Culture

 This is a 3 part guide to Culture. It is aimed at beginning and evolving players.

1. Culture - where to have it
2. Culture - how much and the optimum amount
3. Culture - which buildings? space vs culture value

1. Culture - where to have it

You have to have culture buildings in your city. You need it to be able to upgrade your other buildings. If you haven't already, I recommend you read the following Elvenar wiki on culture; Elvenar Wiki - Culture. That wiki will give you all the general information on culture, it's purposes and details of the cultural buildings. What it won't tell you is the best way to place it in your city.

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/streets 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. So as soon as you research an advanced road/street type I recommend you start upgrading all 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.

As you can see from the picture above, there are 2 spare road/street squares. Both my cities currently have 'Luxury Street" squares. In the city in the picture above I have 130 squares giving me 3900 culture points. At the time of writing this this city had a required culture of 9897. 3900/9897 gives 39.41%. So my streets 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/street. So the best place to put them is on the borders of your city. It's worth replacing cultural buildings as you research new ones. They can't be upgraded but can be sold so you get back some of the resources you have invested. You also loss 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. I have slow internet so it can take a while for cities to load. Sometimes I'm relying purely on the labels that appear when a mouse pointer is hovered over a building. This may mean rearranging your city fairly regularly but it can be worth it.

The smaller cultural buildings are great for filling in small space. The ends of roads are ideal. Buildings that need street/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 1 x 2 or 1 x 3 cultural building.

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. On the up side, 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, active and inactive. This means I currently visit around 100 neighbours each day. In Winyandor this gives me 800 extra  in planks, silk or gems. In Arendyll I get 1000 in steel, crystal or elixir. 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.

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%. Culture can be increased by a spell but I'll stick with the basic beginning point. Early on 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. Obviously cultural buildings take up space in your city. Game advice indicates that having enough culture to achieve the higher levels, without neighbour support, will mean taking up too much space in your city with cultural buildings.

I definitely recommend trying to maintain an available culture that gives you a 150% coin/tool production bonus. You can never have too many tools or coins. 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 soon slow your other productions, or city development, down 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. For more advanced players this may not be so important. So the question is how much available culture do you need to be at 150% culture bonus?

The short version:

If you want optimum results from your culture and to be achieving 160% or 170% culture bonus consistently;

• Aim for twice your required culture.
• If available culture < your required culture, add culture. 

The explanation: 

I played around with several percentages to try and achieve available culture contribution to between 155% and 159%. I was trying to find a relationship between required culture and the amount of available culture to achieve a consistent 150% culture bonus. I was aiming for the top end to reduce the amount of neighbour help required to reach 160% or 170% culture bonus. As I adjusted I noted that the required culture and available culture were getting more equal as I increased the percentage. So I trialled a simple doubling to see how it worked. It's been working for me for at least 3 months.

An Example

In the picture to the left it shows that my city has a required culture of 10925 and available culture of 11573, giving a total culture of 22498.

In this picture to the left it shows that I need 17000 available culture to achieve 170% culture bonus. This has been achieved from combining my available culture of 11573 and a neighbourly help bonus of 12300. 11573 + 12300 = 23875. With my available culture I only needed 17000-11573 = 5427 neighbourly help bonus to hit the 170% culture bonus. Given the culture in my elven city at the time of writing I have 3 Garden of Harmony (2100 ea), 7 Temple of Ages (1200 ea). So 3 neighbour helps on Garden of Harmony or 5 on Temple of Ages is sufficient to get me at the highest culture bonus level (without spells or other means).

This is from my spreadsheet. The 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. You can see the formula in the very top of the image. It's 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 double your required culture. If your available culture is less than your required culture, add some culture. I currently have 648 above my cultural aim (11573-10925=648). That will get smaller as I upgrade. I've been using this formula for at least 3 months and it has worked well consistently.

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. Of course 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, one human;one elf, of information for each cultural building from chapter 1 up to, and including Orc/Goblin chapter.The list includes 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.

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 those that have the link only, not public. If anyone wants an Open Office Calc version please leave a comment as I can try to convert into one. I can also do a google docs version as well.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 2016-07-25

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.

Hope you found something helpful.