Social Policy Cost vs Number of Cities

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The fastest way as far as I know is to create a large empire trough conquest and just bank-in your culture, once you have enough, raze everything and the required culture will drop to a joke compared to what all your cities have gathered. Napoleon is the obvious choice for leader with this strategy.

If you don't want to use this, it still seems large empires can have the upper hand with careful planning:

The cost increase per city in essentially a fixed amount (at the 6th policy for exemple, every city adds 70). now this means that any city is worth keeping as long as it allows you to produce this amount of culture faster than the capital (or main cultural city) can produce the 1 city cost for that policy. From what has been shown on this thread, if your new city can produce at 20% of what your capital does, than it's worth keeping. I don't know the math for puppets but puppets are rarely a good idea because they hurt your economy with their building-craze(you have to pay for the upkeep of all their useless buildings) and you can't really force them to create culture(napoleon might be able to put them to better use). At the same time you have to remember that large empires have many other advantages, namely massive science output which can help you get more wonders, it can also support a larger army and produce more gold(to pay city-states and buy buildings/units)

As for map, the only thing I've seen make a difference is playing on low difficulties(lower than prince) lowers the culture required for policies.

 

[halyavin]

I determined the formula
It is v=[(6*num_of_policies_you_own)^1.7]+25 (base cost)
result=v+[(cities-1)*30*v/100] (add cities)
result1=[result*mod1/100] (final modifiers)
result2=[result1*mod2/100]
result3=[result2*mod3/100]
final_result=[result3/5]*5 (rounding)

Example. I have 32 policies on a small map. v=[(6*32)^1.7]+25=[192^1.7]+25=[7613.98...]+25=7638

Now I have 2 cities (and 43 puppets):
result=7638+[30*7638/100]=7638+2291=9929.

Also I have Cristo Redentor that gives mod1=75 (so it is 25% off instead of 33%) and result1=[9929*75/100]=7446.
I have mod2=100 and mod3=100 (probably they depend on the diffuculty or game speed) so result2=result3=7446. Finally final_result=7445 what is exactly what I see in the game.

 

[TheNoodle]

I just finished a 1 city cultural win with Babylon (not OCC, just didnt settle a second city) and last policy cost was 1660. Babylon produced 200+ culture per turn. I slingshot to renaissance era and opened freedom, 2x culture from wonder city AND 25% less culture cost from next policies, BEFORE getting the freebies from Oracle and piety SP. I didnt use the rationalism SPs at all. Don't forget that a city with a lot of specialists makes tons of cultures ( at least +3 cp per specialist slot ). There is another freebie from sudney opera house, but I had won the game before i reasearched Globalization. the science rate is pretty crappy without the Rationalism sps, but i wanted the piety freebies ( some happiness also go into the sp pool under piety ) . Was a very long game. turn 279 win, std map quick pace pangea.

Even in some ics set ups it can be ok to wait a bit before exploding to unlock some good SPs. The trees I used were freedom piety order commerce and tradition (+- in that order)

Norm

 

[Slowpoke]

haly's formula is correct, and is supported by info in the files

I find playing with 1.6 rather than 1.7 to be a lot better, although it makes cultural much too easy.

 

[taltamir]

I determined the formula
It is v=[(6*num_of_policies_you_own)^1.7]+25 (base cost)
result=v+[(cities-1)*30*v/100] (add cities)
result1=[result*mod1/100] (final modifiers)
result2=[result1*mod2/100]
result3=[result2*mod3/100]
final_result=[result3/5]*5 (rounding)

Example. I have 32 policies on a small map. v=[(6*32)^1.7]+25=[192^1.7]+25=[7613.98...]+25=7638

Now I have 2 cities (and 43 puppets):
result=7638+[30*7638/100]=7638+2291=9929.

Also I have Cristo Redentor that gives mod1=75 (so it is 25% off instead of 33%) and result1=[9929*75/100]=7446.
I have mod2=100 and mod3=100 (probably they depend on the diffuculty or game speed) so result2=result3=7446. Finally final_result=7445 what is exactly what I see in the game.

I don't see the difficulty setting in this formula, and I observed difficulty affects it. Also game "speed" (aka, epic, quick, normal...)

 

[MouseyPounds]

Those would be what halyavin calls "mod2" and "mod3" but s/he didn't include the details. The formula posted by alpaca in the Number Crunching Thread explicitly lists the various modifiers.

 

[Nunya]

haly's formula is correct, and is supported by info in the files

I find playing with 1.6 rather than 1.7 to be a lot better, although it makes cultural much too easy.

That can be solved by increasing the number of policy trees required for the Utopia Project.

 

[wurstburst]

Very interesting. I've been playing 2 cities plus puppets with a goal of going communism mid-game, by grabbing 8 SP (including 4 SP from rationalism to get the 2 free techs to pop to Biology along with 2 GS).

Based on these numbers, I'm thinking it might be better to go 3 or 4 cities, and work towards 3 or 4 GS. Then grab communism with just the 4 SP in the Order track. Will have to try this out and see if it's better.

Nice work with the figures!

 

[CharonJr]

For a culture win with 1 city you need about 30k including 3 free techs (orcale + SP) and the culture discounts from Christo Redentor and the SP. Since each city adds 30% on normal speed depending on when you build the cities take the SPs you can make a rough guess on this basis.

CharonJr

 

[MuteWolf]

92 culture/turn is very easy to obtain. In my last game I was producing 500 culture/turn with Askia by 1900ad. I had 4 cities, 6-7 puppets and 4-5 CS allies.
Cultured CS is really key to obtain high culture/turn.

It's also a bit easier with Askia because puppets seem to have a preference for UB's. Whenever I play as him my puppet cities pump out the UB immediately and that is a nice chunk of culture.