Culture (Civ5)

Maximum cultural borders (Civ5) — 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. Consequtively, some information in this article is only valid for Vanilla Civilization V and the Gods & Kings expansion. For Brave New World information, see the specific parts 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 progresssad scientifically, for example). It is measured in Culture Points (CPs).

Culture has two main applications in Civilization V:

It expands the borders of your empire by acting in each city you found, and
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. Tourism is a new feature, introduced in the expansion - it is another, more offensive side of Culture. For more info on Tourism, go here.

Border growth

The cities you found define your empire's territorial borders. Each city occupies its tile, as well as all times immediately adjacent to it (if not already taken by another civilization/City-State).

Once established in this way, 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 accumulated CPs needed for the 'conquest' of each tile, and each subsequent tile costs more (according to a certain formula). To find out how much Culture exactly do you need for the next conquest, mouse over the Culture stat in the city screen. Certain Wonders and Social Policies may diminish the amount of Culture needed for acquiring tiles - either empire-wide, or in this city specifically.

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 a 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 points	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 shrine. 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

Note: In Brave New World the World Wonders' Culture production is significantly different. For more info, look below.

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 CP, but they also have slots for Great Works which, when filled, produce additional Culture CPs (as well as Tourism Tourism). Furthermore, Specialist slots are now very scarce - there is a total of 6 slots (2 in each Guild). 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. It also means befriending Cultured City-States becomes vital for your Social Policy growth in the beginning and middle game, when Landmarks aren't available yet and you don't have many Great works.

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.

All in all, in the new expansion the Culture Culture stat becomes more of a source of social progress (the means of adopting more Policies and Ideological Tenets) and defense against other nations' influence, than a means to achieve victory. It also seems like the late-game formula for number of Culture CPs required to adopt new policies has been changed, allowing for relatively more policies to be adopted than earlier. On the downbeat, most of the Happiness Happiness-building policies have either been reworked (so that they don't provide Happiness anymore), or simply moved to the Ideologies as Tenets. This means you will have less chances of increasing Happiness through Social policies in the early game, and are literally forced to adopt approproate Ideological Tenets later, especially to counter the new effects of Public Opinion. This is consistent with the many other ways the game now has to hamper your progress in the last stages, if you don't know what you're doing.

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:

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.
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 make them puppets, 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.

Note: For more detailed information and strategies on obtaining a Cultural victory, including the new victory in Brave New World, read THIS article.

Culture (Civ5)

Contents

Introduction

Border growth

Gaining Culture

Culture in Brave New World

Strategy

See also

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