Some Basic Observations on Cultural Games in Civ5

[milk steak]

I noticed that in my current game (I think ~1600 AD), culture from CSes outpace my cities' cultural output.

Does the Sistine Chapel apply to CS cultural bonuses as well? I doubt it, but I just wanted to make sure.

Seems like a strong strategy is gunning for the cultural CSes early.

 

[KamiyuBidan]

Hello! First time poster here.

I'm having a blast with Civilization 5, although it's been ages since I've played Civilization 4, so I'm definitely rusty with the gameplay and all. Finished a Prince game on all regular settings, via the Domination route, and although I believe I handled it *very inefficiently*, I wasn't really that much pressed playing against the AI. Still need to work on my city specializations and building selections, though. I feel as though my cities are always a hodgepodge of odd building choices, and tile improvements, LOL.

I've been trying for a Cultural game lately on Prince, with Gandhi at the helm, and for the life of me, I can't seem to get it right, as I end up not completing the Utopia Project before the game ends, haha! As per the advice here, I've usually limited myself to 3-4 cities, but I can't seem to crank enough culture. I usually ally myself with a Maritime CS, and a couple of Cultural CS too.

I've some terribly noobish questions for you vets:

1. In general, are seaside cities good for the culture game? In some of my cities, half of their working hex consists of the sea, so you can't improve them. Will it benefit me more if I place my cities on areas with more land (and more farm/trading posts)?

2. Prolly tied to #1, but how do you get your city populations that high? A poster mentioned that he was able to get his cities to 18-25 pop by the end of the culture game. Do I just spam farms, along with the occasional trading posts to get to this point? Do you need to tinker with the city's allocation focus and put it more towards food production, or just leave it at default?

 

[Shillen]

1. In general, are seaside cities good for the culture game? In some of my cities, half of their working hex consists of the sea, so you can't improve them. Will it benefit me more if I place my cities on areas with more land (and more farm/trading posts)?

As long as you have 2-3 whales/fish/pearls you should be fine with a coastal city as they'll become hammer tiles with a seaport. They can also build the wonders that require a coastal city. So one coastal city and 2-3 inland cities is probably best.

2. Prolly tied to #1, but how do you get your city populations that high? A poster mentioned that he was able to get his cities to 18-25 pop by the end of the culture game. Do I just spam farms, along with the occasional trading posts to get to this point? Do you need to tinker with the city's allocation focus and put it more towards food production, or just leave it at default?

The default option tends to favor food anyway. To grow them big you want to ally maritime city-states and preferably have river tiles with farms.

 

[stormerne]

I was a habitual cultural victory player on Civ4. So it's my natural inclination to start that way on Civ5. Here are my initial thoughts:

* Early on I heavily maximize gold and happy, not food, production or culture. Then I go buy alliances with as many city states as I can.
* Therefore I do not spend my culture points on social policies straightaway. I save them up till I have Philosophy, and let the Great Library slingshot me into the Medieval Era. Only then do I unlock my first policy tree: Patronage.
* My second policy tree is Piety, but I don't finish it straightaway: I save Free Religion to the end of the game to get the last two free, otherwise expensive, policies.
* Unlike godotnet, I don't stick with a single city, but I do play with a small number (unless foolishly attacked, when I add a string of puppets!). The reason is this. I have found that (very roughly) for every 8 culture points that I earn, 4 come city production, 1 comes from excess happiness and 3 come from those wonderful city states (along with most of the extra food I need). So if I doubled city production by doubling the cities, my culture points would rise by 50% - which would be OK going from 1 to 2 with a 30% penalty. You'll find 2 to 3 is OK too, but not from 3 to 4.
* With three cities you can ensure one is properly mined/built for the final 1500 hammer Utopia project push. Save one of your many golden ages to help with production too.
* Leader: Napoleon, is useless. Gandhi seems good but he only helps with the 1/8 of the culture points due to excess happiness. Therefore I go for Siam because of the 50% city state bonus to culture contribution and this makes a huge difference. Alexander is OK for a city state supported culture drive, but Siam is much better by my calculations. There are only so many city states in the game (2 x normal civs) and once you have the gold to keep all your allies sweet, you can't get any more culture from them. They provide an efficient, turn in, turn out, culture cow, so why not peak that contribution by an additional 50%. What else are you going to do with your gold every turn to increase culture? I go with Ramkhamhaeng.
* Forget the culture bomb. Work the landmarks instead.
* Stonehenge seems a must. GL for a quick sling to Patronage. Not really impressed with much of the rest; they happen kind of late and the effects are lukewarm. Besides your city state allies might suggest a wonder!

Just a few random thoughts.

 

[Delgar]

I agree that Siam might be the best choice. In fact I just managed to obtain a cultural victory with Siam in 1993. Imho, these are crucial wonders:

Stonehenge – 8 culture per turn. In the early stages this is really good.
Great Library – Free technology. Use it as a slingshot to classical era. I usually go for Civil Service as it's the most expensive tech.
The Oracle – Free social policy, and does not increase the cost of the next policy IIRC
Hagia Sophia – 33% culture generation in all cities
Cristo Redentor – Social policies cost 33% less

Because my capital tends to be my main culture producing city (besides the allied city states), I tend to favor these buildings:

Hermitage - increase culture output of city by 100%
Broadcast tower (not technically a wonder) - doubles culture output of city

Great people are also very very useful (when are they not?! ), and you will have a ton of these GPs what with all the wonders you are going to spam in your main culture-producing city. As many Golden ages as possible are going to be almost mandatory in helping you produce extra gold/food/production seeing as how you're only going to have 2-3 cities.

Also, I actually use the 2 free policies from Piety early on, because there are 2 policies in the Freedom branch that will really help you out. I think one of them is that cost of social policies is reduced by 25%.

 

[Newti]

I agree that Siam might be the best choice. In fact I just managed to obtain a cultural victory with Siam in 1993. Imho, these are crucial wonders:

Stonehenge – 8 culture per turn. In the early stages this is really good.
Great Library – Free technology. Use it as a slingshot to classical era. I usually go for Civil Service as it's the most expensive tech.
The Oracle – Free social policy, and does not increase the cost of the next policy IIRC
Hagia Sophia – 33% culture generation in all cities
Cristo Redentor – Social policies cost 33% less

Because my capital tends to be my main culture producing city (besides the allied city states), I tend to favor these buildings:

Hermitage - increase culture output of city by 100%
Broadcast tower (not technically a wonder) - doubles culture output of city

Great people are also very very useful (when are they not?! ), and you will have a ton of these GPs what with all the wonders you are going to spam in your main culture-producing city. As many Golden ages as possible are going to be almost mandatory in helping you produce extra gold/food/production seeing as how you're only going to have 2-3 cities.

Also, I actually use the 2 free policies from Piety early on, because there are 2 policies in the Freedom branch that will really help you out. I think one of them is that cost of social policies is reduced by 25%.

While Stonehenge, Librarly and Oracle are good wonders for cultural victory, on higher difficulty levels you can't get them and it is still very possible to win (I finished 1923 AD on immortal witout ANY of the early wonders).
The only Wonders your really need are Hagia and Redentor and most likely the Opera House (since its faster than waiting).

Its very important to have CSs tech for you. I had <100 beakers from my own reserach but around 150 beakers vom all my CSs allies, leading to a pretty solid tech rate through the rennaisance up to radio.

Another key technique is to split the wonders so that each city has 1+ (100% more culture) and to create the landmarks with great artists all in the same city where you built hermitage. I used 2 GS to bulb towards radio to build the broadcast towers asap, they are huge, and after that you can go into "culture mode" since there are no more useful techs except the one for opera house, but that has time.

And do NOT take the 2 free policies from the Piety branch early. They will increase the cost of the following Policies unlike the Oracle.
Only take this policy when you have 3 left to finish up or it will significantly slow you down. Optimal is to have 4 left, then build the opera house at the same time you reach the culture for the last policy and chose the 2 free piety policies to instantly get the last 4.

 

[KamiyuBidan]

Thanks for all the advice! I've finally managed to win a Cultural Victory earlier on Prince difficulty, using Gandhi, around 1992. Ran with 3 really big specialized cities, made friends with all the culture and maritime oriented CS, played nice with the other civs, and stockpiled my SP for the most part. By the end of the game, I think I was making around 500+ culture a turn. What bogged me down was building the Utopia Project, which took around 30 or so turns, with some sporadic Golden Ages in between. Placing those Great Artist landmarks really helped with the culture generation too.

Since I started with a marble tile, I took up Tradition, and dipped into the +Wonder production policy, for an early Stonehenge and GL. Got to make the Oracle too, and Chichen Itza which helped immensely in chaining Golden Ages. Teched quick to get the Hagia and the Redentor as well. Prolly won't be able to make the earlier wonders on higher difficulties though, so I'll just have to focus on the essentials like the Hagia and the Redentor.

After Tradition, I waited for Patronage, and took up the first two policies. Then, stockpiled SP's until I was able to put points into Freedom and the -SP cost policy. I followed Newti's tip on saving the 2 free SP's from Piety, using them on my last 2, to save on costs.

Will try to play another Cultural game on a higher difficulty this time.

 

[taltamir]

2. Prolly tied to #1, but how do you get your city populations that high? A poster mentioned that he was able to get his cities to 18-25 pop by the end of the culture game. Do I just spam farms, along with the occasional trading posts to get to this point? Do you need to tinker with the city's allocation focus and put it more towards food production, or just leave it at default?

step 1: play on lower difficulty (unhappiness slaughters you otherwise) or be really good at managing happiness (few cities with lots of luxury resources for example).
step 2: ally maritime city states... each allied maritime city state gives you +5 food in capital, +3 food in EVERY other city you own, in the entire world. You own 100 cities? well, +3 food to each and every one of them. (except capital, +5)... and thats per maritime... so if you ally with 5 martime CS you get +25 food in capital, +15 everywhere else.

besides which, a river farm with the right tech gives you +4 food, as does fish with a lighthouse, granaries and watermills are +2 food each as well.
So even without maritime city states getting 20 population is trivial... 4 from mills, 1 from crrent spot, and 15 from ~4 farms / fish / elk / cows / etc. Or just distributed across other squares.

 

[Lexad]

In my immortal game on Earth map wars were non-stop, so if you manage to stay aside from them all the time, you're very lucky. Building monuments is good, but you also need money for bribing CS, buying units in cas eof attack and general upkeep and hammers for Wonders and regular buildings. If you have a great location, you can go OCC, but in me expertise 2-3 cities are much more reliable