How to Culture?

[Fish Man]

I know how to achieve a sub-t300 SV, and I've done it many (actually only 3) times. However, I don't know how to culture.

I already have a hard enough time fitting the trade route stuff into my build strategy, so for the first couple BNW games I neglected to build any of the guilds, ever. This kinda worked for a time, since most of the games I tried were to get an idea of the new mechanics on Prince (where the AI is a pushover). I actually won a Deity game as Poland (t292 SV) ending with 0 tourism and 42 culture/turn since I adopted the same ideology as runaway Portugal and had many unique luxes in the area to cover for unhappiness because of want for a new ideology. Solidarity made it so I could neglect culture with impunity (7 free SPs covers for a lot of culture) in the late-game.

However, I learned the hard way that I can't neglect culture, tourism, and dem guilds in my next game as Babylon, where the Suleiman and Lizzy deity AI DOWed repeatedly and I was forced to watch as my cities willingly joined the enemy because of their overwhelming cultural influence.

I tried going for a CV as Brazil on emperor continents next, and despite the best start possible (mining luxes, little jungle near the cap, grasslands river start with horses and cow, giant rainforest with bananas and rivers in the middle of the continent). However, though culture was no problem with brazilwood camps, by t300 it was clear I wasn't gonna make it. My tourism was never going to catch up with Assyria (only 75 tourism/turn compared with Assyria's 200 culture/turn), even though I built hotels, spammed archeologists/wood camps, and worked every single culture-related specialist from the turn the guilds were built (around t75-125). Oh, and I made many great works from the culture GP like a normal person would. As spy would say, "I did all I could!"
My science, though, was lagging terribly. I captured ONE city from Shoshone early game (they were spamming them everywhere, so it's not like I permanently crippled them), and everyone thinks I'm a warmonger for 100 turns. As a result, I was only able to make RAs with runaway Assyria - until we picked different ideologies and mutually denounced each other. Now they're 5 techs ahead of me always and I've only researched plastics on t280 (more like got it with Oxford).

So after all these failures I have to ask some questions:

1. How do you maintain a decent cultural presence and still be ahead tech-wise? In this Brazil game my culture and tourism could be considered average in a deity scenario, but my science was lagging by more than 50 turns - possibly more if I had played on. The time it took for me to build the guilds or other culture buildings and the GPP allocated towards culture GPs sapped my science dry. Ever since I researched education only by t130 my bpt and literacy has been behind the usual rate. At t300 was only in the modern era and my bpt was only 625-ish.

2. How do you find the time to build everything that's required? The guilds and caravans/caravan-related buildings add about 500 hammers to the early build strats. I don't see how I can produce these things: before BNW (in G+K) I wasn't building everything I want, but now I don't even have time to build the things I need.

3. How do you grow your cities after early warmongering and maintain happiness? The aforementioned is often looked down on in BNW since it sucks more resources than it gives, but I had to do it here with the jungle cities' potential for culture and fear of Pocatello growing too strong. No problem (military AI is bad on emperor) - but for about 50 turns afterward I was struggling with happiness issues. Lux trades with AIs on another continent and ideologies solved this problem, but still, there went 50 turns of growth.

4. How do you get tourism to rise enough for a CV? In this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPJoCfF9u1g
Maddjinn had 850 tourism/turn by t320, and was also in info era. I doubt I could get a tenth that amount by t320, and even if I did, I would pay the price with lost bpt from pursuing culture instead of strictly science.

tl;dr: How do you maintain a decent cultural/economic presence while going strong science-wise, and how do you get enough tourism to win a CV?

Attached are the starting and t-300 saves for reference.

 

[Fish Man]

Any1 have tips at all?

 

[anthropophage]

Culture victory plays very similar to a science game. Do a normal three or four city tradition opening, beeline philosophy as soon as you've got your essential techs and grab the Oracle and the National College in your capital. Head for education while building the writers guild, national epic and a garden in your cap. Once you've finished Tradition open both Aesthetics and Exploration to gain access to their wonders, if you have an extra policy drop it in aesthetics to get fast building culture buildings. Once you reach education get your Universities built/bought and staffed ASAP.

If you have cities next to mountains research Astronomy, otherwise research towards Printing Press, while building or buying Amphitheaters, Workshops, Markets & Caravans in your cities as you go, get the Artists guild in your cap. If a high production city has nothing to build, make military. Once you hit renaisance start putting SPs into Rationalism. Start researching towards Scientific Theory. While getting Opera Houses built in your cites and building the Leaning Tower in a high production city other than your capital, your capital should be building the Globe or Uffizi. Use the free great person from Pisa to get a Great Engineer and use that to rush the other wonder in your capital.
Once you've gotten to Scientific theory get your public schools built/bought and staffed ASAP.
Tech Electricity and use Oxford to bulb radio, then tech industrialisation and finally head towards Archaelogy. Build the louvre in your capital, the rest of your cities should pump out architects. Rush buy a museum whenever you're short of art slots.
Tech towards Refrigeration. Build/Buy hotels. Tech towards Plastics, Build/Buy research Labs. Bee line internet, get the national visitor centre in your capital as soon as it becomes available. Faith buy a bunch of Great Musicians. 8 Turns after internet and NVC are both completed perform concert tours on whoever is holding out against your tourism.

 

[anthropophage]

Forgot to mention a few things.
Plant great scientists up to Industrial era. After scientific theory, save them until you've got research labs built and staffed in all your cities, then bulb them to rush towards internet.
Always try to maximise your theming bonuses.
Get what ever tourism buff you can from your chosen ideology and then start putting SPs into Aesthetics. You need to complete Aesthetics in the late game to gain access to faith bought Great Musicians.

 

[joshua43214]

Deau guide is very good, but he never completed it or updated it due to RL
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=501996

I wrote a long reply to a similar question the other day in this thread
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=517245

 

[phillipwyllie]

Oracle, all guilds staffed asap, and all culture buildings in all cities asap will ensure you never loose on the culture game. Culture is also derived from great works so the more you have to more culture you generate.
The Cultural Heritage sites WC proposal(if you have many wonders) will help as will the Historical Landmarks(if you have many landmarks/GP improvements). Once your culture is up and running winning the World Fair combined with a golden age(just as you win the WF) will make your culture go through the roof, having as many great writers as possible to bulb at this time will make your culture go into the stratosphere(if only for a short while).
I personally unlock Legalism(Tradition) to give me a free Museum or free Broadcast Tower in my first 4 cities. If you haven't unlocked Cultural centers(Aesthetics) then this can be especially useful.

 

[Fish Man]

Thanks for the tips. Quick question: do you build Broadway? If so, do you staff it with GW of music? Also, how do you reliably generate enough faith without desert folklore?

 

[joshua43214]

Thanks for the tips. Quick question: do you build Broadway? If so, do you staff it with GW of music? Also, how do you reliably generate enough faith without desert folklore?

You should only build Broadway on lower difficulty if you have nothing else to build. You want it only to deny it to the AI.

The important thing is you have to build the musicians guild very late. Ideally, you do not want any musicians until you are near max tourism, so after Internet and Radio. Concert bombs win CV, not general tourism.

You can get enough faith by just building temples in all you cities and making friends/allies with some religious CS's. 2500 faith is enough to buy 2 GMus's, combined with the 2 you get pretty quickly after the musicians guild goes up is all you need in 99% of the games up to Immortal.

 

[Fish Man]

How is the amount of culture gained by concert bombs determined? Probably by the amount of tourism you got starting x turns ago. So what I still don't get is how do you get your tourism up above into the hundreds and even the 1000's. Even by spamming archaeologists and GW I still can't get it up above 100 by t300. Take a look at the save and tell me what's wrong, because I still don't get how to increase tourism to victory levels.

 

[joshua43214]

The amount of tourism generated by a musician is based on the turn the musician was born, not the turns preceeding its use. So saving a musician does nothing, because its tourism is fixed. This is why you do not want any early musicians.

If you are having trouble getting over 100 tourism by T300, then you are having trouble with your tech. The tech path for a CV is much shorter than that for an SV, so being done with Internet and Radar by T300 should be a given, and even with no wonders, your tourism should be much higher than 100 with 3 cities.

OK, just loaded the savegame, I must have missed it in the original post.
You might be able to win if you are willing to play it out for a very very long time.
You already built the musicians guild though, so the game is just going to drag on forever and you might simply lose.

A few points,
Learn to manage your citizens, 19 population in the cap at T306 is terrible, this should reasonably be more than twice that. You just can not get a good game with the default city manager.

Build all the guilds in the capitol. You lose the benefits from the Hermitage and Sistine by bulding them.

You have no fpt at all.

You are wasting TR's by sending them to your capitol. These need to be going into the AI to get tourism bonus.

You share open borders with the AI, never do this. Buy open borders from all the AI to get the tourism bonus.

Your spies should have been diplomats 100 turns ago. The diplomat going into Babylon will do nothing because you share Ideologies.

Freedom is almost always better for CV because Media Culture is huge, and your diplomats will work in more civs - though you got luck the AI all went Autocracy for the most part. Cultural Revolution is a wasted tenet because only Babylon went Order, and you will get influence over them easily anyway, and Workers facilities should be the first pick in Order always.

You are not focused on science (or growth), so you are very far behind where you should be in the tech tree. You need more population and you need to work those science specialists. You have 8 unworked science buildings, and you are working no science at all in the cap, not to mention you are missing many science buildings in your other cities.

Read the threads I linked, they have a wealth of information in them

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Faith buy a bunch of Great Musicians. 8 Turns after internet and NVC are both completed perform concert tours on whoever is holding out against your tourism.

You can't bank musicians like that, their tourism output depends on when they were born. You faith buy the musicians and send them out 8 turns after internet. By 8 turns, I really mean do the math before purchasing them to make sure they will insta-win. If the culture leader is a massive wonder whore, doing some math before committing to rushing plastics to get a rough estimate of how long it will take to win is wise. If the numbers look bad, go for artillery instead and kill him.

 

[Browd]

All very good, very thorough points in the prior posts.

Another reason you are doing poorly on tourism is because you aren't maxing out your theming bonuses. On turn 306, you are producing 78 base tourism. If you reallocate the GWs you already have, and trade 2 writings for ones from different civs, you can increase your base tourism over 25%, to 98 per turn.

Attila will sell you his embassy and open borders for a total of 3 gpt, which is well worth the price. Move the diplomat from Babylon to Atitila's Court, and your tourism bonus vs. the Huns rises from 6% to 86%. Switch the Shoshone spy to a diplomat and earn another 40% tourism bonus.

Purchase a harbor in Brasilia and you can redirect the expiring Hun trade route to an Assyrian city for +40% with them. The Huns are sending you a trade route, so you are good there (for now).

Finally, if you are aiming for a culture victory, why are you researching atomic theory? Focus on Penicillin through the Internet. And Penicillin will get you an additional trade route, which you will need if the Huns switch their trade route.

The one saving grace here is that you are the tourism output leader, so you just need to optimize that benefit (and avoid getting wiped off the map).

 

[Fish Man]

What's a theming bonus, and how do you get them? I know the general idea of what they are (basically several GW which fit certain criteria), but I don't know which ones are there and which ones are worth getting. Can anyone tell me? Sorry for noob questions :/

Also, I'm researching atomic theory because of the science boost and it's on the path to Internet. But this game is still pretty hopeless because Assyria is tech/culture leader and I have no way of catching up.

 

[Browd]

Each multi-GW building (museums and many wonders) start with a +0 next to the GW slots. If you mouse hover on the +0 it will tell you what you need to get the theming bonus. Everything else is just switching GWs around to get the max bonuses. The second tab of the culture window is the GW trade screen. Again, a little trial and error and you will get the idea pretty quickly.

And I mistyped on my earlier post -- you can get your base tourism to 102 with max theming bonuses.

 

[Arachnofiend]

An alternative to anthro's peaceful strategy is to play peaceful up until the Industrial Era, building up gold and culture, and then taking Autocracy and exploding onto the domination scene with Mobilization and Big Ben (and Mercantilism if you can afford to get there) and sniping away at anyone who's been building culture while using your passive tourism boosts to win over the weak culture players who were probably gunning for domination and will help out with your wars.

 

[Fish Man]

I still don't get how to achieve the raw amount of tourism needed to overcome civs' culture at least halfway for GM to finish the job. Let's say you have 25 GW/artifacts generating 50 tourism total. You bump that up to 75 tourism with theming bonuses (bit of a stretch, imo). Then you build hotels and airports, and it increases to 150 tourism/turn by t250-ish. Interne5t increases to 300 tourism/turn. That still doesn't match up with what I've seen others getting, with 500+ tourism BEFORE internet.

 

[KmDubya]

I still don't get how to achieve the raw amount of tourism needed to overcome civs' culture at least halfway for GM to finish the job. Let's say you have 25 GW/artifacts generating 50 tourism total. You bump that up to 75 tourism with theming bonuses (bit of a stretch, imo). Then you build hotels and airports, and it increases to 150 tourism/turn by t250-ish. Interne5t increases to 300 tourism/turn. That still doesn't match up with what I've seen others getting, with 500+ tourism BEFORE internet.

Hotels and airports also each add in 50% of the culture from wonders and terrain improvements. This can add up quickly. You then get to multiply the above raw culture by +34% for a diplomat(if different ideology which has a -50% effect), +25% for open borders, +25% for same religion, +25% for trade routes.

Also aesthetics would double the theming bonus and get you another 25 base with your example above.

Next you can multiply all of the above by 50% if you have autocracy level III and are in a common war. Freedom level III has a 34% multiplier if you have broadcast towers. Order has some bonus versus other order civs and another bonus against anyone with less happiness, but I forget the percentages.

With your numbers above 75 raw tourism bumped to 150 with hotels and airports you could add another 50 from terrain and wonders (this is just for an example, this could be a lot more). You now have 200 tourism with a trade route, a diplomat and a different ideology for about 218 tourism per turn. With internet this gets doubled to 436 per turn with 4360 music bombs.

It is easy to faith buy 4 GM for 9000 faith, add in producing two late musicians yourself and you can quickly bomb someone 7 times for somewhere around 35000 in tourism. This plus what you accrued up to this point should win.

Also you can burn down the culture leaders empire, drive them before you and hear the lamentations of their women. Then you only have to out tourism the second place guy.

Once you try it you will see how quickly it can all come together. Warmongering and taking their stuff helps a lot. Aggressive archeology digging can quickly fill up a ten city empire with 40 artifacts getting you 120 tourism raw. Autocracy has a nice level I that gets you 250 every time you get a GWAM, this can add up quickly if you get an early ideology and is applied to everyone.

 

[anthropophage]

I still don't get how to achieve the raw amount of tourism needed to overcome civs' culture at least halfway for GM to finish the job. Let's say you have 25 GW/artifacts generating 50 tourism total. You bump that up to 75 tourism with theming bonuses (bit of a stretch, imo). Then you build hotels and airports, and it increases to 150 tourism/turn by t250-ish. Interne5t increases to 300 tourism/turn. That still doesn't match up with what I've seen others getting, with 500+ tourism BEFORE internet.

Getting world religion is a 50% buff in your holy city (probably your capital, where you've got all your wonders with theming bonuses), and winning the International Games thingy multiplies your tourism by 100% empire wide. Hitting those kinds of numbers isn't too difficult.

 

[BuzWeaverCiv]

Any1 have tips at all?

I followed FourEarFox advise and won pretty handedly. I had a few restarts because I didn't like the map and another Civ beat me to a Wonder, but if you follow his advice you should get the victory: BNW Brazil Culture Victory

 

[joshua43214]

I followed FourEarFox advise and won pretty handedly. I had a few restarts because I didn't like the map and another Civ beat me to a Wonder, but if you follow his advice you should get the victory: BNW Brazil Culture Victory

No disrespect to the guy that made the video, but I would find a different LP'er. Most of the comments in this thread are from people getting faster win times on standard, 302 on quick is pretty slow. Not to mention that I doubt this would even work on Emper, and would a total fail on Immortal