What Culture Bonus do you aim for?

[DeletedUser17455]

I've been running my city at 150% culture bonus since day one. I think this is probably because: the number 150% is in the middle of the other 4 numbers in the UI, and has a reasonable number of fluffy white clouds. In other words, I just really never thought about it.

It recently came to my attention that some people operate at 100% and rely on their fellows to boost their culture to hit the 125% and 150% marks. I'm pretty curious about this, and might give it a shot over the next quarter, but I would also like to know what YOU do.

What culture bonus do you aim for?

(here's my town)

 

[HJK84]

I honestly don't care where mine is at.
I build what I need and what I want, and if my CB is at 100, it gets to 125 with help, and if it doesn't, it still wont bother me.

I do have 2 x AW's that go up in C as my city progress'. These helps a ton, and grow in value far more than any of the pure C buildings, even the big ones from Events.

And last but not least, due to the amount of time I'm on Elvenar, I just pump out Beverages non stop, so I hardly have issues with Supply.
Same goes for Coins, if terribly low due to rushing buildings (happens with 5 builders) I just use Instants

It really depends on your style.
Even if you're very active, you spend more supply/coin to make more troops and goods, so... one might think you need more CB.
Which, I do agree, you do need it, if you're not able to make Bevs or Simple Tools to compensate.
I've tried with Bread to keep up my Supply up when very active, and my calculations showed, even with 125-150 CB, I wasn't able to recoup the Supply used.
Then you might have others who say, just add another WS, and then the dance begins of; oh... so now I need another Res, more room, and so on

Vicious cycle? lol

 

[DeletedUser8946]

Depends on a lotta factors, but mainly the chapter. Chapters I-IV anything below 150% was ludicrous. But as I kept going, it got lower and lower. It varies from week to week. In Orcs and Goblins, I was content with 125% with friends' help. But I'm now in Woodelves with lots of Weeping Willows, and a super active friendly Fellowship, so with their help I'm always at 170 or 180%, not counting the Enchanted spells I use.

 

[samidodamage]

I started off in a really dead area of the map in March 2017, in Elcysandir and it was the newest world at the time. Joined an FS fairly quickly, but again cities were small and the FS had ?14? or so members. I was happy to have the culture I needed to build/do upgrades. By the time they moved me in mid-July, I had explored out 6-7 rings from my city and all but 2 of my 'discovered' neighbors turned to gold mines. I think because of that, I'm still okay with running at 100-125% without counting help. In Woodelves, in a more active neighborhood and an FS with more advanced cities and more active members, I stayed at 170%. While I'll take all the excess coins I can get and buy KP, I abhor spending supplies in the wholesaler. So, I've reduced my WS to 7 (I do have Prosperity Towers(lvl 4) and Endless Excavation(lvl 3), so they make up for some of that). As I've entered S&D and begun replacing those Willows with Libraries, I now stay around 150-160% with help. I'll see short periods of time at 100-125% when I sell off a Willow and am waiting for the Library to finish construction, but it doesn't bother me. I think I adapted to lower culture in the beginning and it doesn't matter to me as long as I can keep it at 125% without help. I don't like it being at 100% because if I decide I need to bump it up with a spell, the spell won't have an effect until you reach 125% anyway.

 

[DeletedUser3507]

160% city culture without polishes 220% with
And I achieved it and have maintained it for the last year.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Keep in mind that a lot of the advice you will get regarding culture is from players who moved up through the chapters before

• Ancient Wonders got a massive boost, making the ToS, EE, and PT far more powerful than a workshop making supplies much easier to obtain.
• Supply and Coin Rain instants are a relatively new thing further greatly devaluing culture bonuses.
• Making visits on mobile 30x faster makes getting coins a total non-issue.
• Faster visits generally should mean getting more buffs too which gives culture as well

some players also neglect the Magic Academy and Tournaments. If you use those properly you can get loads of PoP spells which triple your workshop production (more if you have the PT mentioned above)

I ran 150% up to chapter 9 (before any of the above changes were implemented) and then due to needing mana buildings that give culture I naturally had ~160-170% without a single pure culture building in any city ever.
Players that run 170%+ culture and then use coins and supplies in the super inefficient wholesaler are not running an efficient city. edit: When you get to mana chapters you don't really have a choice.

If I was starting a new city today I would absolutely ignore culture other than the bare minimum to upgrade buildings.

 

[DeletedUser8946]

Supply and Coin Rain instants are a relatively new thing further greatly devaluing culture bonuses.

Because of this reason, I have 0 fear of running out of coins or supplies, Culture is just a nice thing for me to have. I have my entire Supply and Coin capacity 10 times over in Instants alone.

Players that run 170%+ culture and then use coins and supplies in the super inefficient wholesaler are not running an efficient city.

I'm almost always at 180% or above solely because my FS is great in helping, and almost all my Culture is in Weeping Willow form. Thankfully I just got the Trader AW, so the Wholesaler is not as horrible.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I'm almost always at 180% or above solely because my FS is great in helping, and almost all my Culture is in Weeping Willow form.

If your culture is from Willows, then you are most likely in the woodelves chapter where it is nearly impossible to have under 170%.
I should have mentioned that, will edit above.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

Assuming a culture bonus of 200%

That immediately reduces my WS requirement by half. If I can keep that level, even if only at times where I usually collect, I can permanently get rid of some WS.

Think about it.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Assuming a culture bonus of 200% That immediately reduces my WS requirement by half. If

That is only true if you get 100% of your supplies from your workshops.
Figure on ~10 WS being the norm.
At least one WS should be replaced by the Endless excavation since it makes more supplies per square. Same for ToS and PT
Now you're only getting ~70% from WS, less if you've levelled up those wonders.
Culture also doesn't help the supplies you gain from visits, instants or quest rewards.

 

[DeletedUser12171]

ok so now i have 7 WS and I could reduce that to 5 or 6. the point is you'd need just half the WS you'd need without culture bonus (if i had 200% bonus)

 

[DeletedUser3507]

I drastically over produce, but that's ok with me..

 

[samidodamage]

ok so now i have 7 WS and I could reduce that to 5 or 6. the point is you'd need just half the WS you'd need without culture bonus (if i had 200% bonus)

I'm in S&D (in the 3rd column of techs in the tree) and I'm running 7 WS all at lvl 23 (max Woodelves lvl; S&D tech is in the column I'm working on now), with a lvl 3 EE and a lvl 4 PT. My collection pattern is a couple of 1hr productions in the morning and in the evenings (more on the weekends), 3hr productions a couple times during the workday (less on the weekends, maybe 1 3hr/day; do mostly 1hrs instead), and a 9hr overnight production daily. My culture at the moment, with some neighborly help is 125%. I've got plenty of supplies. If I run low because of some drain (like upgrading armories, building guest race buildings, etc), I can always use instants, some of the 450+ PoP and culture spells I have in inventory, collect more frequently, or some combination. I seriously doubt I could decrease that number to 4 WS just by getting my culture to 200%. Maybe, as I haven't run any numbers, but it just doesn't 'feel' like that would work out well for me...

 

[DeletedUser12171]

If you want to run the culture build, you absolutely should get WR and CL/BS. Look at the boosts and you'll see why. PT is the support AW for this build

 

[SoggyShorts]

ok so now i have 7 WS and I could reduce that to 5 or 6. the point is you'd need just half the WS you'd need without culture bonus (if i had 200% bonus)

The number 200% has been thrown around a bit, and I think it should be mentioned that 170% is the max before spells, and 200% is actually hard to achieve without spending diamonds to upgrade your MA since you need 21 EE spells per week.
e.g. a level 2 MA can make 13 per week if you make no other spells, meaning you need 8 from visit chests/tournament rewards.

If you want to run the culture build, you absolutely should get WR and CL/BS. Look at the boosts and you'll see why. PT is the support AW for this build

This is where it gets interesting. Using space and KP to upgrade culture wonders vs using that same KP and space for direct supplies is a rather complicated calculation.

How high you decide to keep you mana production and what event buildings(if any) you are getting it from drastically impacts your culture as well.

One of the bigger impact of course is your FS visits. To get that 200% bonus you need 6 buildings constantly buffed, which even with some CL levels means 12 visits per day, that are well timed. In a smaller FS, or one that doesn't require more than 3-4 visits per week, or one where most players visit in the morning, it all falls apart pretty quick.

 

[DeletedUser17455]

I've been running at 125% for about a month and find that I am juuuuust squeaking by in terms of supply. I am able to keep all my manufactories going all the time as well as producing enough military to fight in tournaments. I think that, going forward, I will add a few big culture buildings to my festival grounds* while there are no events running. This way I can be at 150% much of the time while being certain that I never drop below 125%.

* the "festival grounds" is a part of my city that I fill with level 1 manufactories of my finest boosted goods so that I can easily tear it down at the drop of a hat and fill it with level 1 workshops during events and FAs. Here is a map of my town for reference.

 

[SoggyShorts]

@Zeigfreid looking good!
I very very strongly recommend "Squaring up" your city. an "L" shaped city will eventually be much harder to manage and will give you far fewer design choices in the future.