How do I win a non combat victory?

[hiphopin]

OK so this may seem funny to some, actually, a lot of players. In all the time I have played civ 4 and ffh1 and ffh2 I have never, ever won a culture victory. And in Ffh2 I have never won a tower or luonnatar victory.

My victories come from war, every time. And now, I would like to try a change of pace with different victory methods. I have never had the culture slider go up one time unless I am at future tech. It seems that sacraficing tech to get culture is not worth it.

Also in my games I usually only have 1 or 2 farms that are not on resorces, and this is because the city has terrible food. So please, what other uses can I have with farms?

Thanks for reading, and I hope to win my first non skull crushing game soon.

 

[Love]

Hrm hrmm time victory?

 

[Sarisin]

I'm pretty much the opposite - I rarely get a conquest victory.

For me, it is usually by Time, Cultural or Altar. I've never had a Tower or Domination Victory.

For Cultural the advice is obvious: focus on techs, buildings, Wonders that give you a lot of Culture. It helps if you have a civ with the Creative trait. There are quite a few Wonders that generate culture, but the Lyre is the best. Also, if you can build the Grand Menagerie early in the game, you are almost certain to have Legendary Culture for that city. Then, concentrate on the other two. You may need to change Civics to generate Culture too.

For Altar, the key is pumping out the Great Prophets as you will need at least 6 of those - I say more because it is good to build holy buildings for religions you founded to generate more GP pts. (some can be built with GP other than Prophets). Then, the key is that Final Altar. I always try to stockpile one or more Great Engineers and resist the urge to use him to hurry production of something else. He will reduce the build time of the Final Altar. Also, I used to use Soldiers of Kilmorph (they get obsoleted though) and Slaves to hurry it along. Finally, if you have a ton of Gold you can finish the Final Altar early.

For both of these, you have to focus more on the type of victory you are going for rather than the wars you are used to. Yes, you still need a strong army to defend and prevent other civs from going after you. It is good to get defensive pacts if you can with other civs to help you with this.

I've found certain civs are more conducive to Cultural and Altar victories, but if you try you can get them with most any civ. Luck is involved too, of course.

 

[hiphopin]

Hmmmm I guess I could try that, but what about the culture slider, how should I use that. I feel it is bad to use because research>all.

And as for time victory, I always disable it, I hate it.

 

[heisenberg]

Well... i must admit my victories are >95% from conquest+domination too lol, with the remaining bit mostly religious victories... but here's my take on cultural victory...

There are a few key wonders to pump out those culture (besides using the culture slider).

High priority wonders:
-Syliven's Perfect Lyre (obvious reasons)
-Hall of Kings (+2 culture/spec)
-Theatre of Dreams (+2 culture/bard)
-Grand Menagerie (if you can manage to complete it)

Useful:
-City of a Thousand Slums (you'd want to get a mega-city going for those wonders/bards)

From my experience, I never use the culture slider at all until I have "set-up" my key cities. (ie get a tech advantage, completed most of the useful wonders, built a decent-sized army as deterrence against attacks, got the right civics/population for my 3 core cities)
This is because all that gold should be better spent on research earlier on to ensure that you are still in the tech-race and being able to complete wonders before your rivals do.

I usually do not begin a game with the cultural victory as a goal in mind, I usually decide on it mid-way through the game when I realize that I have a good economy going to be able to divert resources into those "less useful" cultural wonders. And preferably I would be able to somehow isolate myself from most other players so that I could pay less attention to the military aspects--so you'd want to do something like kill everyone else off your continent so you can have relative peace and quiet

Religions:
As much as some might say that OO is the religion for a cultural victory in some other threads, it is my personal opinion that there are AV and FoL are more powerful religions in heading for the cultural victory.

OO benefits from having the Tower of Complacency--meaning that you'd be able to get one huge mega-city up early on to build the earlier wonders, which is pretty useful.
Their temple adds 3 culture, besides the usual 20% culture bonus for all temples. This might look useful in the beginning, but this becomes totally insignificant later on when each bard specialist could potentially generate way more culture.

AV allows for the running of a really powerful civic--Sac the Weak. This effectively solves all your food production problems, allowing you to run a massive number of bards in your megacities. Of course, this also allows you to hit your population cap much faster, though you might have to be careful that you do not have problems with Armageddon events or Hell terrain (take Hybbie out early)

Following FoL is one of the easiest ways to get your megacities going. With Guardian of Nature you can very easily build up huge populated cities with no problems on your health or happiness side. Also, ancient forests do provide a decent amount of food+production per tile, letting you build wonders at decent rates.

Civics:
Try to stay in GK as long as you can for your capital to grab those early wonders for a decent boost to your culture--then you might want to head to city states or republic depending on how much your empire's maintenance is costing you.
Liberty (duh ). 100% culture bonus, unlim bards, free specialist per city. You'd be able to access this civic early if you join the overcouncil without needing mercantilism. However, I'm not a huge fan of Liberty that early on as I'm usually warring early to crush my closest neighbours.
Caste System. 1 beaker, 2 culture per specialist. Vital for a powerful specialist economy as it helps to keep your research going as you divert to less useful specialists like bards. At the beginning of the game I almost -never- use bards, just the usual scientists, priests, merchants to try to get an academy in each of my 3 main cities for a huge research boost, build holy cities, and get some gold.

IIRC, with Theatre of Dreams, Hall of Kings, Caste system you can reach a base of +10 culture/bard before factoring all the percentage boosts. That's a massive amount of culture (aka one major wonder worth) per bard specialist that you run. Multiply that by the number of bards you can afford when you set up 3 megacities of at least 25 pop, that comes up to a whole lot of culture per turn. But I usually only start turning them into bards after I've completed setting my cities up.

Civs/Leaders:
I'll agree with Sarisin that you could achieve cultural victory with almost any leader, but of course some are more suited for it than others.
I however, do not think that Creative helps. Creative adds... a whopping... 2 culture for each of your cities. That's useful for land-grabbing early on, saving the trouble of building monuments, but that's about it. Compare that to your eventual bard specialists and wonders, and you'd realize that its a mere drop in the ocean. (sorry Sarisin )
Its my belief that it is much more important, to get a powerful economy going first, or have a powerful military to crush early opposition before heading for the cultural--so any of the "stronger" civs (or your favourite) would do.
There are of course some highly notable ones though:
Bals. (freaks, slave cages all add nice minor culture boosts, while also adding a lot of happiness, and generates bard GPPs)
Grigori. (when your cities are set up with bards... use the worldspell... and get 1 Great Bard/turn for the next 5 turns at least lol If you manage to hit birthright regained... but you shouldnt really need to bother about that hehe)
Infernal. (yes... the infernals... I have to say, that I hit cultural on the infernals most of the time rather than go for domination. After a long spate of warmongering and getting your 3 cities up to easily 100 pop each, its just too simple to hit legendary with ALL pop on bards.)
Khazad. (Overflowing vaults, lots of hammers, lots of wonders. 'nuff said )
Kurios. (3 sprawling megacities--what else are you asking for? Besides, Liberty has so much synergy with settlements too, allowing you to manually force that 1 pop and the free specialist to become 2 useful specialists per settlement)
Ljo/Svart-elves. (farms in trees.......)
Lanun (3 food/water tile, awesome economy)

the list just goes on but i might have overlooked some.


That was just my 2 cents over how I usually head for and get my cultural victory. I'd be more than happy to see/discuss alternatives to the cultural win that might differ from my usual style ^^
Merry Xmas!~




edit: lol after I've typed this chunk out I realized that there was another discussion 3 threads down here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=303415 about the cultural victory too~
I seem to have repeated some of Zechno's points hehe~

 

[Fragment]

Hi,

it is important to *totally* focus on the victory condition you're attempting, starting at turn 1. Things like acceptable starting places, city placement, choice of resources for a city if you have to choose, buildings you start to build immediately after founding a city etc. are all influenced by the victory condition you're trying.

For example, as the previous poster noted, for the altar victory you need lots of priests. That means you have to have a great people farm, and to actually have it generating great people, 1) you need to be able to switch to great people, and 2) you need to have the food for that. So in your designated altar city, the first thing you build is a pagan temple, which allows you to get your first prophet by switching on one specialist early in hte game. That first prophet can be joined to that same city for more great people point production, or used to build the first temple.

By now the difference to what I assume is your usual play style (cottage spam) should be obvious. You need to look at each tech, each civ, each wonder, each building and each unit and figure out if it's indispensable (like basic defese troops), useful, or not useful.

Do *not* build things that aren't helping your victory type. Do *not* build techs that aren't helping your victory type.

That means if you attempt a cultural victory, you research all the techs you need, and then stop research entirely, crossing your fingers that you will not be attacked in the following x turns.

For a cultural victory there are 2 possible routes to attempt this, either via specialists, or via cottages, the latter one I did not ever try but will in another game. The specialists route is to have as many bard specialists in the culture cities as possible. For techs, you need the tech that gives wonders that do + culture/specialists (drama, feudalism), techs that allow you to produce lots of food (sanitation), techs that allow you to switch to the right civics (calendar, taxation, mercantilism), and a religion, octopus overlords is the common suggestion. More religions help as they allow to build temples (+20% culture each).

You need to move the culture slider up as far as possible, because each 10% culture will produce happiness in cities with a theatre, which you will build in every of your cities. The cities can now become very large, and support a very large specialist population.

The culture cities will have only farms or food resources around them. The other cities will have less farms, and more cottages or production around them. At one point I in fact start to destroy the cottages around the designated culture cities and replace them with farms. For the cottage based cultural victory I plan to have the culture cities with many cottages, only having farms so that I can cottage the hills too. The other cities will have no cottages and only farms, but specialists who generate money so that I'm able to have the culture slider at 100%, so its exactly the opposite mechanism.

Aim for city sizes in the high 20s/30/31, and a culture output of 700-800 per turn in the finishing phase. Aim to win as quickly as you can, before the competition can mount a proper attack.

A suggested civ for cultural victory is Kuriotates, but I consider that a newbie option you will not be able to switch away from once you're getting used to it

And of course you are correct, research in indeed paramount. It is paramount for cultural and especially for the altar victory too. You want the required techs as soon as you can get to them.

 

[cIV_khanh93]

I just completed my first game (of civ... ever... i have a problem with finishing games...) as the ljsosalfar. The altar victory is prettty easy with them. My capital had all grassland with two hills and a banana and a pig. (similar effects can be carved out of DESERTS once you get druids/Yvain/Nature 3 archmages) I ran the Theocracy civic and put all priests in my capital, the priests startd fooding in. Once the priests got to 3 hpt, that city was pumping out so many (level 3-4) priests of leaves that I had to wait for borders on new cities to pop to bloom them, and I took a city with only tigers in one turn. suggestion for FoL ljosalfar: build towns. everywhere. (except for pre-vitalize in a plains city) The elves are the second most flexible settlers in the game. (first of course being Illians) I really could've got any victory with them (although the war thing would have been expensive without siege... I didn't even use mages for my wars )

 

[Grey Fox]

Hmmmm I guess I could try that, but what about the culture slider, how should I use that. I feel it is bad to use because research>all.

It comes a time when research isn't needed anymore. And no I do not mean when you got the entire tech tree.

 

[slowcar]

bard specialists are a lot better then the culture slider. the slider tends to give where you do not need it.
culture victory requires quite some patience and the ability to fend off attacking AIs, and attack they will. forging alliances is a good idea, and a religion that allows defensive warfare, like empyrian (chalid, highpriests, rathas/radiant), OO (hemah, tsunami) or good old RoF
temples of all kind provide +20% culture, get all religions you can

tower victory is kind of easy with metamagic, you only need to be able to defend when building the final stage. being rich helps a lot

altar victory is also not too hard, needs a bit more research though. i would not suggest to go all divine units, the free xp seem tempting but due to their limited promotion abilities they are weaker then melee units.

the big backdraw is that peace is boring. going for CoE and have hidden nationality units helps a lot to retain some fun.