I'm playing as Cultists for the first time.   A very different faction and lots of fun to play (so far).   You get resources from converted villages, is there any way to see what you'll get from each village? 

I'm looking for a strategy to know which villages are more useful than others to convert.   Also... is there any advantage to converting all the villages in a region - do the benefits stack somehow? 

Thanks for any comments or suggestions.  

Wow, this forum is pretty dead.   The Steam forum isn't much better.  

When you click on a converted village, there will be a little toolbar on the bottom-left of the screen that displays the FIDSI generation of the tiles surrounding the village. Each village in a region with a discovered and exploitable strategic resource will generate a small amount of that resource every turn, which makes certain regions more lucrative than others.

Not sure if any of this is strategy, but -

Don't convert villages you can't defend. For my first few villages I try to only convert those that are within reach of reinforcements or my wandering armies. If a converted village is conquered by an enemy (and they can do this without declaring war while within neutral regions) you will have to spend the Influence to convert them again, which gets expensive. Often it's not worth the cost to convert a village in a particularly active region that I cannot defend.

All converted villages of an assimilated minor faction will contribute to the minor faction's assimilation bonus. Get four Delvers villages, get a 20% Dust bonus in your capital, as well as a 20% cost reduction of the Delvers unit. Because of this, you should preferentially assimilate the most numerous minor factions.

Don't convert faster than your economy can keep up. Each converted village costs (I think) 10 dust per turn, raises the number of luxuries required by luxury boosters, and increases the influence cost of empire plans. It also increases the influence cost of converting subsequent villages, by a lot...

Hope this helps.

Very helpful, thank you.

I've already found out protecting converted villages is a big deal.   And when you loose the village you loose the minority faction asimilation and can't build their units any more.   Expensive to re-assimilate and the Cultist units kinda suck so you really miss the faction ones.  

One small addition to what Blandersnatching said. To get the resouces from your converted village you have to have the tech to be able build extractors for that resource.

Once you do that all villages in a region will get you a small amount of all the resources in the region the village is in. 

Idaho wrote:

Wow, this forum is pretty dead.   The Steam forum isn't much better.  

Its true that the forum is a bit inactive, however the official discord is still quite active, you may want to ask your questions there ;).

In my case (and my guess is I'm not alone) I switched to Endless Space 2 past playing the shit out of Endless Legend within the last 4+ years. And I wouldn't call this or the steam forum pretty dead, yet. Anyway, you are welcome.

Same as Groo, i switched for Endless Space 2 and i more active now and Endless Space 2 forums.

Cultist are my favorite faction and i can advise you. I join Blandersnatching for don't convert villages you can't defend and for assimilate the most numerous minor factions.

But the best factions to convert are : Hurnas (+5% attack) strong for the bonuses and are good archers but Nameless Guard  will be prefered. Kazanji (+5% influence) good bonuses and strong units. Silics (+0.5 strategic resource) very helpful and strong units, nice if your neighbors are Necrophages. Geldrius (+5% damage) units can replace Fanatics. Haunts (+5% science) strong units and helpful bonuses, great if you want win with science.

After spetial mentions for Urces, Nidya, Erecys and Bos for the bonuses.

MP, if you need.

Good game.

1.  To see FIDS, use the all-map FIDS toggle button in the lower-right corner of the End Turn button.  You'll have to sum them up yourself.

A simpler shortcut is: count hexes, and assume 3 FIDS total per hex + 6 per anomaly.  So a full hex ring = 7*3 = 21 total FIDS, and with 2 anomalies it's 33.  The distribution of FIDS varies a bit depending on the hexes' terrain, but after several villages they'll converge to a uniform distribution.

2.  For conversions, play a lot and you'll learn what fits your style.  Some reasons to convert are:

- tactical roles you must assimilate: healer, flier, infantry who can take hits, cavalry if you don't build (I) Fanatic

- full hex ring for 21 FIDS; and/or adjacent anomalies for bonus FIDS

- strategic (or luxury) resources in that region, for your leeching.  You get 0.2 resource per site per village, so a region with 2 Hyperium and 3 villages will leech 1.2 Hyperium per turn if you assimilate all 3 and have the Mi/Hy extractor tech.

- more goons for your rolling wars

3.  There's no extra benefit for converting all villages in a region.  Benefits scale linearly, so converting all 3 gives you 3 times the benefit.

My approach to defensibility is to play many-continents (vs. 7 Endless/Normal), and hope to be alone on a continent, or have only 1 neighbor.  Then my villages never get attacked all game long.  Anyways, I invade AIs first, and just wipe them out long before they attack me.

The AI seems to understand that attacking converted villages is a provocation, and won't do so unless it's able and willing to take you on in a full blown war. If they're afraid of you, they'll leave the villages alone. Humans seem to have more trouble understanding that concept...