Is a Cultural Domination possible?

[Big J Money]

The first time I played Civ IV, I went for a cultural victory, and was pleased to see how easy it is to get cultural flips from civs that didn't have culture on the agenda. Now that I am busy refining my cultural wins to be successful at the higher skill levels, I am seeing fewer flips, because they don't seem to have any place in my strategy.

I'm wondering, if cultural flips aren't ideal for a cultural victory, what are they useful for? Are there other victory types that can make good use of culture, like maybe some kind of "cultural domination" where culture is used to grow the empire. If so, is this a technique that can be used in single player and multi player both?

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[Padmewan]

YOu'll never flip capitals or even core cities from AI that are allowed to grow relatively peacefully, so I don't think you can get a domination victory through culture-flips. Culture-flips are helpful if you're facing down a culture-weak civ and don't want to bring war (maybe b/c of your civics) but you need a resource right on the edge of their lands.

Culture-flips are helpful if you control a large contiguous chunk of land but someone managed to plant a city in the middle of it.

Culture-flips are also important to consider defensively. I just took all of Persia's cities, and India proceeded to culture-flip at least one of them. 3rd-party flips are, in some ways, more dangerous than reversions, because you can't take the cities back without declaring war on a new nation. (Of course, India is going to be toast but that's for another era...)

Why wouldn't culture-flipping be useful to a cultural victory? You need a minimum of 9 cities for the "ideal" cultural victory (9 temples/3 = 3 cathedrals). Also, if you can flip a city with a new religion and build a monastary (must be done before scientific method) you can multiply your culture and happiness by spreading that religion around -- and that will net you ANOTHER cathedral.

 

[Big J Money]

First of all, thanks for all the ideas. I have used a border stretch to gain a resource before, but I never really thought of it as a culture flip. I suppose it really is the same thing.

Maybe a demi-cultural domination could be possible if military force were used to take key cities only and then try to get peace afterward.

Why wouldn't culture-flipping be useful to a cultural victory? You need a minimum of 9 cities for the "ideal" cultural victory (9 temples/3 = 3 cathedrals). Also, if you can flip a city with a new religion and build a monastary (must be done before scientific method) you can multiply your culture and happiness by spreading that religion around -- and that will net you ANOTHER cathedral.

Nine cities isn't hard to get by placing little nobody cities in between your major ones, and building the temples in them. If I happen to culture flip a city before that to gain a new temple, I guess that's a nice thing. I pretty much stick to organized religion too, so the monasteries are more useful to me for being ancient built cultural buildings. If I don't build them by a particular date, I don't consider them ueful any more. I'm correct in noting that Civ IV has the same rule where buildings can become tourist attractions for 2x culture, right?

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[seraphism]

I got a domination victory with ghandi on a terra map almost solely through culture. My civ had about 20 odd yrs of war total on that map. Started real close to the greeks and my warrior hit a xp goodie hut just in site of their capital city so i chose the city attack promo's took athens and then chop rushed settlers from my two cities. Managed to grab a good chunk of land early that way and then won the race to the new world and took control of that about 1200 AD. By then i'd flipped about three cities due to culture and at about 1600 AD while i was checking victory conditions i noticed i had enough pop and was only short about 5% of land mass for domination. Quick war vs the americans to my northeastern borders got me that and viola an almost entirley peaceful domination victory. Was rather pleased with that actually (playing on prince btw).

 

[Wlauzon]

A culture victory is probably the 2nd hardest to get, hardest is a late game domination victory.

I have gotten a couple, by concentrating from the start on anything that raises culture, but it is not easy, since you may be short on military - and your expanding borders will often upset neighboring civs.

 

[Grogs]

The thing about culture flips is, IMO, it's maddeningly slow. During my last game, the Greeks popped a city in between 2 of mine. Greece never put a single point of culture into the city, but it still took about 30 turns between the time my cultural borders reached the city and the time it flipped over to me. You CAN flip capitals (I flipped both Athens and Beijing in my last game) but you're probably not going to do it with anything other than one of your 50k cities. Still, if you can manage to grab large chunks of empty land quickly (like the new world), I think cultural can be very helpful in securing a domination victory.

I'm correct in noting that Civ IV has the same rule where buildings can become tourist attractions for 2x culture, right?

IIRC, the 'tourist attractions' in conquests actually gave you a good deal of gold as they aged. I haven't seen anything like that in Civ4. The culture does double after 1000 years though.

 

[Gufnork]

Late game domination is one of the easier. Get a techlead, steamroll your opponents and keep the cities you take. In the late game you have no problems affording new cities. Culture is probably the hardest, but I haven't tried.

 

[YuriPup]

Going for a Gandhi cultural victory for my first try, and while I have some impressive cities (3 in the top 5) and am the birthplace of all religion, I haven't managed to flip any cities due to culture. Its a bit embarring.

 

[Minsc]

Late game domination is one of the easier. Get a techlead, steamroll your opponents and keep the cities you take. In the late game you have no problems affording new cities. Culture is probably the hardest, but I haven't tried.

I find that "get a tech lead" is probably the hardest thing in the game.

 

[bugmenot17]

I've flipped a capital before, but this was on a lower difficulty setting (Warlord I think) -- still pretty impressive when it happened, though.

I think the main reason why culture flipping isn't very useful for cultural victory is because I only seem to get flips when my 3 main cities are already well on their way to the big 50k. By that point the three cities are already just building culture and I'm not very interested in doing the whole temple/cathedral thing again -- just biding time and staying alive.

 

[bugmenot17]

I've flipped a capital before, but this was on a lower difficulty setting (Warlord I think) -- still pretty impressive when it happened, though.

I think the main reason why culture flipping isn't very useful for cultural victory is because I only seem to get flips when my 3 main cities are already well on their way to the big 50k. By that point the three cities are already just building culture and I'm not very interested in doing the whole temple/cathedral thing again -- just biding time and staying alive.

 

[alysenne]

In one game, I had my borders surround an enemy city for most of the game, and it never flipped. It's a too rare occurance, and definitely cannot be relied upon.

Heh, a lot of these strategy discussions don't make any sense because people are talking about different difficulty levels. One person says late game domination is easy...one is it's hard...

 

[SonicX]

When does a culture conversion occur ?
Because I am neighbouring Persia who have 10+ relations with me (as does the third natino on my continent) and if I go to war with them, odds are I'll have both Persia and Arabia at war with my good old United States and that is just a little bit too close to reality for me.
Right now, in two Persian cities, they have a 46 % and a 44 % percent Persian population (rest is mine) but not a single revolution has occured ... when will it ?

 

[R3dKnight]

a good way to estimate is probably examine your city and put a mouse over the %. THat'll tell you the rough chance of it happening.

 

[Vizzini]

In one game, I had my borders surround an enemy city for most of the game, and it never flipped. It's a too rare occurance, and definitely cannot be relied upon.

From my experience only two things would prevent that city from flipping.

1. The AI took that city via conquest (captured cities will never flip back to the original owner unless you enable that option when setting up the game - it's off by default)

2. You neglected to get your religion into that city, or the city had the religion but you didn't have a state religion.

A city surrounded by your culture will flip - if it didn't there's a reason for it. It isn't random or rare because I usually flip AI cities every game I play.