As it stands currently, building improvements which improve FIDS collection on terrain (dust dredger, or canal system for instance) do not improve FIDS on terrain of your converted villages. I wanted to gather people's thoughts on this, because as it stands it seems like mid-late game cultists drop off heavily simply because their FIDS collection can't keep up with other races'. The faction as is plateaus too early with no techs to improve resource collection in outlying regions. I have little incentive to research a tech for a building improvement if I can only build it once for my empire.



I am still reasonably new to this game, but are other people coming to similar conclusions? Perhaps as a fix, minor factions could receive on-terrain improvement to FIDS collection at half effectiveness if the building is constructed in the capital?

The cultists are... interesting. They have a lot of weaknesses, but a few things that you can exploit from their mechanics that can make them quite good.



Converted villages can give a big early power boost. You get pretty much the equivalent of a district, plus an extra worker in your capital. But of course, they're highly vulnerable, don't scale the resources or the unit power level, are on the edge of the territory giving less than a normal district, and every single one costs 10 dust.



The one thing is, while they generally fall behind in total FIDS production, they also have the best potential at specific FIDS production. Well, most everything except for dust because of that additional cost. But you can get some seriously insane research, for example, because it's all focused in one place with *lots* of possible workers, and you only need one leader with a good bonus.



I would definitely agree with powering up the converted villages a bit. They could really scale better, even if it took techs to do it. That would probably be the most fair. But I'd say the FIDS production part is fine because of what I mentioned before. The only thing I'd change about that is lowering or removing that 10 dust cost. That just seems counter-intuitive and doesn't balance well.

True pain for the Cultists are the villages at the edge of territory. Imo there should be some sort of compensation on vill. smaller than 7 hexes or simply made them to always be that 7-hexed size.



Also, when you assimilate Harmonites (crystal guys), their bonus won't increase the village income of strategic resources (actually, I'm not sure about that, but i think they won't... imo they should).



How do u think?

I'm really enjoying trying to figure them out because they are so strange. It may not be the smartest choice for a new player. But damn if I can't stop trying.



I was struck by the limitations converting villages presents. On the one hand you should probably rush conversion to ensure maximum city sprawl, on the other hand, this makes your city incredibly vulnerable. When the converted villages are destroyed, your city starts to fall apart. If you don't get the flat city bonus techs your economy won't survive conflicts. I think maybe, an option, to choose one tech and apply it to all of your villages might be interesting (Imagine a garrison tech adding fortification bonuses to each village, making them more survivable in the long run). I have no idea if it'd be balanced though!

Garlic wrote:
True pain for the Cultists are the villages at the edge of territory. Imo there should be some sort of compensation on vill. smaller than 7 hexes or simply made them to always be that 7-hexed size.



How do u think?

Some thoughts after playing them a lot more. I think the collection bonuses are fine. But that was one thing I was also struck by, converted villages don't come to each others aid. You can still hold converted villages, but it seems ridiculous that even two villages close to one another can't be arsed to act as reinforcements. But this is mostly solved in the late game through Empire planning - you can get the movement bonus, and pretty quickly take back or shore up a weaker village with reinforcements from another.