Help with cultural win strategy!

hbdragon88

haunted by blackness
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I'm been aiming at cultural dominanace in EVERY game I play but have never succeeded. I don't know why! I build lots of wonders in one city (I dominate the ancient wonders) but then lose the race near the end. I have never built the Theory of Evolution, the SETI Program, or the Manhattan Project. And I was at 15,000 points in one city when the game ended.

P.S. Cultural dominance WITHOUT military action. Is that possible?
 
What difficulty level are you playing and how many civs are there?
 
To get to the magic 20,000 points in one city needs a little planning. First play as a religous civ (say babylonians) they get cultural buildings faster than other civs.

Also you need to build culture producing buildings as early as possible as they increase effect over time - temples/cathedrals/library etc

also certain wonders are better than others - great library / sistene chapel/shakespears theatre/michaelangelos/longevity all increase culture significantly.

When I started playing on cheiftan level I could often get 80-90 culture points per turn in one city and win by culture domination. Millitary action is not essential (except for defense) - just very good city production to make building all those cultural buildings possible in one location.

On higher levels it is much harder as the AI often gets to wonders sooner and is more aggressive.
 
As above, go religious/scientific and build your cheap culture buildings as soon as you can. Not only this, but if you aim to win by the whole empires culture, you need to make sure that no-one else has anywhere near the culture you have. You may need to capture some major cities to do that. i won a culture victory in regent level with little difficulty (I was going for dominance, and had a whole continent of newly captured cities).
 
Originally posted by Jodien
What difficulty level are you playing and how many civs are there?

Chieftain, eight civs usually. Sometimes I get a 10 or 11 because I loaded a scanario and didn't comb it over to see how many there are. Standard size map.

Or I could buy the PTW expansio for Civ III and watch as culturally weak civs completely flip to me. Read somewhere that that could happen in a preview on this site.
 
Yzman: I can't remember, it was a while ago, i haven't won any culture ones recently. It may well have been huge. I killed off about 6 other civs to do it, and there were still enough remaining. So huge it most likely was.
 
Originally posted by hbdragon88

Or I could buy the PTW expansio for Civ III and watch as culturally weak civs completely flip to me. Read somewhere that that could happen in a preview on this site.

That was a typo. Meant here was city-culture flip. If you want to read something on cultural victories, read this nice story by Zachriel.
 
If you're going for a cultural victory from one city, there are a few points to keep in mind.

At age 1000 years, a building's cultural output doubles. Keep this in mind, as it's critical to have temple, library, cathedral, university, and colosseum built before 700 AD, as it's at 1700 AD that the years really start slowing down.

Don't mobilize. Doing so cuts your culture production.

Keep that one city focussed on cultural buildings. It should build little else (save perhaps a market and bank) for most of the game.

Are you trying a OCC (one-city challenge) or just getting one city to 20,000 culturally? Both are doable on all levels (including deity) but OCC's on deity are brutal.

Arathorn
 
Originally posted by Arathorn
Are you trying a OCC (one-city challenge) or just getting one city to 20,000 culturally? Both are doable on all levels (including deity) but OCC's on deity are brutal.

Arathorn

i guess he is trying a simple 20k - culture...

so...hbdragon88 , why not try occ?
its pretty easy even on emperor or deity.i prefer playing egyptians (not babs) and build a tempel and the GL as 1st and 2nd cultural buildings...(if you succeed in building the colossus in addition the game is nearly won - u will have no probs to build some other wonders early (sistine is important))
 
Yeah. That's what I shoot for. One city dominance. But almost all the time it's not coastal so I have to build Magellan's Voyage, the Great Lighthouse, and the Coolusos elsewhere. That's why I said I only had "15,000 points in one city" when the game ended
 
hmm

if you are going for the 20,000 points then magellans and lighthouse are not worth bothering with (unless you need them for other reasons) - the more culturally significant wonders are the ones to aim for (as I outlined earlier).
 
OK yeah I'll keep that in mind but what are the ultimate wonders? The absolute best? I build lots of them but seem to be building the weak wonders (e.g. The Great Wall, Pyramids) Somebody said that Shakespare Theater wasn't that great...
 
Check out the manual. It lists the cultural per turn values of all the improvements, wonders, and small wonders..

I suggest that you attack to gain power and deprive the other civs of wonder-building chances.

Also get yourself a nice, big, city near a large mountain range, with a river or two, and get its tile usage up to 21 (including the center, of course). Build a factory, manufacturing plant, and power plant. Preferrably this city also can get the Iron Works. :)
Now just PUMP OUT those wonders!! :egypt:
 
Become a religious civ and expand! The more cities you have the more culture you can receive (and the less likely an agressive civ will attack you). Build temples, libraries, etc., and wonders as fast as you can.

Once an improvement or wonder has been placed for 1,000 years, it's culture doubles. It is important to build culture-related improvements early because early in the game, the years go by faster; 50 years, 10 years, 1 year. The faster you place the improvement, the earlier you will get the bonus. Although, after the year 1050, you will not get the bonus at all.
 
Shakespeare's Theater is by far the best culture for the number of shields it costs.

And he was the dude [pimp]
 
The Great Library is also an important culture building because its 6 culture will soon double since you get it so early in the game.
 
Originally posted by WillJ
I know that you're going for the 20,000 in one city type of win, but just for the heck of it I'll post a link to a strategy article about winning the 100,000 total way. (You may have already seen it.)

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_culturerush.shtml

It's pretty good, and I'm currently playing a game using the strategy. In fact, I made a thread
about the game (and you may have already seen it too):

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38881
I don't want to get in trouble or upset anyone, but that guide has been improved on by many players.

The major flaw in the plan is that it tells you to put cities inside your productive ones. This reduces the gold you can get from the cities as only a certain munber of cities close to your FP or palace will ever be productive. Very quickly you are unable to buy any more temples and libraries, and havve to spend all that money on researchlabs...

The best strategy by far is to create new cities outside your core areas. This enables you to carry on buying improvments at a much quicker rate. Since you may want to avoid triggering domination, you just keep your land area inside the dmination limit.

See this thread for good examples:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32214

In my game in that thread you can see the minimap of the world. Note here that my core areas in the north are kept well spaced, and the close, compact layout is outside this area:

Edit: I'm the grey area :)
 

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I have noticed that map size matters a lot for the 100,000 culture victory. Larger map = more cities = more culture. There have been several times on large maps I was trying for a domination victory but my culture reached 100,000 first. On standard and especially small maps it is really hard to get a cultural victory.
So here is my advice. Play on a large map, build temples and libraries as soon as you can, get in some early wars to expand your territory, and then build those cultural improvements in all of your cities. If you play on a huge map with fewer civs and plenty of room to expand then you might not need to fight any wars at all.
This is the only victory condition that seems unbalanced to the map size. For all the others, map size doesn't matter (much). They should have made the culture victory total different depending on map size IMO.
 
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