Hitting time limit on cultural victory?

[ingenious28]

Hey everyone, long time lurker first time poster.

So I've been playing on King, and I seem to have domination and space victories down, but I'm struggling with cultural. Let me describe my typical cultural game. I generally get up to about 4-6 cities that I own outright. (0-4 puppets, depending on how much waring I need to do to stay alive). They all have the cultural buildings (monuments, temples, etc) along with staples such as libraries and markets. I usually ally with friendly cultural and maritime CS's. I usually get beat to early wonders, but tend to get at least sistine chapel plus some of the midrange ones (lourve, taj mahal). My science does tend to lag, and so one thing I have noticed is that I'm slow to get to Radio. I usually hit the time limit about 1 or 2 policies shy of beginning Utopia, with my max culture per turn coming in around 500 or so, with about half of that coming form 1 city. 2 or 3 of the cities are set for culture for a majority of the game, with the rest of them getting set for culture around 1500 or 1600.

Thats about all I can think of. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[S.K. Ren]

Stick with 1-4 Cities. Beyond that the set up time to bring your new cities up to Culture specs vs the increase in social polices becomes heavily weighted against you. If you're playing a civ with a cultural bonus (France-Unique Ability, Songhai-Mud Pyramid Mosque, Egypt-Burial Tomb, India-Mughal Fort) Go for 3-4 cities. Anyone else stick with 2 and puppet more. Right now puppets are free culture (well almost free, they just don't add to your social policy cost)

 

[Schlomoe99]

You need fewer cities for a cultural win. Most cultural strategies use 2-3 cities tops, otherwise the multiplier to get another social policy goes up for each city you own. It helps to have Ghandi too, if you don't use him already for cultural wins. Good luck!

 

[ingenious28]

You need fewer cities for a cultural win. Most cultural strategies use 2-3 cities tops, otherwise the multiplier to get another social policy goes up for each city you own. It helps to have Ghandi too, if you don't use him already for cultural wins. Good luck!

So the actual cost to unlock the next policy is scaled based on the number of cities you own? Does this include puppets as well?

 

[S.K. Ren]

Right now puppets are free culture (well almost free, they just don't add to your social policy cost)

No, they do not

 

[DonChipotle]

Each city you own increases the policy costs by ~30%, not including puppets. Having too many non-puppet cities severely slows acquisition of new policies!

with about half of that coming form 1 city.

That's a big clue about how to change your approach!

You might check out this thread to see how players have been trying to get the fastest cultural victories possible. Most of these players went off a single city, with a dozen or more puppets.

One of the main ideas is actually saving up culture rather than spending it immediately until you have Free speech unlocked from from the Freedom branch, and also when you make your run for Telegraph (to build Christo Redentor). Only spend culture on the most essential SP's until you get there.