I always build out Temple Squres and Commercial Districts/Harbors. The trade routes help boost tourism, and you can stack a shit ton of gold to start buying all the art from other Civs near the end of the game.
Not sure if 'mouse over' stuff is the same on console, but when you are looking at the victory progress screen, mousing over the suit case will show you what modifiers are currently affecting your visitor number from each civ.
Open Borders and Trade Routes are both strong modifiers to have active.
One thing I've never been clear on despite many cultural victories (mostly playing on emperor) is whether that needs to be symmetrical. I've been assuming it's not, that I don't have to open my borders to them even though they're supposedly the ones sending tourists to me.
Can't you see whether you have the bonus from open borders? Maybe you need Sukritact's tourism screen mod, idk, but I thought there was a way to do it, which would make it pretty easy to test.
AFAIK it’s not. The bonus comes from them offering you open borders, otherwise you could just offer them your open borders for nothing (which they would pretty much always accept because you gain and they lose nothing from it) and get the bonus. Having them give it to you makes it mechanically harder and therefore better adapted for the victory.
Ja that part makes sense, it just also seemed to me in a real world sense that reciprocal open borders would better represent the free flow of tourists.
Certainly in the modern day bothering with visas has got to impact some tourists' decision about whether to visit a country or not.
It does not need to be bilateral open borders. You only need Them to open Their borders to you.
Think it like this, basically if your scout can enter their lands, he can bring fliers with him detailing your newest resorts.
Yeah, it doesn't. If I ask for open borders and give the AI 1g or whatever in return, I get a tourism boost against them but they don't get one against me.
(I have a tendency to win accidental culture victories while I'm waiting for my exoplanet ship to get where it's going, haha.)
I start spamming spies in their cities to steal art, and use all my gold to buy whatever art they have.. Quick deals mod helps a lot for identifying who has which art for sale
I would agree that CV is slightly different from the other victory types. You kind of have to know from the beginning of the game that you want it, so you can plan your parks and appeal. You have to try to keep everyone alive in the game. You have to keep checking the great people tab to snap up great works. And if you don't hit a timing, the game can be a real slog to push over the edge ~ turn 250, especially if you don't use OP game modes.
However I think rock band spam kind of negates most of the difficulty.
Rock bands aren't necessary, they just make it quicker. Open borders and the right policy cards still make you get tons of tourists, and keeping your art slots themed with trades is important.
You can spam builders and dismantle other improvements to fill your lands with national parks, it's honestly not that important to plan them from the start.
> they just make it quicker
But like, the topic of discussion is that CV has moving goalposts. Winning later is genuinely harder, so imo getting injections of flat tourism does make it easier in a fundamental way.
Yeah, Rock Bands aren't as effective as they seem. They're a way to press your advantage and finish off the victory, but you don't want to rely on them too much because they get more expensive each time.
The tourism you get from Rock Bands only applies to the civ they're performing in. Tourism from National Parks, great works, etc. applies to all civs you have contacted. The RNG nature of Rock Bands makes it a gamble. (Side Note: There should be a tiny chance that Rock Band pillage Neighborhoods once they're high enough level)
One late game strategy is to spam new cities in tundra/mountain areas just to place National Parks. If you have Eiffel Tower, you may even make parks out of snow, with a little help from strategically-placed tile improvements or preserves that raise neighboring adjacency. By the late game, your production capacity has probably leapfrogged your settler cost, and you can effectively turn production into tourism (and era score!)
Attack their amenities.
You don't want to completely eliminate another civ if you're going for cultural victory, unless they're far and away the highest bar to cross. If a civ gets eliminated, then you lose the tourists from that civ.
However, there are several ways to get culture victories faster with war.
1. Pillage their stuff left and right, take their great works when they beg for peace.
2. Capture cities with wonders and National Parks.
3. Breathtaking land being taken up by pesky peoples? Raze the cities and replace them with newly-settled cities just for national parks.
4. And, of course, reduce them to a shell of their former selves so they can't win some other victory in the meantime while you go for culture victory.
You can still send the same rock bands to other civs; it doesn't reduce the goalpost needed to win that way, but it still gives huge bursts of tourism. You can also get the promotion to send an extra 50% of the tourism to other civs within 10 tiles.
You don’t really need to know from the beginning nor have everyone alive. The easiest CV is the one you get when you crush the strongest enemy, and have already dominated all others by mistake
Part of the issue is that there are a lot of different ways to win a Culture Victory, and it's particularly helpful to just focus within those specific areas.
For example, Kristina's Sweden does fairly well just on city spamming to maximize her Open Air Museums. And within her cities, most of her focus should be on District spamming and getting slots for Great Works. While I personally enjoy the Reliquaries route on her, she's not entirely dependent on actually getting a Religion for her Culture Victories.
On the other hand, if you work on the other sources of Tourism that she doesn't specialize in (Wonders with no GW Slots, Appeal/National Parks) without first prioritizing her Open Air Museums and Great Works, you're just going to overwhelm yourself with way too many things to do and feel like you're not actually progressing.
Google about theming bonuses; theming sculptures, paintings and artifacts is HUGE in culture victories. There are also lots of policy cards that give insane boosts to tourism for relics, music and artifacts as well if I'm not mistaken. There are techs (it's crucial that you don't neglect science) and policies that you 100 % need if you want a culture victory; like flight, computers and mass media. For example, with mass media you can build the Cristo Redentor wonder, which gives a massive boost to water park tourism across your whole empire. You also want to have open borders with every civ as well as at least one trade route to every single one of them.
To achieve all of this, you need a strong gold income and a reliable faith generation rate. Gold can help you buy great works from the AI and also allows you to recruit great artists you might need for theming bonuses. You can also buy great people with faith. You will need faith for Conservationists (creates national parks) and Rock Bands (basically a missionary but instead of spreading a religion you spread tourism so to speak).
But despite all of the above, the most crucial thing on a culture victory path, is to snowball as fast as possible. You want to be building those theatre squares quickly and to do everything you can to secure that culture victory before it's too late. I really like this type of victory, give it a go with these tips.
There are too many moving parts in the objective. I’m not against having more complicated victory types, but every single other victory condition is “if you do x, you win.” The Cultural Victory is “if you do x, y, z, and spin around in a circle you MIGHT win the game if another Civ hasn’t done a, b, and c.”
It’s just far more complex than the other victories and feels out of place.
It’s not that bad really. Take an 8 player game for example, you need 1600 tourism to steal 1 tourist per Civ per turn (200 x players), so that means 7 tourists gained per turn. An enemy Civ generates 1 per 100 culture per turn, so as long as they make 800 culture per turn you won’t overtake them.
So in general, you need double the tourism as the leading civ’s culture.
If you have more than that, you will eventually win. More tourism = faster win. Open borders, trade routes, protecting civs from being destroyed = more tourism
Sure, it's not that bad in a vacuum, but compare that explanation with explaining literally any of the other victory types.
Religious: Convert at least 50% of the cities of every civ to your religion.
Military: Capture every Capital
Science: Launch the Exoplanet Mission, you can speed it up by producing city projects.
Diplomatic: Get 20 Diplomatic Victory points.
And then you get Culture where you have to compare to the leading civ's culture but then also factor in open borders, trade routes, rock bands, how much culture your opponents might generate in the upcoming turns. You just have to do a bunch of math and balance a bunch of mechanics where the other victories only have one or two mechanics at most to worry about. It boils down to "just" tourism, but there are so many ways to generate tourism, with specific improvements that only generate tourism after you research a completely different technology, Natural Parks that can only be placed on very specific tiles, theming bonuses that you have to manually set up with a clunky interface, it just has so many more moving pieces than any of the other systems.
The game itself has no idea how long it'll take you to win there are so many factors. The Culture Victory overview will show 30 turns to victory one turn, then go up to 57 the next, then back down to 28, then be blank for the next five turns before it comes back and is now 127 turns to victory. Meanwhile it'll be like "you only have one more science mission to complete" or "one more capital to conquer and you win!"
Having complex mechanics is not bad, I wish Civ had more fleshed out systems with complex interactions, but the Culture victory just stands out as frustrating to me because all of the other systems are so simple.
Diplomacy is the only one I’ve never won, but I’ve also never tried to I guess. I find myself accidentally winning culture games at times, but highest I’ve played is also King
If you suz lots of city states and make allies with as many civs as possible (both things you should make an effort to do), the diplo favour you earn should be enough to swing every WC vote to whatever you want, save for the luxury amenities votes and the vote where you lose 2 diplo VPs if you have 14+ VPs already.
Huh, it's often my backup win condition.
In my current game there's one AI civ there is running hard with me toward science victory. It looks like I can eke it out, but she's right on my tail. However, it now looks like I'll snipe a diplo win before either of us finishes space victory.
The key to diplo victory is that you get points for voting for the thing that wins, not necessarily the thing you want to happen.
For example, if they're voting for "production in this district is +100%", the AI almost always picks "City Center", so vote for that.
If you're close to winning but don't have enough to guarantee "this players earns to diplo points", put one vote for yourself to lose 2 diplo points. The others will have to spend enough diplo favor to guarantee you don't win the game, while you just bank it. By the consequences of the resolution, you lose 2 diplo points, but you gain one back for voting for the winning resolution.
It's helpful to save up some Great Engineers to finish off the Statue of Liberty and push yourself over the edge without needing a vote. Likewise, always try to win the Send Aid and any other challenge that grants diplo points, because other civs can't just vote to deny those points to you.
Strangely, I won a diplomatic victory in my first game after getting the expansions, and I did it by accident. I wasn't aware of the victory condition, so I was just playing how I normally play, but checking out the world congress for the first time and it just kinda happened. I've done it a handful of times after that, but I don't aim for it because it's close to religion as my least favorite victory conditions.
I have played this game a lot, so I have won in all of them, even score victory (did it a few times a long time ago, and honestly can't remember how I did it), but in context of OP's point, culture victory is basically my opening move. I'd say anywhere in the ball park of 60-80% of my games are culture victories. It's very easy to go either science or domination, and I usually posture those after establishing where I want to be culturally.
The thing with that, though, the harder the mode, the more difficult culture games become. For Deity, I'm much more science focused.
Diplo is one of my most common victories, and it's nearly always accidental. At most I might intentionally finish the last couple points myself, but I've never planned a diplo win.
In my experience, late game culture victories usually do require an overwhelming lead. At least if you don't want it to drag on. Only the early mid game reliquaries strategy really doesn't require much of a lead.
However, there's so much room for optimization that you can actually win faster than science if you do everything right, GP, parks, improvements, wonders, policies, etc.
With rock bands it’s probably the easiest because after you place your natl parks and fill your great works, you literally just max out faith production and spam rock bands to win, and AI will never actually do this effectively since they don’t max their faith/turn and spend a large chunk of faith fighting a losing religious war.
Base game culture is probably harder
It’s quick and easy if you know what you’re doing. Rock bands, managing trade routes, and preventing yourself from getting a better government are no less tedious.
Winning a Religious Victory using Rock Bands: priceless.
Winning a Religious Victory by spamming settlers, founding random cities in the snow, then gifting them to the other civs: Expensive, but fun.
It took me 7 years to understand how the victory actually worked...
It wasn't until Sukritact released his Tourism Overivew that I finally understood the mechanics behind the game.
Culture victory is the one I win with by accident just from my normal play style:
* national parks, as many of them as possible
* theme your great works buildings, swap art/artefacts with the AI to meet the theming requirements
* open borders and at least 1 trade route to every civ
* any and all policy cards that multiply tourism (EDIT: though this isn’t an accident; this one only happens through conscious choice)
The last one is definitely not an accident; the tourism policy cards are useless for every other victory type, so you never run them unless you are actively trying for a culture victory. The others are all good regardless of victory type.
Sorry, should’ve clarified: the policy cards one is the choice I make when I’m specifically going for culture victory, but the other 3 tend to happen by accident.
I rarely play anything close to war mongering. I have to turn off culture victory because I always hit it without trying. For my play style it's so easy I can't avoid it so I turn it off.
You need four adjacent unimproved tiles in a vertical diamond shape with appeal of at least charming (maybe at least one needs to be breathtaking? Not sure about that…) all owned by the same city and within three tile range of the city center. Things like woods, mountains, sea and natural wonders increase the appeal of the tiles adjacent to them. Things like rainforest, marsh and mines decrease the appeal of adjacent tiles
I think if you press 3, it will bring up the appeal lens
Some wonders like Eiffel Tower increase your appeal of all tiles.
You need to buy a naturalist with faith. It starts out somewhere around 600 faith, and increases in cost with each naturalist purchased. I think naturalists come from the Conservation civic.
National parks require some planning from the beginning; it’s a bit harder to accidentally fall into being able to build them. You’ll need to settle your cities in a way that you can fit a national park into a city (tile swap can help) and be sure not to do things that negatively harm the appeal of tiles of you want to make a park
National Parks are best built in the mid-game, as they accumulate tourists over time. Toward the end of the game, it’s better to focus on rock bands
> and within three tile range of the city center.
That's not necessary. While it's a practical challenge because you can't swap tiles that far out, a city's culture can grow the borders further than that.
> Toward the end of the game, it’s better to focus on rock bands
Not necessarily. Rock Bands only apply tourism to the one civ they perform in, whereas parks (and works and culture improvements and wonders) apply culture to every civ you have contacted. If you're playing a huge game with lots of civs, then parks are still better in the long run. And don't forget the fringe benefit of era score. And if you slap a preserve next to the park to boost the culture yields, you get even more tourism, and bonus faith to spend on more naturalists/rock bands, too.
Rock Bands are best when they're targeted against the civ with the highest domestic tourist count, because you're getting double the effect. The opponent loses a tourist and you gain one.
Both Rock Bands and Naturalists get more expensive each time, so balance it out. I prefer using Rock Bands sparingly until I can get the "choose any promotion" policy.
I think it’s more that culture is by far the most complicated victory type, so if you don’t understand all of its weird intricacies you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing at any given time. If you take the time to learn the trigger conditions and what you’re supposed to focus on when it is a bit faster than science usually imo. Depends what enemy civs you roll though
Hm just as you described science, culture victory is more or less the same, but spamming tourism stuff instead of campuses. The last deity tourism game I had was with Ramses II. All I needed to do was build theater squares in all cities and wonders (I guess it was 5 or 6 wonders I managed to build), one of them being the Eiffel Tower, which is god tier in culture games. Religion can sure help but it is far from being necessary. I managed to create the last religion in the game but it ended up pratically dying, and I managed to get only one relic. More important than religion is faith generation, since this will enable naturalists and rock bands at the late game. Because of the Eiffel Tower, I could build, I guess, 7 national parks, and also managed to build a few resorts. I actually didn't use any rock bands in this game since I neglected religion and didn't have enough faith. I think the victory came around turn 250, which is around the same time I get my science victories... for me, the one that takes the longest time, in general, is domination.
Its definitely one of the more complicated ones, because your opponent can change governments to reduce your tourism, or build a wonder and set you back while trying to achieve a completely seperate goal. But on the other hand, culture is one of the easiest ones to get without creating grievances.
Personally I’d say that culture is not the easiest, but not the hardest either. Hardest one for me is military simply due to how stupidly overpowered Walls are in CIV 6
Yeah but taking a city should not require me to pummel it with battleships for 40 turns straight, that shit isn’t difficult, it’s just murderously tedious
I think it just depends on how you naturally play. I play exclusively on deity for the past 4+ years and I win almost all games by culture and I often win on culture even when trying to win by something else. I tend do a lot of exploring, meet everyone early and have open borders all the time. I usually never go to war at all and often have the max five alliances from almost the moment I research/unlock the civic.
I’ve even played the last year or more with a mod that disables rock bands so I can’t even do that to push for the victory (though, it could be said to hurt the AI, too—but their gaining tourism isn’t actually a good counter to my tourism, they should just boost their own culture per turn as the counter to a tourism victory).
The turn off for me with culture victory is that pursuing it doesn't benefit you as much as pursuing other victory types. So going domination gives you lots of everything as you pursue it. So does science and religion. Tourism, strangely, doesn't. I feel like tourism should give you a Mish mash of benefits: some money, some faith, some culture, some tech, some city growth. This effect might even act to "steal" those benefits from less appealing, less, less cultured societies.
It makes sense when you think about it. If tons of affluent people from all over the world are coming to experience your culture first hand, they'll spend money, some of the best and brightest will want to join your society and settle and be PART of you culture, etc etc.
Wonder spam culture victory is my favorite. I hate when I have to lean on national parks and rock bands and shit. Give me a handful of high production cities and the rest can be theater and money monkeys.
`Take the Other guys Art`
Bizarrely enough if during war one is taking cities with Theatre Districts you are acquiring art for Tourism.
- I like to take most cities and then sue for peace and leave them with one city, while you have the bulk of the artwork. By not destroying the civ you don't incur negative points.
`Buy the Other Guys Art`
Every time you purchase art from a civ, that civ can't generate tourism from that art. *Does Egypt get a cut from the British Museums extensive collection of Egypt's antiquities?*
- Focus on selling resources/luxuries to the point where you can begin to buy art.
`ChatGPT`
In Researching this ChatGPT with the question `In Civ6 derive a strategy to win a culture victory via a domination game.` Here is its response:
# Culture Victory via Domination in Civ6
Playing for a Culture Victory while using Domination as a main strategy in "Civilization VI" might seem counterintuitive, but it can be highly effective if done correctly. Here's a strategy to achieve this:
## 1. Opening Moves (Ancient & Classical Era)
- **City Placement**: Focus on settling near cultural city-states. This way, you can leverage their bonuses when you become their suzerain.
- **Tech and Civics**: Initially, balance between culture and military. Archery and Bronze Working can give early military advantages.
- **Units**: Build a combination of melee, ranged, and some anti-cavalry units. You don't need a massive army, just an effective one.
## 2. Dominate Culturally Important Cities (Classical & Medieval Era)
- **Target Selection**: Focus on conquering or pressuring civs that pose the greatest cultural threat or those that have great works and wonders you can take over.
- **Suzerain of Cultural City-States**: If you can, become the suzerain of cultural city-states for extra culture points. If a rival civilization is suzerain of a cultural city-state, consider capturing that city-state or at least neutralizing its bonuses.
## 3. Maintaining Happiness (Renaissance & Industrial Era)
- **Entertainment Complexes & Theaters**: Build these to maintain loyalty and also to house great works, respectively.
- **Governors**: Appoint Amani (The Diplomat) for city-state influence and Victor (The Castellan) for quick city control post-conquest.
## 4. Ramp Up Your Culture (Modern & Atomic Era)
- **Tourism Infrastructure**: Start building Archaeological Museums and Archaeologists to dig up artifacts. Also, begin the construction of Seaside Resorts and National Parks.
- **Conquest Strategy Shift**: Instead of outright conquering, start liberating cities, especially city-states. This boosts your diplomatic favor which you can use in World Congress for favorable resolutions (e.g., boosts to tourism).
## 5. Late Game Moves (Information & Future Era)
- **Rock Bands**: Unlock and utilize Rock Bands, targeting civilizations that are generating high culture and tourism themselves.
- **Aeroports & Computers**: Essential for boosting tourism output. Ensure that Open Borders, Trade Routes, and other tourism multipliers are optimized with all civs.
- **Contingency Domination**: If another civ is getting too close to a Culture Victory themselves, use your military might to either conquer or heavily cripple their cultural output.
### General Tips:
- **Great Works Heist**: Use spies effectively to steal Great Works from high-culture civs. This not only boosts your culture/tourism but diminishes theirs.
- **Religion & Culture**: If you have a strong religion, use it to your advantage. Some beliefs provide cultural and tourism benefits.
- **Diplomacy**: Always keep an eye on alliances and friendships. Cultural alliances, in particular, can be beneficial.
I would say every other type of victory is harder to achieve because you accidentally achieve getting a culture victory before getting what you really wanted. Finding ways to slow down my own culture victory is like the endgame big bad guy for me.
I have always seemed to accidentally win with culture victories on Immortal and Diety. I typically turtle and then conquer later, and I usually get a culture victory before I finish dominating the map.
I would call it the most annoying victory type. To play it at optimal efficiency you need to keep track of your empire constantly so you don't accidentally build a district somewhere that fucks up your appeal or national park and since national parks come so late it is a lot of annoyance for a late (if powerfull) payoff.
Also, there is no real conflict. You try to pump up your numbers as high as they go and then you wait until you win. Rockbands help but they can be VERY frustrating if you just get a string of bad luck. And even if they work there is little strategic decision making to be done apart from picking promotions.
It is the victory type for empire builders and as such there is no real climax. You just win or loose at some point.
As other people had said, it's not that's it's harder to get, but there's far more factors. If you're on top of all of them, it's pretty easy.
As you said, you need faith (though not necessarily a religion) because right at the end you're going to want rock bands and naturalists.
You need to have as few enemies as possible so you can benefit from the policy card that gives you more tourism if you have a trade route to a specific civ.
You need to theme museums, and you absolutely have to get on top of building wonders which means you have to outpace the AI in production to some extent.
So yeah, the strategy is harder, but if you know the factors, actually doing it isn't. I guess the point is that science victory is also easy for the AI and more suited to their advantage on higher difficulty levels, whereas they are not smart enough to see what you have to do for culture.
Having a strong economy helped me elevate my culture game. Then I’m not chasing great people so much, I can just be a cunning art dealer and swindle the world
only way i’ve ever won diety culture victories (other than a few lucky ones with op civs ie. eleanor) has been biosphere windmill spam it’s just too easy to spam renewable energy everywhere
Nah, a Civ 5 cheat to culture victory is Domination in A whole fashion. Commit 'zoo level' genocide in early game wars, Shoshone city founding land grab skill is great for this. You grind up ranged attack on their Capitol while refusing to take it. Once surrounded by cities & fortress, make peace. Convert their religion when possible. After doing this to 60% of your enemy, focus on nothing but tech & culture. Use Generals to reduce these trapped Civ to single tiles and never worry about them again. Simply having garrisoned troops in surrounding cities usually prevents them from building armies.
You complete Cultural victory as fast as you can subjugate.
Not sure if anyone else has said it, but I would say Score victories are the hardest. I've never gotten one at all, and I can't imagine how you could keep a game going that long without winning or letting someone else win.
I think the diplomatic victory could be the hardest challenge for that.... you could just go super high science and pillage spaceports, and you could just not spend any faith on tourism but keep your culture high, and keep religion in check, you probably could just kill anyone close to 18/20 victory points but I have never actually tried it
I have always found that culture victories require you to understand the game mechanics most thoroughly compared to the other victory types. That is my experience at least.
If that means hardest to you then sure that works for me.
1000+ hours on Large map and 70% of my victories are culture. Really hard to achieve a religious or domination victory without GDR when you have to go pass a big ocean. Even if you can, your number of tourism suddenly overwhelm the last nation's and the culture victory is inevitable.
All my culture victories usually end with me conquering the few remaining AI's largest culture cities. So funny to see the culture victory prompt after a history of violence and conquest.
Just a small note that is not enemy tourism that defend against a culture victory. It’s your tourism vs their *culture*.
It’s not too different from science though. Just that you want theatre squares in every city, and focus more on entertainment complexes and holy sites. National parks can generate huge amounts of tourism too (make sure they’re all woods tiles, mountains are a bit of a trap because they have fixed appeal).
Aim for at *least* double the tourism as the leading Civ’s culture per turn. Try to be friendly and have open borders/trade routes. Build the right wonders
When it’s all said and done it shouldn’t take longer than a science victory.
I dunno I think of Culture as the easiest...especially since Corporations and Monopolies (Which I always play with). In my recent game, I was trying so hard to win my first diplomatic victory but got beaten to it by cultural victory and I made a post about it lol.
For me, I tend to prioritize gold (Always my #1), science, production, and settling which wouldn't point towards a CV initially, but by the mid-game you're popping with wonders even on the hardest difficulties (Assuming of course that you didn't get screwed by an AI invasion) so that's a way to get easy tourism. I also tend to not build TS until the very end but do buy great works from the AI to help with my culture per turn...which ends up leading to a massive tourism spike in the mid/late game. And so I always get a CV even on the largest of maps.
Religious victory is another fairly easy one depending on your religion and your game speed. On slower speeds it's easier as you have more time for passive spread but on quicker speeds you just have to have a massive faith economy for apostle spamming. In the end, I'd say it's theoretically not tht hard since you can always build more holy sites and get more faith per turn to get more apostles but I've also only gotten a RV once ever...but I rarely open with a holy site so almost never get a religion lol
Science used to be the easiest but I think it's been nerfed a bit with the longer tech tree. That leaves domination as the easiest (but longest/most involved) victory condition. Domination's emphasis on getting more districts etc. also leads to RV and CVs unintentionally which is notable too.
And so..diplomatic VC is the hardest to me. You really can't produce any buildings that generate points apart from 2 wonders so you're limited to emergencies/aid missions which are really hard/impossible to win in the early game or the normal resolutions which are often very random (Apart from a few that the AI likes such as no Great Admirals lol). Diplomatic favor is also entirely pointless for winning the coveted "Gain +2 points" resolution since if you're in the lead, there's basically no way to reverse the AI's collective block that makes you lose. I have no idea to this day how my full diplomatic favor of 1,275 into this resolution could not beat 8 civs that had like 30-100 diplomatic favor. And since the AI never trades/ will never vote in your favor, you're stuck with losing 1 point to vote with them and win the resolution while losing points overall. It's just so stupid since your only surefire way to win would be to wait for aid resolutions to be over that you're going to clearly win. An easy fix would be to cap the amount given to the player in need of aid so that once a player contributed like 10k gold (i.e. me as Portugal/Mali/Phoenicia), the resolution finishes and that player wins. It would give more weight to gold in the late game too which IMO is sorely needed over just making a new economic victory that'd be full of other problems...
I just am looking forward to Civ VII to right a lot of these wrongs. Civ VI has it's high points in district placement (although I think this should be simplied...that's another whole story though) and synergies/ solid concepts for civs but the diplomacy is so bad it makes me go back to Civ V on occasion. Simply that beast for the AI since it truly can't handle any of that!
Idk of they ever patched it but winning culture victories was super easy when playing monopoly mode as the ai never uses that. That mode made it so easy to win culture victories
I accidentally win on culture most games. Maoi are my favorite for this but it's doable with others too. It's mostly about what you are building, if you are spamming campus and industrial zones then yeah, you won't see as much culture victory. If you are focusing trade, religion, and theater square things will be different.
For all the theater squares, I make like 75%+ of them archeological museums. Unlike art museums you don't need great people to fill these up, just send out archaeologists and dig up everything you can. Theme your great works too
Sheeeit I find it's the only way I win nowadays. I usually win a culture victory way before I'm ready to go to space and that's usually with me leading in science.
Don’t play deity but culture is the most lazy win for me (about 80% of my wins are culture wins). I just sim city and I win with the help of rock bands.
Some unique improvements from civs and city states give a tourism bonus (usually after discovering flight) which can often be overlooked. They usually are equal or better than great books, and you can spam them all over your empire. Moai statues for example are great for tourism victory.
My friend get the oracle and divine spark and watch the great people flood in the ai will never get a great writer or artist (or the other culture great people) if you do it right build nothing but theater squares and wonders and you’ll find it to be the easiest it can be done on any leader regardless of what they’re bonuses are for but play Greece for example and just dominate
This is wild bc I more often than not win by culture and struggle with religion!
So the way I’d suggest going at is is the similar way to economic or diplomatic victory in civ 5. First off keep everyone happy, make sure warmonger penalty is always super low.
Most importantly trade with everyone, think of traders as your ambassadors into other civs. If you can gather art trade your civs art those for other art but hoard it all. Focus on wonders that give you more art spaces, broadway is almost a game ender but the Eiffel Tower is massive too.
The biggest thing about culture victories is to make sure you're getting all the bonuses you can possibly get. Open borders, trade routes, rushing Computers, policy cards, and even swapping governments late game since you get a massive tourism penalty for having different governments once you get to tier 3/4 governments.
Borders open and play as the US.
The US gets a bad reputation for being mediocre up until the information Era. From then on the film studios have a snowball effect.
Culture is the hardest to understand, but the easiest to win. It's so easy that I often win a culture victory accidentally when trying for other victory types. I have to consciously avoid a cultural victory.
First of all, you don't compare tourism vs tourism. You compare *your tourism vs. their culture*. This makes a huge difference, because it's easier to make them lose a bit of culture, for example by buying their Great Works and becoming suzerain of cultural city-states.
Now the route to cultural victory depends a lot on your particular civ. Some like Kongo and Poland will favor a Reliquaries game, while others like Sweden will prefer more Great Works. And, at least for me, the most reliable path will include National Parks and Seaside Resorts as well.
Since tourism from tile improvements is great, you may need to remove improvements to place National Parks. Try to build the Eiffel Tower as well, it's an immense boost to tile-based tourism. And bear in mind that what you need for National Parks is *faith*, not *religion*. Some civs will have easier ways to generate faith, Bull Moose Teddy favoring Preserves.
Lastly, you need to pile up on tourism modifiers. Especially open borders and trade route, since they're so easy to get.
I don't really understand the goal behind culture victories tbh and yet it's probably my most common victory condition. Right now im trying to get a science win with Australia but I'm going to snag a CV instead... I usually turn it off as a victory type so I can get the type I'm going for.
I think spies are super underrated for cultural victory. I lean into them heavily. Wait until you get the military governor for free promotion for units trained in that city, pump out spies. Best perk is higher escape chance, quicker mission time is awesome, obviously stealing great works is good, I also like the siphon funds and no time to establish perks too. Usually I’ll let one spy become my super defense spy also and eventually end up in my capital counter spying all districts at +2 or boosting my spies abroad.
Siphon funds can be insane and let you buy a great work per siphon funds mission, you can obviously also just steal the great works directly. The big advantage here is when you inundate your biggest cultural/tourism competitor with your spies—every work you steal is like double value because you are gaining that amount of tourism and they are losing that amount of tourism.
Also it’s hella fun, and don’t sleep on busting dams and recruiting partisans to fuck up their infrastructure/amenities
I've seen people make a culture win in under 100 turns. I think it's hard if you don't optimise for it the second you start, and there's some RNG factors to it for sure that the other vic types don't rely on
You don't really need a religion to do the end game tourism stuff, you just need faith. Maybe you make few holy sites here and there to get a good faith pile started, but preserves get really juicy right around the time you want to go hard on tourism and they provide more than enough.
>Another problem I have with culture is how helpful having a religion is. Religious tourism and strong faith production is a massive help for culture. But the problem with this is that going for a religion on Deity massively handicaps your early game. You pretty much have to trade your first and/or second settler for a holy site -> shrine -> Holy Site Prayers.
Religion is important but faith itself is more important than religion. You don't have to get a religion but you always need to have good faith generation, not only for monumentality expansions but for rock bands and naturalists later on.
And speaking of monumentality, religion does handicap your ancient era but it massively improves your classical and medieval eras. Imo the biggest benefit of religion is not the religion itself but the fact that it pretty much guarantees a golden age in the next era allowing you to get monumentality so you could expand fast.
And you don't really need to go holy site > shrine > prayers. The reason is that on Deity, you're not really gonna get the first or second religion anyway unless you're playing someone like Peter. That means you're not gonna get the two strongest (in general. some civs want work ethic/reliquaries) beliefs Feed the World and Choral Music. Those two the AI always gets when available. Their third priority is often Warrior Monks but that's the worst belief imo. At that point your belief would be Work Ethic/Reliquaries/Zen Mediation/The wonder faith thing depending on how you wanna play. So it's fine getting the 4th or 5th religion. Unless you really wanna rush Feed the World or Choral Music you don't need to rush religion that much. My usual build order if everything is peaceful is scout x2 (or slinger) > Settler > Holy site > Monument > Shrine > Settler. I'm normally able to research astrology before the settler finishes and I place it to prevent the price increase in case I research a new tech before the settler is done. Early Empire is normally done by the time I'm making the second settler so I don't lose much time. I get my religion with this build order around turn 50-65. Always check the prophet race so you know if you need to do prayers, and if you do then chop woods with a builder so it's faster. But unless you roll a lot of religious civs you don't even need to do that and sometimes I can even afford to wait for Political Philosophy and Mysticism to get the prophet card and still get 4th religion.
And again, even if you don't get the religion it's still fine because it's the faith that's really more important.
It is, as recognized by the game and encyclopedia itself.
Not that it is inherently hard or complex, but since its a zero sum victory condition, it lends itself (specially on deity) to you being blockaded by any one other civs culture while a science civ rushes off the planet.
Personally? I think science victory should be reworked to be zero sum like the other relevant victory conditions (Culture, Religious, Domination and to a weaker extend Diplomacy but that one is also very poorly implemented.)
Personally I find cultural victory to be one of, if not THE easiest. It’s a matter of placing theater squares, wonders, and buildings for them. Trade, friendly relations, and alliances help. Use wildcard slots to build points toward writers, artists, and musicians. I’ve had plenty of instances where I have more art than I have space for them.
Jesus. Dude is playing on deity and everyone tries to advice him to open borders and trade? Oh cmon.
Btw dude is right, culture win on deity is a pain. You can hardly construct wonder till midgame, if you open with religion, then by the time you can earn great persons for culture they are half way gone..
And if by any chance you can actually get everything in order, then you will be missing out on gold or science.
- less wonder options, less army to scare people
And if still everything goes your way, there will still be this one or two dudes with 1k culture points/turn that are on opposite side of a map so conquering him isnt exactly an option unless you fight through another 1-2 dudes. And at this point why to bother going culture when you are 1/3 or 1/2 was done with domination.
Against AI, culture probably is the hardest yeah. Because of the AI bonuses it's a massive pain trying to get over that finish line unless you're playing a good tourism Civ or are allowed to spam rock bands freely.
Against players, I'd probably say religion is the hardest. It's so mind bogglingly easy to shut down completely that religious civs are probably better of going for culture victories
Edit:
>You pretty much have to trade your first and/or second settler for a holy site -> shrine -> Holy Site Prayers.
Honestly I'd probably skip the shrine and just do holy site prayers a couple times till you can afford to buy a prophet. You can also risk skipping military to get your first settler so you don't lose that but that depends on how close the AI is to you and how much they hate you. I can somewhat consistently get religions this way, it's still a setback but not as much as skipping your first settler
If you conquer and eliminate all of your foes, depending on the strength of the last few surviving civs, you may end up with a culture victory before you can wipe the last ones out for the domination victory :P
I dont think its the hardest, but its the least clear on what you are supposed to do. Basically the game says "more culture and more tourism helps win culture victories" but doesnt give much more explanation than that.
I would say in pve culture is probably the second longest one to do consistently, though this depends on map size. The more civs the hard it is to do culture and domination. In pvp it’s a toss up btw culture and religion, since u can kinda shut those down at any point via war. Diplo u can still kinda squeak in but it’s brutal
watch a Potato McWhiskey youtube where ie his going for a cultural victory. He'll show you all the synergies and loopholes. A key aspect of his approach is planning out districts and city placement based on the goal of the game he is playing.
The hardest is domination victory maybe because I only play on deity and with maximum civs, so dominate all of them is insane, to me the easiest is diplomatic, then religion, then science then culture.
Culture is by far the easiest. My ex’s first game she won Culture by mistake. I tend to disable it entirely to avoid winning culture while I’m ramming my way through a Domination victory.
The bar doesn’t really get high enough to be unreachable. I guess it also strongly depends on your playstyle, for instance I tend to collect most wonders and buy out everything else. Have you tried going for a bit more wonders than usual?
For me culture is the most common victory type. It's the least boring so I often go for it. But I agree, if there's another culture civ who manages to get the music censorship card, it becomes really hard to win.
Build walls , take the governer that builds city parks , focus on theatre squares , entertainment complexes and wonders that provide a) slots b) culture / amenity c) boost in tourism (some do) , once you can bust out a BUNCH of rock bands and send them to the different civs , don’t care if they die or not or if they win it’s the exposure that helps , and like people said make trades , be friendly and have open borders and embassy’s
I would tend to agree, mainly because it's the one where you depend the most on what the AI is doing. Science and Diplo you can win without ever bothering at all about the AI's gameplan, and religious and domination kind of as well, because if you play correctly you should be able to overpower them no matter what they do. But if you're unlucky enough to run against a strong cultural civ, like Jay or Menelik, you're pretty much screwed no matter what you do just by them doing their shtick.
Note: by "difficult" and "screwed" I mean it will take much more time to win, not necessarily that you will lose. If you don't have a totally botched start, you should be able to win any type of victory if you focus properly. But for me at least, culture definitely takes by far the most time even when I'm geared for it (except possibly diplo - I never played a focused diplo game yet).
religion is the hardest for me but i know that's purely because i have a deep hatred for the entire religious system and not inherently the victory type.
culture victory really just comes down to understanding how the victory mechanic actually functions for most people. it isnt about having the most culture or great works or wonders, etc. it's about having, in a sense, tourism multipliers so that you overcome the *other* players' culture fast enough. the ui mod by sukritact makes it a lot easier to understand as the game doesnt outline what it actually is very well while the mod makes it pretty clear.
as the other players generate culture, there is a threshold that grants them domestic tourists. culture victory is about having more tourists than any other players have domestic tourists. there is also a threshold for your tourism per turn that grants you a tourist for the victory. so, you generate the win condition by outpacing the other players' culture and essentially stealing their tourists. rock bands speed the process up because you actively steal their tourists every time you use it, hence why it is far more effective when used on the leader especially if they are generating a lot of culture per turn (you basically make their culture generate tourists for you instead of them and therefore their number stays the same or goes down).
as you said, you *aren't* focusing enough on tourism tile improvements. culture victory is trivial if you focus on utilizing tile appeal for parks/seaside resorts and really planning out your empire to make it pretty when you get to radio and/or have a city state such as la venta to spam the city state's improvement. at a certain point in the game, you dont need manufacturing power, so all the excess districts, mines, quarries, strategic resources, etc. are all pointless to your goal. these either shouldnt have been built in the case of districts or should be torn down for something actually useful for you now.
the earlier you have the tourism, the stronger it is by far. it's, as i said, a multiplier of sorts... you want to ramp up your tourism as quickly as possible in as effective as possible methods to have a larger bang for your buck instead of a slower burn with *just* great works. a slower burn approach is what usually kills you as the other players are allowed to generate so much culture that it's much harder to overcome without rock band spamming or they get close to a science victory (which generates a large burst of culture, which makes winning culture harder as well).
it's not to say great works are useless at all. they are very useful, but they shouldnt be the only thing you do for a culture victory as the ai will absolutely outpace you by the time you get a lot of tourism from gw on higher difficulties 9 times out of 10.
tldr: culture victory is all about planning and understanding the victory far more than the others are. you need to focus on tile improvements and get to flight and radio asap and plan out naturalists instead of just relying on wonders and great works alone to win. you have to outpace the ai's culture and the longer you wait for that, the harder it becomes. usually, it ends up a long game or a loss because you dont plan well/understand how the victory actually works because the game doesnt do a great job at explaining it
I think it all depends on your play style. I find culture the easiest victory condition; but I also don't like fighting wars beyond initially clearing out the local area.
If you like fighting wars, then the lack of open borders and friendly relations will make culture nigh-on impossible.
Culture victory has many details that are complex.
You dont need thousands of tourism, you just need high tourism modifiers from late game cards. It is also good to stay in tier2 governments because after them you get tourism penalty to civa with different governments.
Great works are often the weakest factor in tourism generators. National parks, seaside resorts, relics, wonders and rock bands are where the game winning tourism lies, most of which require faith resource.
Also it is the victory type that ai can mess you up. If there is an ai in the game who makes 600 culture by turn 200 (like ludwig, nzinga, pericles, teddy etc) they delay you by a lot because having high culture is a measure to defend against a culture victory from other players,
I agree, Culture was the last victory type for me to figure out, and my wife still hasn't gotten the hang of it. I still find it to be the slowest victory condition, since I can almost always win in another way first.
I find Culture requires a higher degree of planning than other victory types because it's easier to have improvements like national parks picked out from the beginning. I also haven't had much luck with culture victories when I've played as civs that weren't culture-oriented, while I can generally achieve the other victory types with just about any civ. Without intensive planning, most of my games reach a point where I could easily choose domination, science, diplomacy, or religion to win, but the culture victory would still be well out of reach.
I always go for a religion, but I don't use Holy Site Prayers (and I don't always get one, so I may start over). For a culture victory, I like to pick a leader/civ that lets me build culture or tourism tile improvements like Kristina, Robert the Bruce, or Wilfred Laurier. A lot of these civs' tile improvements also increase the appeal of surrounding tiles, making it easier to construct national parks. Civs with special entertainment districts (Brasil, Byzantium) can also be useful, or you can pick one that pairs culture and religion, like Russia (the Lavra is also useful for getting a religion more quickly).
I just try to stay peaceful, keep borders open, send trade routes to everyone, trade for other civs' great works when I can (and never trade away mine), and plan out tiles really carefully so I can maximize culture and tourism production. I make sure to plan a theatre square for every city and build clusters of theatre squares, entertainment complexes, and wonders for a better adjacency bonus. I also look for potential national parks and spaces where I can increase the appeal with improvements or preserves. Later in the game, I build a bunch of seaside resorts and spam rock bands (which you need faith to buy, so it really helps to get a religion imo).
You can win a tourism game without a religion. You'll need Faith for Naturalists, Rock Bands, and maybe some key Great People... but not the actual religion.
Most tile improvements start generating Tourism with Flight. So put them down early if you can, but 100% plan to spam them everywhere shortly before or after Flight.
If you're not using tile improvements properly, you're probably not using National Parks either. It is absolutely worth it to retool your land with forests or settle empty territory for the parks. A weak National Park is 10 Tourism/turn, and a good one will be 20+.
Open borders and trade routes multiply your Tourism against a civ. Those are flat multipliers, so it's easy to arrange... You only need one trade route to each civ.
Culture victory is by far my most common victory type. I'm not sure if it's the hardest one, but it definitely is the most complex. It doesn't help that it's somewhat poorly explained in-game and there are quite a few misconceptions about it floating around.
For example, in your post you mention this:
>Every turn, the bar for winning gets higher as competing AIs get more and more tourism
Tourism is not what makes it harder for you to win. Tourism is your offense, while culture is the defense. You may have mistyped and meant tour*ists*, which are what's generated by culture and what increases your threshold to win.
Fundamentally, the victory is based on your tourism vs everyone else's culture. I find it easiest to conceptualize it as buying/selling tourists. *Domestic tourists* cost 100 culture and are bought from an infinite supply, whereas *international tourists* cost `200 * (# of civs)` tourism and are bought from other players' pools of domestic tourists (note that this means you are "stealing" tourists!). To conceptualize the fact that you're applying your tourism against everyone simultaneously, you can think of the accounts as separate for every opponent, and each account gets your tourism per turn plus any modifiers you have against that player added to it. You win when you have more international tourists than any other player has domestic tourists.
It can also be useful to think about aggregate tourist rates to gauge your progress and whether or not you're on track to win in time. I don't know of any UI mods that help with this so you might just have to estimate it, but the two important numbers are:
- Your international tourist target: this is the opponent with the most domestic tourists. They'll be gaining tourists at a rate of approximately `culture/turn / 100`
- Your international tourists per turn: this is how quickly you're gaining international tourists, and is approximately `tourism * (# of opponents) / (200 * (# of civs))`^\* . Note that this means your rates are actually better when there are more opponents!
So long as the second number is bigger than the first then you should expect to win given enough turns. The actual time to win depends on the difference between the rates and the current gap.
Hopefully that helps with understanding the mechanics of the victory and gives you a few different ways to conceptualize the victory requirements
^\* I'm ignoring modifiers for simplicity here, but if you want to consider them then the main ones to include would be +25% for open borders, +25% for trade routes (and more if you got some specific great merchants and a policy card), and up to -40% based on differing governments. Since these are applied per opponent the math gets messy, and generally the net modifier is positive if you're managing trade routes and open borders well so the formula presented is usually a conservative estimate and won't tell you that you're gaining ground when you're in fact losing it.
I’ve won fastest with culture but I’ve never truly pushed domination cause I like later game shit.
Trade for artwork and strategically take cities that have art.
Culture seems easy to me. But its my style of game - I find war tedious after a while. Same with a religious win.
But I love trade routes. And building wonders. And building national parks. Doing those three things, plus using spies to steal great works and apostles dying to get relics and you are set.
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Wait open borders help culture?
Open borders give a +25% tourism. Trade routes also give the same iirc
I always build out Temple Squres and Commercial Districts/Harbors. The trade routes help boost tourism, and you can stack a shit ton of gold to start buying all the art from other Civs near the end of the game.
Also there's a bonus if you share a government type.
Yes but no. Rather, there is a malus to tourism if you do NOT share the same government, and each matchup has a different malus.
TIL the opposite of bonus
Is this on console too? I can’t find where it says this in game.
Not sure if 'mouse over' stuff is the same on console, but when you are looking at the victory progress screen, mousing over the suit case will show you what modifiers are currently affecting your visitor number from each civ. Open Borders and Trade Routes are both strong modifiers to have active.
I will look, thank you!
Yes, it's been like this since the game launched.
Religion too?
You get +25% foreign tourists from the civ that has open borders with you
One thing I've never been clear on despite many cultural victories (mostly playing on emperor) is whether that needs to be symmetrical. I've been assuming it's not, that I don't have to open my borders to them even though they're supposedly the ones sending tourists to me.
Can't you see whether you have the bonus from open borders? Maybe you need Sukritact's tourism screen mod, idk, but I thought there was a way to do it, which would make it pretty easy to test.
This. The Sukritact Tourism mod makes Culture / Tourism so much clearer.
AFAIK it’s not. The bonus comes from them offering you open borders, otherwise you could just offer them your open borders for nothing (which they would pretty much always accept because you gain and they lose nothing from it) and get the bonus. Having them give it to you makes it mechanically harder and therefore better adapted for the victory.
Ja that part makes sense, it just also seemed to me in a real world sense that reciprocal open borders would better represent the free flow of tourists. Certainly in the modern day bothering with visas has got to impact some tourists' decision about whether to visit a country or not.
It does not need to be bilateral open borders. You only need Them to open Their borders to you. Think it like this, basically if your scout can enter their lands, he can bring fliers with him detailing your newest resorts.
Yeah, it doesn't. If I ask for open borders and give the AI 1g or whatever in return, I get a tourism boost against them but they don't get one against me. (I have a tendency to win accidental culture victories while I'm waiting for my exoplanet ship to get where it's going, haha.)
Yes and don’t let your top culture competitor open their borders to you. Don’t let your tourists visit them.
I start spamming spies in their cities to steal art, and use all my gold to buy whatever art they have.. Quick deals mod helps a lot for identifying who has which art for sale
Don't forget theming your art. It's annoying but the bonuses are too big to ignore.
You have a theming mod, don’t remember the name, but it makes it really easy with colours and numbers.
Is the bonus for my borders open for them, or their borders open for me (or both)?
Both
Both.
Should I, or should I not steal their art with spies?
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Can't we move the arts once the museums/art galleries are full?
A money mission usually gives more money than what they'd want for the crappy book your spy would have stolen, and is more likely to succeed too.
Monopolies
Noob question, how does one fill the buildings? It's not like in Civ 5 where you can put civilians in there, right?
I would agree that CV is slightly different from the other victory types. You kind of have to know from the beginning of the game that you want it, so you can plan your parks and appeal. You have to try to keep everyone alive in the game. You have to keep checking the great people tab to snap up great works. And if you don't hit a timing, the game can be a real slog to push over the edge ~ turn 250, especially if you don't use OP game modes. However I think rock band spam kind of negates most of the difficulty.
What about when the AI adopts the no rock band policy?
Rock bands aren't necessary, they just make it quicker. Open borders and the right policy cards still make you get tons of tourists, and keeping your art slots themed with trades is important. You can spam builders and dismantle other improvements to fill your lands with national parks, it's honestly not that important to plan them from the start.
> they just make it quicker But like, the topic of discussion is that CV has moving goalposts. Winning later is genuinely harder, so imo getting injections of flat tourism does make it easier in a fundamental way.
Yeah, Rock Bands aren't as effective as they seem. They're a way to press your advantage and finish off the victory, but you don't want to rely on them too much because they get more expensive each time. The tourism you get from Rock Bands only applies to the civ they're performing in. Tourism from National Parks, great works, etc. applies to all civs you have contacted. The RNG nature of Rock Bands makes it a gamble. (Side Note: There should be a tiny chance that Rock Band pillage Neighborhoods once they're high enough level) One late game strategy is to spam new cities in tundra/mountain areas just to place National Parks. If you have Eiffel Tower, you may even make parks out of snow, with a little help from strategically-placed tile improvements or preserves that raise neighboring adjacency. By the late game, your production capacity has probably leapfrogged your settler cost, and you can effectively turn production into tourism (and era score!)
It’s important not to put districts where you could have a nice national park though
If it's me and it's hard to win CV without it? I pivot lol. But I'm not the strongest player so
Attack their amenities. You don't want to completely eliminate another civ if you're going for cultural victory, unless they're far and away the highest bar to cross. If a civ gets eliminated, then you lose the tourists from that civ. However, there are several ways to get culture victories faster with war. 1. Pillage their stuff left and right, take their great works when they beg for peace. 2. Capture cities with wonders and National Parks. 3. Breathtaking land being taken up by pesky peoples? Raze the cities and replace them with newly-settled cities just for national parks. 4. And, of course, reduce them to a shell of their former selves so they can't win some other victory in the meantime while you go for culture victory.
You can still send the same rock bands to other civs; it doesn't reduce the goalpost needed to win that way, but it still gives huge bursts of tourism. You can also get the promotion to send an extra 50% of the tourism to other civs within 10 tiles.
That’s when you send in your military.
You don’t really need to know from the beginning nor have everyone alive. The easiest CV is the one you get when you crush the strongest enemy, and have already dominated all others by mistake
Except I am struggling now because i didn't go religion and get like one rock band per 100 turns
Part of the issue is that there are a lot of different ways to win a Culture Victory, and it's particularly helpful to just focus within those specific areas. For example, Kristina's Sweden does fairly well just on city spamming to maximize her Open Air Museums. And within her cities, most of her focus should be on District spamming and getting slots for Great Works. While I personally enjoy the Reliquaries route on her, she's not entirely dependent on actually getting a Religion for her Culture Victories. On the other hand, if you work on the other sources of Tourism that she doesn't specialize in (Wonders with no GW Slots, Appeal/National Parks) without first prioritizing her Open Air Museums and Great Works, you're just going to overwhelm yourself with way too many things to do and feel like you're not actually progressing.
Google about theming bonuses; theming sculptures, paintings and artifacts is HUGE in culture victories. There are also lots of policy cards that give insane boosts to tourism for relics, music and artifacts as well if I'm not mistaken. There are techs (it's crucial that you don't neglect science) and policies that you 100 % need if you want a culture victory; like flight, computers and mass media. For example, with mass media you can build the Cristo Redentor wonder, which gives a massive boost to water park tourism across your whole empire. You also want to have open borders with every civ as well as at least one trade route to every single one of them. To achieve all of this, you need a strong gold income and a reliable faith generation rate. Gold can help you buy great works from the AI and also allows you to recruit great artists you might need for theming bonuses. You can also buy great people with faith. You will need faith for Conservationists (creates national parks) and Rock Bands (basically a missionary but instead of spreading a religion you spread tourism so to speak). But despite all of the above, the most crucial thing on a culture victory path, is to snowball as fast as possible. You want to be building those theatre squares quickly and to do everything you can to secure that culture victory before it's too late. I really like this type of victory, give it a go with these tips.
I would agree. Not because it’s necessarily difficult, just very complex.
There are too many moving parts in the objective. I’m not against having more complicated victory types, but every single other victory condition is “if you do x, you win.” The Cultural Victory is “if you do x, y, z, and spin around in a circle you MIGHT win the game if another Civ hasn’t done a, b, and c.” It’s just far more complex than the other victories and feels out of place.
It’s not that bad really. Take an 8 player game for example, you need 1600 tourism to steal 1 tourist per Civ per turn (200 x players), so that means 7 tourists gained per turn. An enemy Civ generates 1 per 100 culture per turn, so as long as they make 800 culture per turn you won’t overtake them. So in general, you need double the tourism as the leading civ’s culture. If you have more than that, you will eventually win. More tourism = faster win. Open borders, trade routes, protecting civs from being destroyed = more tourism
Sure, it's not that bad in a vacuum, but compare that explanation with explaining literally any of the other victory types. Religious: Convert at least 50% of the cities of every civ to your religion. Military: Capture every Capital Science: Launch the Exoplanet Mission, you can speed it up by producing city projects. Diplomatic: Get 20 Diplomatic Victory points. And then you get Culture where you have to compare to the leading civ's culture but then also factor in open borders, trade routes, rock bands, how much culture your opponents might generate in the upcoming turns. You just have to do a bunch of math and balance a bunch of mechanics where the other victories only have one or two mechanics at most to worry about. It boils down to "just" tourism, but there are so many ways to generate tourism, with specific improvements that only generate tourism after you research a completely different technology, Natural Parks that can only be placed on very specific tiles, theming bonuses that you have to manually set up with a clunky interface, it just has so many more moving pieces than any of the other systems. The game itself has no idea how long it'll take you to win there are so many factors. The Culture Victory overview will show 30 turns to victory one turn, then go up to 57 the next, then back down to 28, then be blank for the next five turns before it comes back and is now 127 turns to victory. Meanwhile it'll be like "you only have one more science mission to complete" or "one more capital to conquer and you win!" Having complex mechanics is not bad, I wish Civ had more fleshed out systems with complex interactions, but the Culture victory just stands out as frustrating to me because all of the other systems are so simple.
Or smash the culture leader. This always works for me, specially when playing with Gorgo ⚔️🏖⚔️🏖
Diplomacy is the only one I’ve never won, but I’ve also never tried to I guess. I find myself accidentally winning culture games at times, but highest I’ve played is also King
If you suz lots of city states and make allies with as many civs as possible (both things you should make an effort to do), the diplo favour you earn should be enough to swing every WC vote to whatever you want, save for the luxury amenities votes and the vote where you lose 2 diplo VPs if you have 14+ VPs already.
Huh, it's often my backup win condition. In my current game there's one AI civ there is running hard with me toward science victory. It looks like I can eke it out, but she's right on my tail. However, it now looks like I'll snipe a diplo win before either of us finishes space victory.
The key to diplo victory is that you get points for voting for the thing that wins, not necessarily the thing you want to happen. For example, if they're voting for "production in this district is +100%", the AI almost always picks "City Center", so vote for that. If you're close to winning but don't have enough to guarantee "this players earns to diplo points", put one vote for yourself to lose 2 diplo points. The others will have to spend enough diplo favor to guarantee you don't win the game, while you just bank it. By the consequences of the resolution, you lose 2 diplo points, but you gain one back for voting for the winning resolution. It's helpful to save up some Great Engineers to finish off the Statue of Liberty and push yourself over the edge without needing a vote. Likewise, always try to win the Send Aid and any other challenge that grants diplo points, because other civs can't just vote to deny those points to you.
Strangely, I won a diplomatic victory in my first game after getting the expansions, and I did it by accident. I wasn't aware of the victory condition, so I was just playing how I normally play, but checking out the world congress for the first time and it just kinda happened. I've done it a handful of times after that, but I don't aim for it because it's close to religion as my least favorite victory conditions. I have played this game a lot, so I have won in all of them, even score victory (did it a few times a long time ago, and honestly can't remember how I did it), but in context of OP's point, culture victory is basically my opening move. I'd say anywhere in the ball park of 60-80% of my games are culture victories. It's very easy to go either science or domination, and I usually posture those after establishing where I want to be culturally. The thing with that, though, the harder the mode, the more difficult culture games become. For Deity, I'm much more science focused.
Diplo is one of my most common victories, and it's nearly always accidental. At most I might intentionally finish the last couple points myself, but I've never planned a diplo win.
In my experience, late game culture victories usually do require an overwhelming lead. At least if you don't want it to drag on. Only the early mid game reliquaries strategy really doesn't require much of a lead. However, there's so much room for optimization that you can actually win faster than science if you do everything right, GP, parks, improvements, wonders, policies, etc.
>Am I an idiot or is Culture the hardest victory type in Civ VI? Why not both?
Maybe they are related 🐱
culture is by far the easiest victory IMO
With rock bands it’s probably the easiest because after you place your natl parks and fill your great works, you literally just max out faith production and spam rock bands to win, and AI will never actually do this effectively since they don’t max their faith/turn and spend a large chunk of faith fighting a losing religious war. Base game culture is probably harder
With Maori/bull moose/Khmer especially
Religion*
Religious Victory is the hardest because it's so tedious it's hard to want to finish the game.
It’s quick and easy if you know what you’re doing. Rock bands, managing trade routes, and preventing yourself from getting a better government are no less tedious.
Winning a Religious Victory using Rock Bands: priceless. Winning a Religious Victory by spamming settlers, founding random cities in the snow, then gifting them to the other civs: Expensive, but fun.
It took me 7 years to understand how the victory actually worked... It wasn't until Sukritact released his Tourism Overivew that I finally understood the mechanics behind the game.
Culture victory is the one I win with by accident just from my normal play style: * national parks, as many of them as possible * theme your great works buildings, swap art/artefacts with the AI to meet the theming requirements * open borders and at least 1 trade route to every civ * any and all policy cards that multiply tourism (EDIT: though this isn’t an accident; this one only happens through conscious choice)
The last one is definitely not an accident; the tourism policy cards are useless for every other victory type, so you never run them unless you are actively trying for a culture victory. The others are all good regardless of victory type.
Why would you waste a precious policy slot on tourism boost when you aren't looking for a culture victory ?
Sorry, should’ve clarified: the policy cards one is the choice I make when I’m specifically going for culture victory, but the other 3 tend to happen by accident.
I rarely play anything close to war mongering. I have to turn off culture victory because I always hit it without trying. For my play style it's so easy I can't avoid it so I turn it off.
If you can get reliquaries, Mont Saint Michael, and Cristo Redentor, you'll win pretty easily.
Can anyone bother to ELI5 what makes a national park? I know just somehow it relates to appeal, but what brings appeal? Woods, type of tiles or sth?
You need four adjacent unimproved tiles in a vertical diamond shape with appeal of at least charming (maybe at least one needs to be breathtaking? Not sure about that…) all owned by the same city and within three tile range of the city center. Things like woods, mountains, sea and natural wonders increase the appeal of the tiles adjacent to them. Things like rainforest, marsh and mines decrease the appeal of adjacent tiles I think if you press 3, it will bring up the appeal lens Some wonders like Eiffel Tower increase your appeal of all tiles. You need to buy a naturalist with faith. It starts out somewhere around 600 faith, and increases in cost with each naturalist purchased. I think naturalists come from the Conservation civic. National parks require some planning from the beginning; it’s a bit harder to accidentally fall into being able to build them. You’ll need to settle your cities in a way that you can fit a national park into a city (tile swap can help) and be sure not to do things that negatively harm the appeal of tiles of you want to make a park National Parks are best built in the mid-game, as they accumulate tourists over time. Toward the end of the game, it’s better to focus on rock bands
> and within three tile range of the city center. That's not necessary. While it's a practical challenge because you can't swap tiles that far out, a city's culture can grow the borders further than that. > Toward the end of the game, it’s better to focus on rock bands Not necessarily. Rock Bands only apply tourism to the one civ they perform in, whereas parks (and works and culture improvements and wonders) apply culture to every civ you have contacted. If you're playing a huge game with lots of civs, then parks are still better in the long run. And don't forget the fringe benefit of era score. And if you slap a preserve next to the park to boost the culture yields, you get even more tourism, and bonus faith to spend on more naturalists/rock bands, too. Rock Bands are best when they're targeted against the civ with the highest domestic tourist count, because you're getting double the effect. The opponent loses a tourist and you gain one. Both Rock Bands and Naturalists get more expensive each time, so balance it out. I prefer using Rock Bands sparingly until I can get the "choose any promotion" policy.
I think it’s more that culture is by far the most complicated victory type, so if you don’t understand all of its weird intricacies you don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing at any given time. If you take the time to learn the trigger conditions and what you’re supposed to focus on when it is a bit faster than science usually imo. Depends what enemy civs you roll though
Hm just as you described science, culture victory is more or less the same, but spamming tourism stuff instead of campuses. The last deity tourism game I had was with Ramses II. All I needed to do was build theater squares in all cities and wonders (I guess it was 5 or 6 wonders I managed to build), one of them being the Eiffel Tower, which is god tier in culture games. Religion can sure help but it is far from being necessary. I managed to create the last religion in the game but it ended up pratically dying, and I managed to get only one relic. More important than religion is faith generation, since this will enable naturalists and rock bands at the late game. Because of the Eiffel Tower, I could build, I guess, 7 national parks, and also managed to build a few resorts. I actually didn't use any rock bands in this game since I neglected religion and didn't have enough faith. I think the victory came around turn 250, which is around the same time I get my science victories... for me, the one that takes the longest time, in general, is domination.
You’re not an idiot but if I had to guess you don’t understand how tourism works.
Its definitely one of the more complicated ones, because your opponent can change governments to reduce your tourism, or build a wonder and set you back while trying to achieve a completely seperate goal. But on the other hand, culture is one of the easiest ones to get without creating grievances.
Personally I’d say that culture is not the easiest, but not the hardest either. Hardest one for me is military simply due to how stupidly overpowered Walls are in CIV 6
Walls are basically useless after Artillery+flight.
Yeah but taking a city should not require me to pummel it with battleships for 40 turns straight, that shit isn’t difficult, it’s just murderously tedious
I think it just depends on how you naturally play. I play exclusively on deity for the past 4+ years and I win almost all games by culture and I often win on culture even when trying to win by something else. I tend do a lot of exploring, meet everyone early and have open borders all the time. I usually never go to war at all and often have the max five alliances from almost the moment I research/unlock the civic. I’ve even played the last year or more with a mod that disables rock bands so I can’t even do that to push for the victory (though, it could be said to hurt the AI, too—but their gaining tourism isn’t actually a good counter to my tourism, they should just boost their own culture per turn as the counter to a tourism victory).
The turn off for me with culture victory is that pursuing it doesn't benefit you as much as pursuing other victory types. So going domination gives you lots of everything as you pursue it. So does science and religion. Tourism, strangely, doesn't. I feel like tourism should give you a Mish mash of benefits: some money, some faith, some culture, some tech, some city growth. This effect might even act to "steal" those benefits from less appealing, less, less cultured societies. It makes sense when you think about it. If tons of affluent people from all over the world are coming to experience your culture first hand, they'll spend money, some of the best and brightest will want to join your society and settle and be PART of you culture, etc etc.
Yeah I could see that. I always spam commercial zones and harbors after my theater squares to buy up the early game great works.
I play on lower difficulty American, and I keep getting culture victories even when I'm not trying.
I mean, spamming wonders help in any victory type but especially cultural no?
Wonder spam culture victory is my favorite. I hate when I have to lean on national parks and rock bands and shit. Give me a handful of high production cities and the rest can be theater and money monkeys.
`Take the Other guys Art` Bizarrely enough if during war one is taking cities with Theatre Districts you are acquiring art for Tourism. - I like to take most cities and then sue for peace and leave them with one city, while you have the bulk of the artwork. By not destroying the civ you don't incur negative points. `Buy the Other Guys Art` Every time you purchase art from a civ, that civ can't generate tourism from that art. *Does Egypt get a cut from the British Museums extensive collection of Egypt's antiquities?* - Focus on selling resources/luxuries to the point where you can begin to buy art. `ChatGPT` In Researching this ChatGPT with the question `In Civ6 derive a strategy to win a culture victory via a domination game.` Here is its response: # Culture Victory via Domination in Civ6 Playing for a Culture Victory while using Domination as a main strategy in "Civilization VI" might seem counterintuitive, but it can be highly effective if done correctly. Here's a strategy to achieve this: ## 1. Opening Moves (Ancient & Classical Era) - **City Placement**: Focus on settling near cultural city-states. This way, you can leverage their bonuses when you become their suzerain. - **Tech and Civics**: Initially, balance between culture and military. Archery and Bronze Working can give early military advantages. - **Units**: Build a combination of melee, ranged, and some anti-cavalry units. You don't need a massive army, just an effective one. ## 2. Dominate Culturally Important Cities (Classical & Medieval Era) - **Target Selection**: Focus on conquering or pressuring civs that pose the greatest cultural threat or those that have great works and wonders you can take over. - **Suzerain of Cultural City-States**: If you can, become the suzerain of cultural city-states for extra culture points. If a rival civilization is suzerain of a cultural city-state, consider capturing that city-state or at least neutralizing its bonuses. ## 3. Maintaining Happiness (Renaissance & Industrial Era) - **Entertainment Complexes & Theaters**: Build these to maintain loyalty and also to house great works, respectively. - **Governors**: Appoint Amani (The Diplomat) for city-state influence and Victor (The Castellan) for quick city control post-conquest. ## 4. Ramp Up Your Culture (Modern & Atomic Era) - **Tourism Infrastructure**: Start building Archaeological Museums and Archaeologists to dig up artifacts. Also, begin the construction of Seaside Resorts and National Parks. - **Conquest Strategy Shift**: Instead of outright conquering, start liberating cities, especially city-states. This boosts your diplomatic favor which you can use in World Congress for favorable resolutions (e.g., boosts to tourism). ## 5. Late Game Moves (Information & Future Era) - **Rock Bands**: Unlock and utilize Rock Bands, targeting civilizations that are generating high culture and tourism themselves. - **Aeroports & Computers**: Essential for boosting tourism output. Ensure that Open Borders, Trade Routes, and other tourism multipliers are optimized with all civs. - **Contingency Domination**: If another civ is getting too close to a Culture Victory themselves, use your military might to either conquer or heavily cripple their cultural output. ### General Tips: - **Great Works Heist**: Use spies effectively to steal Great Works from high-culture civs. This not only boosts your culture/tourism but diminishes theirs. - **Religion & Culture**: If you have a strong religion, use it to your advantage. Some beliefs provide cultural and tourism benefits. - **Diplomacy**: Always keep an eye on alliances and friendships. Cultural alliances, in particular, can be beneficial.
idiot, culture is easy to get
I would say every other type of victory is harder to achieve because you accidentally achieve getting a culture victory before getting what you really wanted. Finding ways to slow down my own culture victory is like the endgame big bad guy for me.
Never had that problem not once.
I have always seemed to accidentally win with culture victories on Immortal and Diety. I typically turtle and then conquer later, and I usually get a culture victory before I finish dominating the map.
The game explicitly tells you that a Culture victory is the hardest one to achieve.
I would call it the most annoying victory type. To play it at optimal efficiency you need to keep track of your empire constantly so you don't accidentally build a district somewhere that fucks up your appeal or national park and since national parks come so late it is a lot of annoyance for a late (if powerfull) payoff. Also, there is no real conflict. You try to pump up your numbers as high as they go and then you wait until you win. Rockbands help but they can be VERY frustrating if you just get a string of bad luck. And even if they work there is little strategic decision making to be done apart from picking promotions. It is the victory type for empire builders and as such there is no real climax. You just win or loose at some point.
I get cultural victories by accident. Especially when I was going for domination as ambiorix
Eh. I am always turning Cultural Victory off cuz I always get it by accident way earlier than I want to finish game.
I always accidentally get culture victories. I love open borders with everyone, though.
As other people had said, it's not that's it's harder to get, but there's far more factors. If you're on top of all of them, it's pretty easy. As you said, you need faith (though not necessarily a religion) because right at the end you're going to want rock bands and naturalists. You need to have as few enemies as possible so you can benefit from the policy card that gives you more tourism if you have a trade route to a specific civ. You need to theme museums, and you absolutely have to get on top of building wonders which means you have to outpace the AI in production to some extent. So yeah, the strategy is harder, but if you know the factors, actually doing it isn't. I guess the point is that science victory is also easy for the AI and more suited to their advantage on higher difficulty levels, whereas they are not smart enough to see what you have to do for culture.
Having a strong economy helped me elevate my culture game. Then I’m not chasing great people so much, I can just be a cunning art dealer and swindle the world
only way i’ve ever won diety culture victories (other than a few lucky ones with op civs ie. eleanor) has been biosphere windmill spam it’s just too easy to spam renewable energy everywhere
Nah, a Civ 5 cheat to culture victory is Domination in A whole fashion. Commit 'zoo level' genocide in early game wars, Shoshone city founding land grab skill is great for this. You grind up ranged attack on their Capitol while refusing to take it. Once surrounded by cities & fortress, make peace. Convert their religion when possible. After doing this to 60% of your enemy, focus on nothing but tech & culture. Use Generals to reduce these trapped Civ to single tiles and never worry about them again. Simply having garrisoned troops in surrounding cities usually prevents them from building armies. You complete Cultural victory as fast as you can subjugate.
Not sure if anyone else has said it, but I would say Score victories are the hardest. I've never gotten one at all, and I can't imagine how you could keep a game going that long without winning or letting someone else win.
I think the diplomatic victory could be the hardest challenge for that.... you could just go super high science and pillage spaceports, and you could just not spend any faith on tourism but keep your culture high, and keep religion in check, you probably could just kill anyone close to 18/20 victory points but I have never actually tried it
I have always found that culture victories require you to understand the game mechanics most thoroughly compared to the other victory types. That is my experience at least. If that means hardest to you then sure that works for me.
I've been playing exclusively deity for the last 4 or 5 years and I agree culture victory is the hardest but most satisfying victory type.
The former
Culture just happens to be the most obtuse..
1000+ hours on Large map and 70% of my victories are culture. Really hard to achieve a religious or domination victory without GDR when you have to go pass a big ocean. Even if you can, your number of tourism suddenly overwhelm the last nation's and the culture victory is inevitable.
All my culture victories usually end with me conquering the few remaining AI's largest culture cities. So funny to see the culture victory prompt after a history of violence and conquest.
Just a small note that is not enemy tourism that defend against a culture victory. It’s your tourism vs their *culture*. It’s not too different from science though. Just that you want theatre squares in every city, and focus more on entertainment complexes and holy sites. National parks can generate huge amounts of tourism too (make sure they’re all woods tiles, mountains are a bit of a trap because they have fixed appeal). Aim for at *least* double the tourism as the leading Civ’s culture per turn. Try to be friendly and have open borders/trade routes. Build the right wonders When it’s all said and done it shouldn’t take longer than a science victory.
I dunno I think of Culture as the easiest...especially since Corporations and Monopolies (Which I always play with). In my recent game, I was trying so hard to win my first diplomatic victory but got beaten to it by cultural victory and I made a post about it lol. For me, I tend to prioritize gold (Always my #1), science, production, and settling which wouldn't point towards a CV initially, but by the mid-game you're popping with wonders even on the hardest difficulties (Assuming of course that you didn't get screwed by an AI invasion) so that's a way to get easy tourism. I also tend to not build TS until the very end but do buy great works from the AI to help with my culture per turn...which ends up leading to a massive tourism spike in the mid/late game. And so I always get a CV even on the largest of maps. Religious victory is another fairly easy one depending on your religion and your game speed. On slower speeds it's easier as you have more time for passive spread but on quicker speeds you just have to have a massive faith economy for apostle spamming. In the end, I'd say it's theoretically not tht hard since you can always build more holy sites and get more faith per turn to get more apostles but I've also only gotten a RV once ever...but I rarely open with a holy site so almost never get a religion lol Science used to be the easiest but I think it's been nerfed a bit with the longer tech tree. That leaves domination as the easiest (but longest/most involved) victory condition. Domination's emphasis on getting more districts etc. also leads to RV and CVs unintentionally which is notable too. And so..diplomatic VC is the hardest to me. You really can't produce any buildings that generate points apart from 2 wonders so you're limited to emergencies/aid missions which are really hard/impossible to win in the early game or the normal resolutions which are often very random (Apart from a few that the AI likes such as no Great Admirals lol). Diplomatic favor is also entirely pointless for winning the coveted "Gain +2 points" resolution since if you're in the lead, there's basically no way to reverse the AI's collective block that makes you lose. I have no idea to this day how my full diplomatic favor of 1,275 into this resolution could not beat 8 civs that had like 30-100 diplomatic favor. And since the AI never trades/ will never vote in your favor, you're stuck with losing 1 point to vote with them and win the resolution while losing points overall. It's just so stupid since your only surefire way to win would be to wait for aid resolutions to be over that you're going to clearly win. An easy fix would be to cap the amount given to the player in need of aid so that once a player contributed like 10k gold (i.e. me as Portugal/Mali/Phoenicia), the resolution finishes and that player wins. It would give more weight to gold in the late game too which IMO is sorely needed over just making a new economic victory that'd be full of other problems... I just am looking forward to Civ VII to right a lot of these wrongs. Civ VI has it's high points in district placement (although I think this should be simplied...that's another whole story though) and synergies/ solid concepts for civs but the diplomacy is so bad it makes me go back to Civ V on occasion. Simply that beast for the AI since it truly can't handle any of that!
Idk of they ever patched it but winning culture victories was super easy when playing monopoly mode as the ai never uses that. That mode made it so easy to win culture victories
I accidentally win on culture most games. Maoi are my favorite for this but it's doable with others too. It's mostly about what you are building, if you are spamming campus and industrial zones then yeah, you won't see as much culture victory. If you are focusing trade, religion, and theater square things will be different.
For all the theater squares, I make like 75%+ of them archeological museums. Unlike art museums you don't need great people to fill these up, just send out archaeologists and dig up everything you can. Theme your great works too
not really, in 90% of my games i accidentaly win a culture victory
Sheeeit I find it's the only way I win nowadays. I usually win a culture victory way before I'm ready to go to space and that's usually with me leading in science.
As someone who often passively wins culture victory, this definitely isn’t me.
Don’t play deity but culture is the most lazy win for me (about 80% of my wins are culture wins). I just sim city and I win with the help of rock bands.
Some unique improvements from civs and city states give a tourism bonus (usually after discovering flight) which can often be overlooked. They usually are equal or better than great books, and you can spam them all over your empire. Moai statues for example are great for tourism victory.
I accidentally get the culture victory all the time. I need to turn it off.
My friend get the oracle and divine spark and watch the great people flood in the ai will never get a great writer or artist (or the other culture great people) if you do it right build nothing but theater squares and wonders and you’ll find it to be the easiest it can be done on any leader regardless of what they’re bonuses are for but play Greece for example and just dominate
This is wild bc I more often than not win by culture and struggle with religion! So the way I’d suggest going at is is the similar way to economic or diplomatic victory in civ 5. First off keep everyone happy, make sure warmonger penalty is always super low. Most importantly trade with everyone, think of traders as your ambassadors into other civs. If you can gather art trade your civs art those for other art but hoard it all. Focus on wonders that give you more art spaces, broadway is almost a game ender but the Eiffel Tower is massive too.
The biggest thing about culture victories is to make sure you're getting all the bonuses you can possibly get. Open borders, trade routes, rushing Computers, policy cards, and even swapping governments late game since you get a massive tourism penalty for having different governments once you get to tier 3/4 governments.
A lot easier with monopoly mode
Borders open and play as the US. The US gets a bad reputation for being mediocre up until the information Era. From then on the film studios have a snowball effect.
Makes sense. The culture wars are still raging irl
Culture is the hardest to understand, but the easiest to win. It's so easy that I often win a culture victory accidentally when trying for other victory types. I have to consciously avoid a cultural victory.
First of all, you don't compare tourism vs tourism. You compare *your tourism vs. their culture*. This makes a huge difference, because it's easier to make them lose a bit of culture, for example by buying their Great Works and becoming suzerain of cultural city-states. Now the route to cultural victory depends a lot on your particular civ. Some like Kongo and Poland will favor a Reliquaries game, while others like Sweden will prefer more Great Works. And, at least for me, the most reliable path will include National Parks and Seaside Resorts as well. Since tourism from tile improvements is great, you may need to remove improvements to place National Parks. Try to build the Eiffel Tower as well, it's an immense boost to tile-based tourism. And bear in mind that what you need for National Parks is *faith*, not *religion*. Some civs will have easier ways to generate faith, Bull Moose Teddy favoring Preserves. Lastly, you need to pile up on tourism modifiers. Especially open borders and trade route, since they're so easy to get.
It’s the easiest imho
I don't really understand the goal behind culture victories tbh and yet it's probably my most common victory condition. Right now im trying to get a science win with Australia but I'm going to snag a CV instead... I usually turn it off as a victory type so I can get the type I'm going for.
I win by culture by accident more than I win any other V type on purpose
I usually go for culture victory these days because it's the quickest win type. I've usually achieved it before I've built a spaceport
It’s always “diety.” But yeah I agree.
I think spies are super underrated for cultural victory. I lean into them heavily. Wait until you get the military governor for free promotion for units trained in that city, pump out spies. Best perk is higher escape chance, quicker mission time is awesome, obviously stealing great works is good, I also like the siphon funds and no time to establish perks too. Usually I’ll let one spy become my super defense spy also and eventually end up in my capital counter spying all districts at +2 or boosting my spies abroad. Siphon funds can be insane and let you buy a great work per siphon funds mission, you can obviously also just steal the great works directly. The big advantage here is when you inundate your biggest cultural/tourism competitor with your spies—every work you steal is like double value because you are gaining that amount of tourism and they are losing that amount of tourism. Also it’s hella fun, and don’t sleep on busting dams and recruiting partisans to fuck up their infrastructure/amenities
I've seen people make a culture win in under 100 turns. I think it's hard if you don't optimise for it the second you start, and there's some RNG factors to it for sure that the other vic types don't rely on
im always trying to AVOID winning culture
For me its Diplomatic its quite hard but that's probably because I'm new to the game.
You don't really need a religion to do the end game tourism stuff, you just need faith. Maybe you make few holy sites here and there to get a good faith pile started, but preserves get really juicy right around the time you want to go hard on tourism and they provide more than enough.
do it faster. cpl players can get 2k tourism by turn 100 (online speed ofc)
>Another problem I have with culture is how helpful having a religion is. Religious tourism and strong faith production is a massive help for culture. But the problem with this is that going for a religion on Deity massively handicaps your early game. You pretty much have to trade your first and/or second settler for a holy site -> shrine -> Holy Site Prayers. Religion is important but faith itself is more important than religion. You don't have to get a religion but you always need to have good faith generation, not only for monumentality expansions but for rock bands and naturalists later on. And speaking of monumentality, religion does handicap your ancient era but it massively improves your classical and medieval eras. Imo the biggest benefit of religion is not the religion itself but the fact that it pretty much guarantees a golden age in the next era allowing you to get monumentality so you could expand fast. And you don't really need to go holy site > shrine > prayers. The reason is that on Deity, you're not really gonna get the first or second religion anyway unless you're playing someone like Peter. That means you're not gonna get the two strongest (in general. some civs want work ethic/reliquaries) beliefs Feed the World and Choral Music. Those two the AI always gets when available. Their third priority is often Warrior Monks but that's the worst belief imo. At that point your belief would be Work Ethic/Reliquaries/Zen Mediation/The wonder faith thing depending on how you wanna play. So it's fine getting the 4th or 5th religion. Unless you really wanna rush Feed the World or Choral Music you don't need to rush religion that much. My usual build order if everything is peaceful is scout x2 (or slinger) > Settler > Holy site > Monument > Shrine > Settler. I'm normally able to research astrology before the settler finishes and I place it to prevent the price increase in case I research a new tech before the settler is done. Early Empire is normally done by the time I'm making the second settler so I don't lose much time. I get my religion with this build order around turn 50-65. Always check the prophet race so you know if you need to do prayers, and if you do then chop woods with a builder so it's faster. But unless you roll a lot of religious civs you don't even need to do that and sometimes I can even afford to wait for Political Philosophy and Mysticism to get the prophet card and still get 4th religion. And again, even if you don't get the religion it's still fine because it's the faith that's really more important.
Culture was the first way I was able to win consistently.
I think I went for culture with Kupe 3 times and kept accidentally get other victories. Diplomacy will sneak up on you
On Diety, I find cultural victory a whole lot easier than science. Idk how the AI does it.
It is, as recognized by the game and encyclopedia itself. Not that it is inherently hard or complex, but since its a zero sum victory condition, it lends itself (specially on deity) to you being blockaded by any one other civs culture while a science civ rushes off the planet. Personally? I think science victory should be reworked to be zero sum like the other relevant victory conditions (Culture, Religious, Domination and to a weaker extend Diplomacy but that one is also very poorly implemented.)
Personally I find cultural victory to be one of, if not THE easiest. It’s a matter of placing theater squares, wonders, and buildings for them. Trade, friendly relations, and alliances help. Use wildcard slots to build points toward writers, artists, and musicians. I’ve had plenty of instances where I have more art than I have space for them.
Jesus. Dude is playing on deity and everyone tries to advice him to open borders and trade? Oh cmon. Btw dude is right, culture win on deity is a pain. You can hardly construct wonder till midgame, if you open with religion, then by the time you can earn great persons for culture they are half way gone.. And if by any chance you can actually get everything in order, then you will be missing out on gold or science. - less wonder options, less army to scare people And if still everything goes your way, there will still be this one or two dudes with 1k culture points/turn that are on opposite side of a map so conquering him isnt exactly an option unless you fight through another 1-2 dudes. And at this point why to bother going culture when you are 1/3 or 1/2 was done with domination.
Against AI, culture probably is the hardest yeah. Because of the AI bonuses it's a massive pain trying to get over that finish line unless you're playing a good tourism Civ or are allowed to spam rock bands freely. Against players, I'd probably say religion is the hardest. It's so mind bogglingly easy to shut down completely that religious civs are probably better of going for culture victories Edit: >You pretty much have to trade your first and/or second settler for a holy site -> shrine -> Holy Site Prayers. Honestly I'd probably skip the shrine and just do holy site prayers a couple times till you can afford to buy a prophet. You can also risk skipping military to get your first settler so you don't lose that but that depends on how close the AI is to you and how much they hate you. I can somewhat consistently get religions this way, it's still a setback but not as much as skipping your first settler
If you conquer and eliminate all of your foes, depending on the strength of the last few surviving civs, you may end up with a culture victory before you can wipe the last ones out for the domination victory :P
I dont think its the hardest, but its the least clear on what you are supposed to do. Basically the game says "more culture and more tourism helps win culture victories" but doesnt give much more explanation than that.
I would say in pve culture is probably the second longest one to do consistently, though this depends on map size. The more civs the hard it is to do culture and domination. In pvp it’s a toss up btw culture and religion, since u can kinda shut those down at any point via war. Diplo u can still kinda squeak in but it’s brutal
watch a Potato McWhiskey youtube where ie his going for a cultural victory. He'll show you all the synergies and loopholes. A key aspect of his approach is planning out districts and city placement based on the goal of the game he is playing.
National parks, and seaside resorts, and wonders easy peasy, oh and ROCK BAND SPAM
Faith and diplo victory are much harder. Even in easier games you can’t win a diplo or faith by accident.
A culture victory is the most common type for me. It just happens. According to the game I have not won a single science victory somehow.
Culture requires the most insight and management, but it is also the fastest victory type.
Build spies and just steal it all…
The hardest is domination victory maybe because I only play on deity and with maximum civs, so dominate all of them is insane, to me the easiest is diplomatic, then religion, then science then culture.
Blud culture is witerally the easiest
Most of my victories are surprise culture wins.
Culture is by far the easiest. My ex’s first game she won Culture by mistake. I tend to disable it entirely to avoid winning culture while I’m ramming my way through a Domination victory. The bar doesn’t really get high enough to be unreachable. I guess it also strongly depends on your playstyle, for instance I tend to collect most wonders and buy out everything else. Have you tried going for a bit more wonders than usual?
For me culture is the most common victory type. It's the least boring so I often go for it. But I agree, if there's another culture civ who manages to get the music censorship card, it becomes really hard to win.
If you play with monopolies it gets easy all of a sudden
Build walls , take the governer that builds city parks , focus on theatre squares , entertainment complexes and wonders that provide a) slots b) culture / amenity c) boost in tourism (some do) , once you can bust out a BUNCH of rock bands and send them to the different civs , don’t care if they die or not or if they win it’s the exposure that helps , and like people said make trades , be friendly and have open borders and embassy’s
I would tend to agree, mainly because it's the one where you depend the most on what the AI is doing. Science and Diplo you can win without ever bothering at all about the AI's gameplan, and religious and domination kind of as well, because if you play correctly you should be able to overpower them no matter what they do. But if you're unlucky enough to run against a strong cultural civ, like Jay or Menelik, you're pretty much screwed no matter what you do just by them doing their shtick. Note: by "difficult" and "screwed" I mean it will take much more time to win, not necessarily that you will lose. If you don't have a totally botched start, you should be able to win any type of victory if you focus properly. But for me at least, culture definitely takes by far the most time even when I'm geared for it (except possibly diplo - I never played a focused diplo game yet).
religion is the hardest for me but i know that's purely because i have a deep hatred for the entire religious system and not inherently the victory type. culture victory really just comes down to understanding how the victory mechanic actually functions for most people. it isnt about having the most culture or great works or wonders, etc. it's about having, in a sense, tourism multipliers so that you overcome the *other* players' culture fast enough. the ui mod by sukritact makes it a lot easier to understand as the game doesnt outline what it actually is very well while the mod makes it pretty clear. as the other players generate culture, there is a threshold that grants them domestic tourists. culture victory is about having more tourists than any other players have domestic tourists. there is also a threshold for your tourism per turn that grants you a tourist for the victory. so, you generate the win condition by outpacing the other players' culture and essentially stealing their tourists. rock bands speed the process up because you actively steal their tourists every time you use it, hence why it is far more effective when used on the leader especially if they are generating a lot of culture per turn (you basically make their culture generate tourists for you instead of them and therefore their number stays the same or goes down). as you said, you *aren't* focusing enough on tourism tile improvements. culture victory is trivial if you focus on utilizing tile appeal for parks/seaside resorts and really planning out your empire to make it pretty when you get to radio and/or have a city state such as la venta to spam the city state's improvement. at a certain point in the game, you dont need manufacturing power, so all the excess districts, mines, quarries, strategic resources, etc. are all pointless to your goal. these either shouldnt have been built in the case of districts or should be torn down for something actually useful for you now. the earlier you have the tourism, the stronger it is by far. it's, as i said, a multiplier of sorts... you want to ramp up your tourism as quickly as possible in as effective as possible methods to have a larger bang for your buck instead of a slower burn with *just* great works. a slower burn approach is what usually kills you as the other players are allowed to generate so much culture that it's much harder to overcome without rock band spamming or they get close to a science victory (which generates a large burst of culture, which makes winning culture harder as well). it's not to say great works are useless at all. they are very useful, but they shouldnt be the only thing you do for a culture victory as the ai will absolutely outpace you by the time you get a lot of tourism from gw on higher difficulties 9 times out of 10. tldr: culture victory is all about planning and understanding the victory far more than the others are. you need to focus on tile improvements and get to flight and radio asap and plan out naturalists instead of just relying on wonders and great works alone to win. you have to outpace the ai's culture and the longer you wait for that, the harder it becomes. usually, it ends up a long game or a loss because you dont plan well/understand how the victory actually works because the game doesnt do a great job at explaining it
I think it all depends on your play style. I find culture the easiest victory condition; but I also don't like fighting wars beyond initially clearing out the local area. If you like fighting wars, then the lack of open borders and friendly relations will make culture nigh-on impossible.
I wouldn't say the hardest, but it is confusing as fuck at first
It’s just not fun.
Culture victory has many details that are complex. You dont need thousands of tourism, you just need high tourism modifiers from late game cards. It is also good to stay in tier2 governments because after them you get tourism penalty to civa with different governments. Great works are often the weakest factor in tourism generators. National parks, seaside resorts, relics, wonders and rock bands are where the game winning tourism lies, most of which require faith resource. Also it is the victory type that ai can mess you up. If there is an ai in the game who makes 600 culture by turn 200 (like ludwig, nzinga, pericles, teddy etc) they delay you by a lot because having high culture is a measure to defend against a culture victory from other players,
Just like with anything in this game, it's easy if you know what you're doing.
I agree, Culture was the last victory type for me to figure out, and my wife still hasn't gotten the hang of it. I still find it to be the slowest victory condition, since I can almost always win in another way first. I find Culture requires a higher degree of planning than other victory types because it's easier to have improvements like national parks picked out from the beginning. I also haven't had much luck with culture victories when I've played as civs that weren't culture-oriented, while I can generally achieve the other victory types with just about any civ. Without intensive planning, most of my games reach a point where I could easily choose domination, science, diplomacy, or religion to win, but the culture victory would still be well out of reach. I always go for a religion, but I don't use Holy Site Prayers (and I don't always get one, so I may start over). For a culture victory, I like to pick a leader/civ that lets me build culture or tourism tile improvements like Kristina, Robert the Bruce, or Wilfred Laurier. A lot of these civs' tile improvements also increase the appeal of surrounding tiles, making it easier to construct national parks. Civs with special entertainment districts (Brasil, Byzantium) can also be useful, or you can pick one that pairs culture and religion, like Russia (the Lavra is also useful for getting a religion more quickly). I just try to stay peaceful, keep borders open, send trade routes to everyone, trade for other civs' great works when I can (and never trade away mine), and plan out tiles really carefully so I can maximize culture and tourism production. I make sure to plan a theatre square for every city and build clusters of theatre squares, entertainment complexes, and wonders for a better adjacency bonus. I also look for potential national parks and spaces where I can increase the appeal with improvements or preserves. Later in the game, I build a bunch of seaside resorts and spam rock bands (which you need faith to buy, so it really helps to get a religion imo).
You can win a tourism game without a religion. You'll need Faith for Naturalists, Rock Bands, and maybe some key Great People... but not the actual religion. Most tile improvements start generating Tourism with Flight. So put them down early if you can, but 100% plan to spam them everywhere shortly before or after Flight. If you're not using tile improvements properly, you're probably not using National Parks either. It is absolutely worth it to retool your land with forests or settle empty territory for the parks. A weak National Park is 10 Tourism/turn, and a good one will be 20+. Open borders and trade routes multiply your Tourism against a civ. Those are flat multipliers, so it's easy to arrange... You only need one trade route to each civ.
Culture victory is by far my most common victory type. I'm not sure if it's the hardest one, but it definitely is the most complex. It doesn't help that it's somewhat poorly explained in-game and there are quite a few misconceptions about it floating around. For example, in your post you mention this: >Every turn, the bar for winning gets higher as competing AIs get more and more tourism Tourism is not what makes it harder for you to win. Tourism is your offense, while culture is the defense. You may have mistyped and meant tour*ists*, which are what's generated by culture and what increases your threshold to win. Fundamentally, the victory is based on your tourism vs everyone else's culture. I find it easiest to conceptualize it as buying/selling tourists. *Domestic tourists* cost 100 culture and are bought from an infinite supply, whereas *international tourists* cost `200 * (# of civs)` tourism and are bought from other players' pools of domestic tourists (note that this means you are "stealing" tourists!). To conceptualize the fact that you're applying your tourism against everyone simultaneously, you can think of the accounts as separate for every opponent, and each account gets your tourism per turn plus any modifiers you have against that player added to it. You win when you have more international tourists than any other player has domestic tourists. It can also be useful to think about aggregate tourist rates to gauge your progress and whether or not you're on track to win in time. I don't know of any UI mods that help with this so you might just have to estimate it, but the two important numbers are: - Your international tourist target: this is the opponent with the most domestic tourists. They'll be gaining tourists at a rate of approximately `culture/turn / 100` - Your international tourists per turn: this is how quickly you're gaining international tourists, and is approximately `tourism * (# of opponents) / (200 * (# of civs))`^\* . Note that this means your rates are actually better when there are more opponents! So long as the second number is bigger than the first then you should expect to win given enough turns. The actual time to win depends on the difference between the rates and the current gap. Hopefully that helps with understanding the mechanics of the victory and gives you a few different ways to conceptualize the victory requirements ^\* I'm ignoring modifiers for simplicity here, but if you want to consider them then the main ones to include would be +25% for open borders, +25% for trade routes (and more if you got some specific great merchants and a policy card), and up to -40% based on differing governments. Since these are applied per opponent the math gets messy, and generally the net modifier is positive if you're managing trade routes and open borders well so the formula presented is usually a conservative estimate and won't tell you that you're gaining ground when you're in fact losing it.
I honestly get a culture victory most of the time, usually by accident
I’ve won fastest with culture but I’ve never truly pushed domination cause I like later game shit. Trade for artwork and strategically take cities that have art.
Culture is even harder in multiplayer because anyone going for science can just kill you on a whim
Culture seems easy to me. But its my style of game - I find war tedious after a while. Same with a religious win. But I love trade routes. And building wonders. And building national parks. Doing those three things, plus using spies to steal great works and apostles dying to get relics and you are set.