What Culture strat worked for your Civ?

I'm a dom addict, so even if I've set out to win a cultural victory I might go Germany, conquer hyper wide, spam districts with more hansas than necessary, rush meritocracy to skyrocket civic progression in midgame, end with ibuka. But who am I kidding... it's still effectively a domination victory despite the game saying it was a cultural victory. The only reason I'm getting 150 merchant points a turn is because I smashed everything I saw nonstop.
 
Ever since they fixed cultural victory to be much harder (before the patch the number of domestic tourists used to be much lower and was based on a civs culture in comparison to other civs... Rather than being based on flat amount of civics researched) it is just a piss poor way of winning and you could probably win with domination instead (back then AI France was actually capable of threatening to win culturally at t270 or so... Now I don't think any AI is capable of that... It just becomes a broken VC which AI will go for but will never get unless the game goes on for 400 turns) nowadays even if you get 2000+ tpt it sometimes still takes 20 turns to win on deity whereas prior to the patch you'd probably win in 3-5 turns...
 
On artifacts: I get mostly ancient ones from sites, sometimes classical if the spot wasn't settled until later. But if I remember well shipwrecks provide later era artifacts. I wonder what's the minimum distance to a Civ / barb. camp to get them as an option when digging? (Sometimes you get no choice.)

The Great Wall: The base tourism (with flight, not counting computers) is 2n - 2 for n consecutive segments. 9 segments = 16 tourism (equal to great writer with 2 books) and 7 segments = 12 tourism (equal to great artist with 3 unthemed works). Assuming you're done building, you might as well replace border improvements with wall segments. And even late game, 3 builders is typically cheaper than a museum + projects or great people patronage.

Wonders: The main advantage of China is that tourism per turn for wonders is greater for earlier era wonders, and that's where their UA applies. (I think it starts at 9 base tourism for Ancient and goes down 1 per era.) Note that what matters is the era where the wonder becomes available, not the one where it's built. Therefore it's worth going for the Colosseum later in the game.

In the case of France, the double tourism bonus means that their mid-game wonders (for which they get a boost) generate more tourism than other Civs' Ancient wonders. When playing them I generally try to build Forbidden City, Hermitage and Bolshoi; although Great Zimbabwe would also be great for all the late game museum / archaeologist buys).

This trend reminds me to experiment more with the science / culture balance. For those who build campuses in a cultural game, what is your typical district order? I tend to put commercial and theater first, then either campus or industrial as the 3rd district, but it seems a bit too slow for science.

I haven't played England much yet. A huge advantage seems to be that you can use harbors for both trade routes (bonus tourism) and for beelining the top part of the tech tree. With other Civs, harbors just seem too slow compared with commercial hubs, and you need CH for a few eurekas.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Are we talking to win the game or just like unusual ways to boost culture ? Because a lot of these strategies are pretty similar to each other....

For something a little different - religious Brazil with Sacred path and Jesuit Education. I mean, build buildings ? pffffft we simply pray to our lord and saviour Amazonas and our buildings simply appear from thin air.

I like papal primacy too (if we assume some cultural city states), I don't own the DLC but I imagine France with Apadana and papal primacy would be pretty good generally. A similar train of thought could be applied to the great Monarch Pope 'Murica but the boost is just so bad there will always be better options...........
 
Ever since they fixed cultural victory to be much harder (before the patch the number of domestic tourists used to be much lower and was based on a civs culture in comparison to other civs
... nope. It has always been based purely on a civ's culture generation and a lot of people have said that since the patch your domestic tourism does not reduce... but I checked it out and it still does.

Domestic Culture loss and gain - finer point clarifications

The difference since the patch is that they tweaked the AI civs to get more artefacts and writings/works which escalates a lot more on higher levels

This trend reminds me to experiment more with the science / culture balance. For those who build campuses in a cultural game, what is your typical district order? I tend to put commercial and theater first, then either campus or industrial as the 3rd district, but it seems a bit too slow for science.
It depends, some cultural games I will build a campus in all cities but my capital and only 2 theatres.
Capital will have encampment/harbour , commercial, campus and IZ if it can fit. Most of the rest have campus, commercial or theatre commercial and the odd IZ when needed.
For a traditional culture game I will reverse campus and theatres.
High growth and high industry mean little. Some games I will get the 3 factories eureka but it just limits my ability to place campus, theatres often.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I recently won a culture victory where I was way behind in culture/tourism (rough start) on immortal by going big on commerce (I handicapped by not being able to start any wars). My starting goal was a culture win.

Once a commerce powerhouse I filled by museums (half art, half arch) by buying pieces from civs that were weak or under attack, by trading strategic resources and gold. I did manage to buy one of the merchant great people that upped by trade route tourism by 25%. (and, of course, had trade routes to everyone and bought their open borders so I always had that boost after about mid-game).

Then focused to computers and since I was America, built film studios em mass once available.

A late game win but it shows that you can go for a culture win in just about any way you want. (dom, religion, commerce) It is funny but the toughest way to win at culture is to go 100% culture from the start, focusing on great art/writers/musicians and building archeologists, since that is more costly when compared to setting up a military/religion/commerce.

Only way I can think of for a quick culture win at high levels is the Kandy+Kongo one, which is already well documented.
 
You really need lots of early barbs if going peaceful

Always seems to be a lot, heh. In fact the barbarians have a big impact in Civ 6, they seem to be more like the old setting 'Raging Barbarians'. They also act very oddly sometimes, but it is what it is. What is amusing is if you turn them off the AI will almost always come and attack you (which is fine, since 4-6 warriors is nothing compared to 6+ horsemen), had one game where 3 AI civs took turns early on declaring war, was funny, they kinda Qed up their troops and waited. Course it is not so amusing when it is Montezuma or Gilgamesh, then its hard.
 
It went pretty well (deity, large map), I made a couple timing mistakes and always tend to make too many cities (I just like expanding my empire :) ). I think the one thing that is bothersome about Gorgo is that the acropolis have to be on a hill which can limit some cities production. Were more than enough barbs, just had to go looking, and the AI attacked a bit early on. Just slower since I was not taking cities and didn't have ideal city-states nearby to suze.

It'd be nice if they made a change where the warmonger penalty negatively affects your tourism, since going out and capturing cities is still the fastest way to any victory, especially if you have the appropriate AI nearby (like Kongo nearby when going CV, they seem to have so few units and you get all those relics and GP works from them).

I also feel like computers giving 100% boost is a semi-hack because they don't really have early to early mid-game culture/tourism working properly. Can pretty much be last in culture/tourism until you can make Archeologists. It isn't a big deal and kinda makes sense historically since was much tourism early on.

I think the AI going for CV needs to make more resorts, I don't find that I need to plan all that much and getting the Eiffel tower has never been a problem. The AI gets the early wonders but gets poorer and poorer at that as the game progresses. That I don't understand since when I look at their cities they look like they should be high in production plus they get a bonus. And on immortal/deity there are always some with good science or good civics (or both). So far the biggest threat to a CV win for me has always been Brazil (Kongo always starts strong but gets beat down by someone, eventually). But they never make enough resorts, not even sure if they make any at all.

And damn your avatar Victoria, that cute smug companion can't compare to Donna Noble! :D (hmmm, probably more due to Moffat, definitely don't like how he directs the show and seems to force stories). But hell, been a great run. I watched all the originals as a kid.
 
And damn your avatar Victoria, that cute smug companion can't compare to Donna Noble!
You are mixing shows, the avatar was from the Victoria tv series. Donna was a great companion but I would not like to choose from between about 5 of them. Forced stories is a problem, I did sort of enjoy the jolly jaunt approach of baker

But we digress, sounds like you have CV worked out. Gorgo can be a big threat also. The thing about the hills is fine to me because of the hill start bias, normally there is no shortage. Play a few games as Victoria and you will understand just how nice gorgo's start bias is
 
... nope. It has always been based purely on a civ's culture generation and a lot of people have said that since the patch your domestic tourism does not reduce... but I checked it out and it still does.

Domestic Culture loss and gain - finer point clarifications

The difference since the patch is that they tweaked the AI civs to get more artefacts and writings/works which escalates a lot more on higher levels


It depends, some cultural games I will build a campus in all cities but my capital and only 2 theatres.
Capital will have encampment/harbour , commercial, campus and IZ if it can fit. Most of the rest have campus, commercial or theatre commercial and the odd IZ when needed.
For a traditional culture game I will reverse campus and theatres.
High growth and high industry mean little. Some games I will get the 3 factories eureka but it just limits my ability to place campus, theatres often.
I'm pretty sure pre-patch some AIs were stuck at 50 domestic tourists all game whereas now even a culture gimp has at least 100... You could even reduce some civs to negative domestic tourists back then. What they certainly did change was the amount of tourism needed to gain one tourist... I'm pretty sure pre-patch I could siphon off a handful of tourists in a single turn from each opponent. Now it seems to be only 1-2. Despite me having around the same 1200-2000 tpt. Also back then if you start a standard game and kill off every civ but one their number of domestic tourists jump up every time a civ is eliminated making it almost impossible to win culturally. Now that does not seem to be the case.
 
So we agree they are now generating more culture. Let's take the 50-100 example you use on a standard map.

Generating 1 domestic tourist is 100 culture. To take this tourist away you have to generate 1200 tourism. Before the patch the culture gimp was only generating 50 so every turn you would be reducing their domestic tourists by one and no w at 1200 you are not reducing at all. That's a big change just by getting their culture up.

You say they have changed the number of tourism to gain 1 tourist but I have checked this, it is the same.

On the last point, sure I have no issue they have fixed something buggy. The rest of it I just see the increased culture creation has made the impact. I look at the numbers published in the culture guide and they have not changed.
 
A very useful thread. Some minor observations (most not Civ specific) from my relatively few attempts at culture victory:-

1. Scythia is disadvantaged when trying a martyr relic approach to early tourism. The Scythia combat healing bonus includes religious units which makes their apostles very reluctant to die for the cause.
2. I usually manage to theme at least one Art Museum by swapping Artworks with the AI, even these who are otherwise ill disposed to me.
3. Focus your warfare on capture of those cities with Theatre Squares. You can see the location of GW under the cursor which can be helpful here.
 
They do move them if the city gets low health
They certainly do, but only to other available slots as far as I can establish (?). Artifacts and non-religious artworks are less "movable" in this respect I think (usually fewer spare slots).

Another (maybe obvious) generic point is that you can sell "poor-value" works (those you are never likely to theme) to free up slots for better new works if you become short of slots. I found this useful when generating lots of Great Artists but having few Art Museums (Archeological Museums generally taking preference) :- better than having Great People loafing about the map.
 
It was a while since I played the game. Anyway I found mass building faith and culture district and simply brute force the late game with seaside resorts and national parks (the reason for the faith districts) to be quite effective.

While useful I don't think great works or wonders are particular needed for culture victory. Having large amount of land for seaside resorts and parks work pretty well and don't limit your strategies in any way.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom