Policy cost increases per city

[Thalassicus]

Updated July 19th 2011

Hopefully this thread will clear up any confusion about how policies work. The game's information is somewhat misleading about the cost of adding new cities to our empire. It's important to distinguish between these:

• Cost = culture per policy
• Income = culture per turn
• Rate = policies per turn

Each new city adds to both cost and income, altering rate in a complex way. In this post I'll talk about:

1. Founding vs not founding a city.
2. Occupation vs puppeting.
3. How the math works.
4. Policy cost difference between VEM and vanilla.

The conclusions are:

• Tall and wide empires are equally capable of cultural victory, so long as they're peaceful.
• Wide empires research faster, while tall empires get policies quicker.
• Occupation is better for , while puppets are better for .

Playstyles

Here's the advantages the 3 Civ archetypes have in VEM. Policy generation is balanced between all these playstyles, and each of the 3 early policy trees have ways of earning culture. Click for details.

• Peaceful - Tall
• Peaceful - Wide
• Conquerors

Reading the Tables

Each table in the thread contains this information:

• Culture from:
  • World Wonders (WW)
  • City States
  • Special sources like Mandate of Heaven or national wonders
  • Landmarks
• Per-city average culture revenue
• Per-city cost expense
• Number of cities
• Policy rate

A rate of -5% for the 4th city means policies come 5% slower when you add your 4th city. This is not affected by policy cost (see math section at the end of the post). You could be on your 1st or 30th policy, and the effect of adding a new city to the empire will be the same.



- Founding a City -

Culture Victory

Here's a decent mid-game situation when going for a culture victory:

• At least one or two world wonders.
• Half dozen cultural citystates.
• Some culture from Mandate of Heaven and National Wonders.
• Half dozen Landmarks.
• Tradition, Liberty, and Piety trees filled out.
• Maximum available culture buildings in every city.

When pursuing the fastest possible culture victory, founding and developing a new city always slows policy generation. However, adding a city also adds to other things like research rate. Both of these end up cancelling out, so tall and wide are equally capable of achieving a culture victory. It's important the game is a peaceful one, however, for warfare has many damaging effects when going for a culture victory (such as fewer Declarations of Friendship available).

Click here for details on tall vs wide culture victories.

Spoiler :

Conquest Victory

Here's my typical situation in a conquest game:

• Military Caste policy earned.
• Monuments and Garrisons in every city.
• 25 from per-player sources that can't be duplicated for each city: citystates, wonders, etc.

In this situation founding and developing a new city has no effect policy rate. However, it does drain the empire until a Garrison and Monument are present. If policies are important to you, get these quickly. If you can afford to get Temples in all your cities, each new city will actually improve policy rate.

Spoiler :

- Occupying a Puppet -

Now let's consider the same scenario described in founding a city, but this time use it to determine the effect of occupation. Puppets generate 25% less culture, so puppet → occupied is less income change than founding a city. However this only applies if the puppet governor has actually built cultural buildings already. Here are the overall effects on policy rate:

Spoiler :

Something important to point out is if the puppet hasn't built cultural buildings and has no garrison, it's the same as not having a city at all. Conquered cities lose all cultural buildings and puppets are forced onto a gold focus, so they lag behind in building other types of buildings.

If you can't occupy for a while and the governor builds a temple, policy generation will indeed be 3-5% faster if we leave the cities as puppets. Puppets generate less science, however, so we're better at research if we occupy. It's a tradeoff between (occupation) and (puppets).

Here's the combined effect of occupation:

• Advantages
  • Occupation increases from population.
  • Allows control of city focus and production.
• Disadvantages
  • Temporary happiness drop.
  • Slower policy generation.
  • Increases cost of National Wonders.

- Technical Details -

You can play around with the table by downloading the Civ V Modding spreadsheet I use. It's in Excel format, which can also be opened in LibreOffice (which I highly recommend trying).

Modifiers in Civ are additive. If the cost of a policy is 1000, adding cities increases it to 1300, then 1600, 1900, etc. It's adding 30% of the base policy cost for each city, not multiplying by 1.3.

Ironically though, base policy cost cancels out and can be ignored.

This is the formula for the increase in #turns before and after a "change." The "change" can be either founding a city or occupying a puppet.



c = cost
i = income
p = per-player income
n = number of cities
m = modifier for culture before the change (0% for founding cities, 75% for puppets).



- Policy Costs -

Compared to vanilla, this is the cumulative cost of policies in VEM:



So for example, it takes -15% less culture to get 8 policies in VEM than Vanilla, and +70% more culture to achieve a culture victory.

The first few policies are more expensive in VEM than vanilla. The reason for this is VEM palaces give 2 (up from 1), to reduce the impact of other early culture sources:

• Monument
• Ancient ruins
• Tradition/Liberty/Honor opening policies
• French trait

Later policies are cheaper because the total number of trees required for the Utopia Project is increased to 6, compared to vanilla's 5. Midgame culture sources are much more powerful in VEM than vanilla, however. The Opera House gives +50%, and the Museum gives 0.5 per population. The result is the time a culture victory can be achieved is approximately the Industrial era in VEM (was Modern in Vanilla).

 

[bigfatjonny]

I had noticed that the base cost for each policy has changed, could you post the table for the base cost. How is this influenced by the map size and game speed?

Ie, on Epic, King, Small Fractal it is (with one city)
35, 60, 110 etc

What is the formula for the increase?


This is a big change from Vanilla where it was;
30, 45, 60, 70, 85

I know that this was changed as the culture buildings later on give a lot more culture income. However it means that if you dont concentrate on culture (ie Warload with no culture buildings) then you get a lot less early policies.

The new Liberty policies that give units, worker, settler & great person are now very powerful, but you really have to put some work in to get that third policy quickly now.

 

[Thalassicus]

That's strange, though I reduced policy costs.

The values are:

25. = BASE_POLICY_COST
5.0 = POLICY_COST_INCREASE_TO_BE_EXPONENTED
1.7 = POLICY_COST_EXPONENT
5.0 = POLICY_COST_VISIBLE_DIVISOR

I'd thought the formula is:

round( gamespeed * (base + (increase*policiesBought) ^ exponent), visible_divisor)

The value I changed is policy_cost_increase, which I lowered from 6 (vanilla) to 5 in "BP - General.xml". I'd just assumed that lowering a cost value would lower costs. It seemed so straightforward I didn't even check to see if it was working as intended!

Map size no longer affects policies, Firaxis changed that in some patch. I must have a mistake somewhere else in the mod causing policies to be higher than intended... I checked and none of those values are included elsewhere in the mod. I'll do some testing to figure out where the problem is. Maybe that's not the formula, and the cost increase is actually a divisor?



Update:
Are you sure you wrote down the epic gamespeed vanilla values? On epic speed vanilla I got:

35
65
135
240
370
520
700
895

The reason I want to reduce policy costs is because we now fill out 6 trees for a cultural victory, up from 5. That's a 20% increase in policies, so we needed a matching increase in culture income, in order to still complete culture victories at a decent time. Increasing income +20% is the same as reducing costs -15% (1 / 1.2 = 0.85), so I reduced policy costs 15% from 6 to 5.

Basically, it takes the same effort to get to 6 trees as it used to require for 5. (Actually faster because of the buffed culture buildings and artists.) I did this because I think policies are a fun way to specialize our empire and I wanted to get more use out of them. Culture victories also have a much lower score than conquest or science victories, so I wanted to let cultural players achieve victory sooner and get a higher score.

 

[Stalker0]

Thal, while I agree with your math, I don't agree with some of the premises.

I think you are dismissing too easily the following factors:

1) The delay between founding a new city and getting all of its culture structures up and running. Even with purchasing that is a significant investment.

2) The culture bonuses in your "culture cities" that cannot be replicated in all cities.


Lets first go through the various cultural bonuses that can be acquired in all cities:

Monument (2)
Temple (3)
Liberty (1)
Opera House (50%)
Museum (1/2 population)
Broadcast Tower (100%)
6 artist specialists (18)

Now if we are talking about a normal city, its probably going to have a population of around 12..and its unlikely to be able to support 6 artist specialists and do all of the building and other things it needs to do. So we will say it holds 3 artist specialists. If anyone strongly disagrees with these assumptions let me know.

With those numbers, we get: 2 (mon)+3 (temp)+1 (lib)+6 (museum)+9 (spec) = 21 * 250% = 52.5 culture.

So in a normal city that has still been heavily built to produce culture, 52.5 is what you get.


Now lets look at our prime culture producing city in a late game phase. In addition to the above, we also gain the following:

Wonder (10) - I'm assuming a few wonders, maybe a bonus like stonehenge, etc).
National Epic - 50%
Hermitage - 5, 100%
Freedom (with a wonder) - 100%
Landmarks (5 landmarks * 6 culture = 30) - I actually consider 5 landmarks to be low, but I'm leaving some pad for some other assumptions that might favor the big city.
Specialists: Gained 4 new specialist slots.

Now with our big culture producing city, I'll assume a nice big population of 28, and utilization of all 10 specialist slots. This city produces:

2 (mon)+3(temp)+1(lib)+14(museum)+30(landmarks)+30(spec)+5(hermitage) = 95 * 500% = 475


Now, we have our big culture city, and generally in a culture victory you try to get at least one other city well specialized for culture. He will have a wonder to get the freedom bonus. He will also use all of his 6 specialist slots, and have a population of 24. So for the most part he's the same as a normal city, but has a few bumps. His culture:

2(mon)+3(temp)+1(lib)+12(museum)+18(spec)+1(wonder) = 37 * 350% = 129.5


So here's the summary:

Prime Culture: 475
Secondary Culture: 129.5
Other Cities: 52.5

Now lets assume each city produces the same amount of culture. We will take all of the other culture out as "starting culture". This will allows us to do the same comparison that Thal has done before.

So that's 475 - 52.5 = 422.5.
129.5 - 52.5 = 77
City State Culture: I'm going to assume 18 culture per turn from city states. I generally get more in later games, but again I'm going to pad a bit.

So overall, our "starting culture" is:

422.5+77+18 = 517.5

So using a city value of 52.5, and a starting value of 517.5. We will again assume representation in the equation. The chart below shows 2 percentages. The first one is the difference from the previous city to the next one. The second column shows the overall difference between that many cities and just having 1 city in terms of policy cost.

Spoiler :

1	0.00%	0.00%
2	9.88%	9.88%
3	7.59%	18.22%
4	6.04%	25.36%
5	4.93%	31.54%
6	4.10%	36.94%
7	3.47%	41.69%
8	2.98%	45.92%
9	2.59%	49.70%
10	2.27%	53.09%
11	2.01%	56.16%
12	1.79%	58.95%
13	1.60%	61.50%
14	1.44%	63.83%
15	1.31%	65.98%
16	1.19%	67.96%
17	1.09%	69.79%
18	1.00%	71.49%
19	0.92%	73.07%
20	0.85%	74.55%

So here's one way to think about these numbers:

If I have 5 cities vs 10 cities, it takes about 20% longer to get new policies.

And again, that is assuming you took all the time to build every culture building you could in every city, that at least 3 population is being used for specialists in every city.

Now if we use Thal's original assumption that most cities will produce about 26 culture, then you get the following numbers:

Spoiler :

1	0.00%	0.00%
2	14.99%	14.99%
3	11.99%	28.77%
4	9.88%	41.50%
5	8.32%	53.28%
6	7.13%	64.21%
7	6.20%	74.39%
8	5.45%	83.89%
9	4.83%	92.78%
10	4.32%	101.11%
11	3.89%	108.93%
12	3.52%	116.29%
13	3.21%	123.24%
14	2.94%	129.79%
15	2.70%	135.99%
16	2.49%	141.87%
17	2.30%	147.44%
18	2.14%	152.73%
19	1.99%	157.76%
20	1.86%	162.56%

So in this scenario, 5 cities vs 10 cities is around a 50% difference!


Now granted I am looking at a late game scenario that allows for a lot of culture magnification. On the other hand, I am giving up the argument that every city will not be able to build every culture building instantly....there will be a lag time there.

So since those assumptions are there, you can debate when in the game more cities starts to become a significant hindrance. However, I think my analysis concretely shows that there is definitely a point where more unpuppeted cities is bad for cultural wins.

 

[Thalassicus]

The scenario you analyzed is the end-game of all buildings and policies available, and it's important to consider when empires reach that point.

Most city-founding is done in the first half of the game (ancient-medieval). For this period the only massable culture buildings are monuments and temples, and it's very easy to get both of those in newly-founded cities. This is especially true now that I reduced the Monument purchase cost modifier to the same as other buildings, so it's only 170. Freedom, opera house, museum, and broadcast tower are available in the second half of the game. By this point our cities are built and developed and it's easy to get the new buildings.

In the first half of the game the two empires are basically the same, since player-culture is low and there's only two buildings to construct. In the endgame the smaller empire will indeed have a cost advantage. However, a player with more cities will reach that point faster. More cities means more , which means access to new culture buildings sooner, leading to higher culture income.



Blue = large empire, high , new culture sources sooner.
Green = small empire, lower income, but also lower costs.

This is why we have to consider multiple scenarios and variables; it's the relationships between all these scenarios you and I have described that's important. I posted tables describe many different situations for this reason. The game is complex, and can't be analyzed completely with any one set of variables. Since Temples are so early, I didn't cover this because I don't feel the two empires diverge significantly until the second half of the game, and I wanted to focus just on the cost-vs-rate misconception of the user interface's policy tooltip.


In short, I stand by my conclusion that small and large empires are equally balanced for cultural victories. The higher costs of a large empire in endgame are balanced by reaching it sooner, so both playstyles will probably have the same score (don't forget population and land area are also factors in score). I'll admit it's difficult to know for sure, though. Even if we play several games with both playstyles, the final scores of either strategy still depend on circumstances of a particular game.

 

[Stalker0]

This is why we have to consider multiple scenarios and variables; it's the relationships between all these scenarios you and I have described that's important.

I agree with this. However, you are making the conclusion that both small and large empires can accomplish a cultural win just as easily. I think you have to show more than the early game ability to maintain culture with many cities in order to do that.

Overall, we have the following factors for a cultural win scenario:

1) Early game, it is possible to add cities without dropping culture.
2) Late game, a large number of cities becomes a hindrance to culture.
3) More cities = more science = ability to acquire new cultural buildings faster.
4) There is a certain amount of lag time between when a city is first founded and its ability to generate its full amount of culture. That lag time is between 0 (for all purchased buildings) to a very large amount if all buildings must be built.

Of course, the ultimate question is: how do all of these factors add up?

I do agree that the science bump will help, how much I don't know. However, I don't think the lag time can be dismissed. It takes a lot of gold to buy all the culture buildings AND be able to keep a lot of cultured CS allies (which you want to do for a nice big culture bump).

Now you could wait to build a new city until you can build every culture building, but then again...the longer you wait till you get your cities the less gold/science impact it has.

I can only speak from my own playtest experience at this point. I have tried a few culture wins with larger empires, its always failed miserably. Now I am not generally a big empire player...I prefer "TALL" empires, so I'm not the best to know for certain.

But overall, I think a deeper look needs to be done until we can announce that large empires are just as cultural.

 

[Seek]

Another thing to point out is that I've had puppets stop building anything if there are only cultural buildings left to build and no possible border expansion available. At this point I agree that it may be better to annex, but I'm apt to agree with Stalker that the top post is somewhat misleading: the time it takes to get the culture buildings up can make an enormous difference. Although with TBC it may be more viable to win culturally with a larger number of cities, it's still more *efficient* with fewer.

 

[Thalassicus]

I purchase all culture buildings because they're highly cost-effective in the → conversion. Compare the purchase modifier of buildings in any given timeperiod. With the exception of Aqueducts, we get more bang for our buck economically if we build other buildings and buy culture, so I do this even though I'm normally a conquest-victory player.

I'll try a large-empire culture victory in my next game... I wonder which leader would be best at it?

 

[Stalker0]

I purchase all culture buildings because they're highly cost-effective in the → conversion. Compare the purchase modifier of buildings in any given timeperiod. With the exception of Aqueducts, we get more bang for our buck economically if we build other buildings and buy culture, so I do this even though I'm normally a conquest-victory player.

I'll try a large-empire culture victory in my next game... I wonder which leader would be best at it?

I'm almost done with my latest play test. I'm using arabia, I figured the big gold will help me do all the purchasing I need to do (if arabia can't do it, no one can).

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[Thalassicus]

At the very least, playtesting will help identify ways we can better reach the goals of the first post, whatever the outcome.

Another leader who might be good is Washington, he's the ideal rapid-expander and protectionist. Or we could take the opposite path and do a one-city build up through Monarchy to get Stonehenge at turn 25, followed by a National College at turn 50. I tested that out but didn't go further with it. The real question is which of these results in better long-term success?

Option A: Culture then expand:

1. Legalism → Landmark
2. Monarchy → Stonehenge
3. National College and/or Epic
4. Citizenship/Rep
5. Expand

Option B: Expand then culture:

1. Legalism
2. Citizenship/Rep
3. Expand
4. buy Monuments
5. Aristocracy → free Temples
6. National College and/or Epic
7. Monarchy → Stonehenge (if still available), a College/Epic, or something else?

Option C: Expand then science, push culture in midgame?

There's also the question of what we spend the great engineer on. Stonehenge for a quick culture boost, manufactory for long-term effect, or a quick National College or Epic... or even the Great Library for a classic Civil Service slingshot.

 

[Stalker0]

If you have the GE I would definitely get stonehenge. That bonus culture is something you just can't get anywhere else.

I can compensate for the manufactory by getting more gold elsewhere, but culture is always at a premium in your capital citiy.

 

[Seek]

The Oracle is nothing to shake your fist at either: a free SP saves you thousands of culture from the lategame. One could argue that it ultimately yields more culture than Stonehenge. (and the sci GPP isn't too shabby either!)

 

[Stalker0]

Thal, I almost completed my recent playtest, attempting to do a culture victory with a larger empire. Unfortunately the patch stopped my game, but I at least got some datapoints to consider.

I was Arabia, standard fractal map on King difficulty, no other adjustments.


My general policy strategy I outlined in a previous post. Basically bouncing between tradition and liberty. Got the early GA, then pushed to get my free settler, then went for representation.

I built 3 cities as a base, got them temples with monarchy and then got representation.

First hurdle I noticed, the cost of temples made it unfeasible for me to buy them and a monument in my future cities. I just wasn't generating enough gold at this point. I tried waiting for a bit, but I quickly realized that waiting to have enough gold to instant buy a monument and temple in my new cities would meaning waiting so long I don't think the new cities would provide me that much advantage.

So I purchased the monument and then had to build some of the my temples the long way.

Through a series of conquests and settlements I acquired 10 cities. I eventually courthoused my puppeted cities and annexed everything. So I had a 10 city civ pumping culture.

When acoustics came around, I was able to pick up the sistine chapel, which was a great boost for my larger civ. However, I was still too low on cash to purchase a lot of opera houses right away, and was forced to build many of them slowly.

However, by the time I was getting to museum's, my economic situation was changing. My gold was starting to flow, and I was able to pick up several commerce policies. With that I was able to buy several museum's right away, and was generally able to buy a new one every 2-3 turns. That meant I was able to get the hermitage in fairly short order.

One positive I did note was because I had max artist specialist in nearly every city, I was getting GAs a bit more frequent than normal.

The game wound up stopping at turn 347, with 3.5 policy trees filled out. That is definitely lower than I am used to by that point in the game, and as I was moving into radio I've already shown that the small capital focused civ tends to get better and better at this point.


My general assessment was that the science advantage of the larger civ was completely overshadowed by the cost in gold and time building all of the culture buildings in my cities. I just couldn't get the culture in these cities up fast enough to justify the policy expense of that city.

I'm going to try another playtest and play around a bit more, but my first playtest did not look hopeful for large civ equality.

 

[Thalassicus]

When acoustics came around, I was able to pick up the sistine chapel, which was a great boost for my larger civ. However, I was still too low on cash to purchase a lot of opera houses right away, and was forced to build many of them slowly.

How much income did you have at that point? At Acoustics was at about 400 gpt and able to purchase an opera house in each of my 8 cities right away (saved up a few turns prior). Right now I'm mid-industrial with 1,000gpt, 4 1/2 policy trees filled out, all buildings purchased in every city, running artist specialists everywhere while idling on the Wealth process. I haven't finished the game yet though, so it remains to be seen what the final score will be.

I didn't have a military, barracks, or go on any conquests. I befriended my neighbors and built just a few camel archers, enough to deter attacks and occasionally swat barbarians.

 

[Stalker0]

I don't remember how much exactly but it was definitely a lot less than that

On the one hand, I had to engage in a lot more war than you did. I was double attacked early on and was forced to build armies to defend.

On the other, I may be spending too much effort on growth to maximize science (which I think we both believe is the main advantage of a large civ culture style), but then I don't have the gold to build the infrastructure when I need to.

That's something I may test out in my next game. Land cities are all villages, and I let coastal cities do the growing.

 

[Thalassicus]

​

I've completed my game as Harun al-Rashid on epic continents emperor normal settings. For those who have read about my past games on Immortal, the reason I now play on Emperor is due to the shift in difficulty settings I did a month ago. Emperor in the mod is basically about as hard as vanilla's Immortal.

I started on one side of a continent adjacent to Hiawatha and Montezuma, with Augustus and Askia across the continent. My opener was Option A style. I got two cities and ran down Tradition to Monarchy, used the great engineer on Stonehenge. I then built a national college and epic in my capital. After doing so I expanded to 5 cities by going down the Liberty tree, and focused on population and production as usual. After getting myself situated, in medieval era I expanded to 8 cities by filling in gaps left from my initial expansion. I was attacked twice by Montezuma during the medieval period, but camel archers were sufficient to hold off the attackers until Monte signed a cease fire. I didn't run any artists or other specialists in my cities until the early Industrial era.

I was at about 400 gpt by the Renaissance with much of Tradition, Liberty, Piety, and Commerce filled out. Golden ages bumped it up to 600gpt I was also trading about ten resources for 8gpt each (in instant cash payments). Once I reached Archaeology I bought museums and switched over all cities to artists, started pumping out great artists. I made landmarks until the Modern era, then started using the great artists on golden ages for gold and production boosts. The extended golden age in late game was especially important to build the Utopia Project. Near the end of the game, the world turned on my neighbor Hiawatha, so I used a few ships to bombard his capital and boost me to 9 cities.

I achieved victory on turn 351 in 1650 AD with a score of 2743. I had income of 1300/turn and 1100/turn (1600/turn during the continuous golden age at the end of the game). My score for this 9-city game was lower than my typical Domination victories, but 54% higher than my 5-city 1775-score cultural victory as Kamehameha. The highest Civ 5 score I've achieved was an 8074 Domination victory as Gandhi on turn 357. (Gandhi is extremely powerful for conquest since warmongers are usually low on happiness.)

Considering how my culture-victory score is still only a fraction of my domination high score, I'll continue searching for ways to boost cultural victories.

It's possible that I could have gotten a higher score with only 5 cities, but I doubt it, considering I did relatively well in my Kamehameha game and yet got a much lower score. I also personally find it more enjoyable to have a larger, more complex empire. It's more challenging to manage and defend. With a well-executed strategy, peacefully (but aggressively!) filling all available space with 8-10 cities should be just as viable as remaining at 5 cities. By aggressively I mean dropping cities close to neighbors, and using ranged mobile UUs to defend ourselves. Gandhi, Ramesses, and Harun are good at this. Babylon is also good due to strong walls and archers. It's important to make as many friends as possible to deter war and speed up research. Coastal cities are most valuable because they're easily defensible, and provide large amounts of food and gold.

In the end, the goal is for either an expansive or small empire playstyle to be successful. The important thing is that people can have fun playing the way they like to play, and not feel penalized for it.

 

[Stalker0]

Thal I am definately not as good a player as you, so I have to ask:

How did you get such large cities and have all of that gold? Did you get a massive amount of maritime allies?

 

[Thalassicus]

I only had size 15-20 cities until the Industrial era. That's when we get Hospitals and I picked up the freedom policy that makes specialists half food cost, which together provided a big boost. I started buying up citystates when gold-production outpaced new things to build (the modern era doesn't really have many new buildings to construct, mostly units). In my cities I had about 40 from terrain on average and 11 from MCS. The coastal cities had about 50 from terrain since coastlines are so good for food.



At around the same time I also started buying up all the resources, which totals up to +75%/turn from Harun's trait. It costs a lot of money to purchase an AI's resource when they only have 1 of it, but since doing so also increases gold income, eventually the income outweighs the cost and it's a net gain for us to purchase everything.

 

[Stalker0]

I think hospitals are the key. I never picked up on the change that they are +25% to TOTAL food, not surplus food like so many other things. When I put a lot of hospitals in my civs that did really speed up the growth.

 

[Stalker0]

Finished another playtest, this time as Suleiman.

Went with a similar policy strat from last time, got early legalism -> representation -> monarchy for the early wonder.

Someone beat me to stonehenge so I would up getting the oracle, and off I went.

I tried to focus less on culture at the beginning and focus more on infrastructure, especially money.

I built up to 6 cities relatively quickly, and had enough gold to get opera houses up "fairly quickly".

I made a beeline for archeology and then once I had museums up I pushed all my cities into specialists and went from there. Filled up the tradition,liberty,piety,freedom,commerce, and patronage trees. Won it at turn 387 with 1500 culture per turn...and that is with the bug I mentioned.


Again, the biggest hindrance for me was gold. I did better at getting gold this game, but I think there are two factors that ultimately still limit how many cities you can found in a culture game:

1) Once your at opera houses, you need a huge amount of expensive infrastructure in a new city in order to make it culture profitable or at least neutral.

2) At some point in the game (not sure exactly where, will need to think about it more), new cities are culture negative, because even with full infrastructure they can't match up against the culture output of your mega cities.

So we've had playtests around 6-8 cities, so the big question is a 10-12 city culture victory really feasible?