Culture requirements are to high

[DeletedUser119]

I don't think that increase polishing time will solve anything here. It might help a little but not so much.

I've at the moment 9 spot of whispering and planning to add 2 more soon.
I receive 8-10 polish a day. But even if all of my 9 Spot was polish at the same time, I wouldn't be able to reach 170%...
With 2 more Spot, I'll be able to get 120% bonus by myself and 170% if almost every Spot was polish.
But as soon that I'll build my 3rd tier manufactory (in less than a week), I'll lose my 120% bonus again.
Since number are sometimes easier to understand on a graph : http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=276932elvenarculture.png

RugBug has 3 diamonds cultural building. It's really not that much. I'm sure it help a little, but not to reach easily 170%

I think the real problem here is that requirement for a cultural bonus increase a lot faster than we get new city expension or new cultural building.
I'm starting to regret having upgrade my main hall. It cost a lot of culture and I'm think I would've be able to manage my income of coins without that.
I'm now thinking about destroying an armory and some residences to be able to build more Spot of Whispering.

 

[DeletedUser]

I manage to keep 200% without anyone polishing me and I seem to do OK in the game (but it did cost diamonds to do it)...

Me too, but it didn't cost diamonds to do it ...

Playing with diamonds or not, in this game you never can count with neighbors or 'neighbors help', so if you want 'culture' you must create it by your own - and it's not so hard to maintain 200% all over the time, it's much more difficult to tell your 2 or 3 neighbors visiting you once per week that they should not polish culture buildings - they will do it, there's no way to avoid it.

The one and only idea of this game so far is 'you never will have enough space', so buildings upgrading them become bigger, but need also more extra-space for requiring more culture.

So your decision always will be based on having sufficient resources to upgrade + having sufficient space to upgrade (= space for the bigger upgraded building + space for more culture which the upgraded building will require).

And you need to upgrade buildings to progress, (more) culture doesn't give you any point for ranking, but more culture makes it easier to upgrade buildings ... that's where cat biting its own tail ...

 

[DeletedUser136]

you never can count with neighbors or 'neighbors help', so if you want 'culture' you must create it by your own

I actually agree with this...

Right now it's about space management. If you build and upgrade faster than you can keep culture at the level you want without help, then you're building too much, too fast. The game was not designed to make it easy for everyone to have 170 - 200% culture all the time and if it was then there wouldn't be much of a challenge to it.

 

[DeletedUser58]

But growing/upgrading your city is what pushes your rank ahead so currently there's a conflict between A) advancing in the game B) meeting culture requirements. You can't do both, and you'll suffer from the side-effects of the other no matter what your choice is. You may be able to do both if you're spending enough diamonds to obtain all premium expansions and culture buildings, but that's way too expensive and it puts too big of an advantage to premium players (while diamonds will always give an advantage they shouldn't be a requirement for one to properly manage their city).

In a single era you need to upgrade multiple residential houses, multiple supply buildings, multiple goods buildings, the town hall, the barracks, the armory (or armories), and build new goods buildings. All of that can't be satisfied with a single large non-upgradeable culture building per era even if you build it a few or several times. And if you build it a couple times and use almost half your city space to meet the culture requirement, there's not much space management left for you to do, is it? Personally I think the rapid growth of the culture requirements vs. the lack of culture income is an issue, but obviously we can agree to disagree on the topic.

 

[DeletedUser136]

Lol. Disagreement is not a bad thing.

I look at it this way. In theory this is a P2P game. If you choose to play for free than of course it's going to be much harder (but not impossible) to maintain the max culture level... the game is meant to make money for the company and if there is no incentive to actually need/want to spend money for the max culture and space, then the game will never get out of closed beta.

 

[DeletedUser58]

But there's a difference between something been challenging and simply difficult to a point where it makes the game less enjoyable (if I have to sacrifice too much city space for culture buildings I'd be left with too little space for other buildings; the alternative is slowing down my game progress so the culture requirements don't go up; both of these make the game less entertaining). This can drive away players and while the company needs to make profit it also needs those players who play for free because without them the player base would be too small.

Maybe the issue will be less significant with more active players, that remains to be seen, but I think we need additional possibilities for getting culture.

 

[DeletedUser231]

Ok....so what if your culture is at 100%, what is the big deal. The good thing is that it does not drop below 100%, then it would be a HUGE issue in relation to revenue etc. So just make more stuff and trash all the culture buildings. Make trade-able stuff and trade your way through this game then space would not be an issue. Yes your boosted income will be lower but build bigger buildings. Yes having 200% looks very good and is great for your economy.

Try this out....

>>>Rename you cities name......Polish CULTURE...or something like that.
>>>Mail everyone who is active in your discovery area and ask them to polish your Culture the few you have left.
>>>Thank those players who help you out.
>>>Trade more efficiently reduces the need for space.

Communication in this game is critical for success but you know all this right...

I am going to be decreasing my cultural buildings and depending more on my neighbors. I have 8 good players who visit my city and polish my cultural buildings now on a regular basis. I have trained them very well....

 

[DeletedUser]

Hi RugBug, all your points are good but there are a few problems with this at present:
I renamed my city to Buff Culture Please long ago, and half of the people who visit still ignore it and give me coins or buff the builder .. not much that you can do about that.
There are few trades. I've had 4-5 pages of offers up for days and nothing .. also there is nobody selling what I need .. or perhaps it's just that I'm unfortunate enough to be near the top 2 players and they grab all trades as they are posted. And just my luck, they have the same boosted goods as me

 

[DeletedUser231]

Hi RugBug, all your points are good but there are a few problems with this at present:
I renamed my city to Buff Culture Please long ago, and half of the people who visit still ignore it and give me coins or buff the builder .. not much that you can do about that.
There are few trades. I've had 4-5 pages of offers up for days and nothing .. also there is nobody selling what I need .. or perhaps it's just that I'm unfortunate enough to be near the top 2 players and they grab all trades as they are posted. And just my luck, they have the same boosted goods as me

Have you mailed the players around you?
Are you coordinating your goods with others?

You tell us your very near the top 2 players, have you ever talked to them and made any plans? Being pro-active is much better than sitting in your wee village.

By properly managing your efforts with the output of others you can better manage your good, your development and your space. If you try and do everything alone you will get frustrated. Most players think Guilds are needed to effectively work together and that is not true. If you can effectively communicate with other in your discovery area then you will get all the stuff you need to grow.

 

[DeletedUser58]

Those things don't help. This is not a goods issue for me nor an issue of others helping out with something else than culture nor an issue with communication with others. Lack of activity from others, maybe, but that remains to be seen when inactive players are moved out and replaced with active ones. The whole issue I have is the increased culture requirement for all buildings and their upgrades while lack of culture buildings to use (because they're far too few in amount and cannot be upgraded).

 

[DeletedUser231]

Ok, fine. I will not try and help you anymore if your too stubborn to listen when all I want to do is try and aid you. Play as you wish...I will do it my way and you can do it your way. Your choice..SAD...

 

[DeletedUser58]

It's not about me not wanting help, most of us are already doing all of those things and OP in fact points out he even uses diamond culture buildings. We're trying to make a point and I do not want the thread side-tracked to tips/tricks or a goods talk when we can be coming up with different potential solutions to what we see as an issue (the culture requirements). Don't take every comment personally, we appreciate the tips and they might be useful to Inque, but they're not helpful to all of us (they may have helped in your hood and at your level in the game, not saying they don't work, but it doesn't mean they work in all cases).

 

[DeletedUser]

+1

 

[DeletedUser]

For culture my problem was coming form fisrt tier manufactuing to second tier, as we still need first tier, we need to "double" our works team and our manufactories it means a lot more residence, and a lot more space eat up for the silk/diamond/scrolls building, even woth more cultural building there is no enough space, I went from close to the limit at 170% culture without polish to the limit down of the 120% bonus woithout polish

The problem is for one culture bonus upgrade I need three concurrent polishing, whereas even low level players can polish my main hall (you can't polish culture when you have reach the first polishing culuture building through research).
Each main hall polish gives me 12k gold, meaning despite the loss of tools (which won't be much as at maximum I never have more than 5 concurrent culture polish so loss of 20% production), main hall polishing gives the daily production of one level 7 residence (nearly)

The fact is that I may ask for main hall polish soon because without culture upgrade I will soon need more than 1200 culture (3 concurrent polishes) for the 20% boost

 

[DeletedUser]

+1 for upgrade

 

[DeletedUser]

We need either more culture buildings or the ability to upgrade the existing ones. I agree currently we need too much culture with little potential for getting some. While one can still manage their city either way, it's less enjoyable if their city space is eaten up for a single purpose.

I vote for more cultural buildings. The Mysterious Cyclone comes way too late and is too weak. It would be nice to have a game designers statement if it is intended to force diamond buys? Otherwise I am planing ahead to deal with 100% in the "purple age" and compensate with much more coin and supply buildings. That will give me a short boost in the rankings as well

 

[DeletedUser326]

As for now there is no real use for cultural Buildings in late game. As i'm calculating that you will Need 50% of your City Space to even reach the 140%. But using the same space for residences and Workshops would produce a much bigger Output as i'm scared of.
Even if you use 40-50% of your space for culture and would have enough to polish them the outcome would be much better if they directly donate the coins to your Mainhall and you are fine with your 100%.

 

[DeletedUser]

I think I'll reconcile with the idea of a city without any culture buildings if there will be no change in the cultural feature of the game. If chimere's rough guess is right and you need around 50% of your space for cultural buildings to reach 140% boosts (and even worse: only becuase auf helping hands) it is not worth the try. Then I will take my constant 100%. Going to test this with the next city rebuilding so that I am prepared when the other servers start....

 

[DeletedUser]

This strategy would also prevent any useless polishing...

 

[DeletedUser58]

Technically you still need culture buildings, at least enough to meet the building requirements. But yes, you can avoid having any additional culture and just stick to 100% --- that's what I'm doing right now myself. I can't sacrifice my space for culture because I need the goods and coin and supplies to actually play the game, so I'll just have to give up on getting improved culture at least for the time being. Maybe the culture buildings I have yet to research will prove better and sufficient in the future.