Culture (Civ5)

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The cultural borders of one city may expand to a maximum of four tiles away. The city can, however, only work on the slots three tiles away.

• Note: The Cultural aspect of the game got a complete rehaul in Brave New World, including the way to achieve Cultural victory. Some information in this article is outdated (see the Brave New World part below)!

Introduction

Culture, Culture, represents the advancement of a civilization in ways that aren't scientifically- or technologically - oriented, and have nothing to do with day-to-day survival, or any other practical purpose (for example growing food and making things). In this aspect, Culture is one of the things that best define a civilization and differentiates it from Barbarians (who also progress scientifically, for example).

Culture has two main applications in Civilization V:

1. It expands the borders of your empire by acting in each city you found, and
2. It allows you to buy new social policies by accumulating empire-wide Culture points (CP). Perhaps even most importantly, when you acquire enough culture and complete 5 social policy trees, you may win the Cultural Victory after constructing the Utopia Project in one of your cities.

In the Brave New World expansion pack, Culture's role is a little different, especially when it comes to the victory conditions of the expansion. It now has the added purpose of defending against other civilizations' Tourism Tourism, making their way to a Cultural Victory more difficult.

Border growth

Your Empire's borders are pushed by each city individually, according to the amount of Culture Culture produced by it. There is a certain amount of Culture needed for the 'conquest' of each tile, and each subsequent tile costs more (according to a certain formula). Certain Wonders and Social Policies may diminish the amount of Culture needed for acquiring tiles - either empire-wide, or in this city.

- NOTE: If a city produces 0 Culture, it won't grow your borders at all!

The process of border growth is automatic, but it conquers more important tiles first. The target tiles selected by the engine depend on the presence of these factors, in order of importance:

• Luxury resources
• Strategic resources
• Bonus resources
• Tiles bordering one of the above
• Tiles bordering rivers, or containing any other unusual feature (Oasis, Lake, etc.)

Note that your borders cannot grow when they reach another empire's, or a city-state's borders. Only tiles that don't belong to anyone may be conquered by Culture. There is, however, one way to take over tiles belonging to other nations: a Great Artist, activating his special ability - the Culture Bomb will take over all surrounding tiles, regardless of whom they belong to! (In G&K, this ability was transferred to the Great General, when he builds his Citadel). Be wary, though - this will surely cause diplomatic repercussions.

Gaining Culture

Culture can be gained in several ways: cultural buildings, specialists working in those buildings, and wonders (also, acquiring Great works in Brave New World). Of those, the most important, and the first one available, in fact, is the first - buildings. The following is a comprehensive table of all the buildings that produce culture, valid for the Gods and Kings expansion:

Buildings that produce culture

Era	Name	Culture	Notes
Ancient	Monument	2
Classical	Burial tomb	2	Egyptian unique building, replaces temple. Produces Faith, instead of Culture.
Classical	Mud pyramid mosque	4	Songhai unique building, replaces temple. +2 Culture, also produces Faith.
Classical	Temple	3	Requires monument. Produces Faith, instead of Culture.
Medieval	Monastery	*	+2 culture from each nearby incense and wine. Only buyable via a religious belief.
Classical	Amphitheater	3	Requires monument(1 Culture + 1 Great Work slot)
Medieval	Mughal fort	2	Indian unique building
Medieval	Wat	3	Siamese unique building
Renaissance	Opera house	5	Requires temple/amphitheater ( 1 Culture + 1 Great Work slot)
Industrial	Museum	5	Requires opera house ( 1 Culture + 2 Great Work slots)
Modern	Broadcast tower	3	+33% culture in this city. Requires museum. ( 1 Culture +1 Great Work slot)

All wonders also produce at least 1 culture per turn but a few produce or may produce more:

Wonders that effect culture and/or produce more than 1 culture

Era	Name	Culture	Requires	Notes
Ancient	Stonehenge	6	Calendar	Produces Faith instead of Culture
Classical	Terracotta army	6	Construction
Classical	Oracle	3	Philosophy	1 free social policy
Classical	Great Wall	3	Construction
Medieval	Angkor Wat	1	Theology	Culture cost of new tiles reduced 25%
Medieval	Himeji Castle	3	Chivalry
Medieval	Notre Dame	3	Education
Renaissance	Sistine Chapel	1	Acoustics	+25% culture in all cities
Renaissance	Kremlin	4	Acoustics
Industrial	Louvre	4	Archaeology	2 free Great Artists
Modern	Sydney Opera House	4	Mass media	1 free policy +50% culture in this city

The following may also help you acquire more culture:

• Ancient ruins - provide a small, one-time bonus.
• Specialists - each Specialist Artist (also in Writer or Musician) produces +3 Culture
• Social policies - see below
• Landmark improvement - may be created by a Great Artist; adds +6 Culture to a tile. In this improvement is made by an Archaeologist, and doesn't have a fixed amount of Culture.
• City-states - each Cultural city-state gives you CP per turn when befriended. The amount grows each Age.

The Piety Social tree is designed to enhance considerably Cultural growth. In Gods and Kings, this is a bit mixed up with Religion enhancements, but it still provides considerable Cultural bonuses. In Brave New World, however, the Piety tree is focused solely on Religion. So instead, the new Aesthetics policy tree is included as a major source of Culture.

Also, the Liberty tree has some nice effects, especially if you intend to build a larger empire. Finally, the Tradition tree's opening effect influences positively border growth, besides giving you bonus CP in the Capital. You get these benefits with only unlocking this branch, so you don't need to actually complete it - its main purpose is other.

Culture in Brave New World

In the Brave New World expansion, the role of Culture Culture is strongly affected by the changes made in the expansion. For starters, as mentioned above, its secondary purpose now is to defend against others' cultural influence. According to a certain formula, a nation's total Culture per turn is measured against another nation's accumulated Tourism output, determining the latter's cultural influence over the former. Simply put, the stronger your Culture, the more difficult for the others to influence you!

Secondly, the production of Culture Culture is considerably altered. Most of the regular Culture buildings now produce only 1 Culture Culture, but they also have slots for Great Works, which, when filled, produce additional Culture Culture (as well as Tourism Tourism). This means your total Culture Culture depends not that much on how many Cultural buildings and Wonders you have, but also mostly on how many Great Works you have in your buildings and Wonders.

Thirdly, Social Policies have been also altered. Since the Piety tree is now solely dedicated to Religion, a brand new tree, Aesthetics, is now dedicated to Culture. For more info about the changes on Social Policies, check here. Also, to better understand the touristic part of the new Cultural system, check here.

Strategy

(This part is written for Vanilla and ; it doesn't apply to where the strategy is quite different)

Cultural growth is one of the important, although not essential, aspects of the game. To be successful in it, you should keep in mind two things:

- 1: Culture is mainly produced in buildings built in your cities, and through specialist Artists, working in those buildings. There are ways to produce it in land tiles (for example the Landmark Great improvement, or Natural Wonders), but they are limited. One of these special ways is through certain Religious Beliefs - consider it if you pursue Cultural growth.

- 2: Each city you found (or conquer, or acquire in any other way) increases the cost of further Social policies. NOTE: Puppet cities don't count here!!!!

So, as you see, you need cities to maximize your Cultural output, but also, you can't have too many of them, lest the price of Policies skyrockets. A good way to easily balance between expanding and producing enough Culture is to conquer cities but PUPPET them, not annex them. This way, you get more culture from these puppet cities, but the puppet cities don't increase the culture cost of policies. Build Cultural buildings as a priority, research technologies giving you access to those as a priority, assign Artist specialists and use the Great Artists to build Landmarks to maximize Culture production without founding new cities.

Certain Wonders are vital for your Cultural growth (see above), try to built them at any cost necessary.

Cultural victory in Brave New World

The way of achieving Cultural victory in the new expansion is quite different, and maybe the biggest change in the game. No longer you try to keep your empire as small as possible, while rushing like mad to research and build all cultural buildings possible. There are now many more elements involved in achieving victory.

Basic differences

The most important thing you need to know about the new strategy, is that Tourism Tourism, not Culture, is the key to achieving a Cultural victory. In fact, it is perfectly possible (although not common) to achieve victory without having the biggest Culture output per turn. Spreading your Tourism to other civilizations is now your primary concern, involving a whole range of actions needed, and NOT piling up a single stat! The key to the victory lies in acquiring Great works and maximizing their effect. As before, several key World wonders will be absolutely needed for that, but apart of that you don't need to rush like mad to build Cultural buildings - unless you've run out of slots to put your Great works in.

Also, the primary culturally-oriented Social policy is no longer Piety, which is now completely dedicated to enhancing Religion only. The new branch, Aesthetics, is now exclusively dedicated to developing Culture and Tourism.

Research/building order

As with all paths to victory, there are several key technologies that you need to acquire ASAP - in the beginning and the middle game these are technologies which provide Wonders with many Great work slots, such as the Great library, the Uffizi, and the Louvre (note that the last two of these require unlocking the Aesthetics and Exploration Social policies). Towards the end game, you'll need Refrigeration and Radio for the Hotel and Airport buildings, which are essential for your Tourism. Also, when entering the Information Era, rush straight to The Internet tech, which gives you another boost. Fortunately, its prerequisites allow you to skip most of the science-expensive techs of the earlier era. Also, Telecommunications allows you to build the National wonder National visitors center, which also gives your Tourism a nice kick.

Build Hotels and Airports first in your Touristic centers - this way you'll maximize Tourism as early as possible.

Finally, Archaeology is now extremely important for the Cultural victory. The new mechanics allow you to extract Artifacts from the terrain once you research that tech, and each Artifact has the same effect and use as a Great Work of Art! So, start training Archaeologists (you can do that only in cities with an University!!!), and rush to get these Archaeological sites before the others!

Maximizing your Tourism output

To achieve maximum Tourism output, you need to consider three facts:

• 1. The sole source of Tourism (with small exceptions) are Great Works, and they are created by the three types of cultural Great People (Writer, Artist and Musician) and via archaeological digging. Note that you can only create Great Works if you have buildings with the appropriate empty slots for them! (for more info check the Great work article).

• 2. The only source of the above-mentioned three Great people types are three National wonders - the three types of Guilds. Each can hold 2 Specialists, which add points towards producing the relevant Great Person, in the usual way. However, being National Wonders, you can build only 1 of each! That means that your ability to generate these people is limited, and you have to consider additional ways to boost their production.

• 3. Buildings with more than 1 Great Work slots have the possibility of activating Theming bonuses, which provide additional Tourism. These buildings include many World and National Wonders, but only 1 normal building - the Museum.

So, research the necessary tech and build the Guilds right away. The specific techs are: Drama and Poetry (for Writers' Guild), Guilds (for Artists' guild (Civ5)), and Acoustics (for Musicians' Guild). Naturally, you have to put Specialists in them to boost production speed (although the Guilds also contribute points on their own). Next, look for all possible ways to boost Great People production in the cities with the guilds. It's usually a good idea to put them all in a single city with a big population (capital, maybe?), but other options are also viable, as long as you manage to boost production speed. A Garden gives you +25% (but the city has to be near river or lake!), and so does the National Epic. Ideological tenets can also give a boost, as well as the World Congress resolution Arts funding.

Then, as soon as you get buildings with multiple Great Work slots, look for ways to activate their theming bonus right away. You will need all sorts of Great Work and Artifact combinations, so you'll need to Swap Great Works with other civilizations. Fortunately, this doesn't depend on diplomacy and trading, and is pretty easy (cudos to the developers for this).

Diplomatic strategy

Next think you need to consider when pursuing the new Cultural victory is the way you behave towards the other nations. It is actually pretty logical that a war-mongering conqueror won't have much success at influencing others culturally, so, leave world-domination ambitions for when you pursue other types of victory and try to maintain good relations with everyone. Also, turn your spies into diplomats! This will benefit you in the following ways:

• You'll be able to sign Open borders treaties with most, if not all, nations. This treaty nets you a 25% bonus to Tourism influence with the nation, as long as it's active.
• You'll be able to form Trade routes without fear of them being constantly plundered by someone. A Trade route with a nation also nets you a 25% bonus to Tourism. Of course, you may trade with hostile nations as well, even with such you're at war with, but don't expect these trade routes to survive long.
• Keep Diplomats in the capitals of the nations which resist your influence. Another +25%. And also you'll be able to trade with these nations for votes in the World congress to pass key resolutions to help your cultural influence!

Finally, religious influence could also help you. When a nation shares your religion (more than 50% of its cities have it as a majority religion), you get another 25% bonus to Tourism.

See also

• Mathematics of Civilization V

Civilization V [edit]
Gods & Kings • Brave New World
Lists Buildings Civilizations Unique abilities Improvements Leaders Promotions Resources Social policies Technologies Terrain Units Unique units Wonders Natural wonders
Eras Ancient Classical Medieval Renaissance Industrial Modern Future† Atomic‡ Information‡
Concepts City-State Culture Espionage‡ Food Gold Great People Happiness Natural wonder Production Religion‡ Science Unique ability Unit Unique unit Tourism‡ Victory Cultural Diplomatic Domination Science
Miscellaneous DLC Mathematics Modding Major Patches Scenarios Soundtrack Steam Achievements
† Only in vanilla Civ5 ‡ Only in Gods & Kings and Brave New World

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