How do u win by culture?

[ACEofPANZERS]

I can now regularly win by military means or space. This game, I am the Celts and plan to try and build a dominant culture. I know u win culture race by acquiring a certain number of points in a city or across your empire as a whole. But how do u guys get to that point? This is my first attempt to win by culture. I picked the Celts because of religious so I could build many temples. I was beaten to a couple of great wonders and forced to build the Great Wall and another I can't remember. I want to build universities and colosseums too, but I know all that will be very expensive in maintenance.
Maybe just build colosseums and cathedrals in my capital and the border cities to give strength to my borders.... What else?

 

[Turner]

Easiest would be to play the Religious/Scientific traits. Babylons. The scientific trait also gives you cheaper scientific buildings. So cheaper temples and librarys to start with.

That said, I've gotten cultural victories without using one or the other, sometimes both, traits. You just gotta make sure you're out producing and out researching the AI. Expand like crazy early game, and give yourself enough space to build the cultural buildings quickly. Wonders also help, so build those too.

Take that with a grain of salt, tho, because I haven't tried for a cultural victory in years.

 

[Spoonwood]

Check the War Academy articles.

 

[The Professor]

You're going to want the biggest empire you can get--100 or more cities is common for culture victories. This makes the Celts a good choice, since those Gallic Swords are good for taking extra land and cities from your neighbors. Once you have a lot of space (an entire continent is probably enough; just make sure you don't go over 66% of people AND land) build as many cities as you can squeeze in, and have them build temples, libraries, cathedrals, and colossea.

In the more corrupt parts of your empire, you will have to rush those builds. That's why a lot of people recommend using Feudalism as your government, so you can pop-rush. Cash-rushing gets expensive, especially since you're paying maintenance on all those culture buildings.

Wonders don't create a lot of culture, compared with culture you can get in all of those towns. The only ones that are worth building in a 100K culture game are Pyramids (for re-growing your population quickly after pop-rushing) and the Temple of Artemis (free culture in every town.) Just remember to stop researching before you get Education, or you'll lose the free temples and have to build them again. This means that you can't build Universities, so there's a trade-off there, so you'll have to decide for yourself which you prefer.

 

[Turner]

Womders may not create a lot of culture, but they do help.

Do try and get the Internet, if you're still playing that late. Free Research Lab (2 culture points per turn) for each city almost guarantees a win. Especially if you do have over 100 cities. That's an extre 200 culture per turn. For free.

 

[ACEofPANZERS]

thanks for the advice. i completed my first culture win 100K today. i built cities very tightly spaced, expanded overseas, cash rushed like mad temples, universities, libraries. the comps sneak. .. .. .. . attacked me several times. i know the ai is computing strength and number of military units i had, i tried to keep a fair number, but for having so so many cities, many had no defender in them -- i just mainly guarded the border cities. he must have calculated correctly that it was difficult for me to guard all those damn culture cities.

by 1500 AD i had 100K, nearest competitor had 29K. twas very expensive of course. and i had to resist the urge to be the warmonger i am, although several enemy cities flipped to me. winning with culture and spaceships requires so much less effort than eliminating all the enemies. in long war games, it takes centuries and centuries to conquer all the enemies on all the continents.

thanks again!