I can't win the game (Prince Difficulty)

[Qwan]

But by turn 280, I was rocking 1200 culture per turn and more tourism than Kongo

Note that what matters in a Cultural Victory is Tourism, not Culture. And I forgot to mention Rock Bands: use them, and exclude them from your territory. Get Open Borders and a Trade Route with anyone with less Tourism pressure than you. Also, the Golden Age dedication Wish You Were Here.

I love seeing what other people say about strategy, because in some ways I play the exact opposite!

Anyways, one way to learn how to win is to play some games at a very high level of difficulty (compared to what you're used to). Get overwhelmed by the AI. Observe what it does well, and try copying that. Observe was it does poorly, and try exploiting that.

 

[Old Victoria]

Note that what matters in a Cultural Victory is Tourism, not Culture. And I forgot to mention Rock Bands: use them, and exclude them from your territory. Get Open Borders and a Trade Route with anyone with less Tourism pressure than you. Also, the Golden Age dedication Wish You Were Here.

Oh, I mentioned the culture because culture is - as far as I understood the mechanics - what pumps your domestic numbers up and puts off the AI winning a CV. All of those other things: I did all that. :| Also worth mentioning I had all the tourism cards plugged in (the 200% for works of music, the extra tourism for the artifacts, etc). But thanks for the tips! I get how my frustration can make it sound like I was missing a lot of that information.

I feel like the AI just snowballed so hard so early that no matter what I did.
I get the concept of snowballing, but it's kind of annoying that I can't do anything against it. Because if the AI starts with bonuses on Emperor level. But what? Then it's a matter of luck? Well, I do peaceful games. Logic says, I should've tried to wipe him clean when he started snowballing, but ugh.... I really hate going into battle.

 

[Buktu]

But buy turn 280, I was rocking 1200 culture per turn and more tourism than Kongo, for quite a while then, and I was still no close to winning.

You have to compare his culture to your tourism not both players culture or both players tourism. If no civ completely died (so all are left in the game) you need more than 2 times his (the one with the highest culture per turn) culture as tourism (without any modifiers counted in) to make progress torwards victory.

 

[PiR]

If you are trying to make progress in tourism towards everyone, parks are the solution. If you are trying to make progress towards 1 enemy, rock bands are the solution.
If an AI snowballed the victory type you had in mind, change your target victory type.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Have a notepad or piece of paper open while you play. Have on it:
- A long term plan which includes things like: your intended win condition, a handful of technologies and civics needed to get there and why, maybe conquest plans, maybe religion plans, key great people or wonders you may want. Go as far as you want, for Prince you don't need to go very far, but it still all starts with having a plan.
- A Short term plan which includes more specific plans for the next few dozen turns. Like for example the next handful of techs and civics you intent to research and if you can make any boosts happen. What policies you will be using during the coming government phases and how you plan your cities production around. (So you build units in many of your cities at the same time while running agoge and then build a worker in all cities while running Ilkum). Again, go as far in details as you like.
- Notes you make during play when you think of stuff you should not forget in the next few turns.

Every 10 or 20 turns stop clicking next turn. Look at your notes and take at least a few minutes reevaluating and reformulating your long and short term plans. The more time (much of it spent googling and reading civfanatics) and the shorter the interval, the higher difficulty level you will beat.

 

[Qwan]

Have a notepad or piece of paper open while you play.

I keep my notes on a spreadsheet. That way, I can keep different kinds of notes on different pages. I can sort easily, e.g. notes that have a (future) turn number next to them. And I can do calculations right there, like how many turns worth of science will the decrease in tech cost provide with the upcoming Era change.

But then, that's part of my fun.

 

[intellectsucks]

Have a notepad or piece of paper open while you play. Have on it:
- A long term plan which includes things like: your intended win condition, a handful of technologies and civics needed to get there and why, maybe conquest plans, maybe religion plans, key great people or wonders you may want. Go as far as you want, for Prince you don't need to go very far, but it still all starts with having a plan.
- A Short term plan which includes more specific plans for the next few dozen turns. Like for example the next handful of techs and civics you intent to research and if you can make any boosts happen. What policies you will be using during the coming government phases and how you plan your cities production around. (So you build units in many of your cities at the same time while running agoge and then build a worker in all cities while running Ilkum). Again, go as far in details as you like.
- Notes you make during play when you think of stuff you should not forget in the next few turns.

Every 10 or 20 turns stop clicking next turn. Look at your notes and take at least a few minutes reevaluating and reformulating your long and short term plans. The more time (much of it spent googling and reading civfanatics) and the shorter the interval, the higher difficulty level you will beat.

This is an absolutely AMAZING tip. I'm putting it in place during my next game!!!

 

[Old Victoria]

@WackenOpenAir That sounds like a lot of work. But useful!

I finally got my tourism victory on Emperor level. It might have helped that I managed to get 3 natural parks (I usually struggle to get one and have done CVs entirely without in lower difficulty levels) and this time I really focused on building theater squares and entertainment complexes straight away (I usually go for Science Victory, so it's confusing to me to skip the campuses) and tried not to care that I was always last in terms of Science. I didn't manage to snag a great Prophet, but I lucked out: Buddhism had the belief that you get culture equale to the intrinsic faith value of a Holy Site, so after one city was converted, I bought a couple of buddhist missionaries and converted my entire civ to buddhism. It was a mix of thinking and lucking out, but I'm happy.

 

[kk1000]

If you're starting out in the game, playing as Canada is pretty difficult - they are not a particularly strong civ, and have some very specialized abilities that require knowledge of game mechanics. You might be better off starting with a more straightforward civ that has a strong advantage towards one or more victory conditions - Russia or Greece are strong and fairly straightforward towards a cultural victory, while Korea or Australia are towards science. For diplomacy, Rough Rider Teddy has some good advantages, and his home continent strength bonus should help defending in war.

Indeed, play Teddy on a Pangea map and you’ll always have a boost