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Culture

DeletedUser

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DeletedUser

Guest
1. Culture - where to have it

There are 3 basic ways to add culture to your city;
  • Advanced road/street types
  • Cultural buildings
  • Some Ancient Wonders
Roads/Streets

You have to have roads in your city. Every building except the builders hut and cultural buildings need to be connected to a road. So it makes sense to get as much value from them as you can. As soon as you research an advanced road type I recommend upgrading your roads. If you are re-organising your city and have left over road bits you can put them in unused space for later use rather than sell them.

SpareRoad.jpg

Both my cities currently have 'Luxury Street" squares. In the city in the picture above I have 130 squares giving 3900 culture points. At the time of writing this city had a required culture of 9897. 3900/9897 gives 39.41%. My roads gave me nearly 40% of my required culture. Not bad for something you have to have anyway!

Cultural Buildings

Along with the builders hut, cultural buildings do not need to be connected to a road. So the best place to put them is on the borders of your city. They can't be upgraded but can be sold so you get back some of the resources you have invested. You lose their cultural value!

I recommend keeping your biggest cultural buildings close to your main hall. When neighbours or fellowship members visit your city their screen will load focused on your main hall. Whilst some visitors may search your city for culture to give neighbourly help on, others will click on the nearest one to the main hall. This may mean rearranging your city fairly regularly but it can be worth it.

The smaller cultural buildings are great for filling in small spaces. The ends of roads are ideal. Buildings that need road connections only need to connected to one side of one road square. So at the end of a road you may have room to put a small cultural building.

roadendculture.jpg

The residences in the picture above are 3 x 3 but only connected to the road on 1 square. The 2 x 1 Nature's Blessing culture buildings are worth 100 culture, 40 more than 2 Luxury Street squares which are worth 60. The Temple of Ages building is on the very edge of the city and not connected to the road.

Ancient Wonders

Ancient Wonders (AW's) are fairly new for me so I'm not going to say too much on them. There are the AW's (chapter 4) that have a direct impact on your cultural score. Building one doesn't add to your required culture. The bonuses they give increase with each upgrade. They do need to be connected to a road, but as these buildings can be supported by your neighbours it's worth trying to keep them relatively close together so they are easier to locate.

- direct culture bonus
  • Elven players:- Martial Monastery
  • Human players:- Sanctuary
- lengthens duration of cultural support
  • Elven players:- Crystal Lighthouse
  • Human players:- Great Bell Spire
Both the Crystal Lighthouse and Great Bell Spire also give you an additional reward for visiting neighbours. At level 1 you get an additional 8 of one your boosted products. You will see conversations elsewhere within the forums debating the usefulness of ancient wonders. For these wonders I think it can depend where you are in the game and how you play. I visit all my discovered neighbours. I currently visit around 100 neighbours each day. In Winyandor this gives 800 goods and in Arendyll around 1000 goods. It takes me about 90 minutes to do the rounds in both worlds (with slow connection). I don't have a single manufactory with a 3hr production that produces that amount. I'm still at the stage where I'm regularly short of goods for one reason or another so this bonus is good for me. If you only visit within a fellowship or a few neighbours it may not be for you.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
2. Culture - How much and the optimum amount

So you have required culture, the amount necessary for the buildings in your city. Any culture you have above this amount is known as available culture and helps create culture bonus. When you have culture bonus it can help boost your coin and tool productions from your residences and workshops. It does not impact on productions from your goods manufactories.

When you have the required culture amount your residences produce coins and tools at 100%. With a culture surplus your coin and tool production can increase to 125%, 150%, 160% and 170%. Early in the game there are quests that encourage you to achieve the 150% cultural level. The expectation is that the 160% and 170% levels will be achieved with neighbour help.. Game advice indicates that having enough culture to get the higher levels, without neighbour support, will mean taking up too much space in your city.

I recommend trying to maintain available culture that gives 150% coin/tool production bonus. Almost every upgrade and production requires coins and/or tools. If you do max out, and have no immediate other needs, you can buy goods from the wholesaler in the trader. A lack of money or tools can slow down your other productions, or city development, significantly. Having a high culture level is particularly helpful if you have limited time online and need to run longer productions in your workshops, so you maximise their potential output. So how much available culture do you need to get 150% culture bonus?

The short version:

If you want optimum results from your culture and to be achieving 160% or 170% culture bonus consistently;
  • Total culture of 2x required culture.
  • If available culture < your required culture, add culture.
The explanation:

I was looking for a relationship between required culture and available culture to achieve a consistent 150% culture bonus. I was aiming for around 159% to reduce the amount of neighbour help required to reach 160% or 170% culture bonus. I noted that the required culture and available culture were getting more equal as I experimented so I trialled doubling to see how it worked. It's worked well for at least 3 months.

An Example:
reqdCult1.jpg
​
In the picture above my city has a required culture of 10925 and available culture of 11573, giving a total culture of 22498.

reqdCult2.jpg

​
In this picture above it I need 17000 available culture to achieve 170% culture bonus. This has been achieved by combining my available culture of 11573 and neighbourly help bonus of 12300. 11573 + 12300 = 23875. With my available culture I only needed 5427 neighbourly help bonus to hit 170% culture bonus. 3 neighbour helps on Garden of Harmony (2100) or 5 on Temple of Ages (1200) is sufficient to get me at the highest culture bonus level.

reqdCult3.jpg

In this snapshot figures with green background are taken from the game. You can see the figures match the ones in the top image. The top figure to the right of 21850 is the culture value I am aiming for. The formula in the very top of the image is simply 2 x the required culture, so currently 21850.

Without going into complicated spreadsheets the easiest way to monitor this is really straightforward. Aim for total culture 2x your required culture. If your available culture is less than your required culture, add some culture.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
3. Culture - Which buildings? Space vs cultural value

Culture buildings take up space in your city so it makes sense to try and maximise the value per square you give to culture buildings. How much culture they give, the space you have available and whether they can be boosted by neighbourly support are all factors to consider.

I've compiled two lists of information for each cultural building from chapter 1 up to, and including Orc/Goblin chapter. The lists include name, size, cultural value, value per square, build costs and Y/N neighbour support. This information was compiled based on the information in the wiki on the date of posting. Please note these lists do not include culture buildings earned in events (i.e. Summer Solstice). This is because their culture value varies depending on what chapter a player is in when they gain it.

I've extracted the relevant information into pdf and spreadsheet formats. I've supplied links to the documents on google drive. They are set to share with link only, not public. You should be able to print or download should you wish to. The original documents were virus scanned before uploading.


PDF Elven Cultural up to Orc-Goblin level 2016-07-26

Excel (2010) Elven Cultural up to Orc-Goblin level 2016-07-26

PDF Human Cultural up to Orc-Goblin level 2016-07-26

Excel (2010) Human Cultural up to Orc-Goblin 2016-07-26

Space vs Culture Bonus

Generally it makes sense to replace culture buildings as you research new ones. In most cases the bigger buildings give better culture per square than smaller ones. There are a couple of interesting examples of where what you have in your city could depend on what you need most; space or culture.

In the human culture the Monster Fountain give less culture (410) than the earlier unlocked Delicatessen Butcher (430). But it does give a better culture value per square (45.56) to (35.83) respectively. It occupies less space at only 9 squares compared to 12 for the DB.

In the elven world there's a different example. The elven Temple of Ages gives 1200 culture in a 4 x 6 space giving 60 culture points per square. In the dwarf culture the Wayfarer's Tavern gives 1300 culture in a 5 x 6 space giving 54.17 culture points per square. So it gives more 100 culture but needs 5 squares more space and gives less value per square than the earlier Temple of Ages.

I hope you found something helpful.
 
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DeletedUser

Guest
Erm... I only build as little culture as I can and use the rest for things I want. Culture only helps gold and supplies, which you can get more from doing quests and having more buildings, rather than culture buildings? You have 5? extra culture buildings to get gold/supplies that I never run out of anyway, so I use those building spaces for manufactories etc.

Not a criticism, just another viewpoint that either going all-in or all-out are equally valid strategies, depending on playing style, neither is better than the other generally.
 

DeletedUser

Guest
Thanks for adding your viewpoint oldskoolrx7. As you say playing style has a big impact on game strategy. It's good to get a an overview of different approaches to this aspect of the game.
 

DeletedUser1925

Guest
You need find balance between slaves and culture. Which makes culture over rated. ;)
 

DeletedUser2114

Guest
Thank's for taking the time to put this together. It look's like a lot of work went into this and I found it very helpful. And I'm sure a lot will benefit from the information .
 

DeletedUser772

Guest
Wondering why Venars Rock gives different culture player to player... I only just found this out having helped someone and thought i'd done well and then found i'd helped the worst building they had ^^

Makes it very hard to be sure you are helping the best building :( when the same items different to differnt players

Why isn't it same for everyone ?
 

Deleted User - 106219

Guest
The stats of event buildings depend on the chapter when they were obtained. A Venar's Rock obtained in Dwarves Chapter has lower stats than one obtained in Orcs chapter.

If this wasn't so event buildings would either be too weak for advanced players, or too good for players in the early chapters.
 

DeletedUser772

Guest
I get the reasoning for ... but can't help thinking its a nightmare for helping. So do other event buildings have the same progression of help or just venars rocks ?
 

DeletedUser2333

Guest
My question is: when does it culture kick in?

If I set my workshops when I am at 150% and it drops to 125% half way through, do I get 150%, 125% or something inbetween?

How does it affect the maximum storage in houses?

I can't find anything on this.
 

DeletedUser1829

Guest
Or better yet I got to choose which buildings got boosted and in which order. Either way not likely a change to arrive anytime soon if ever. How you design your town though can greatly assist this. Making people play hide-and-seek to find your best culture buildings is not a good idea. Design your town to make people helping you have the easiest time possible to provide the help you want.
 
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