Some Basic Observations on Cultural Games in Civ5

godotnut

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Just finished my first cultural victory in Civ5. This was the second game I attempted since Civ5 came out. I played on Emperor difficulty and won around 2000. This was not a fast finish, but victory really wasn't in doubt. My only worry was that one of the AI (who at least seemed to be best buddies with me) would invade.

I wanted to share some basic observations about cultural wins:

1) They are quite easy, even if you have have never played Civ5 before, and even on the higher levels. At least that's what it seems like right now. Just play nice with the tougher civs and try to avoid war.

2) One city only will probably provide the fastest victory condition. Each additional city adds 33% to the total needed to advance through policies, and additional cities will not add that much more overall culture--not even close. Your main cultural center will be cranking out several times the culture of your other cities, if optimized for culture.

3) Additional cities provide some benefit in terms of safety (producing units) and resources, but if you are trying for fastest win possible, its OCC all the way, I believe.

4) Another option is to play militarily and leave captured cities as puppet states, since puppet states do not add to culture needed for advancement through the trees. I have not tried it yet, but it should work and might produce a faster finish than an OCC, especially on lower levels where you can easily roll as many AI as you want.

5) You have to build the Utopia project after you complete all of the policies. Your game will not end when the policies are completed. Prepare to build the project by maximizing production in the tiles for the city you will be building the project in. Do this just before you are about to finish your last needed policy. Don't worry about going over the tiles with monuments. Save forests for workshops, then chop them just as you are finishing the project.

6) Culture bombs by artists do not add to your culture for policies. Culture bombs add land to your empire but nothing to the pace of your advancement through the policy trees. Therefor use artists to improve tiles in your main culture city. In the end, your culture city will be working mostly tiles with monuments.

7) Stonehenge is a powerful early wonder for cultural victories. Sistine Chapel is even more powerful. Taj Mahal is pretty good. There are also a couple of late game wonders that are powerful, Cristo Redemptor (spelling?) and one other that I can't remember. After you get broadcast towers, the rest of the techs aren't very useful at all, except to give you modern units in case of attack.

8) Cultural victories require far less micromanagement than they did in Civ4. Some will like this, but personally it seems to me that a lot of the strategy for cultural games has been greatly simplified.

9) You won't be finishing your cultural games as early as you used to. They take more turns now.

10) Make as many cultural city states as possible your allies and keep them that way. Maritime is nice too. Militaristic city states are useful for OCC games, where you don't want to waste your precious production on units, but they are the least useful city states.

11) Progress through the policies is the most complicated consideration, and I am going to refrain from speculating about the optimal path in this post. The trees you need are pretty obvious, and I want to think more about the best exact order before commenting. I certainly did not pursue the best exact order in my first game.

Comments? Questions? Ideas?
 
I agree with all of this. Especially one city.
 
Wow on emperor the AI can't launch a spaceship by 2000AD? They should be launching earlier than that on prince, let alone emperor.

Please tell me you weakened them all or something. Don't tell me the AI is as bad at tech wins as it is at war.
 
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering -- why no AI space win? Also, how did you keep up technologically and militarily? I've tried the 2- or 3-city culture-win, and I just can't keep pace on tech because my total population is so much smaller, even if I make alliances with several maritime city-states. Did you conquer and then puppet lots of other AI cities?
 
@Grotius (and Shillen): I conducted no war whatsoever against any opponents, though I did use diplomacy to slow their tech pace. I also refused tech agreements from the civs who seemed to be in the lead. Other than that, nada. There were a lot of wars on one large continent that preoccupied several civs, but Gandi, usually a good techer, had a large continent to himself, generally avoided all wars, and still could not launch by a few turns after 2000AD.

This was on continents setting, with everything default. My assumption is that yes, the AI is also pretty bad at teching. More research is needed though.

How did I keep up militarily? though I made a decent military presence, I didn't keep up with the toughest civs. I used diplomacy to maintain positive relations with them, at the expense of the weaker nations. I was behind in military a bit the whole game. I was a little behind in tech for the early part of the game--and a lot behind Gandi as the game wore on. And while he build the Apollo Project, judging from the victory screen, where it at least SEEMS to also show us space ship progress, he hadn't build a single part by the time I finished, if I am reading the screen correctly.
 
I don't think 1 city is better than lets say 3 for example. In my culture game my cities were providing over 100 culture each. Even with the 33% added cost I think it was faster.

if a policy costs 1000, a +33% cost would mean 1330. It is better to generate 200/turn and reach 1330 than generate 100 and reach 1000.
 
I agree with kaltorak that 3-4 cities is better for cultural- you just need to get the culture buildings up fast in them (buying them when possible). The additional cities give you more production for wonders, and more gold income (spam trading posts). The extra income helps you buy off more culture-producing city states and buy the culture buildings. You want to pick up a couple maritime states to feed your cities, and then every culture state that you can find.

Having a couple extra cities also gets you some extra luxury resources for happiness to support larger population, or to trade off to the AI's for gold(for buildings and bribes). More cities also help you keep up in tech so that you can beat the AI to important wonders. More than 3 or 4 will hurt you more than help due to the escalating cost of policies, but so long as you make sure that you get the culture buildings up ASAP in all of your cities, they'll speed you up overall.
 
Yeah, that's what I'm wondering -- why no AI space win? Also, how did you keep up technologically and militarily? I've tried the 2- or 3-city culture-win, and I just can't keep pace on tech because my total population is so much smaller, even if I make alliances with several maritime city-states. Did you conquer and then puppet lots of other AI cities?

I am fearing that the AI is definitely weaker in this game as well as producing less interactions. However, I think it took Civ IV a while to get cranking as they only thing the AIs did in that game was tech towards space, but come BTS with patches you usually have a multiple of threats at higher levels. This will likely take a while to work out, hopefully.
 
Puppet states DO add to the policy costs, which is good as they themselves produce culture. As I said in another thread though, get them anyway, get some culture from them, then sell them before you buy any more policies.
 
One city or a small number of cities is best for cultural victory. Does that make Gandhi the best civ for cultural victory ?
 
4) Another option is to play militarily and leave captured cities as puppet states, since puppet states do not add to culture needed for advancement through the trees. I have not tried it yet, but it should work and might produce a faster finish than an OCC, especially on lower levels where you can easily roll as many AI as you want.

This is a good point... as far as I can tell puppet cities increase your culture production, but not your culture COST... so by having 1 city you control and lots of puppet cities you can get good culture, and fast.
The extra cities also give you research and money... which can be used in a variety of useful ways... Having a few controlled cities I think is preferable... a few very high production cities so that you can get all the wonders (wonders = good for culture)... being the first to get the technology that is required to produce a certain wonder is great, as it lets you build and control said wonder. getting tech to build fancier culture centers or money making buildings like banks (to help fund your various unoptimized puppet cities) will be useful too...

that being said, I haven't had a culture victory yet... My typical game is:
stage 1: build up a strong capital. getting a few culture levels.
stage 2: conquer a bunch of nearby things, puppetting them all, and use settlers to expand as well. Gaining a few more culture levels.
Stage 3: Annex and settle out my continent... not a single culture advancement here, it just costs too much. (I think my cost per culture went to 10x what it was before last time I did that)
Stage 4: conquer the rest of the world, puppeting everything, very rapid culture growth in this stage... with 1000+ culture gained per turn (and about 5000 culture required per policy)...
the first game was small... I won early in stage 4... second game is on large, it now lags terrible and crashes all the time in stage 4 (too many cities, arg!)... Second game I did well enough that I am so far ahead, I used money to buy a ton of mechanized infantry and I am sweeping through the world conquering everyone else who still uses crossbows and longswordsman...

Anyways, this is my "typical game"... if I go for a cultural victory I would replace stage 3 with "only annex a FEW strategically located cities... cities which produce tons of structure and manufacturing already and are near enemies and will be used to purchase units".
Actually, now that I think about it, there is absolutely no reason NOT to do that even in a regular game... The only difference between a military game and a culture game should be whether I spam settlers or not... with culture game I should totally avoid settlers, and only annex a few cities. Let others settle and then conquer and puppet.

My favorite civ is rome: 25% bonus to building anything you already have built in your capital... I buy any building in my capital as soon as its available (remember, lots of puppet cities means some will be building it right away) and it makes a huge difference. It really helps to buy museums and the like in the capital, because all your puppet states are now building those faster (and giving you more culture faster)

I am first to admit I am a noob though. So correct any mistakes I make please.

PS. I find research is absolutely vital, a good research lead will just win the game for you... and by having lots and lots of puppets you get lots and lots of research. (base research production is 1 research per 1 population... in any city, no cost, no need for any building... you just make it).
 
Hmm, now I'm totally confused! Is it this...

Puppet states DO add to the policy costs

Or this?...

as far as I can tell puppet cities increase your culture production, but not your culture COST
I guess I'll try making more puppets in my next game, in any case. :)
 
Puppet states don't increase it, as it says when you mouse over a puppet state. It does not increase culture costs and produces less unhappiness, but you have no control over production.
 
I think 2 cities might be preferable, but otherwise, I agree. Certainly in my last game my second culture city produce ~40% of my culture, but this could just be poor optimisation on my part. I will try OCC culture later and see how it goes. ;)

>4 doesn't seem feasible anyways. Discounting the way that you can currently save culture by having a large empire, then sell the cities off and buy cheaper policies which I assume is a bug.
 
One city or a small number of cities is best for cultural victory. Does that make Gandhi the best civ for cultural victory ?

In my opionion, yes. You will end up with 3-4 cities with around 18-25 pop each. That's a LOT of happiness saved. And each happiness ressource that you don't need is worth 10 gpt throughout the whole game as one AI will always buy it for 300g for 30 turns.
Playing ghandi you should be able to keep your people happy with just CSs ressources and zero happiness buildings, allowing you to sell ALL your ressources for 10 gpt each.

Siam and Greece are close seconds or even better, it all depends on how many CSs survive and how many of them are cultural/maritime. I would prefer Siam over Greece without doing the math.

France is only good if you plan to puppet a lot of cities and sell them before you buy the policies, but that is broken at the moment (imo).

Egypt is good on lower difficulty levels, but on emperor+ you wont get more than 4-5 wonders. And none of the early ones.

Rome is interesting. Since you will build the same stuff in all cities it could work, but them again you want to build the culture buildings right when you unlock them.
 
Puppet states don't increase it, as it says when you mouse over a puppet state. It does not increase culture costs and produces less unhappiness, but you have no control over production.

and with enough puppets you get literally thousands of culture per turn.
 
One city or a small number of cities is best for cultural victory. Does that make Gandhi the best civ for cultural victory ?

I Found Egypt was pretty good, I think the extra 20% wonder production on top of the 33% from Tradition is better than the extra happiness from Ghandi. You get a really powerful start cranking out those crucial wonders like Stonehenge faster. Plus you you do want to expand, Burial Tombs more than hold off any advantage Ghandi would have early game.

I won a cultural victory with two cities, but I'm sure it's doable with one.
 
I won OCC emperor with Greece, finished sometime in the 1800s but I did get a very nice starting location with river plains/resources (due to golden ages, the best terrain hands down), and 7 cultural city-states in game which accounted for about half my culture in the endgame. I had 7 monuments that I never even used.

game overview:

small pangaea 7+14

I went tradition->aristocracy and used that 33% bonus to get all the useful early wonders. Stonehenge, GL, oracle, chichen itza, angkor wat (to pick up more resources for selling) Selling luxuries is crucial, you need the gold and delaying the first golden age is a good thing.

Made a horsey to roam around doing barbarian quests, later gifted it to a city-state to prevent it being killed off

Sold resources for cash early and saved money until I had patronage->aesthetics->philanthropy. All gold went to city-states except a couple of times when I had to pay AIs to declare war on other AIs.

Got the hilariously overpowered policy where city states give you free GPs and most of Freedom tree, then just stockpiled culture until Cristo Redentor was completed and bought everything. In hindsight, Order would probably have made the best 5th policy branch to speed construction of Utopia.

The main weakness of the strategy is there's almost no time to build military units or cash to pay for their upkeep (although you can get free ones from military city-states, they're often outdated) so you have to hope the diplomacy works out.
 
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