Is the Cultural VC the hardest to achieve?

[Uncle Reeno]

I can't believe you all think this is the hardest/slowest. If left unmolested on a corner of the map you can crush out pretty much every relevant wonder. One thing that hasnt been mentioned much is paying other civs to go to war with each other, which I found to be a nice strategy to slow down their progress or to have a strong science civ wipe out someone like ghandi who will fight you for the those cultural wonders.

 

[chazzycat]

I can't believe you all think this is the hardest/slowest. If left unmolested on a corner of the map you can crush out pretty much every relevant wonder.

If you play on the higher levels (immortal+), this just isn't true. Maybe if you are Egypt and have marble...but the AI gets a lot of the wonders very quickly. It's also rare to be that isolated.

 

[binhthuy71]

I can't believe you all think this is the hardest/slowest. If left unmolested on a corner of the map you can crush out pretty much every relevant wonder. One thing that hasnt been mentioned much is paying other civs to go to war with each other, which I found to be a nice strategy to slow down their progress or to have a strong science civ wipe out someone like ghandi who will fight you for the those cultural wonders.

"If left unmolested on a corner of the map..." How often does that happen without jimmying things in advanced setup or re-rolling? We're talking about real games here.

 

[Tachii]

How often do people conquer and puppet neighbour cities?

I've tried a peacemonger game once and ended up with a diplomacy win using some other civ's UN. From then on I remained as a warmonger for my cultural victories, often snatching 2-3 puppet cities for gold purposes and even annexed a capital once (I only had 3 cities at that point) since it had marbles and pretty good production tiles around it (it had more production than my capital near the end). It seems to me the only reason I won't DOW is if I don't want to suffer the diplomatic hit or have a low happiness for Mandate of Heaven, but Mandate of Heaven is so weak that I can probably gain the missing +4-5 cultures from puppet cities simply by letting them build the Monument and even the Amphitheater if they have enough pop.

Right now I'm playing as Siam and I have a great urge to just conquer as much as I can with Narusean Elephants. My neighbour Aztecs is ridiculously weak after I took everything from him for 30 turns then DOW right afterwards. I'm assuming I'll get a diplo hit to the peaceful civs but my current game has 3 strong warmongers (Attila, Genghis Khan, and the Ottomans) and Persia is pissing me off by snatching Chichen Itza, Alhambra, and Notre Dame.

 

[chazzycat]

if your neighbor starts the war then go for it, puppet some cities. some extra gold never hurts. just don't take their last city or get too big through expansion, you want the other civs to like you so you can keep trading and signing RAs.

 

[GreedysMaximus]

I can't believe you all think this is the hardest/slowest. If left unmolested on a corner of the map you can crush out pretty much every relevant wonder. One thing that hasnt been mentioned much is paying other civs to go to war with each other, which I found to be a nice strategy to slow down their progress or to have a strong science civ wipe out someone like ghandi who will fight you for the those cultural wonders.

I don't know what kind of difficulty you play or what kind of times you achieve, but for me personally going over 315-320 turns is already a game where i'm doing something wrong. In essence it's not hard to turtle the entire game and wait for a ridiculously long time for the Utopia(350-400+ turns), but these are not the times i'm aiming for. So far i've only played on emperor and i can pretty much build everything if i have the proper starting position, but i this will only work with good terrain/neighbour setup, i can't even imagine what it would be on immortal/deity after hearing of the horror stories of wonder spamming AIs on these difficulties.

Paying Civs to go to war? I can't fathom to understand where all of this gold is gonna come from because you need to rush buy a lot of cultural(economic) buildings, sign RA's and bribe cultural CSs to get anywhere near a decent finishing time. That's a huge amount of gold, how can you possibly maintain such a huge surplus of income to fund wars elsewhere in a culture game, is very baffling to me. In my last game the axe of bankruptcy/poverty was always threating to cut off my juicy cultural neck, it was very stressful at certain points, but i still managed to get my best time. Now, if i had had a runaway civ or played the same map on an higher difficulty it would've prolly been a fiasco in square.

 

[alpaca]

...
Paying Civs to go to war? I can't fathom to understand where all of this gold is gonna come from because you need to rush buy a lot of cultural(economic) buildings, sign RA's and bribe cultural CSs to get anywhere near a decent finishing time. That's a huge amount of gold, how can you possibly maintain such a huge surplus of income to fund wars elsewhere in a culture game, is very baffling to me. In my last game the axe of bankruptcy/poverty was always threating to cut off my juicy cultural neck, it was very stressful at certain points, but i still managed to get my best time. Now, if i had had a runaway civ or played the same map on an higher difficulty it would've prolly been a fiasco in square.

I actually do this sometimes. Aggressive AIs often don't need to be paid that much to declare war and it does get them off your back. For example, if you start between Nappy and Hiawatha you have to bribe one of them, or they will both attack you. Declaring war on the victim as well does also give you a nice diplo modifier that likely results in a DoF. If you don't settle too many cities to piss off your new ally, DoFs can be quite stable in G&Ks so I think it's a fairly decent deal. It does throw your initial plan somewhat off the rails but unless you're trying to set a new record you should be able to live with it.

 

[budweiser]

I don't know what kind of difficulty you play or what kind of times you achieve, but for me personally going over 315-320 turns is already a game where i'm doing something wrong. In essence it's not hard to turtle the entire game and wait for a ridiculously long time for the Utopia(350-400+ turns), but these are not the times i'm aiming for. So far i've only played on emperor and i can pretty much build everything if i have the proper starting position, but i this will only work with good terrain/neighbour setup, i can't even imagine what it would be on immortal/deity after hearing of the horror stories of wonder spamming AIs on these difficulties.

This happens to me every single game. It takes about 350 turns to finish a culture win on emperor. I'm starting to think maybe its because I stay small at 3 or 4 cities with maybe a puppet or two thrown in. I am going to work on getting 6 cities to see if it makes any differnce. I feel like I have tried everything else.

 

[Moriarte]

Puppets will put you behind in tech, since you ll have to produce big army to gain them puppets. Unless you are Austrian, or lucky to have 6-7 Composites by turn 60 and two enemy capitals fifteen tiles away. I think 3-4 cities is perfect for this endeavor, it gives you the balance of cash/culture/science. The root of the problem is swiftly unlocking necessary culture buildings (and wonders) IMO, because they are the ones that give you Artists. And artists + freedom give you most culture.

 

[ifinnem]

This happens to me every single game. It takes about 350 turns to finish a culture win on emperor. I'm starting to think maybe its because I stay small at 3 or 4 cities with maybe a puppet or two thrown in. I am going to work on getting 6 cities to see if it makes any differnce. I feel like I have tried everything else.

I don't think more cities is the solution - its growing tall and getting to Artists, key wonders and culture buildings ASAP.
My T273 Emperor win was based on 3 cities + puppets (which I only took cos Japan settled towards me and was stealing my tiles...) It was useful for the gold

 

[GreedysMaximus]

I don't think more cities is the solution - its growing tall and getting to Artists, key wonders and culture buildings ASAP.

This a thousand times. My last game was a blatant, shameless copy of Tabarnak's game which he posted on this thread. Now the differences were that i didn't have 1 city with a river(4cities), and i was also forced to delay the last city due to mistakes(not hooking up the luxuries in time), i also only had 3 unique luxuries, biggest plus for me was the fact that i was fairly isolated and had lots and lots of copper around if i only had ppl to trade with, China who had the biggest wallet the entire game hated me 95% of the game, we were at war when i was building the UP.

In addition, i had a very hard time accumulating wealth, when i saw the screenies of Tabarnak i can see that he was making at least 4 times the money during a GA than i during the same turns(techwise i was pretty close to him i think). I'm not sure where such huge differences came from, but i suspect city pop may have played a role here.

I got one GS from the capital, missed the other one cause i decided to delay the GS for city growth which was a big mistake(i wonder how many GSs Tabarnak eventually accumulated).

There were 5 cultural CSs, i never met 1 CS, but i guess the probability of that CS being a cultural would have been slim. Anyway i got two of them from the get go. The last three were incredibly hard to get on my side, even if i bribed them with huge sums. Theodora would coup in 1 turn and make all my spent gold worthless, happened at least 3 times(this coup mechanic is broken).

I was forced to send my spies away from the CSs i currently had and make them work my prestige up in these others cities, which took an eternity.

Eventually i had them all at my side, but the difference was marginal - the last city was couped/bribed somewhere b4 the last 10-7 turns of the last policy.

Most of the policies game at 5-6 turns, after about 200 turns once the permanent GA started, possibly even earlier. I settled a total of 8 GA's - now here's where the river could've helped. The last policy came in 7 turns while i was producing a whopping 1196 culture per turn(but this is with Siam ofc). I think i teched CR at 242, but not entirely sure about that anymore.

Despite all of these problems i understood somewhere at middle game that if i don't mess this up i will finish with my best time(eventually at turn 278). That is 20 turns better than the previous best time i had, Utopia took 9-10 turns once the micromanagement of tiles and railroad bonus kicked in. Citygrowth is integral for a fast finish, you need it for science/gold/hammers/culture and the cities have to be decent productionwise, cause you'll want a wonder in each of them for the piety bonus.

 

[Moriarte]

This a thousand times. My last game was a blatant, shameless copy of Tabarnak's game which he posted on this thread. Now the differences were that i didn't have 1 city with a river(4cities), and i was also forced to delay the last city due to mistakes(not hooking up the luxuries in time), i also only had 3 unique luxuries, biggest plus for me was the fact that i was fairly isolated and had lots and lots of copper around if i only had ppl to trade with, China who had the biggest wallet the entire game hated me 95% of the game, we were at war when i was building the UP.

In addition, i had a very hard time accumulating wealth, when i saw the screenies of Tabarnak i can see that he was making at least 4 times the money during a GA than i during the same turns(techwise i was pretty close to him i think). I'm not sure where such huge differences came from, but i suspect city pop may have played a role here.

I got one GS from the capital, missed the other one cause i decided to delay the GS for city growth which was a big mistake(i wonder how many GSs Tabarnak eventually accumulated).

There were 5 cultural CSs, i never met 1 CS, but i guess the probability of that CS being a cultural would have been slim. Anyway i got two of them from the get go. The last three were incredibly hard to get on my side, even if i bribed them with huge sums. Theodora would coup in 1 turn and make all my spent gold worthless, happened at least 3 times(this coup mechanic is broken).

I was forced to send my spies away from the CSs i currently had and make them work my prestige up in these others cities, which took an eternity.

Eventually i had them all at my side, but the difference was marginal - the last city was couped/bribed somewhere b4 the last 10-7 turns of the last policy.

Most of the policies game at 5-6 turns, after about 200 turns once the permanent GA started, possibly even earlier. I settled a total of 8 GA's - now here's where the river could've helped. The last policy came in 7 turns while i was producing a whopping 1196 culture per turn(but this is with Siam ofc). I think i teched CR at 242, but not entirely sure about that anymore.

Despite all of these problems i understood somewhere at middle game that if i don't mess this up i will finish with my best time(eventually at turn 278). That is 20 turns better than the previous best time i had, Utopia took 9-10 turns once the micromanagement of tiles and railroad bonus kicked in. Citygrowth is integral for a fast finish, you need it for science/gold/hammers/culture and the cities have to be decent productionwise, cause you'll want a wonder in each of them for the piety bonus.

Very nice result. Congratulations! You just inspired me for a cultural game .

Reading your post i get an impression there is still room for improvement. Few thoughts. Think Siam is a bit map dependent. I mean, with cash in hand you can sponsor 4-5 CS's by the endgame, and after you find only three of them over entire map (and very late too), Siam seems less attractive. Besides, the effect of cultural CS's diminishes towards the endgame, and then again Wu keeps snatching them from you every now and then. However, i must admit, Wats are hard to beat.

How many RAs did you sign? When was NC ready? Immortal? Would be interesting to see a screenshot or two , for educational purposes ofc.

 

[ifinnem]

Siam is also good for the maritime food to grow - not just culture CS

 

[ifinnem]

One thing that may or may not have been mentioned, but certainly bears repeating: if you go cultural, take a religion and get Cathedrals. The additional fairly early artist slots really help.

Very much agree. The other subtle but powerful effect of Cathedrals is that you can fill your Uni slots without worrying about an unwanted GS since you get several artist slots quickly in your cities

 

[GreedysMaximus]

How many RAs did you sign? When was NC ready? Immortal? Would be interesting to see a screenshot or two , for educational purposes ofc.

I haven't played an immortal game thus far, because i'm already having trouble repelling enemy attacks on emperor which is my difficulty of choice atm. The NC was done either at turn 72 or 81(i checked the turn logs from the little saves i had), the last number is more probable though and it was the 1st one that popped in my head after i saw your question. The most important moment occured on turn 101, both the Oracle and CI were completed at that turn.

I think overall i had 5 RA's, 2 b4 archeology and 2-3 b4 Plastics, i didn't sign any after getting plastics, i should have because of Neuchwanstein(could have broken the 1200 mark) and railroads ofc(i hard teched these just barely in time b4 the UP). The RA's are a huge boost to your cultural game, get as many as possible.

Here's the situation at turn 149(last save i had of that game). I wanted to modify the map to have the lowest amount of water tiles, but i'm not sure if this actually happened, cause sometimes you miss to mark that property properly b4 the game and then you might be surprised with the outcome. We are nicely isolated with a few mountains and CSs giving us a nice defensive buffer zone in the south. At this point i had a merc CS just at vicinity of MS and 2 cultural CSs right to Wu. Capital will build the Hermitage/Pisa(for GE to rush PT in Lampang so we can have a wonder in 4 cities, Muang Saluang has Djenne)Louvre/Taj Mahal.

Notice the low population in the bottom cities, MS isn't running any GSs cause that would hamper growth too much. I will have RAs kicking in a lil over 10 turns so i'll keep my science as high as possible to reach arcehology ASAP. Also look at the negative income and low happiness, even though i've got the proper religional modifiers and 1merc CS to my benefit.

Overall:

Spoiler :

Economic data:

Spoiler :

Luxuries:

Spoiler :

Religion:

Spoiler :

Tech tree(after architecture we'll hurry towards PP for Pisa if the RA's kick in b4, then we need to micro the tree a bit):

Spoiler :

Here's the policy tree(3 turns until next policy)

Spoiler :

 

[GreedysMaximus]

Siam is also good for the maritime food to grow - not just culture CS

Don't forget the bonus for GA purchases.

 

[aguliondew]

On immortal do not expect to get some the cultural wonders unless the city is focus only on hammers when it is being built. So many times I have been 3-5 turns away when someone else builds it. The biggest issue for me with a cultural victory is using my last couple of GA for golden ages. On immortal I expect to lose if around 330 turns if their is one big Civ on the other continent.

 

[GreedysMaximus]

The biggest issue for me with a cultural victory is using my last couple of GA for golden ages.

Yeah, this a very tricky question, i'm not sure if i made the right choice in my Siam game either. I started the GA after completing the Freedom tree in the early 200's i think, it wasn't long for a natural golden age, but the happiness was only 15 per turn(not suprising considering the lack of gold for merc CSs and the lack of unique luxes), with a civ like India the would be 3-4 times that. That was the biggest dilemma for me in the entire game - to settle the GA or be in a permanent GA for the next 70-80 turns, at that moment i had 7 GA tiles i believe.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Considering that GA now grant +20% culture, you should burn all late game artists into a GA. With OCC it is usually better to GA after the 6th tile improvement, but a larger CIV might even want to start after the 2nd or 3rd.

 

[alpaca]

Considering that GA now grant +20% culture, you should burn all late game artists into a GA. With OCC it is usually better to GA after the 6th tile improvement, but a larger CIV might even want to start after the 2nd or 3rd.

I'm unconvinced. Great Artists provide 25 culture (12 with freedom finisher, +50% for hermitage, +33% for broadcast tower, +25% for sistine) for the rest of the game. One of them is worth 12 turns of golden age (again including the freedom finisher) or 16 if you have CI. If you produce 500 base culture, another +20% modifier yields 100 culture per turn. Multiplied by 16 this is 1600 culture. So if just comparing raw culture, you would need 74 turns for the settled artist to break even in a vacuum, which means you should still settle any artists that pop before, say, turn 200.

Furthermore, in the late stages of the game you will often get more Great Artists than you can burn on golden ages what with the louvre and running 4-5 artists in every city. In that case, if you see that you will be producing another Great Artist before your current golden age ends (or shortly after), settling your GA instead of holding it makes a lot of sense as it will provide culture during the whole time. It also does not take natural golden ages into account which sometimes may take as few as 10 turns of waiting to trigger.