learning new things the hard way, lol

[Hammer Rabbi]

i just finished a diff 5 culture victory with Russia. of course after finishing your 5 policy trees, you have to build the Utopia Project. and you CAN'T use a Great Engineer to speed it up. I didn't expect to get it to 1 turn away, but I expected it to drop from 32 turns to maybe 6 to 10 turns. that little function is grayed out so no dice on that one. i instead made a manufactory (+9 prod) reducing it to 24 turns.

i still had to survive 3 UN votes (already surviving 1 prior) and DIDN'T get the victory until 2002.

i've only gotten a couple cultural victories, so that was very new to me. and almost a screen puncher.

 

[CTH]

GE cant rush projects, ie the Utopia project, the manhattan project and the apollo project

 

[sav]

No matter how hard I try, I can't win a cultural victory, so you've got one up on me there!

 

[Derpy Hooves]

I've only finished a culture victory twice because unless I do it while conquering the world I get bored like crazy and if your capable of doing that you might as well go for a scientific or a domination victory.
Once I did it in a 1CC, most boring game I ever played.

 

[thadian]

in that type of sandbagging game you always become afraid to advance by conquest which makes you do less with your abilities then through attrition alone you become frustrated and bored.

i find myself in these types of games so often and i learned it happens when you get trapped in the start - you over-commit to one thing, and 20 turns later the whole world has 5 cities and 8 techs and you have 2 cities and 5 techs and you don't have any gold. you survive and stay alive but know you won't advance so you try to snake a peaceful victory of some type but it takes a while to happen and in that time any number of factors can cause you to lose - your just trying to stay viable somehow.

when this happens, i get more pleasure conceding and moving on to the next game where there is possibility on the horizon than one with a pre-determined result because i am too much ahead or farther behind everyone else.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i actually had no intention of playing for cultural victory but i got an insane starting situation. i was on a continent all to myself with 4 CS's around me. I can honestly say I've never played a game where I never had ONE DoW, but this game was the one. On King difficulty no less. i chose to use Russia's production capabilities to build, build, build while the other civs were warring.

and yeah, it took FOREVER to get the Utopia Project built. I already survived one UN vote before I had my 5th policy finished. I had to drastically adjust specialists and production to reduce it from 32 turns to 24 and fire-sale all my buildings to keep enough gold to sway votes. And to show how poor the AI was, Persia and Hiawatha were battling it out for votes and 4 of the civs had the Apollo Project completed by 1960 and only one of them built 1 booster before the end. I couldn't win until 2002. It was a victory, but it was kind of a hollow victory since I didnt lose to a science victory.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

btw, i did it with 6 cities and culture from 2 of the culture CS's. i did a typical liberty/tradition/patronage/freedom path with honor for the 5th tree.

oh yeah, i was surrounded by lots of Wine, so i decided to go with the monastery bonuses too.

 

[PhilBowles]

btw, i did it with 6 cities and culture from 2 of the culture CS's. i did a typical liberty/tradition/patronage/freedom path with honor for the 5th tree.

oh yeah, i was surrounded by lots of Wine, so i decided to go with the monastery bonuses too.

I did it mostly by having regular Great Artist spawns and spamming Landmarks around my cities, and fully exploring the Freedom policy branch (I'd fully expected to lose the game, since I was going exclusively for culture victory, until I'd got that 100% bonus from GP improvements).

And this too was a game in which I had no DoWs, and I had to survive two UN votes. The interesting thing about cultural victory is surely the challenge; it is the hardest victory condition to achieve by some way. But I agree that, since it constrains your play and tech development to a much greater extent than the other victory conditions, and you usually need to decide to go for that victory condition right at the start of the game, it's not the most interesting way to play the game.

EDIT: I also had, I think, 6 cities (playing as France) on King (difficulty 5).

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

I did it mostly by having regular Great Artist spawns and spamming Landmarks around my cities, and fully exploring the Freedom policy branch (I'd fully expected to lose the game, since I was going exclusively for culture victory, until I'd got that 100% bonus from GP improvements).

yeah, i definitely didnt exploit that enough. i only had 3 great artists the whole game. i've done both culture and science victories with a Great Person strategy to good success, but i didnt go that route in that game. i didnt build things like gardens and the wonders that boost GP rates. and i eventually only made units for garrisoning for the culture/happiness bonus. i was at something like 670 culture/turn when i was maxed. ive cracked 800 before but that was on easier difficulties.

 

[fat_tonle]

The only victory I can get other than science is cultural. I never scored a conquest victory on Emperor plus. Don't have the patience for it. Plus I play quick speed so you really have to maximize very turn.

 

[TPQ]

No matter how hard I try, I can't win a cultural victory, so you've got one up on me there!

The key is play an aggressive military game and just prioritize culture for buildings, wonders, city states and social policies. Build 3-4 cities of your own and have a puppet empire of 20-30 cities. Getting that social policy in honor that gives you +3 culture per garrisoned unit is pretty good doing this for example.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

The key is play an aggressive military game and just prioritize culture for buildings, wonders, city states and social policies. Build 3-4 cities of your own and have a puppet empire of 20-30 cities. Getting that social policy in honor that gives you +3 culture per garrisoned unit is pretty good doing this for example.

i've never tried that method. i've done it two ways now on emperor (this thread was different cuz its King and it was with Russia and it wasnt planned either, haha).

one was a Great Person strategy and using scientists to pop free techs and engineers to hurry wonders and using the free generals for golden ages. if i get the Temple of Artemis, which didnt happen every game, then i also get 100 gold for every GP popped which really added up over the length of a game. the artists were used for culture tile improvements and merchants were either used for golden ages or trade missions with friendly CS's. (some games i had no friendly CS's.) all of this is managed with 6-7 cities (no puppets or attacking) while maintaining a defense and building wonders/culture buildings. with 6 cities, you can pick 2 or 3 of them to specifically manage the specialists for the scientists/engineers/artists.

and choosing to finish policies in a particular order really helps. i have messed with which ones i go for and in what order so far and had different results. sometimes the game dictates what you need like picking a policy that gets your happiness out of trouble when you needed to pick another one for a long term bonus. regardless, Liberty, Piety, Freedom are required while the other two are up to you. I've done Lib/Piety/Free with Honor/Commerce and with Honor/Tradition. I've found that I think Commerce kind of sucks. doesnt boost gold nearly enough to be considered a commerce-specific tree, imo, and the naval bonuses are nicer for military aggression which i wasnt doing. the luxury happiness bonus in commerce was just less than the happiness bonus from Tradition.

and the 2nd method used Patronage/Tradition for the other 2 for the option of winning a UN vote. this was with 7 cities and 1 puppet. these were the benefits i saw from trying this:

1. you dont have to focus on science other than to keep up a military defense
2. CSs will gift you culture/tech/units and occasionally GPs (you have to be picky which ones you ally with based on what they can provide--lux's, units, etc.)
3. finishing the patronage tree makes it a little more difficult for other civs to win with a UN vote
4. you dont need to build the UN cuz another civ will do it for you (risky if none of them do it, i just havent been in a game when at least one of them didnt)

focusing less on Great Persons and relying more on CS culture/tech gifts was much harder to manage, imo. you have to never Open borders (so they cant scout your weakness) and occasionally refuse an RA from a military heavy civ or from a civ that just offered it to you cuz they might backstab with a DoW to waste your money and pay attention to who you DoF with for the reprisals from their enemies. you also have to pay attention to the alliance switches from CSs and keep on the Victory Progression info to see who is being the bigger Diplo threat. the only reason i tried this was because i wanted to see if i could get a UN win because i needed to change my win options. it didnt work out that way, but it helped to survive the UN votes while the Utopia Project was building. Having enough money to pull off a UN win was just too difficult, but Patronage made the money gifts go further. (its also much harder being brain tired at 4am after 5 hours of playing, haha. this game has ruined my sleeping schedule.)

(geez, i didnt intend this reply to be big bricks of strategy, but there you have it.)

ive played for all of the win types except military wins which is my next task, to try and figure out those particulars. thats why ive never used your strategy, im just not familiar enough with how domination victs work.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

The key is play an aggressive military game and just prioritize culture for buildings, wonders, city states and social policies. Build 3-4 cities of your own and have a puppet empire of 20-30 cities. Getting that social policy in honor that gives you +3 culture per garrisoned unit is pretty good doing this for example.

nevermind that giant brick of tactics. i just read maybe 7 of your posts in other threads that i was subbed to and you seem quite beholden to military tactics and offense. i still need to learn that side of the game.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

The military part is really not that hard, let me give you my opening:
First rush to whatever tech you to get your lux working, start off with 2 scouts on huge or large, 1 for anything smaller, make sure to send em out in opposite directions to get as much ruins as you can, you can then either hard build a worker or just steal one from a CS, declare war, take worker, make peace, all in the same turn.
As far as policies, go for tradition opener and then, if you can start the 'henge get the 15% wonders production bonus and get it ASAP, if not get the free settler from liberty, get this one after the tradition one if you get that first.
If you think your taking too long to get to calendar for 'henge because you need to connect furs or marble just rush straight for Oracle, in the long run it's better for your culture anyway, and in contrast to the Oracle you can always take Stonehenge from an AI and only miss out on the culture bonus up to that point.
After oracle, rush to iron, get an iron city if necessary and get at least 2 catapults, at this point you should have enough money from selling lux, CS and ruins that you can just rushbuy both, maybe a couple of swordsman if your iron source can support it, make sure to keep your first warrior alive because you can upgrade it straight into swordsman once your iron is connected for a small upgrade price, if your can't make catapults yet a couple of swords can easily take a city as well, altough at a somewhat greater risk, make sure you have a couple of archers if you go this path.
From here on out it should snowball, your units will get better with the EXP, the conquering will give you a good amount of money and lux, make sure to only annex cities you plan to turn into huge culture cities or if they already are such due to wonders or such, if they're bad and you can't take the happiness penalty (ie they don't have any useful resources), just raze them, whenever it becomes available, pick up piety and later in the game I love Autocracy if I have relatively large empire (especially Police State).

If you can, don't get more then 4 annexed/settled cities before opera house, keep the tradition policy where you get a free culture building for the first 4 cities until all of them have a monument and a temple, this will all give them a free Opera House, giving you the ability to start the Hermitage in your strongest culture city for a pretty massive 50% culture bonus.
Also try to get at least a single wonder in most of your cities, this will give them 33% culture bonus when you take the apropriate piety policy.

Not sure what your problem is with warring, once you get a strong core of around 6 or 7 units you should pretty much crush everything, remember that the most important thing is to never lose your units, especially the siege weapons and rangers, you can lose a meelee unit from time to time, but they should be easy to rushbuy at that point.

In the midgame, make sure to build/rushbuy some libraries and such, see how far the opponents are in tech (get the infoaddict mod if you don't have it) and make sure you stay ahead, if you've been conquering you can fairly easily get back in the lead by building science buildings in your new cities.

Doubt you really need Autocracy, I just like it for the happiness boost and the wonderful combo that religion and regimes make.

 

[TPQ]

nevermind that giant brick of tactics. i just read maybe 7 of your posts in other threads that i was subbed to and you seem quite beholden to military tactics and offense. i still need to learn that side of the game.

The military route is probably the least skillful route to any victory. It's also one of the more fun aspects of Civ5, which is why I usually go for it. It gives you something fun to do whilst you wait for great people, techs, social policies, buildings etc to finish.

The thing is, every victory condition in the game is assisted by successful war and with the correct social polices and lots of trade posts and trade routes, happiness and gold are never an issue. 3-4 cities and 30-40 puppets is a recipe for success. In fact, it's hard to loose once you carve out a massive puppet empire and manage it properly.

My toughest games are the ones where I force myself to play peacefully. You really need planning and management for those. Aggressive war is easy in comparison imo.

 

[chazzycat]

planning a golden age or two to coincide with building Utopia is definitely a good strategy (same for spaceship parts).

re: cultural victories, sure you can use your military to make it easier. 3-4 own cities and a few puppets is probably the ideal size. But personally, I believe this goes against the spirit of cultural victory, and so if I go for culture, I try not to do it that way. To win culture peacefully a few things come to mind:

1) OCC with Korea can be really easy if you know how to use RAs. Put all GP focus on artists...with Korea you get +2 science anyway from them and also from the landmarks. Korea + RAs + 10 landmarks + freedom finisher = win. Defend yourself with hwacha.
2) Using city states. Siam is the best for this...basically you just focus on gold & cultural city states. A puppet empire is still ideal for this strategy though, since they provide extra gold.
3) Going crazy with wonders. Best with Egypt and marble...expand to 4 cities...get 4 free burial tombs to power early growth...get at least 1 wonder in all 4 cities, then the rest in your capital. That is the best combo to max the freedom/piety bonuses.

 

[PhilBowles]

i've never tried that method. i've done it two ways now on emperor (this thread was different cuz its King and it was with Russia and it wasnt planned either, haha).

one was a Great Person strategy and using scientists to pop free techs and engineers to hurry wonders and using the free generals for golden ages. if i get the Temple of Artemis, which didnt happen every game, then i also get 100 gold for every GP popped which really added up over the length of a game.

Mausoleum of Helicarnassus...

Temple is good (+10% growth and 25% reduction in ranged unit cost), but it's steadily fallen down my priority list as I've got more of a handle on the Civ V versions of the Wonders. Mausoleum is probably the Wonder that rewards a specific strategy more than any other - with a GP-heavy focus you can be producing them every few turns, and 100 gold is a useful amount to gain for free at any point in the game.

the artists were used for culture tile improvements and merchants were either used for golden ages or trade missions with friendly CS's. (some games i had no friendly CS's.)

Merchants also increase influence with CSes (unless you're at war with them), so can make CSes friendly...

and choosing to finish policies in a particular order really helps. i have messed with which ones i go for and in what order so far and had different results. sometimes the game dictates what you need like picking a policy that gets your happiness out of trouble when you needed to pick another one for a long term bonus. regardless, Liberty, Piety, Freedom are required while the other two are up to you. I've done Lib/Piety/Free with Honor/Commerce and with Honor/Tradition. I've found that I think Commerce kind of sucks. doesnt boost gold nearly enough to be considered a commerce-specific tree, imo, and the naval bonuses are nicer for military aggression which i wasnt doing. the luxury happiness bonus in commerce was just less than the happiness bonus from Tradition.

Commerce has some useful stuff, but also some junk - mainly useful because the bonus for opening the policy branch is a big boost to gold output in the capital, which is important if your capital is gold-specialised. I get it most games.

As a side note, I feel there is a balance issue with Patronage (as someone who's exploited it). If you use CSes at all (as you should), the bonus you get for opening the policy tree (basically equivalent to giving you the Greek UA) is by far the most powerful of the opening policies in any branch. I think that should probably be the benefit you get for finishing rather than starting Patronage, since otherwise it's just much too easy to build up influence in increments of 250 gold every so often, knowing that you can wait for a long time and still gain a substantial advantage with your next cash injection. I played my last game as Greece, and it was practically impossible for the AI to break my hold on CSes other than by eliminating them through warfare.

and the 2nd method used Patronage/Tradition for the other 2 for the option of winning a UN vote. this was with 7 cities and 1 puppet. these were the benefits i saw from trying this:

1. you dont have to focus on science other than to keep up a military defense

Not really true. The UN requires you to have completed the majority of techs in three tech branches to unlock Globalization. Then you have the build time and the 10-turn wait. So unless you're relying on someone else building the UN (which they shouldn't if you have a diplomacy advantage) you need to tech fairly hard. I was ahead of my rivals by a long way in an Emperor game technologically recently, entering the Modern Era before the 20th Century, and I finally completed the UN in 1999 having started it as soon as I got Globalization.

2. CSs will gift you culture/tech/units and occasionally GPs (you have to be picky which ones you ally with based on what they can provide--lux's, units, etc.)

One thing I found was just how useful the science bonus from allied CSes is with that Patronage policy.

3. finishing the patronage tree makes it a little more difficult for other civs to win with a UN vote
4. you dont need to build the UN cuz another civ will do it for you (risky if none of them do it, i just havent been in a game when at least one of them didnt)

In my last game, had I not built it, no one else would have been close to the necessary tech level in time, and having denied Arabia and India all the city-states, both apparently gave up any designs on a diplomatic victory.

 

[PhilBowles]

The military route is probably the least skillful route to any victory. It's also one of the more fun aspects of Civ5, which is why I usually go for it. It gives you something fun to do whilst you wait for great people, techs, social policies, buildings etc to finish.

I have to confess, while I approach victory peacefully in most games (though am planning Songhai domination for my next...), and find the game as a whole far more engaging to play that way, I found my last end-game war with Mongolia an unreasonable amount of fun (not least because nukes and crashing aircraft have great graphics and sound effects) - I always dreaded late-game in earlier editions of Civ, where so much came down to just duplicating buildings and improvements across half a million cities while tediously throwing stacks of doom at your enemies.

Though my experience with Oda (who turns up in most of my games) persuades me that the more continual war needed to actually execute victory conditions through aggression is just boring. The final Greek-Mongol war I mentioned was essentially a sideshow that gave me something to do while the UN completed and counted down to its vote.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

[PhilBowles: Mausoleum of Helicarnassus...

Temple is good (+10% growth and 25% reduction in ranged unit cost), but it's steadily fallen down my priority list as I've got more of a handle on the Civ V versions of the Wonders. Mausoleum is probably the Wonder that rewards a specific strategy more than any other - with a GP-heavy focus you can be producing them every few turns, and 100 gold is a useful amount to gain for free at any point in the game./QUOTE]

yeah, i meant Halicarnassus. I just got that expansion 2 weeks ago in the steam sales and was still confusing a few of the new wonders i was seeing in-game. and yeah, i only go for it if i m doing a GP strategy. otherwise i dont bother.

im playing in immortal now and im learning i pretty much have no chance of completing any early wonder outside of the ones the AI never goes for like Heroic Epic. plus im trying the "dont reload cuz the results arent what you liked" approach. i wanna see if i can roll with punches of unlucky rolls, sniped wonders, and unfortunate clicks.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

The military route is probably the least skillful route to any victory. It's also one of the more fun aspects of Civ5, which is why I usually go for it. It gives you something fun to do whilst you wait for great people, techs, social policies, buildings etc to finish.

The thing is, every victory condition in the game is assisted by successful war and with the correct social polices and lots of trade posts and trade routes, happiness and gold are never an issue. 3-4 cities and 30-40 puppets is a recipe for success. In fact, it's hard to loose once you carve out a massive puppet empire and manage it properly.

My toughest games are the ones where I force myself to play peacefully. You really need planning and management for those. Aggressive war is easy in comparison imo.

Interesting perspective. I learned the game on easier diffs and did non-military vics exclusively cuz i thought they were easiest. Science has been what im most successful at and (until Immortal) Ive been able to do strictly non-military strategies. The bad things i learned from doing that is that it took me to get into King before I knew allied CSs had any value at all or that puppets were better than annexes in ICS or that you got a bunch of gold from building roads to those puppets.

Ive gotten military vics on Warlord but not any higher. Pretty sad, really.

I think some of us definitely have a better time a grasping certain strategies over others. for me military and diplo are the hardest and science and culture are the easiest. there are people who certainly have the exact opposite view of the game.