of this city)
The oracle (if noone builds it), sistine chapel, the louvre, cristo redentor, sydney opera house are your target wonders. A focused approach on deity can net a good number of these

Liberty-tradition-piety-patronage-freeddom, play around with policy order to find what's best

 

[spider1]

One other thing you can do which helps a lot if you think you'll be going without some wonders or the peity branch is get the Representation civic in the Liberty branch BEFORE settling your second city. Each city you found after you take this reduces all future policy costs by 33% for each city you settle. It is very significant you get this civic before settling any cities.

 

[RedRover57]

Your starting site is a big factor. If you are sandwiched in between Aztecs and Japan with no room for expansion then you probably are in trouble. You need at least a semi-isolated start. The exception I guess would be to play the Aztecs and go for an always war culture victory, in which case you don't want to be too isolated.

 

[starrywisdom]

Stop worrying about wonders, and just build culture buildings.

This is honestly some pretty bad advice, if you don't build a wonder(or manage to accumulate a ton of artists[which wonders help]) you have a very minsicule chance of a culture victory on any higher difficulty...lol

 

[Vo01985]

One other thing you can do which helps a lot if you think you'll be going without some wonders or the peity branch is get the Representation civic in the Liberty branch BEFORE settling your second city. Each city you found after you take this reduces all future policy costs by 33% for each city you settle. It is very significant you get this civic before settling any cities.

This does not matter. The culture costs will be the same (tested today). But I agree, you should try to hit Representation early, since its effect diminishes the later you use it.

 

[spider1]

This does not matter. The culture costs will be the same (tested today). But I agree, you should try to hit Representation early, since its effect diminishes the later you use it.

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying it does NOT reduce policy cost by 33% for each city settled? The only way to test that is to play and record policy costs both with and without the civic selected and see how they differ. Is this what you did?

I admit, I've never tested it. I just assumed it was working because it "seemed" to me that the policy costs didn't go up as much afterwards.

 

[Vo01985]

It works, but it does not matter if you activate the policy before your 2nd city or after your 9th city. What really matters is is that you activate the policy early on, and not as your 15th policy or so; it will not have as much effect as when you activate as the 4th policy, as you have wasted much culture by buying expensive policies. Not sure if this make sense to you

 

[spider1]

It works, but it does not matter if you activate the policy before your 2nd city or after your 9th city. What really matters is is that you activate the policy early on, and not as your 15th policy or so; it will not have as much effect as when you activate as the 4th policy, as you have wasted much culture by buying expensive policies. Not sure if this make sense to you

If you activate the policy before you settle your 1st city after your capital, shouldn't that settlement reduce future policies by 33%? And then your next settlement reduces it more? If I read it correctly, each time you settle, it reduces policy cost.

Or, are you trying to say if you get the policy after you've settled a few cities, it will take those cities into account for the reduction in policy cost?

 

[zyx]

I would like to know how many cities are needed for a cultural victory at deity. Because if you have 2 to 3 cities you never come to build radio towers. Or is every cultural victory on deity due to 100 puppet cities?

 

[ColinTH]

Playing with a tall empire post patch, I would say the possible peaceful victory order is as follows.
1 - Diplomatic (except if you include Mongolia in your game they might wipe out most of the City States, thus rendering this victory condition un-attainable).
2 - Tech Victory. (was 30% slower than a culture victory pre patch).
3 - Culture Victory. (20% slower than a tech victory now).

This is purely from what I have seen using the same methods pre patch and post patch.
Even with the hotfix I am struggling to attain a Deity Culture victory with three or less Cities. I havn't tried with Polynesia, Archipelago yet, but I think they might be (my) last chance.
I started a thread some weeks back on this subject and the consensus of opinion from the more learned members of the forum seem to be suggesting we need larger empires and with puppets! So basically a complete turn around in strategy.

To Starrywisdom and zyx, sorry I couldn't help - I am just as perplexed as you!

 

[Strategist83]

I'm certainly no cultural victory expert (hardest type for me to achieve as well) but I still think I can offer a few pointers based on pure logic if nothing else. I certainly believe a fair deal of what is posted here so far is poor advice.

1. The right civ. Neither Japan nor Russia are interested in cultural victories by default. It's India, Egypt.

2. The right policies. Cultural victory empires tend to be tall so Tradition followed by the all-important Piety and later Freedom are your weapons of choice. Skipping Piety seems like an incredibly poor choice and while Liberty is nice, I find it hard to believe it would be stronger in the long run than Tradition - you are not exactly going to be cluttering the map with cities.

3. You DO need wonders, but not necessarily lots of them - just the ones suiting you victory condition. Cultural victory not involving wonder building is unimaginable - there's just too strong synergies with both Tradition, Piety and Freedom. There's no sense in relentlessly pursuing wonders than don't match your style but you're certainly interested in cultural-specifics like Stonehenge, Christo Redentor and especially your new ultimate, the Sydney Opera. Optimum is having a wonder in each city (read: main cities, particularly capital) as this allows you to utilize Piety's incredible Reformation for the culture boost - essentially providing you with free Broadcast Towers in each city already in the medieval era.

Beyond that, everything is completely situational. Good terrain with plentiful luxury access coupled with good diplomatic relations favors a wider empire style, as does access to bonus happy resources like horse and stone. Wine and Incense starts offer an incredible advantage and suggest prioritizing Piety even higher. Gold-heavy terrain coupled with nearby cultural city states open up the option of going wider and paying for your culture rather than producing it yourself. And so on and so forth.

*

As for the confusion over Representation, what it does is it lowers the per-city culture cost increase in ALL your cities, even the ones you founded prior to adopting the policy. But, of course, if you adopt Representation very late in the game, you'll thus receive the benefit for a shorter span of time.

 

[snarzberry]

2. ... and while Liberty is nice, I find it hard to believe it would be stronger in the long run than Tradition - you are not exactly going to be cluttering the map with cities.

I think you may be looking at this part the wrong way.

Liberty is always going to be a correct choice as one of your policy trees for a cultural victory as you now a) want more than one city as extra cites, up to some limit possibly 4, can more than pay their way in culture produced vs policy cost increase, and b) Liberty contains the policy that reduces future policy cost increase per non-puppet city.

That's not to say that you don't want Tradition, you do. Legalism is one of the cornerstones of a good cultural game. Aristocracy is worth a load of hammers. So rather than being forced to choose between the two, Liberty and Tradition that is, you are actually basically forced into taking both.

Piety and Freedom are no-brainers too. Is there any debate that Patronage should be the other policy? Honor in a quirky, Aztec type game?

EDIT: on rereading your post I'm unsure if you were suggesting taking Tradition instead of Liberty, or just taking Liberty as one of your final policy trees.

 

[Strategist83]

I do not agree. Like I said, Liberty is nice. The problem is that so is everything else. You're going to make exclusions.

Tradition and Liberty are both openers - early game policy trees. Picking two openers and thereby forsaking/postponing a different policy tree is, IMO, bad play (and something the AI does all the time, I'm afraid). Picking both Tradition and Liberty early means going both tall and wide at the same time thus not capitalizing fully on either. It is wiser to pick one of the openers, move on to Piety then suitable medieval policies (Patronage, Commerce) and finally into Freedom. Had I opened a cultural game with Tradition, I would almost certainly not pick Liberty as one of the five trees. In a late-game empire, Representation and Meritocracy are the only meaningful policies - everything else is obsolete. Adopting a full tree just for two policies isn't the way to go. There's much more bang for the buck to be had everywhere else at that point in the game. So, unless there's a very good case for not going Honor or whichever you're missing from Patronage/Commerce: no Liberty.

Liberty only truly shines in the early game. A free settler is immensely more valuable on turn 20 than turn 200. The same goes, to a lesser degree, for every other policy in that tree. Liberty becomes increasingly less valuable the further the game advances. The same is true of Tradition, but to a lesser degree. So, vice versa, by opening into Liberty I would most likely not come back for Tradition.

But once again, it is all highly situational. Playing France, I believe Liberty will be the 'correct' opening move in 90+% games, even if you're going cultural (thanks especially to the wonderful adjustments of the new patch which has fortunately done away with the rule that cultural victories are for small empires only). So I should correct myself on the line you quoted above because saying Tradition is better than Liberty for cultural isn't correct; it's just that the civs that are especially well geared for cultural victory (such as India) benefit a lot from Tradition.

 

[vexing]

liberty is absolutely required if you're playing correctly.

the optimal path for a culture victory as far as i can tell is tradition -> liberty -> worker -> settler -> aristocracy -> representation -> all of piety -> all of freedom -> finish off liberty -> start patronage -> finish tradition -> finish patronage
with legalism thrown in at the point you get acoustics to speed up hermitage.

with 4 cities representation cuts the modifier from 1.6 to 1.4, 12.5% less cost per policy - more reduction than the piety finisher.

 

[ColinTH]

2. The right policies. Cultural victory empires tend to be tall so Tradition followed by the all-important Piety and later Freedom are your weapons of choice. Skipping Piety seems like an incredibly poor choice and while Liberty is nice, I find it hard to believe it would be stronger in the long run than Tradition - you are not exactly going to be
cluttering the map with cities.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=430164&page=2

Like vexing already explained, a larger empire with more cities are the way to go now when pursuing a cultural victory. I'm very pleased with the changes because frankly, I think the 'don't expand past three cities for the whole game' gameplay was a huge misunderstanding - the game *is* still called Civilization, not Citylization. Getting rid of the gameplay with these three super-cities surrounded by vast expanses of unsettled landcouldn't have come too soon. They have, thankfully, re-ICS'ified the game like I posted a thread about a while back.

Strategist, I assume your opinion of what is good for a cultural victory has changed then? Because in my thread you were stating that you now need more than three cities, yet here you are saying a tall empire is what's best?

You along with Vexing are two of the people I hold in high-esteem on this forum and now I'm slightly disilusioned, what is your stance?

 

[Hakizo]

I won a occ Cultural on Deity before the finisher policy fix was implemented. And by turn 216 (Quick).

I used Tradition, Rationalism, Freedom, Piety, and Commerce.
Tradition was a no brainer since I was Occ, I used the Rationalism Opener for RA boosting. Maxed out Freedom, Finished Rationalism, Switched into Piety, then finished out Commerce.

My tactic was to get to the Culture buildings/Wonders ASAP. And I was able to effectively Wonder Spam as well since I had the Tech advantage.