Civ IV

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There are two ways to find the holy mountain: you can try to search it, but building enough temples & cathedrals also reveals the location. I had some luck, as the holy mountain was in my starting continent, just a few tiles south of my capital. I'm not sure when the actual location of the mountain is determined - it's placed either when the quest starts or after you have searched/built enough. My guess is it's the latter, or then I was incredibly lucky: the peak in question was almost the last free land tile in the world.

 

1. Aldeth - it's usually advisable to run Caste System to start getting Great Artists as early as possible.

2. I have had my capital eaten by Barbarians plenty of times! So it's easy to see how it could happen to an AI with just one warrior in its capital.

 

@Aldeth & Henkie: it's all about context and choosing the right words.

I had the barbarian killing off a civilization in my games, it happens from time to time especially if you're the one who built the Great Wall. The less crowded a continent is the more chances barbarians will emerge.

Don't forget the special barbarians uprisings that happen sometimes very early. If you are on their path it means game over.

Regarding the Holy Mountain, it's not worth going after it if that means shifting your priorities too much. I had a game in which the mountain was located on a one tile island in the middle of an ocean.

 

Hello all,

New to the game. I used to play Civ 3 on the easiest leve and roll the cpu, but now I am trying to get better on the Civ 4. I played my first game on noble last night. I get Genghis, Monty, and Napoleon on my borders. I built Quechas to take Monty out since, he has the earliest UU that could cause me problems. 20 turns later Napoleon basically wipes me out. I think I may have handled the diplomacy wrong as I refused everything from him and Genghis.( prolly not a good idea). Should I just give in to all their requests?? lol.

I am trying to perfect my military strat. but I have a few areas that need work. I have trouble in these areas : diplomacy, city placement, knowing a good time to expand and knowing what to build when. Here are my questions:

1.How many cities are optimal for a proper military conquest strat? I usually only have 2 cities that i use to bang out troops asap.. dont know if this is good or not.

2. Are food sites or hammer production sites better for second city? I usually look for a place with a few mines to bang out troops faster but this has backfired since it usually limits growth of city.

3. should i focus on any wonders in the beggining or just troops? also are cottages or farms better for first city?

4. What is initial build strat for first city for military strat? (worker, settler? and then what after that?)

Any other tips are welcome as well.

 

1. How many cities? The depends on how big the map is, how far away your enemy is, whether you have an early UU, and how good those city sites are. Sometimes you can do an early conquest with just one city, sometimes you should have 4 or 5.

2. You need food AND hammers for an early conquest. Probably more important, you need forests to chop.

3. No early wonders are useful for an early conquest. If you're diverting to build wonders, you're not building units. The more wonders you build, the more you delay your conquest. If you insist on Wonders, then the Oracle is usually the one that I find to be most useful.

Cottages vs farms? Depends on whether you're running a Cottage Economy, a Specialist Economy, a Slave Economy, or something else. That's a whole discussion in itself.

4. Initial builds? Depends on a lot of things, but usually worker than warrior is a good bet, unless you're on the coast and need a workboat, or you're playing with barbarians off, when you might not need that first warrior.

 

Thanks Harbour for input.

1. I usually play on standard maps with barbarians off. I am thinking 3 cities would be ideal? And it seems that you would recommend building a workers until I can build the exclusive units? Better to chop the settlers correct?

Can you get a bit into the econmies to run. A major problem of mine is going bankrupt and having to turn sciene down to 30 percent sometimes. But this can also be a sympton of having another city to far away (although I have read that having an enemies capital is good even if its far away and can sustain itself)

 

I didn't think of that... If the first hut you run across spawns barbarians, and it's anywhere near your capital, you are pretty much screwed.

Well, it's very difficult to answer any of those questions, because a lot of it depends on your starting locations, how many neighbors you have, you starting civ, what type of victory conditions you are going for, etc. With the easier difficulty levels, you can pretty much do whatever you'd like, but beyond Warlord difficulty, you need an organized strategy from the start, and a lot depends on what civ you are playing, and what victory condition you are shooting for. If you played on Noble for your first try, that may not go very well. I'd recommend at least one game on Chieftan difficulty, and one or more at Warlord.

Some general tips:

Regarding diplomacy, it is usually only advisable to give in to the AI demands if they are clearly militarily superior to you. Most civilizations are more than happy to trade with you for resources or technologies, and in doing so you will build positive relations with them. Trading is almost always preferable to paying tribute, and the AI is typically fair in their trade agreements. They typically will trade food for food, or luxury for luxury straight up (assuming they lack the resource you are offering). Also, they are often willing to trade gold per turn if you have a resource they lack, and they don't have a comparable resource to offer you in return.

Regarding city placement, you are usually going to want a combination of cities that have different strengths. It's usually good to have a few cities with high food producing ability, others with high hammer producing ability, and yet others that provide a good amount of money. It is not all unusual to have a dozen or more cities in a developed civilizaiton, so there's no need to limit yourself to one type of city.

Similarly, I wouldn't be too concerned with finding a "perfect" location for your second and subsequent cities. I'm a big believer in expanding my cultural borders to cover every tile on my continent, and once I have about half a dozen or so cities, I will start new cities in certain locations just to make sure the AI cannot locate a new city nearby.

Also, if you need access to a resource (be it food, luxury, but especially strategic), it is usually worth while to build a city nearby to access it, even if the city isn't particularly overwhelming beyond that single resource. For example, if you don't have copper, and there is only one nearby tile that contains iron, you basically have to start a city there, as things are going to go downhill for you quickly if you lack a source of iron AND copper.

Generally speaking, it's usually advisable to have at least a couple of tiles in each city that produce a good amount of food. Ideally, you'll have a tile or two with a food resource, but building a farm on grasslands, or ideally flood plains work well too. While it is certainly not necessary to produce huge population cities, very small cities are not going to be particularly good at producing anything. Also, I like to use the slavery civic for a good chunk of my games, which allows you to sacrifice population to hurry production of building projects, and having a couple of high food producing tiles allows for quicker population recovery.

If you're going for conquest victory, usually it is advisable to build a worker first (to start improving your starting city) and then a settler. For a conquest victory, you want as many cities as you can reasonably accomodate to maximize troop production, you're going to want to build a barracks in every city before you start cranking out troops, and ideally, you'll want to pick a civ that has access to an early unique unit.

In my most recent game, Catherine stabbed me in the back, and after losing a couple of cities, I stopped playing that game. Restarted, and things are going pretty well. I'm in the Renaisance Era, and I've so far got three Great Artists which I used to culture bomb the three cities I'm planning on using to meet the culture victory conditions. I'm up against a fairly friendly group of people. Mansa Musa, Joa II, Charlemagne, Brennus, Gilgamesh and Ragnar (there's alway one who doesn't play nice - at least he's not on my continent).

I have been somewhat unlucky regarding great people, as some of my cities have wonders in them that give great people points to something other than artists, and the number of great people I've generated that have been something other than artists seems disproportionately large given the number of specialists I'm running. (For example, I'm running FOUR artists in my capital, where I have the Oracle, Parthenon, and National Epic, and three out of my first four GP were priests. WTF? I used them to found the shrines in my three holy cities, so it wasn't a completely uselss GP. As a general question, do shrines produce culture? I imagine they should, but you don't get the information screen when you build one that shows anything.

I also broke from strategy slightly - I started out all alone on a continent that was capable of supporting nine cities, so I really didn't need to do any expansion, and I probably should have been satisfied with turtling up and staying put. But my trieme finds a pretty decent sized island (big enough for three cities), and I see that it has sheep, rice, and gems, none of which I have on my home continent, so I coudln't resist and expanded my civilazaiton to the island. The only downside of this is that Ragnar is right next door now, and one of the three cities is one of my holy cities (bad luck - it was the ONLY city not on the mainland continent when I founded the religion), and I have a shrine there I don't want to lose.

I also got lucky in that I got the coliseum quest. I would have built them anyway for the culture boost, especially considering I'm playing as Pericles, so the Odeon (sp?) is my UB, but one of the options when I completed the quest as my reward was +4 culture from Odeons. Yes please!

My main concern is I have only produced three GA. How many do you typically need to get to the culture total? Due to the wonders in my capital, I do not think I will place many of my subsequent GA in there, as I'm thinking I should be able to get there just from what the city is producing. (I also unexpectedly landed a GE in one of my cities - I did have one Engineer specialist - and I used him to quick build Notre Dame for the HUGE culture boost.

EDIT: According to the score at the bottom of the screen, I'm currently running 3rd, behind Brennus and Joa II, but I'm not too concerned, as I am technologically superior to them, and since expansion nor conquest is a priority for me, I think I'm OK.

 

Thanks for the input.

I have actually played about 12 games so far 3 on the first two levels and the rest on warlord. I have beaten warlord pretty easily so I moved up to noble. I also think I know why I lost so badly to the Frenchin my first noble game on standard map with the Cupac. They rolled in a bunch of chariots that crushed my axemen (in the warlords exp, seems like chariots get bonus against axes). I pretty much just built axemen in my cities after quechas became irrelevant when I should have mixed in some chariots and spears as well. My next game should go better.

 

Chariots do get a bonus versus axemen. In fact, I'm reasonably sure it's a 100% bonus against axemen when they are the attacking unit. Don't get me wrong - axemen are great units, and they are so veratile you'd never want to avoid them. I usually garrison two units per city, and in the early parts of the game, one of those units is ALWAYS axemen. But every unit has a weakness, and so for your military to be successful - especially when it comes to defense as you have to account for a variety of units, diversity is the key. In cases where a city holds a border against a rival civ, I usually up the garrison to three units, typically consisting of an axemen, archer, and spearman. That way you're covered no matter what the enemy shows up with. And of course, walls are never a bad idea for border cities.

I'm starting over again after Ragnar really put a hurt on me. I only played about an hour last night, so I'm not particularly far into the game. For a change, I'm playing the Dutch. I'm not sure how impressed I am with their UU, but their UB seems really useful (at least for coastal cities).

I may be playing on the strangest map I have ever played on. My starting continent is a great big ring. In addition to my civ, I have encountered the Americans (Lincoln), the Aztecs, and the Cathaginians. The continent is quite large - even with four civs on it, it's going to be a while before we start knocking heads for city placement. But there is an enormous lake smack dab in the middle of it. The lake is irregular in shape, but there are certainly areas where the lake is many tiles across, both in the horizontal and vertical directions. It's so large that even after the civs get developed there may be parts of the lake that are not within any civ's cultural borders. The lake is positioned so that there is more land mass on the southeastern portion of the ring, but the lake continues northward and the northern most parts of the ring have several locations where the ring is only two or three tiles thick.

The Aztecs are sititng in the catbird's seat as far as starting locations go. Although the continent is ring shaped, there is one place on the northern part the continent that is just one land tile thick, and it's right by the Aztec's starting location. Whichever civ places a city there will be able to control access to all the ports on the inland sea. This is especailly concerning for me, because I started on the southern part of the ring, and the only ports I'm going to have are going to be on the lake, unless my expansion goes much better than I am anticipating.

That said, I am definitely going the rapid expansion route. I am still trying to do a cultural victory, and under such victory conditions, I need a minimum of nine cities. While the continent is big enough that I shouldn't have too much of a problem with that, I don't want to take any chances. The starting positions are me in the south part of the ring, the Aztecs in the north part, the Americans in the west part, and the Cathaginians on the east part. However, it is possible (even probable) that I will share a border with all three civs. It's a certainty that I'll have a border with the Americans and Cathaginians, but as I mentioned earlier, the majority of the continent's land mass is on the eastern half of the continent. I'm going to be expanding north, so it's possible that if the Aztecs expand south, that I'll get a border with them as well.

Oh, and my capital had the mother lode of resources. In my capitals cross I started with pigs, sheep, marble and gold. Obviously, I'm building the parthenon, oracle, and probably a couple other wonders on the cheap. My second city I built in a location where it had access to silver and corn, and then I got lucky and it turned out that copper was a revealed as a hidden resource when I got bronze working. So I have access to seven different resources in just two cities. I already have the site for my next city picked out. There is a site just to my west, that has cows and fish, and will be the first city I locate on the coast of the inland lake. Just to the north, I can pick up rice, bananas, and elephants (which is important because I don't appear to have any horses around) with another city. I should have four very closely packed cities with access to ten different resources very early in the game.

 

Actually I was referring to the barbarian uprisings that are sometimes triggered by random events. There is usually nothing that can be done to counter them if you don't have the Great Wall. Fortunately they don't happen very often.

Very long post and good analysis by the way, I'd like to point out a few things that I tend to do differently though.

Actually giving help is not necessarily a bad thing since if you systematically refuse you won't get far with positive modifiers. Still, it never hurts to be careful what techs you are giving away (especially if you don't play with the No Tech Brokering option).

Having a good production city specialize in units is not a bad thing.

Regarding the start I can't stress how important early exploration is. I agree with the worker first (except on some starts which benefit more from a workboat) but I wouldn't build a settler right away unless if you're isolated. Not building a settler allows the capital to grow and in the meantime you can start pumping out units so you can rush the nearest civilization. If you succeed you basically have two capitals without having built a settler yet and a large chunk of land to settle plus some troops to defend your cities and the settlers you'll build.

Don't neglect the usefulness of slavery in the early game either, it can make a huge difference especially if you have no problems with food and growth (build a granary first).

You need to know that some leaders are not to be trusted. In my experience Catherine is one of the worst. When I see Stalin, Genghis Khan, Alexander, Montezuma, Shaka, Boudica, Brennus, Hannibal, Napoleon, Ragnar and a few others I know that I have to train more units. Be wary of Isabella too if you don't share her state religion. Louis XIV is a real psycho by the way who will freak out if you're ahead of him.

I'm not saying that you can't be friends with these leaders or that you don't have to worry about the others but in my experience these are the ones you have to worry about because they will come after you if they don't have another target or if you're not powerful enough.

I had games in which some leaders first attacked me and failed (because I was expecting them to attack me) and later on became great allies because we shared common enemies. Alexander and Montezuma can be great war dogs when you direct them to attack someone else. Tokugawa is hard to befriend but he usually makes a better ally.

In the early game religion is what matters the most but as the game progresses with free religion things can change radically so maintaining a group of friendly allies will require some work.

Then mass producing units is the only way to go, especially if you can't get Ragnar to convert to your religion.

Expansion is always good provided you have a plan for your economy to recover. Code of Laws for courthouses (Priesthood if you're playing Gilgamesh for Ziggurats) and Currency really make a difference. Later on State Property can help manage world wide expansion.

As long as they don't see you as an easy prey you may pull it off but it's a bit uncomfortable. That being said, score is just an indication and it doesn't mean much in the end.

 

Oh, I just meant that you should build a worker before you build a settler. Not necessarily back-to-back as your first two builds. I actually agree that doing so is a poor strategy, as your city doesn't grow when making a worker or settler unit. I also agree that if you start with access to clams, fish, or crabs, a work boat should be one of your first (the first if you already have the fishing technology) builds.

One strategy that I have never implemented with complete success is founding one of the early religions and exporting it to all nearby civs through missionaries. The AI will usually adopt whichever religion they get first as their state religion, so it should work so long as they also did not found a religion. In my most recent game, I founded both Hinduism and Judaism, and I may export one of them to the civs that didn't discover Buddhism. I'm also nearly certain to be the first to discover Confucianism, because I'm building the Oracle (at super speed thanks to marble), and plan to take Code of Laws as my free tech.

This game is like digital crack though. I definitely want to pull off a cultural victory, but I'm already thinking about my next game. IMO, financial is the best leader trait, simply because you get a good benefit that works for the entire game. All the other traits are more limited in scope, or offer rewards that can be obtained by other means. There's nothing that compares to having tiles in each an every city produce more gold. Sure, financial misses out on getting cheap buildings (all the other traits give discout production costs for specific buildings), but for the most part, they are cheap buildings anyway.

I would probably rank philosophical as second best, just because you'll get more great people. That's also something that's hard to duplicate by other means. Based on this, I wondered if there were any financial/philosophical leaders, and as it turns out, there is one - Elizabeth. Even better, the English come with a pretty good UU in the redcoat, and a very good UB with the stock exchange (heck, I always build banks, why wouldn't I build stock exchanges that boost gold by 65% as opposed to 50%).

It would also (it seems - I haven't tried it) allow me to run a hybridized economy. Financial leaders usually run a cottage based economy, to maximize their gold. Philosophical leaders tend to run a specialist economy to get GP. I'm wondering if it is possible to do both - have certain cities pump out great people, and have other cities concentrate of cottage spamming. I'm sure it could be done, but I'm not sure how effective it will be. Something tells me that doing a half-and-half approach may be less effective than going all-out in one direction or the other.

 

There is lots of good advice here, so I will just comment on this one. I might be interpreting you incorrectly, but are you try to say that you want to have you BFC's interlocking as much as possible, so each city uses all the tiles in your empire?

If so, this WAS the go-to strategy in Civ 1 through 3, but it has been pretty much nerfed successfully in Civ 4, where maintenance costs mean that strategy is no good anymore. Cities need to be placed where they can be most useful now. Each city needs a specific purpose. It's too expensive to have crappy cities now.

Yes - that is a concern. To get a quick culture victory you need way more than that. In the fastest culture victory you want to engineer things so you have ONLY Great Artists. This means if want Oracle, it has to go in a city that will never produce a Great Person. No other Great Person provides sufficient benefits to outweigh the value of a Great Artist in a culture game. You should be after at least 10 Great Artists by the time you've won the game.

You can try that when you next start a game with the aim of winning a Religious victory!

 

Religious victory is tricky because early game I'd rather produce military units than missionnaries and you have to convert as many civilizations as possible before Theology is discovered.

I never felt that to be a real problem. Usually an isolated city like this can be conquered with ease or it will eventually revolt and join your empire. The only time when it is really annoying is when it is actually located on top of a strategic resource. The AI seems to be able to see every resources in the game and will often settle on top of them.

Like HB said, spamming cities is really costly in terms of maintenance unless you get some extra resource in the city squares.

Since we're on the topic of city placement, what are your opinions on overlapping cities? I try to avoid this as much as possible but it looks like it could be a valid alternative in low food areas.

 

No - that's not what I mean. I like to place me cities so that evenutally their cultural borders will interlock. I certainly do not use every tile on the continent. Maintenance costs aside, building a city somewhere that has no functional purpose is just silly. For example you wouldn't build a city it a location where it had lots of tiles that were desert or tundra, that additionally did not give you any special resource.

I could have been more accurate in my wording. It would have been more precise to say that on a given continent I want a contiguous cultural border with all of my cities. Sometimes if you start a city too far away from those you've already started, the AI will build one between that city and the rest of your civ, which can make such cities very problematic to defend in war time if your trade routes are cut off. The only time my cultural border would actually encompass the entire continent would be if my civ starts by itself on a large island as opposed to one of the main continents. In that scenario, my cultural borders would actually exceed the area of my continent, as they would extend into the ocean.

True, but there are many purposes of having a city in a certain location. For example, in my current game I did manage to get a city on the one place of the ring continent that is only one tile thick, so now I control access into and out of the great inland lake. Resource wise, the city doesn't have much - there were a lot fo jungle tiles, and the only resource there were bananas, which I already had a source of. But that city serves a tactical purpose, even if it isn't a great city in terms of my overall economy.

I would also define accessing a resource as a specific purpose. That is deifnitely true in the case of a strategic resource that you otherwise wouldn't have access to, but I'm not above building a city in a place to access luxury and/or food resources as well. For example, in my present game, I built a city in a mostly jungle area, for the express purpose of getting a source of gems and rice, which I didn't have anywhere else.

Well, I'm not necessarily out to get a fast cutural victory. I've never had a cultural victory before, so any cultural vicotry would do. I don't necessarily care if I have to get to the modern era before I win. I don't have a goal of winning prior to say, the industrial era.

I also try to avoid that as much as possible, and on the rare occassions that I do it, the overlap is only with a tile or two.

In my current game, I have a few questions for people. Lincoln has offered (repeatedly) to become a vassal state. We've never been at war, but he is also by far the weakest faction. What are the pros and cons of having a vassal state? What are the supposed expectations of both parties? I suppose I give him protection, and he gives me, what exactly?

Montezuma did not take kindly at all to me gaining control of the area that allows access to and from the interior of the continent. It is an important area, because I have two cities that border that massive inland lake, and now those cities can make naval units that can get out into the ocean. We have been at war for a long time now. I have just turtled into the city, and he really cannot do anything to me. He has chariots, horse archers, and jaguar warriors, while I have macemen, longbowmen, and crossbowmen (and I think a spearman in that city too).

So I think he's SOL as far as any realistic hope of taking that city, although not for lack of trying on his part. He has already brought in one stack of about 10 units that he threw into this meat grinder. He didn't manage to kill even one unit, so now he has to deal with longbowmen that have city garrison and a extra first strike chance next time he comes around. Strangely, I didn't see any catapults but from espionage I know he has construction.

Carthage also tried to screw me over, but I was prepared for that as well. I don't need a long drawn out war with them, as I'm going for a cultural victory, so my response was quick, precise, and served a very specific purpose. Carthage owned one city that bordered my civilization that was useful to me. They had founded Christianity (one of two religions I did not found - technically one of three as no one has founded Islam yet). Their state religion was Hinduism - I saw to it they got that - but they had built the Church of the Nativity, and exported Christianity into quite a few of my cities. The city also had wheat, which I didnt' have yet, but that was just icing on the cake. Got me some catapults and macemen, took that city, and then offered him a peace treaty, which he accepted. I now own the holy city of every religion in the game except Buddhism. I also captured/built three of the holy shrines, so basically every city in the game (except Montazuma's) is paying me money. That combined with a financial leader, and I'm rolling in cash.

One more general question regarding culture. Should I aim to have my cultural slider percentage as high as possible? I find that I can keep my cities extremely happy with just 20%, but I have so much money coming in, I'm still making money even though culture is at 20% and science is at 60%. Would raising the culture bar significantly impact the amount of culture my cities produce, or are the two tracked in separate pools? Should I actually start selecting "culture" in the production menu as well? I have mostly build temples, cathedrals, granaries and court houses up until now. In some of my more developed cities, I've also built markets, figuring I need a strong economy too. I guess I'm asking if I am not necessarily interested in a quick cultural win, can I reasonably expect to reach the needed culture from buildings, wonders, and great artists, irrespective of actually building culture?

 

Vassal states are a two edged sword. If your vassal is at war you'll declare war by accepting that deal. If your vassal is hated you'll get a hit to your diplomacy modifiers. The pros are that vassals don't count as rivals when determining conquest victory and they increase your score (iirc) plus you can demand in tribute any resource from your vassal. Should you take Lincoln? It really depends on the big picture.

Montezuma has actually been very nice in attacking you, that gave you GG points and allowed you to level up a few units. That being said if you're so far ahead in tech you could strike back to submit him or finish him. You don't want a war to be too long though.

To achieve a cultural victory you need three cities with legendary status so playing with the sliders will reduce the time needed for that. You can give it a try since you've managed your income quite well. Just be wary that you don't get too much behind in techs (although some may say that at that point since you probably got a GA from music and built theatres you may not need to tech further). Playing with sliders is often rather marginal but it may help. Producing culture will reduce the number of turns needed as well for culture to expand. Maxing both you may rush your cultural victory but it's hard to tell without knowing the particulars of your game. See how many turns you need without maxing it out and compare with a strong emphasis on culture.

Seems like a very good game to me.

 

1. Overlapping cities. Yes - overlapping cities can be an excellent strategy. There are 20 tiles in the BFC and it takes a LONG time to get to a size 20 city. You're better to have great tiles being worked NOW rather than hanging out for size 20 cities some time in the distant future. For example if you have two gold tiles in a BFC but not enough food for one city to work them both all the time, the overlapping city can take over one of the mines when the other one is not using it. This can really speed up early game progress, so long as you remember to manage the citizens properly

2. Culture Slider - you should be aiming to get the culture slider up to 100%. At a certain point in the game, usually just after Liberalism, you don't really need any more techs, so the final phase of a culture game is the one where you pour on the city-generated culture to supplement the Great Artist culture. You have your 3 cathedrals and you're running Free Speech, so your 3 cities are finally producing over 500 culture per turn in the final race to legendary status.

 

Regarding vassal states, I'm assuming that if I have to go to war because of my vassal, that means my vassal goes to war because of me. The only war Lincoln has been involved in the entire game is with the Aztecs, and since they already hate me, and are in fact, actively at war with me, I don't see much down side here. As far as helping me out in wartime, I'm not sure there is much he can do. He's still running around with swordsmen and chariots, while I an my chief rival, Carthage, are already well beyond that point.

Regarding the culture slider, I cannot do that just yet, as I'm only in the middle ages, and I lack the necessary techs for my civics (although I am on the required tech path to get liberalism, but I still need another couple of techs before I get liberalism. The way I've handled research has been pretty standard thus far. I've done obvious things like make sure I get to music first, but because I have a border with two fairly agressive civs (Aztec and Carthage) I could not completely forgo so research for military units.

How can you run 100% culture though? I have a few holy shrines, and a few trade agreements, and I suppose I can run some merchant specialists, but I do not see how I can maintain my upkeep costs through those means alone.

Also, it has just occured to me that I know have four religions, and 13 cities. If nine cities and three religions are good, I imagine four religions is even better. I can get one more temple and cathedral type building in my three main culture producing centers.

 

4 religions is not really better because:
a) it makes it harder to spread the right 3 religions around
b) you don't have time to build 4 cathedrals per city - once you have 3, you switch all you hammers into building culture.

 

A religious victory? Haven't heard of that one yet, and can't find it in the Civilopedia either. Is a religious victory a sort of diplomatic victory?

 

I was actually considering switching over the slavery to quick build the cathedrals - it costs you a LOT of population to do it, but I think the dividends it would pay off in culture would over-ride the zero culture you'd produce during the anarchy periods.

I think he means the diplomatic victory you can get by building that religious wonder - I cannot think of the name of it offhand. It functions similarly to the UN, but it's available much earlier in the game. I turn diplomatic victory off in most of my games though, which is probably why I don't remember its name.