Best Ideology for Cultural Win?

[Assault Potato]

All have their perks. But which one is the best?

[bottom fragger]

Freedom?

[gimmethegepgun]

Definitely Freedom. The 34% from Broadcast Towers improves the base output of your cities rather than putting up a 34% multiplier that adds on to the effects of the likes of Open Borders and Trade Route that Order uses, and is much easier to reach the condition for it than Order's bonuses.

[cerberusiv]

Civ - Brazil
Religious belief - Cathedrals
Ideology - Freedom

Do a little warmongering and work up to 10 decent cities, break any culturally strong civ (and capture some great works) in the process. Then you can do this....

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=483820770

I would have already won a cultural about 2/3 of the way through the game anyway but had disabled cultural in order to get a diplomatic. I played on just to see how much tourism I could generate. The screenshot is after researching the Internet and with the freedom tenet giving 34% for broadcast towers and also it is carnival time in Rio!

[Acken]

Freedom is always good. Order is also good because the AI has a high probability of choosing order, therefore increasing your % bonus by a lot compared to freedom. But it's a bit more random since you need the biggest culture civs to pick Order for it to be efficient. It's not very useful if you reach ideology 50 turns before the AI.

Some expert strategies involve getting Futurism from Autocracy very fast. It's actually the fastest way to win (without Sacred Sites spam) but requires to already master the game.

[Matthew]

Originally posted by Acken:

Some expert strategies involve getting Futurism from Autocracy very fast.

Is that with sniping AI cities though? It has been a while since I did any math on it, but Futurism alone didn't seem that great. Difficult to imagine that that single tenet would make that much of a difference.

[Acken]

Well like I said it's something advanced requiring a lot of preparation. You basically base your strategy over the fact that if you reach Futurism fast enough the cumulated culture won't be very high. You then delay guilds (or working them actually) so that you can maximize the number of GWAM you get after futurism.
t's pretty common to manage 10ish GWAMs post ideology which is a 2500 free tourism. When the AI doesn't have big accumulated culture like 10000, this is a good chunk of it. Then adding hotels and making concert will as always finish the job.

But it's a very advanced idea only to break record times. It is used in Civfanatics competitions but isn't very popular outside of it. Especially because it also requires some good conditions for fast teching.

[Damsteri]

My fastest culture victories (168 turns on standard speed was fastest) have been religious culture victories playing extreme wide with sacred sites and pagodas/mosqueus(/monasteries). You can get a culture victory well before ideologies in that way, even on large maps. Those ideologies are useful, but they are not mandatory for culture victory. You can get the culture victory faster with a religion and that even feels like a cheating the mechanism, because culture victory supposed to be an end game thing.

[zxcvbob]

Freedom is my favorite, but Order seems to build cultural influence faster than the other two (I'm not sure why.) Order, and focus on happiness, and and send diplomats to all the other civs -- you might very well get a cultural victory before you tech to Internet or get the National Visitor Center.

Sometimes you are influential with all but one civ and have to conquer the last culture holdout.

[junkyarddDAWG]

Out of my experiance i have always won with autocracy but freedom is most likely the definate winner.

[tangoafterdark]

Originally posted by zxcvbob:

Freedom is my favorite, but Order seems to build cultural influence faster than the other two (I'm not sure why.) Order, and focus on happiness, and and send diplomats to all the other civs -- you might very well get a cultural victory before you tech to Internet or get the National Visitor Center.

Probably because Order gets one of their tourism tenets as a Level 2 tenet instead of Level 3, which is a minimum of 3 social policies earlier than Freedom. Since you're chasing a CV and the AI loves Order, you will end up getting +68% tourism to Order civs and +34% tourism to the unhappy non-Order civs.

[Lennart]

I always pick order. It gives a large amount of happiness, production and science. Often AI picks order as well.

[Murgen]

Freedom is best if you're doing a standard defensive 4 city Tradition game.

At first glance Autocracy doesn't seem like it would be good for a cultural victory, but the impact of Futurism cannot be overstated. In fact in most games in which you play a warmonger you should be able to win a Cultural victory LONG before you win a Domination victory!

A basic warmonger strategy would be to do the standard 4 city Tradition empire, then when your war machine gets going you target cities specifically for their culture/tourism output (you WANT to be at war with the civ that has the highest culture/tourism output, and at peace with the civs that have the lowest culture output).

Captured cities would all be puppetted (not annexed), unless they were worthless (in which case they should be razed, or better yet, avoided). Your empire would focus on pushing out as many Great Artist/Writers/Musicians as possible to get the bonuses from Futurism, you're gonna need them because nobody's going to want to gave a warmonger Open Borders. (I would first focus on Great Engineers, as 1 GE can give you a Wonder, prevent that Wonder being built by others, give you extra tourism slots and bonuses, and give you extra Great Artist/Writers/Musicians).

It's actually the fastest way to win a cultural victory!

[Assault Potato]

I actually chose Order, because my happiness levels are quite manageable, and is currently the highest among all the civs. Freedom's third tenet only gives a Tourism boost to cities with a broadcast tower, while Order gives a boost to all cities. Also, the latter has a tenet that gives more Tourism to civs that shares the same ideology, so might as well.

Thanks for the suggestions, seems Freedom gets the most popular opinion.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Assault Potato:

Freedom's third tenet only gives a Tourism boost to cities with a broadcast tower, while Order gives a boost to all cities.

It's very worth noting where the increase in tourism actually is, though. Order's bonuses are at the multiplier level, while Freedom's bonus is at the city level, which is better because it gets multiplied.
For instance, if you get 40% from Borders and Trade, and have both, one of Order's bonuses increases the bonus from 80% to 114%, which is an 18% improvement to your tourism, whereas Freedom affects the base and will get the full 34% if all cities have a tower.
In fact, if you have Borders Trade and Religion, 120% bonus, Freedom's 34% base will be better than both of Order's bonuses combined.
Also, since it increases the base tourism output instead of a multiplier, it will make Musicians stronger.

[Zanteogo]

Freedom is good for the long haul culture win. The broadcast tower bonus is massive, particularly on a large empire.

As others have said it certainly possible to win with futurism from Autocracy, but requires some early planning and can cripple yourself if things don't go your way.