(Request) tutorial on wining a cultural victory

[Paeanblack]

Thanks for the description. I will check out the numbers thread. I'm going to give it a try.

Alpaca and I spent a while hammering out the numbers. All that really matters is the ratio between the culture your typical city produces and the culture you get from other sources, like CS allies, wonders, etc.

On a standard map, that ratio is 3/7. If a new city can produce at least 3/7ths of the culture you get from allies/wonders/puppets, then you are better off expanding. If not, then you are worse off expanding. The optimum number of cities will either be 1 or infinite. The one-city optimum usually has to give way to other constraints, such as basic survival and teching to the Cristo Redentor and Sydney Opera House quickly enough to avoid losing them. This is why people go for 3-6 cities for a culture win.

On a Large map, that ratio is 1/4, and on Huge it is 3/17. On these maps, it's much more likely that the ideal number of cities for a culture win will be infinite.

 

[Paeanblack]

How many turns did it take to reach that, and how did you produce that much culture? I understand that each additional city adds 33% more culture to the policy requirement. Does that number change on huge maps?

That's not how it works.

Standard map:

City %increase in policy costs
2	30
3	23.1
4	18.8
5	15.8
6	13.6
7	12
8	10.7
9	9.7
10	8.8
15	6.1
20	4.7
25	3.8
30	3.2
35	2.8
40	2.4
45	2.2
50	1.9
60	1.6
70	1.4
80	1.2
90	1.1
100	1

 

[MykC]

My last run at OCC via cultural victory was with Alexander on Emperor, standard turns, standard map size on Pangaea type. I finished on turn 250 something. I outline the strategy in a post in a fair amount of detail.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=398695

Depending on your map position, no one will ever attack you, however, depending on your map position few people may attack you. Also, depending on whether you attacked any city states, shared open borders, various diplo mumbo jumbo will impact this. So, half the time you never get attacked and I will normally delete my single starting unit once the barbarians stop spawning.

 

[Civsassin]

Alpaca and I spent a while hammering out the numbers. All that really matters is the ratio between the culture your typical city produces and the culture you get from other sources, like CS allies, wonders, etc.

On a standard map, that ratio is 3/7. If a new city can produce at least 3/7ths of the culture you get from allies/wonders/puppets, then you are better off expanding. If not, then you are worse off expanding. The optimum number of cities will either be 1 or infinite. The one-city optimum usually has to give way to other constraints, such as basic survival and teching to the Cristo Redentor and Sydney Opera House quickly enough to avoid losing them. This is why people go for 3-6 cities for a culture win.

On a Large map, that ratio is 1/4, and on Huge it is 3/17. On these maps, it's much more likely that the ideal number of cities for a culture win will be infinite.

That's a great description. I found the thread that crunches the numbers and does the analysis. I appreciate the information. I totally misunderstood the escalation costs. I am going to do some analysis of my own and try another culture game. I did it once using Siam on a small island. I wanted to be left alone to see how it worked. I am going to wait for the upcoming patch and give it another run.

 

[Paeanblack]

Ah! stormerne reminds me that I had both Cristo Redentor and the Sydney Opera House, which must throw those calc'd numbers all out of whack.

They have no effect. If the question is "Will settling more cities increase or decrease the number of turns between policies?", then it doesn't matter if your next policy will cost 1,000 or 100,000. The answer will be the same either way.

 

[MykC]

That's not how it works.

Standard map:

City %increase in policy costs
2	30
3	23.1
4	18.8
5	15.8
6	13.6
7	12
8	10.7
9	9.7
10	8.8
15	6.1
20	4.7
25	3.8
30	3.2
35	2.8
40	2.4
45	2.2
50	1.9
60	1.6
70	1.4
80	1.2
90	1.1
100	1

It appears that each city increases the policy cost by 30% of what the base cost would be at a given policy number.

IE assume the base is 100.
City two makes the policy requirement 100 * 1.3 = 130.
City three makes the policy requirement 100 * 1.3 * 1.231 = 160

1.3 * 1.231 = 1.6 or 60% / 2 = 30% per city of the base.


So like it was said before after 100 cities you culture costs don't increase meaning with enough cities you can generate more culture per city than you can with 1 culture mega city. (which I had producing around 325)

 

[stormerne]

People may wish to check this spreadsheet PDF for a table of costs versus cities, that I created just after the game first came out. It's more accurate than the 100 city table above. However, it wasn't originally for ICS so it only goes to 10 cities, but I can either supply the raw spreadsheet if anyone wants to take it further, or I can just generate a larger one for more cities if anyone's interested. If the numbers look odd, it's because Civ5 applies rounding up to multiples of 5.

 

[MykC]

Nice PDF, I was always wonder exactly how much the base policy cost were at a given policy. I new the what the first 10 or so where and I knew about how much I need to finish a OCC game. Interesting stuff.

 

[ButSam]

Ramesses is also pretty good for cultural victory, particularly at moderate-to-high difficulty levels....Stonehenge, Oracle, and possibly Great Library on Prince (at least in my game I got all 3 of these). Be sure to not ignore science. In particular, you want to get to the Renaissance rather rapidly. Freedom track is the best track for Cultural victory -- particularly +100% Culture in any city with a wonder, and -25% cultural policy costs.

Patronage track is very helpful, as you can ally with cultural city-states easier. Piety track is a must for your first attempt; I highly recommend it because of the "2 free social policies" policy, which means 2 of the latest most expensive social policies are free if you save it for the end. (Actually, it might not matter when you take it -- I haven't tested this.)

There is one track left that is at your discretion. I would leave it up to whether or not you are able to get to Industrial early enough to finish out the track in a timely manner or not. If you get to Industrial relatively early and think you can finish it out, go for Order; otherwise, go for Liberty as your other track, or possibly Commerce.

Hope that helps!

 

[dubrown]

I've done only two cultural victories so far, one OCC with Darius and fully abusing his golden age bonus (large pangea map, prince (I chickened out a bit about going to any higher difficult with this game, though it would've been quite possible) and one with Ghandi where I only built two cities (small continents map, emperor).

With the Ghandi game I was fully focused at getting cultural buildings up asap, trying to get as many wonders as possible (I was a bit lucky in that game), I didn't use citystates to any great extent but used a few cultural ones early/midgame (they where eaten by a juggernaut AI towards the end). Avoided war by luck or rather by the AIs inability to see that you're a sitting duck. The Juggernaut could've eaten me alive easily towards the end.

In the Darius game I focused fully on happiness, getting the social policy that converts excess happiness to culture was my main goal early on here. I had about 80-90 excess happiness for the better part of the game. Did get some wonders in this game but far from all, but atleast some of the important ones. Not much in the way of military in this game either, lucky or playing the diplogame good, I don't know but no AI was ever hostile with me. Still, this happiness focus in an OCC may be alot harder with the coming patch and cap to happiness.

 

[ZHONN]

I highly recommend avoiding earlier social policies as much as possible. Beelining to acoustics via great scientist slingshots is a good strategy. It's also a must technology to get asap as the Sistine Chapel is an essential wonder to have. When going for culture I always try to fulfill Freedom 4/5.

Patronage is a good option especially if you happen to get some of those great artists. Cultural city states give good boni but you can't guarantee you'll have the money for them, especially if you don't build or puppet that many cities. In my last OCC culture game I didn't have any trading posts so I couldn't get more than a couple of them. There's also no saying if the AI conquers the faraway city states.

Piety is a good policy for the last two free policies and also for getting half of your happiness to culture. This has a good synergy with patronage as you get more happiness for luxuries with it.

Going for culture is also by no means a reason to avoid war. Puppet cities don't add to your social policy costs and they often make a couple of culture buildings. This is the more effective with the right civ like the Egyptians or the Songhai or the Siam, iirc, who have a nice special building for it. Culture victories are actually easier the more you have puppets.

 

[ZHONN]

Three cities probably isn't the maximum, but if I were trying it for the first time, or an early attempt, I would limit myself to no more than three.

Approximately how many turns into the game did you win it with that many cities? That's not easy to do. You must have had a very good strategy. Non of your cities were puppets?

I can't remember the exact details as it was one of my first games and I've since overwritten the save. I think that it was very late that I won. Six means core/annexed cities, I can't remember about puppets.

 

[PEACE!]

ok thank you all alot! i just came back from schol and i'll give it a shot

 

[Sneaks]

I really enjoy going for culture wins, and there are several civs that will give you an extremely good shot at it. As mentioned above, Siam tends to be tops thanks to both and UA and UB with culture. Alex is top notch, thanks to the cost savings with CSs.

Often overlooked is Askia, who has some downright sexy synergy between his UU/UA/UB. the 5 free culture plus the fortune you'll amass by conquer/puppetting with your superknights basically means easy CS costs.

Ramses can be pretty good, but his UB tends to keep me divided. With mandate, you can look at Burial Tomb as 3cpt for no cost, as opposed to the 4cpt for 2g of a temple. Where I think the tomb would prove better than the base temple is in a large puppet empire, where the GA bucket would far greater benefit from all the extra 2 happiness. On the flip side, the 20% wonder is no laughing matter.

 

[Zyxpsilon]

Personal opinion:
....
ANTI-CLIMAX
Yes you will feel this when you win.

Altogether, your "hints" smoothly fit within a real great summary of the essentials!

 

[Varanid]

I've done cultural victory with 15-20 cities fairly often (non puppeted). The thing is you probably own't win an early victory--but after you rush-buy broadcast towers, hoo-boy your culture per turn gets gigantic. It does mean you'll be in at least modern era though.
I usually don't get stonehenge; the AI seem to value it pretty highly, but I can (most of the time) get Oracle. Don't ignore science, because you *will* want to get to later eras fast, and you will of course need a halfway decent military if only for defense. One memorable game I was on an penninsula with one overland route that I build a city on, and plopped down a citadel and kept 2 current units right there to check the fairly aggressive german empire.
As far as Civs...I've done it with most. I really like Askia because you can usually rush buy at least one or two early buildings with his UA and that's dang helpful. Rush buy a library, then start to work immediately on GL or Oracle.