Anybody managed to culture capture a rival's capital?

[Kokuei]

I've just started a new game & I had a dream start. My first city location had grasslands w/rivers & 4 (count 'em) squares with cattle inside the city radius...

Anyway, needless to say my expansion has so far been meteoric & my closest neighbors (N) are the Romans (closely followed by the Greeks (E)). For some reason, either their empire has not been expanded much (if at all) or they settled in a direction away from me (not enough map visible to see where they went). I originally couldn't see which city it was, but after I saw their border expand I twigged it must be their capital & sure enough it is.

At best then, they maybe have 2, possibly 3 cities, I have 6 or 7, one of which is next door (originally to secure an incense resource square) to Rome (but far enough away so there aren't any potential resource overlaps).

The good news is I'm playing the Egyptians (Religious/Industrial), I've rush built a temple, already connected to my capital by road, token defense in place & then the thought occurred to me.

I usually rely on culture capture to expand my empire after the initial land grabbing exercise. What would happen (if it was actually possible) if I managed to capture the capital?

Okay, so the city in question has mostly desert tiles (but does have a hill with gold & the aforementioned incense).

Anyone know if this can be done? And what would happen if I did?

(edit)

I'm guessing that since it has a Palace, I'll be at a constant disadvantage culture wise, unless I can overpower it with my own culture enhancing improvements. Moving my palace, or building the Forbidden City might help to even the odds, but I think the problem will be that I'm always going to be playing 'catch up'.

I suppose I could attempt to settle 'around' Rome, but even with my super growth rate, the time it will take to get the settlers up there may not be fast enough to curtail the Romans' expansion.

(I'm not interested in military solutions!)

[raiseupx]

War is the only way ive been able to capture capitals. ive tried culture bombing capitals quite a few times but i havent been successful in converting any capitals yet, at one point i had the zulu capital surrounded with my cities(i was the indians), and each city had quite a few culture improvements and still no luck. so maybe you cant take the capital thru cultural means.

[MattHiggs]

I've tried getting the capital [Paris] with culture. I had cities surrounding it all with temle, cathedral and colleseum. One of the cities even had the forbidden palace. But still no luck.

I don't think it is possible to capture the capital with culture. This was on Cheiftan skill too.

[raiseupx]

ya thats what i suspected, thats too bad, being able to completely eradicate other civs thru culture would be nice

[Kokuei]

Ah well, not to worry.

I figured that there might be a 'no-no' in there somewhere, but hey, you don't ask, you don't get!

I'm sure that this position will still give me some options to try out more creative tactics & strategies though, I just have to make sure I don't lose to his culture!

Thanks for the reponses people, much appreciated.

[Kokuei]

Originally posted by raiseupx
ya thats what i suspected, thats too bad, being able to completely eradicate other civs thru culture would be nice

Unfortunately not, it's either none or all!

(the one city @ 25,000 culture points or civ @100,000 culture points for cultural victory)

[Kokuei]

doh