Three city challenge/Noble = easy

[Basket Case]

I've just one my first cultural victory ever. On noble and I only built the minimum number of cities required (three). I never conquered any other cities either.
And there was no need for a complex strategy at all. I focused on Artist specialists for the culture boost and (more import) to create lots of Great Artists. I made all of them super specialists because if you get them early in the game you can squeeze much more culture out of them that way. At the end I had 2-3 super artists + 3-4 ordinary artists in my cities. Only the last two Great Artists were used to culture bomb my 2nd and my 3rd city because their culture ratings were a little lower than the one of my capitol (of course). However they reached "legendary" status only a few turns after the capitol had reached it.
I didn't care much about wonders only build a few of them. Religious buildings really helped I think. I founded three religions and every city had two high-end religious buildings in it (holy shrine + that other thing).
I finished in 1997 however I basically stopped playing 30 turns earlier. At one point it was clear that I could reach culture victory by going 100% culture well before any AI could reach any victory condition. So I switched to 100% culture with all my cities producing culture too. Then I pressed the return key about thirty times and VICTORY!

Good the lowest rating (Dan Quale ), though. The Hall of Fame rating is screwed up IMO. It totally favours aggressive early warmongers. I good the highest rating (Augustus Caesar) when I reached domination victory in th 18th century playing Mongols. My strategy for that game was even more simple minded. I build exactly two cities - the second city only because the first one didn't have access to horses - than I started building mongol riders and basically never stopped! I just stomped all the poor AI civs. Screw "combined arms" - hords of mongol riders can defeat everything! The only "strategy" I used was choosing aggressive civics (theocracy and that other +2 XP thing) and giving all my riders the +25% against melee units upgrade which made fighting spearmen a little easier. But basically all I did was overrunning them with large stacks of riders.

I think it is fair to say that Civilization is not exactly challenging on standard difficulty. I couldn't even get myself to finish a space race victory because when I built the apollo program the AI had just discovered industrialization

 

[LabMonster]

noble is pretty easy for me too, i like the domination game you played. For me my weapon of choice would be the Praetorian Interesting culture experiment you did there.

 

[Basket Case]

noble is pretty easy for me too, i like the domination game you played. For me my weapon of choice would be the Praetorian

Nah, too slow. Read "Art of War" - mobility is key! When I attacked a strong civ the first thing I did was destroying all important modernizations / cutting off all important resources in his land. On a standard pangea map a dozen mongol riders (movement 2 - ignoring terrain modifiers!) can wreck the entire land of a civ in a few turns. Before the AI knew what was going on his production power was totally destoryed - not that he could have produced anything of value - horses, iron, copper, elephants - everything was already cut off by my riders. So he tried to fight my hordes with archers and catapults
Needless to say that it was a short, painful ending for him.

Interesting culture experiment you did there.

I wonder if the same tactic will work on higher diffculty levels too..
Gotta try!

I also consider trying a OCC . I think I could achieve an OCC space race victory on noble... I would just keep the AIs down by sending small pillager squads that destroy their lands and raze some of their cities now and then ..
Combine that with a decent city building strategy that gives you decent science AND production and you are set

 

[Gufnork]

OCC space race victory on Noble has been done by someone, so it's possible.

Cultural victory on higher difficulties with only three cities will be a whole lot harder. The other AIs are much more likely to attack you with massive armies that you'll have a very difficult time resisting.

 

[Alveanerle]

Don't bother OCC cultural victory. It did not work for me. I got to 75k culture with my city, and still nothing happened. Speed was set to Quick, so 25k should be enough in theory. Then i checked the victory conditions screen. It still stated you need THREE cities of legendary culture. Pretty undoable with just one city there

 

[KAuss]

I finished in 1997 however I basically stopped playing 30 turns earlier. At one point it was clear that I could reach culture victory by going 100% culture well before any AI could reach any victory condition. So I switched to 100% culture with all my cities producing culture too. Then I pressed the return key about thirty times and VICTORY!

Every noble game I've played on epic had the space race finished before 1950... This was on huge map with 11 players...

The AI must had issues if they didn't finish building it by 1997...

 

[Rustypipe]

Play on a dif close to diety or try diety diff its self. They will stomp a mud hole in you, and leave you crying in the corner of the map for mercy. The only way I have managed to beat the comps on Diety is with a contents map where they can't use there super building / expanding powers to take over the entire map before 2000bc and out research the crap out of me. Anyhow give it a try its a lot of fun.