Any help with how to play Cultists properly?

I just can't get the hang of them.

Only advice that works for higher difficulties (hard or serious), please.

The issue I have with them is that whole world is pretty much hostile to you.

Neutrals want to kill you. Pacifing them by force penalizes you with 2x expensive conversion costs. Using quests to pacify them is gamble. It is either easy or not worth it. Using bribes is expensive since dust is not obtainable early in good quantities. In fact, every converted village has -10 dust upkeep, which is steep.

Other factions want to kill you, since they do not care about converted villages. Converted forces are weak.

Pacification actually invites other faction to settle the region, since neutrals threat is removed. But without pacification, there is no conversion.

Mobility is awful, since there is no road network.

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I tried couple of starts, and if I succeed to convert couple of villages, my dust reserves get drained, due to dust upkeep of each village.


So anyway, I'm clueless of how to properly play Cultists. Any hints, or what I am doing wrong?

Even online and in the hardest difficulties, you rarely need more than 2-3 villages to win a game as the Cult.



When you´re settling, you have to pay attention to what are the things you´ll need to invest population on, because 90% of times you will lack at least one (usually 2) yields from terrain. Once you spot that, you want to always reach the maximum of that Yield/Pop that you can given a certain era, and keep some people there, no matter how much it seems that you need something else.



If you look for Industry in your start, like you should, the more usual is that you´ll lack Dust - which is good news, because you don´t need dust at the start of the game. Any dust you come by is great, and the way you spend it is important (always bribe and convert, if you can´t just pacify, a Daemon/Haunts village that seems like it won´t die really really fast, regardless if it´s far from your city center and might die eventually), but until you need to field armies, you don´t need more than a slight surplus every turn.



Your starting hero must always be a governor, and you should get a General asap. Getting real lucky with ruin in the first 10 turns make it worth it to invest on the market before changing to era 2. Since you basically only need to win single battles, the more health bonuses (or survivability, like Broken Lords and Necro vs Necro) on your general the better. If you don´t have a lot of dust early, it doesn´t matter. Around turn 30 fast speed (if not already at turn 20 for some pacification quest) you will be turning the Economy empire plan for +3dust/pop. That alone make hiring a hero much faster, but you should probably couple it with the Glassteel tome for even more dust/pop. When you do so, hiring a hero becomes a matter of focusing on dust for around 3 turns.



The Cult is among the factions that can get the Megapole the most easily, since their governor will increase industry/pop, and the game gives Wonders to people who have the most industry when they finished it (in case it draws), meaning it actually benefits whoever "started later". Managing to build a Canal Locks before starting the megapole will tend to see it built in about 3 turns, but due to their Governor, they are, along with the Wild Walker, one of the factions that might want to try finishing the Megapole before the Canal locks, to get it before or at turn 20.



The villages you want to convert will depend mostly on resources that they provide. Converting the villages in your own region means people can only destroy them by declaring war (which is all that you want), so moving to a 3 village region is always awesome - unfortunately, only luck will dictate that, with 4 movement points. Converting an otherwise useless village for an early strong Flying unit is totally worth it for the scouting.



You probably want to sell your mercenaries/stockpiles to invest on strategic resources. Even a full 6 mercenary garrison will never be able to fight a 6 equipped unit hostile army - on the other hand, you will kill a lot of AIs and aggressive players by hiding decently equipped units inside villages.



Never forget your science. Along with Dust, it´s the most common yield for the Cultist to lack, and even when you have it on a moderate amount, the fact you won´t have other cities will soon take your acquisition rate to 3-4 turns - do not spend more than 10 turns at that rate, especially against the AI.



Buy spies, use them wisely (2 infiltrated in the strongest faction, for morale reduction and fortification damage at the same time). Build watchtowers, build +security building, equip +security trinket, you´ll be very quickly at 90 security.



Don´t waste your time with Dust Transmutter if you don´t have about 30% of your city tiles originally with Dust, or with Dust Repository if you´re intending on focusing on industry to build era 3 military, use Dust Refinery. By early era 3, you´ll want to be preparing to finish the game, not improve your economy. Money by this point is exclusively to reftrofit, field armies and buy spies, and reaching the t3 armor/weapon technologies before From Dust to Rust can be the difference between a very short game and a rather long one.



I hope this helps, feel free to ask anything I dind´t mention.

BPrado wrote:
Even online and in the hardest difficulties, you rarely need more than 2-3 villages to win a game as the Cult.

Can you elaborate more on this specific point?



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Also, I was thinking about possibly of not converting my home region village at all. Instead to just pacify it (even maybe with force/rebuild) to get extra pop. Saves me 10 dust I would lose for converting it. I could always convert it at later time, when economy becomes stronger.

Regarding your region village, think about it - you´ll get one population and every yield from exploitation. The -10 dust of upkeep can very easily be offset by you leaving that extra population producing 7 dust/turn after the economic empire plan, or 9 dust/turn with the Glassteel tome. That´s 4/7/9 dust+7x tiles per turn at the cost of 10 dust per turn.





And your villages are mostly very complex extractors. The extra pop+yields make a reasonable difference early, but the productivity of your capital increases so fast that they are only really a push to get you past certain plateaus of productivity. I rarely get more than one village until turn 30, and after that, I look for them basically to provide Dust boosts when selling mercenaries. Everything else can be done, for example, like the Allayi - simply build a giant city that gets everything it needs out of having a lot more tiles than an average city.

Advise when playing with shifters expansion

1. Try to build winter borough as fast, as you can (need 20 perls + 10 pearls + dust to make it in one turn if 3rd winter isn't long). This will grant you +6 food, industry and dust from each tile when lvl 3 reached. This thing is realy OP for cultists.

2. Abbey of anomalies is 2nd blessing you need to get. The best place for this - anomaly with science\food. This will give for you +9 food from each anomaly.

3. If you have a river\water tiles - try to get +10 production from this tiles. Again, production is everything for you.

3. Luxury\strategic infester - if possible. You need bonus science\dust from this expansion.

4. Don't make you's hero goventor at first turn and don't assign perks. Every game is unique, so be flexible.

a) You can find in market cultists hero with bonus industry per population.

b) If you's capital in the forest - you can also think about good wild walker's hero as goventor. Ofc, he has bonuses only for industry, but this bonuses much more stronger, then any other hero bonuses. With wild walker as goventor you can build temple of earth core faster, then with any other hero.

c) If you are in desert with river and access to sea - may be broken lord with +3 dust per population can be good option. This is strong option too, because in this situation you can try to play for economy victory.

BPrado wrote:
Regarding your region village, think about it - you´ll get one population and every yield from exploitation. The -10 dust of upkeep can very easily be offset by you leaving that extra population producing 7 dust/turn after the economic empire plan, or 9 dust/turn with the Glassteel tome. That´s 4/7/9 dust+7x tiles per turn at the cost of 10 dust per turn.

This is what I meant that they are ok to be converted later. But I'm not sure if they are worth early since you already get pop bonus for free with just pacification, unlike villages outside your region.

Personally for me, I've found aiming for a good dust and influence production as cultist will allow you to increase your fids (food, industry, dust, science) over all. This is because your dust and influence are going to convert as many villages as possible. While it is possible to only with with 2-4 villages, the more villages converted the merrier they say.



The trick is to determine which villages to convert before others, and you really need to look at how much fids each village will produce and consider the -10 dust for its conversion. Ideally a village that has all tiles available around it or with anomalies are your first target. The second thing you want to look for is how close the villages are you, other players, and how defend-able they are in the sense of how long away it takes to send reinforcements to them.



You are right about not converting your starting region minor faction immediately UNLESS, it will provide a huge amount of fids that your city can't reach, OR its a small map with not much room for expansion, and you want a safe converted village within your boundaries.



While exploring and expanding is difficult as cultist with your preachers being weaker than other starting units. This can be overcome by converting a village asap, using the unit you gain to help explore. You hero CAN be used to help pacify minors with parley or battle, but it also really nice to have him produce influence with his capacity of influence boost 2 right off the bat. Really more of a gameplay preference at that point.