What is a good benchmark for the cultural win strategy?
Here's a recounting of my France, Tiny, Pangaea, King game.
Turn 75
7, 2, 2 population.
2 spearmen 2 warriors 2 workers
Completed: Wheel, BronzeWorking, Calendar, Trapping. Civil Service is 8 turns away.
Stonehenge 7 turns away. 3 Monuments. No other buildings.
Social Policies: Tradition 5/6
Notable randomness: Fountain of Youth +10 happy, so ignoring happy science. Turn 2: +1 pop from ruins.
Turn 250 (1700 AD)
21, 11, 10 population
2 Pikemen 1 Musketeer 3 Crossbowmen 1 Cannon 2 Caravel 2 Workers
Science: Archaeology, Acoustics, Chemistry. Fertilizer is 2 turns away.
Wonders: Hermitage, Ironworks, National College, Sistine Chapel, Hagia Sophia, Kremlin, Louvre, Stonehenge, Colossus, NotreDame, National Treasury
Social Policies: Tradition 6/6, Piety 6/6, Freedom 6/6
Culture 272 + 75 + 42 = 399
7 landmarks.
At this point, Science is mainly for defense and production. I don't really need any more wonders to win. My next focus is to get a bunch of artillery, and build any helpful buildings (finish my museums, then happiness due to piety's conversion, then the rest). I hope to win before bombers become any kind of threat.
Notable randomness: My incredibly weak military score has caused all 3 AI's to declare war and send armies (even my ally :( ). Sorted them out, but situation is still risky. I lost a couple workers, and it's hard to build improvments with enemy units standing on those tiles. However, cities were never really at risk.
Turn 350
There are 15 enemy units on my lands, a mix of modern infantry and tanks. I have ~6 artillery trying to sort them out... (note from the future: I wind up losing all military that isn't in a city, but I do enough damage to push them back.)
1.5 policies to go. 14 landmarks.
Turn 370
City pop: 25, 19, 17
All policies done. Starting Utopia project. Currently researching Electronics. Did not research Radio.
Turn 390: 1970 AD
Cultural Victory. Whew.
Additional notes: King is much harder than I remember... by the end of the game, one of the AIs was able to field a ~40 military unit offense. Fortunately, he sent it to another AI. I feel the Fountain of Youth greatly influenced my game - I never hit unhappy and I was able to put off Theater science and buildings for a long long time. I feel I built too many wonders at the start of the game and should have instead built more units.
The AI's took all the city states as allies, I never sent any of them any gold. I never had much spare gold to send them either.
I ran a comparatively idyllic prince game (france, pangaea, tiny). Two city'd my way into a cultural victory on turn 317, 1894 AD.
Because nobody came up with KPIs for cultural victory by now, I will document here what I have found out through experiments. Please keep in mind that I am a beginner and the values of an experienced player might differ a lot. I will keep this question open longer and hope that a stronger player can provide his data points.
Scenario:
Difficulty level "Prince". Playing as Gandhi on a small island map. I stayed an 3 cities and had little space to maneuver because of the small island I started on. Never initiated war but was under attack twice. Both attacks did cost me some units but no major harm has been done. I was able to stay safe, although I had only about 30% of military power compared to my opponents in the end. On harder difficulty levels this will most likely be more difficult and military investment will slow the strategy down. I was lucky to find 3 cultural oriented city states early, which also helped my strategy.
KPI's:
- I won the game through the utopia project in the year 1970 AD.
- In the end I got +740 culture per turn.
- I reached the +500 culture per turn mark around 1850 AD.
- I was able to produce 12 great artists before the 5th policy tree was completed.
Interesting learnings:
If everything works out, it does not make sense to rush towards "Cristo Redentor", which seems like an amazing wonder. I was able to research the necessary technology "Telegraph" before I won, but the game was over before I could have put "Cristo Redentor" to use. It might help to catch up if things go wrong, but if you can use this strategy without major interference the game can be won before Cristo Redentor even comes into play.
Other attempts with this strategy failed because I neglected how important science is. It seems better to wait a little before going all out culture heavy and invest in science initially. Otherwise it seems impossible to get the important wonders before your opponents. I consider the "Sistine Chapel", the "Louvre" and the "Sydney Opera House" the most important wonders. Failing to get them will slow you down significantly.
Having one city for Science, one city for wonder production and great people production and one city you can plaster with cultural landmarks seems like a solid approach, also it is likely that there are way better approaches possible.