How to effectively win a CV?

[Alpharius]

Is it just me or does everyone else find it extremely hard to win a CV on Emperor/Immortal? Most of the time when I play a culture focused civ I end up snagging a SV or DV, simply because you have to be ahead in tech to get more tourism bonuses, but by the time I become influential on all civs I'd have been able to win a SV much earlier.

A couple of times now as Arabia, I've had to shift to a SV because it becomes more viable earlier. Once, I even had to do it since an AI civ was close to a DV.

 

[CrazyG]

What's your social policy choices and religion?

I find cultural victory achievable as Arabia by focusing on generating strong culture.

 

[stii]

I did it pretty easily as Brazil. I had already won so it was just picking a win condition but it was much faster than other victory types at that point. I didn't have any of the later bonuses just used a swarm of musicians to finish off what my passive and trade routes had started.

The more players the harder it will be however, with just 6 and me conquering some it was pretty easy however.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

If CV on higher levels comes down to using Arabia or Brazil exclusively, then I don't think it's in the right spot. As Alpharius and others have noted, my biggest concern is also how reliant tourism is on tech; you need to essentially be a run-away to achieve CV, and SV / DV become just as viable by that point, if not more.

 

[stii]

I think that is often just how the end game works. It is rare to be racing the AI to any victory type. I'm pretty sure you can win a CV without a civ power to back it up but it requires a lot more effort than just getting ahead in tech then figuring out how to win.

 

[Alpharius]

What's your social policy choices and religion?

I find cultural victory achievable as Arabia by focusing on generating strong culture.

Tradition/Artistry/Rationalism/Freedom
Goddess of Beauty/Divine Inheritance/Mastery/Pagodas/Syncretism
No reformation belief as someone else snagged Cathedral of St. Basil and I was at war with my neighbors(China, Huns) most of the time so I couldn't send missionaries constantly.

On this save file I'm actually 8 turns away from being influential on all civs, but voting on global hegemony came much earlier and I had enough votes to win. If I had committed to a SV I'd have won earlier too.

 

[CrazyG]

On this save file I'm actually 8 turns away from being influential on all civs, but voting on global hegemony came much earlier and I had enough votes to win. If I had committed to a SV I'd have won earlier too.

Did one particular civ have more culture than the rest and it's the only one holding out? (if so was it China?) That's a common situation I end up in.

Also constant war really hurts a CV because trade routes account for a lot of tourism, even more so for Arabia. I don't like how that's ended up relative to SV .

 

[Alpharius]

Did one particular civ have more culture than the rest and it's the only one holding out? (if so was it China?) That's a common situation I end up in.

Also constant war really hurts a CV because trade routes account for a lot of tourism, even more so for Arabia. I don't like how that's ended up relative to SV .

It was the Netherlands, actually. By the time I was influential on all other civs the Dutch still had 40+ turns remaining. It was only shortened to 8 turns because I sent 2 GMs for a concert tour. I think I had 6-8 caravans looted the whole game, all of them during war with China as it had to pass by their territory.

The wars couldn't be helped though, I had a common border with China, and their weakest adjacent neighbor military-wise. And Attila just being Attila, lol.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

I find CV one of the easier victory conditions to achieve on Emperor and somewhat easy on Immortal.
It's trivial to achieve as Arabia (In my experience it's doable even before the 1900s) or Brazil but it's not that hard even with non CV focused civs if you advance your game plan well and enhance it with reasonable religious and policy choices.
As a starting point to get a true CV (not the one you snag along the way to domination victory having 6 vassals) Artistry is pretty much a must .. having an early vassal makes any win condition a lot easier to achieve and CV is no exception .... religion helps a lot and some beliefs make your life way easier; Way of the Pilgrim with fealty opener is ridiculous.
I personally prefer Autocracy or even Order to Freedom when it comes to CV.

 

[Melchizedek]

My first Emperor victory was Babylon -> Tradition -> Artistry -> Rationalism -> Freedom, tundra pantheon -> Divine Inheritance + Mastery + a ton of wonders, prioritizing the GA ones especially Itza -> GPTI spam (mostly academies) and the GPTI Enhancer + GPTI Freedom policy. Played purely defensive militarily. By the Industrial, my capital was only working GPTIs and specialists. Had 55 pop in capital at victory. Don't remember the turn, but it was early 300s on standard.

I would say under these circumstances it was easier to get a culture victory than science with Babylon, but the start matters. This start had lots of tundra camps and Lapus, so the resources combined to give a fast culture start, a fast religion, and a GA bonus. Not many starts will line up so perfectly. Divine Inheritance + every capital tile being an academy, manufactory, or town is pretty fun. I was about 10 policies ahead of the competition by the end.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the trick with CVs is that its the easiest victory condition to both "be good at", and also "not possible to win".

Here's what I mean. I've had Tall CV games that were a breeze. Generally its a situation where you have one major culture player in the game. In that situation, you can focus all of your great musician bombs at them at them, and probably optimized, you will generate about 70% of your total tourism through this method. With even a bit of optimization you can wreck the competition and win faster than any other condition.

But then there are scenarios that are extremely difficult for CV. You get 2 major culture players (or god forbid 3). Now you have to spread the load around to convert everyone, and things become significantly harder. Of course the boredom numbers are a big wildcard, sometimes you get like 20% more tourism because of boredom, sometimes its 0%. In those scenarios, the only real viable way to win CV is to beat down one of your cultural opponents, and then focus your tourism on the other one.

This is why I find Tall CV brittle on Immortal+. When things are good, they are really good, and I will just win like its no big deal. But if things start going sideways, I often don't have the military to project the force I need to correct the issue. The best thing you can try to do is go autocracy (with the CV tenants in the tree), and utilize the military powers there to compensate for your weaker base supply and production.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

If we ignore the current problem with March patch concerning voluntary capitulation that tends to create runaways very often i do agree with @Stalker0 big time about the first scenario when things work flawlessly but in standard games i don't think i have seen two or three culture giants that my tourism cannot influence by the time i unlock the Citizen Earth Protocol ... at least not on Emperor/Immortal; i'm no deity player.
for me one of the most fun ways to achieve cultural victory is Authority/Artistry/Imperialism Arabia; Bazaars kind of guarantee a religion and with the copious amounts of production and gold supplanted by it i can spam wonders to my hearts content without caring much about being ran over by another warmonger thanks to functional Authority satellites.
Sure not going tradition as Arabia is a big sacrifice but the pay off in the form of consistency and having a backup plan in my back pocket to invade any strong culture player that i cannot reliably influence is totally worth it IMO.

 

[stii]

I just tried this and it didn't seem too bad with six players, maybe it scales up poorly but I almost won before even getting to broadcast towers and stations.

I had a good start and a powerful civ (netherlands) but no natural buff to tourism. no war other than defending myself, which happened every ten turns on/off by the end. Which prevented me ever running external trade routes but I stacked pretty much every other source. Taking out the strongest player would have probably made things easier but wasn't needed.

There might be a bit of an issue that you need to be ahead before winning like this, you want wonders and religious tenants and if you are behind you won't always have access to those.

 

[CrazyG]

I think the trick with CVs is that its the easiest victory condition to both "be good at", and also "not possible to win".

Yeah cultural victories can be very sink or swim. Often you just roll over the enemy with no real obstacles.

One thing is so many culture sources are blocked by war (including musicians).

I also don't know how much musicians give because the UI is flawed (at least it was the last time I dropped a great musician, which wasn't this patch). The display on the tour button gives a different value than the displayed number when you use the musician, and I don't think either one is the amount you actually receive.

 

[Alpharius]

I don't think I'll be attempting a CV again anytime soon. Just finished another game as Arabia(SV) on Immortal.
Tradition/Artistry/Rationalism/Autocracy
Goddess of Beauty/Divine Inheritance/Mastery/Mandirs/Symbolism/Inspired Works

In this game I tried branching away from my usual Arabian ideology(Freedom) to Autocracy.
While I was getting decent amounts of tourism, I find that winning a SV is still more efficient. My tourism usually spikes up when I get the CN tower and the Internet, and it's not too far to the Hubble Telescope since I'm usually leading in techs at this point, and producing GPs almost every 2 turns. Though I feel some Victory competition plays a huge factor as well. I might have lost to another Civ(DV) had I waited long enough for a CV to be available.

Funny thing is, 2 of the Civs which were most resistant to my tourism wasn't even culture-civs (as far as I know) namely, Zulus and Celts.

 

[Alpharius]

I find CV one of the easier victory conditions to achieve on Emperor and somewhat easy on Immortal.
It's trivial to achieve as Arabia (In my experience it's doable even before the 1900s) or Brazil but it's not that hard even with non CV focused civs if you advance your game plan well and enhance it with reasonable religious and policy choices.
As a starting point to get a true CV (not the one you snag along the way to domination victory having 6 vassals) Artistry is pretty much a must .. having an early vassal makes any win condition a lot easier to achieve and CV is no exception .... religion helps a lot and some beliefs make your life way easier; Way of the Pilgrim with fealty opener is ridiculous.
I personally prefer Autocracy or even Order to Freedom when it comes to CV.

I tried Autocracy in my latest game and it does work better tourism-wise compared to Freedom. Pretty strange as I always thought it was a warmonger ideology, this is the first time I ever selected it iirc.

 

[Ranslee]

I tried Autocracy in my latest game and it does work better tourism-wise compared to Freedom. Pretty strange as I always thought it was a warmonger ideology, this is the first time I ever selected it iirc.

Autocracy seems to be the best Ideology for all VCs at the moment, maybe on par for Science with Order.

And it is true that CV is very much like SV, except it's more complex and you have to commit to it throughout the entire game, while SV is something you can decide on later on.

 

[Laz0r]

unfortunately cv seems to benefit most from conquering as much as you can. I consistently end up with full influence when I have around 20-40 cities, and can end up just conquering any cultural rivals should they not get influenced. As fun as tall CV can be, it's basically a self imposed weakness because you end up not really able to deal with threats to your CV such as snowballing civs. Also, the scaling for tourism penality ends at caps at 16 cities so you get heavily penalized for expanding at all with tall CV whereas if you go for a wide CV once you hit 17 cities + you're only going to gain more tourism

 

[Thibix Magnus]

Autocracy seems to be the best Ideology for all VCs at the moment, maybe on par for Science with Order.

And it is true that CV is very much like SV, except it's more complex and you have to commit to it throughout the entire game, while SV is something you can decide on later on.

not to derail too much but I'm curious, what makes autocracy so good at science? Vassals?

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

not to derail too much but I'm curious, what makes autocracy so good at science? Vassals?

Military industrial complex is such a game changer.