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