Question about Culture?

[kuukkeli]

I've been playing (at least doing something that vaguely resembles playing) Civ4 for less than 2 weeks now and, surprisingly, I'm having lots of problems. One of those has caused me to mostly shun away from non-Creative leaders:

How to create some early, cheap and easy Culture on my cities without the Creative trait (at least enough to be able to work the whole fat cross)? I'm always trying to rush to Stonehenge and it helps in the very beginning but after it obsoletes I'm having difficulties with new cities. All Culture creating buildings seem too expensive to make it to early queue. Only answer I've found is the Culture slider but 1) my older cities don't need that extra Culture and 2) I don't necessarily have Drama before Calendar.

So is there some easy ways to enculturate my cities that I'm just missing?

 

[Naismith]

Getting Stonehenge is a good idea, especially if you have stone.

I don't like building Monuments, since all they do is produce +1 culture and they obsolete quickly, as you pointed out. Early game, consider building a library instead - at least you get long term benefits from it (and +2 culture). If it's going to take a long time to build one, have workers ready to speed it up by chopping. Once you get Drama, you can build a theater, which is cheaper and produces +3 culture. After Drama, a theater is usually my first build in a new city.

Of course, there is also religion. If you have converted to a religion, every city with the state religion gets +1 culture. So, you send off your settler with a missionary, and voila! It makes even more sense if you founded a religion and have built the special building, since you will get 1 gold for each city that has that religion.

I'm not saying it's easy, I struggle with this every game if I'm not Creative. It's especially a drag if you haven't founded a religion (often the case with me), or you don't want to pick a state religion because you can't afford to offend your neighbor(s). Then you are stuck building a monument or library. Ugh.

 

[Pogel]

Usually my initial cities are focussed on production and so a library would be wasted. In those, I build a monument. If I've got a large food surplus (to support 2 scientists as well as regular whipping) or a commerce resource (gold/silver/gems) then I'll build a library, otherwise you don't get much benefit from the library.

 

[UncleJJ]

Of course, there is also religion. If you have converted to a religion, every city with the state religion gets +1 culture. So, you send off your settler with a missionary, and voila! It makes even more sense if you founded a religion and have built the special building, since you will get 1 gold for each city that has that religion.

I often use monastries as the main way to boost culture in the early game. It is important to get to 100 culture to pop borders beyond the fat cross and push back the AI's culture. I tend to avoid researching Drama and Music so theatres and building culture or using the slider are delayed. Libraries, and multiple religions giving monastries and maybe temples are cheap sources of long term culture.

Once the new city has religion then building a monastry is a cheap way to get culture faster. It costs 60 hammers for 2 culture/turn and gives other benefits.

 

[DigitalBoy]

Theatres are one of my favorite ways after monuments go obsolete. Chop rush/pop rush it out.

 

[Diamond]

Use Caste System. Then when you settle a new town you could just halt growth and run an artist instead for 4 turns (on Epic), and the border will pop.

This is also works great with towns coming out of revolt. Before the revolt ends, force hire 4 artists (on Epic), then the borders will pop as soon as the city comes out of revolt.

 

[civ4legs]

One thing to keep in mind about monuments is that when you build them by hand, instead of just getting one from Stonehenge, they don't disappear when Calender is discovered, they go obsolete, which, as is the case with wonders, they end up giving MORE culture than they originally gave (which I believe is +2 instead of +1).

For that reason, sneaking in some monument builds just before calender can be a VERY cheap source of culture...

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Well, any building that produces culture gives twice as much after 1000 years (not turns), obsolete or not.

When stonehenge obsoletes, the monument effect that you got from the wonder go away. Not so when building the monument itself. Building just Monuments instead of building the stonehenge will keep the culture coming long after calendar. You just lose the +1

 

[Welnic]

Monuments put out double culture after 1000 years, not because they have been rendered obsolete. But I agree with what you are saying. When they become obsolete you just can't build them anymore, they still pump out culture.

I'm pretty sure it is 1000 years, but it might be some turn based thing.

(edit) I guess I shouldn't let the page sit there for a couple of hours before I read it.