My first deity win! Rationalism cultural victory discussion

[Toastern]

So I decided to take the step up from playing Immortal, the advice and strategies here have really helped me get better at Civ5!

I decided to try for a "scientific" cultural victory (=Broadcast Towers and Cristo Redentor almost ASAP) after the discussions in wainy's cultural Persia LP thread (the relevant posts start at page 4). I knew I wanted 4 cities if location permitted to get a good balance of policy costs, gold, science, military and Legalism abuse.

The idea was to start generating GAs when a city got a Museum, get to Electricity ASAP using RAs and then bulb Telegraph, Radio and Mass Media using Oxford and Scientific Revolution. Cristo Redentor, Broadcast Towers and Sydney Opera House, yes please.

In short: I won according to plan, which is good! ...in turn 313, which is bad. I got lucky in that no AI won before that and that no AI took over the rest of my continent until right before I won, but on the other hand unlucky with an semi-early DoW from my closest neighbor who wouldn't have a reasonable peace until I destroyed him with arty and mech. inf.).

Victory!

Spoiler :

The good news is I think the win time could be improved a lot with better policy choices. Policy and build order was inspired by Tabarnak's 2nd city Oracle opening.
Liberty - Citizenship - Collective Rule
Tradition - Aristocracy

Capital build:
Scout - Monument - Scout - Granary - (Warriors) - Library - National College

2nd city build:
Monument - (buy Granary) - Library - The Oracle (got it around turn 65)

Tech order:
Pottery - Writing - Mining (for lux, can be Calendar) - Philosophy

After that, I got Calendar for additional luxes, teched towards Education, built the Hagia Sophia and rushed the Porcelain Tower with a GE from HS (in turn 93). Hard teched to Chivalry and bulbed Acoustics with the PT GS. Cue Legalism, Sistine Chapel and Hermitage. I had also signed RAs with the 3 AIs on my continent that didn't hate me.

So far so good, but then I kinda messed up my policy order because I wanted to have Scientific Revolution ready when needed after Electricity. I think a much better policy order after the ones outlined above would be:
Finish Liberty for GE for Sistine Chapel or the Louvre
Open Rationalism ASAP
All of Freedom
Finish Rationalism
All of Piety
Finish Tradition

After playing this, I don't think Scientific Revolution is necessary to have ready at Electricity, you can bulb either Radio or Telegraph with Oxford and easily get the other by just waiting for one of your other ~5 RAs to finish. And Mass Media for Sydney Opera House isn't urgent. I also think it's possible to get Stonehenge in the early build order instead of the warriors (at least with Calendar luxes) without compromising the opening too much, I didn't build it until turn 100-ish I think.

I definitely think it's worth taking both Rationalism and Piety, but it's not obvious how to best manage the switching. On the one hand: RAs are essential to this strategy, but on the other hand: Reformation and Piety finisher! Any thoughts?

Anyways, a screenshot recap of my game:
Start

Spoiler :

Education and HS finished by turn 92, GE ready for PT. Also about to kick Nebby out from my peninsula

Spoiler :

Turn 195, tech looking good with 3 RAs incoming in the next 10 rounds...

Spoiler :

...but social policies not so much, made some bad choices

Spoiler :

Peak culture 832 at turn 298, before I started replacing monuments with mines

Spoiler :

119 hammers in my capital at the turn of victory, you can also see the wonders built

Spoiler :

 

[ense7en]

Very impressive that you used Rationalism for culture win.

Never seen that, and it makes me want to try that now

 

[bhavv]

Very nice

I've not attempted immortal+ yet mostly because I don't like losing my wonder spam, but rationalism culture wins are very possible and strong.

Egypt are very good for this, but you should also try with Korea - they tech a decent amount quicker from getting several tech boosts plus more science from specialists.

 

[vexing]

strange, i get broadcast tower (+33% culture) and cristo redentor (-10% policy cost) equivalents much sooner by just getting them directly with the piety branch.

 

[Toastern]

Yeah, I'm not a very tight Deity player yet and I think I mismanaged a few things mid-game.

But it hit me on the way home today that this focus on science and RAs specifically would probably work almost as well with just the Porcelain Tower and no Rationalism. Mid-game culture would look much better and you could take Patronage instead and get some nice bonus science and other stuff that way. Not such a novel strategy if doing it that way though The alternative would be to smack down your closest neighbor with Swords early (since s/he's probably going to DoW you anyway) and focus even more on science after that, instead of constantly being on the defensive, as I was.

 

[S.K. Ren]

Well back when Piety gave 2 free policies and no finisher, the popular plan was to finish Piety and use the free policies to open Rationalism, ofc that was before Rationalism and RAs got overhauled as well.

 

[bhavv]

I never understood that, why finish Piety and open rationalism? They never worked together, you could have completed rationalism before then.

 

[S.K. Ren]

I never understood that, why finish Piety and open rationalism? They never worked together, you could have completed rationalism before then.

The reason was Piety sucked hard back then. So the ONLY reason to take it was the free 2 Policies it game. Now that all the trees have been redone, Piety is better but before it was just worth the free policies at the end, afterwards you didn't need it and Rationalism got you to the next Culture tech faster. But like I said that's not the case now it just used to be valid before.

 

[smallfish]

Kinda OT: Why is Oda so much more points lower than Askia, despite having a visible large chunk of the other continent under control?

e: derp

 

[Toastern]

Maybe that's what you derped about, but most of it isn't Oda, it's Alex.