Maybe the first in a series of Quick-tips threads. Maybe. Hopefully! Probably!



As Cultists I feel to many players don't understand that building your city comes after indoctrinating your first couple of villages! One bribe + 20 infleunce = 1 military unit, 1 Population, and a District and half. The net FIDS gain far outweighs things like Mill Foundry.



My Advice:



1. Choosing Your Roots.



Split your guys. Scout. Found your city in turn 1 or 2. Maybe turn 3 if you see a pile of anomalies just out of reach. Prioritize Dust and Science over food and industry. A Border or Coastal spot with a couple of anomalies might be tempting---But you must think about positioning. You get Tier 3 Districts so you need more space. This is imperative, because without those districts you cannot stay competitive in your Science/Research speeds.



2. Hero as governor, ASAP.



As soon as you found your city assign Andom(starter hero) as your governor. This is because he has Influence boost 2 and you 20 as soon as you can get it for your first village.



3. Influence First.



Make sure your first population is assigned to producing influence unless assigning him to food gets you new pop in one or two turns. 3 or more? Stick to influence. Influence is your weapon. In the beginning you'll be starved for it, using every shred to get a new village. In Era II and beyond you'll be using it to broker deals to manipulate Auriga into leaving you be until it's too late.



4. Search Party = Dust = Bribes.



While not mandatory, I do recommend it. Anything to make gathering up money for bribes easier. Grab Search Party as your first tech. The sooner you get 20, the sooner you get your first village, the sooner you snowball out of control.



5. Grab quests from villages, but don't neglect those ruins!



Remember the easy quests, ignore the hard ones. Since you founded on a city with Dust and Science you should have gotten search party by turn 2 or 3 an early bribe should be cake. Sometimes RNG hates you though. But not usually bad enough to cost you more than a turn or two! You put your starting population on influence, so you'll have 20 influence by turn 4-5 ish. It is around this time that you will bribe your first village.



6. First Converts.



Congrats. You've got your first village. You've essentially bought a district and population for the cost of one Bribe and 20 influence. The net FIDS gain is here is far more important than waiting on Mill Foundry and other such structures. You want to have two or more before turn 10. You know have two options. Use your first converts as muscle to complete quests, or rush Mercenary Market tech to sell them for cash and bribe your way into the hearts and minds of Auriga!



7. Infrastructure.



Now that you've got your first converts it's time to focus on those Era 1 Structures. You know when the time is right, usually around the second village. You'll now have enough population to split your attentions between building and converting. If you get "kill the things" parley quests grab fanatics. If you don't you can safety skip them. Once you get the Order of Isivar through the quest line, however, Fanatics do have their uses.



8. Expansion Disapproval? What Disapproval?!



Don't bother. Don't get Sewer System or other disapproval tech. You can -easily- stay Fervent (Max Happiness) with boosters bought from the market and eventually you won't even need them with enough Tier 2+ districts! Also avoid the Right of Way tech--you only have one city and you don't want people settling around you! Roads are of little use, watch towers are nice but there are simply other things you'll want instead.



9. Diplomatic Manse and Imperial Coinage.



Can be a life savers vs AI and players. Bartering through the diplomacy screen is beneficial to you and peace treaties can act as an Early Warning systems for when someone is about to target your villages.. This helps you combat your lack of vision and properly place your patrols. Don't let your greatest strength be your greatest weakness! Imperial Coinage gives you access to strategic resources ---but more importantly--- luxury resource boosters that you only spend 10 to activate!



10. Patrols.



Speaking of Patrols, you need to make sure your villages are protected when you are not at war. Fielding armies may be expensive, but it is key to this. Choose your villages wisely, don't over extend near enemy borders. The areas around your capital should be easy enough to defend. If you do over-extend do so in uncontested parts of the map or regions that are bottled up through a choke point on oddly formed maps.



11. Sell Stockpiles.



Most of the time you'll want to sell the stockpiles you get for razing cities. Currently the price out weighs the benefits most of the time. As Vaulters or Wildwalkers there are some clever strategies you can employ with Stockpiles, but this isn't about them. You are cultists, and as such you are addicted to Influence and dust!



12. 99 Problems, 1 City ain't one?



Bad song. Bad pun. Whatevz! Anyhow. Point is take advantage of having just one city---Empire Plans are cheap. You'll only ever need 10 of each booster. Knowing this prepare for empire plan day and make sure you use and abuse the Market, Roving Clans willing that is!



13. Generals and/or Privateers.



You probably want to start taking people out long before you get Mercenary Corps in tier IV. But if that is your plan, it might be worthwhile to stock up on mercs with that extra credit rather than more generals. If you plan sniping capitals long before then--and usually you will-- buy lots of generals! You can buy them with the money you'll make selling stockpiles.



14: Main Quest: Order of Isiver:



Without spoiling the story, there is a point in the main quest where you'll get an item only equipable to cultist native faction units, not villagers. It adds +50% to several stats and level 2 regeneration and costs both titanium and glass-steel to equip. You absolutely should utilize this item and at least have one well-equipped commando unit (if not more) of Fanatics and Nameless Guards. If you start in an area with glass steel and titanium or move to one? Then it might even be a good idea to sell your free troops on the merc market and buyout a lot of these.



15. Production is Limited: Districts vs. Structures vs. Units.



Villages will be the priority almost every time. Thankfully that gives you breathing room to produce your army! However, you should not neglect building structures in your city. Priorities are Science, Influence, and Dust generating structures in that order! Industry and Food are far less important to you----Skip them! Instead grab military-related tech. Structures that give "+ Y% X"+ X per tile" and "+ Y per Population" bonuses are always better than "+ Y per city" or just a flat bonus. Sure, that adds on empires with several cities---but you just have one.



Districts are worth pushing out during times of peace or otherwise when you'd think you'd expand with settlers as any other faction.



16. Preachers and Fanatics: NOT WORTHLESS.



This is a common misconception you see on the boards and on you-tube all the time. Preachers are amazing buffers/debuffers. and are extremely cheap to produce--having only one city, one source of production--means this is important early-mid game. Late game you will probably ditch them. This means they are best used as filler units so that you can can split 2 armies into three. This is important for policing your villages from other players and covering more ground at once! Equip them a movement/initiative talisman and the unsteady wand. Unsteady III provides a massive debuff to enemy defense allowing your units to chew through problem targets. Unleash, the freindly buff, adds +10% to all stats on the unit. While often not as impressive as unsteady, it can is great when combined with item and hero buffs. Fanatics are fast, cheap, can equip the Icon of Isivar, and synergize well with Preachers. A Fanatics main purpose is to assist you vs. rush tactics---As a fledgling cult you will not have a huge free army at your disposal.



17. Traits to consider for Custom Cultists:



*Cult ain't the cult without conversion!



*Endless Excavation is extremely powerful. Settling near just one ruin provides an additional 3 influence per turn. After assigning your hero to your city and your pop to influence that is 8 per turn right from the start.



*Keys the Market can be great if you notice that another player is buying up all your strategic resources. Not to mention, immunity to market ban which can hurt you a lot more than others.



*Movement Speed and Vision will help you find the perfect spot for your city, gather dust from ruins faster, parlay with villagers faster, and defend those villages more readily. Really potent for Cultists.



*Landscapists: If you find a spot with two anomalies then you'll more than likely have fervent (+30% fids) bonuses all game. You'll also have additional science and dust income---your two main early game priorities!



*Dust Archeology (start with +42 dust), while normally a lackluster pick for other factions it will help you bribe that first village even faster!



*Vaulter's Endless Recycling can give a huge science boost to your city, considering the number of districts you will have.



*Necrophage's Cellulose Mutation (reduced cost for building districts) can lead to humorous amounts of districts in your city. The benefits are obvious! Great synergy with Endless Recycling.



*Necrophage's Cannon Fodder can help you maintain your huge amount of units.



*Roving Clans' Mercenary Comforts (x2HP to Privateer Armies) Can be hilarious on a very political passive build that suddenly launches a surprise deathball late game against it's own allies.



*We Are Legion has notable Synergy with Mercenary Comforts.



*Drakken's Advanced Diarchy let's the player receive empire plans an era sooner---since your empire plan is super cheap it's easy to capitalize on this trait if it makes it into your build. This can be a great way of keeping your momentum going if your villages are getting aggressively destroyed.



*Military buffs go remarkably well with the accessory the Cult gets in their main questline.



*Drakken's Well Connected. A particularly aggressive build could use this---- From the very beginning of the game you'll know exactly where the capitals you need to snipe are!

Great guide, thanks for this! I just started my first Cultist game on Hard today and wasn't sure how to approach playing them. Thanks to this, I'm doing great and enjoying the faction's really unique play style. The guide is short and sweet, easy to digest, but full of good stuff. Well done

You're welcome <3



And thank you! I'm really glad it helped!



I will likely do more in the near future!

Broken Lords or Roving Clans will most likely be my next Quick Tips!

Eddited for typo regarding the Order of Isiver >.>

Also eddited explanation of Diplomatic Manse, to clarify that by trading I meant bartering through the diplomacy screen, not trading via roads---which is quite useless to you, as the cult.

I've yet to proceed beyond the part of the quest where you have to raze another factions city. Without spoilers. Should I bother. By the time this part of this quest comes up I'm already falling behind other factions. I like to play on challenging difficulties (I'm playing on the one past Hard, because the one after that at my current familiarity and skill with the game is a no-win no-fun scenario. But it seems like the quest victory, would be the best experience and strategy given the natural advantages toward building one huge mega city has. Edit: Or the other extreme. You survive, you're still behind, but ... you don't even know where, or what faction is the owner of said territory... and you may not enough influence to trade maps! Heh. Tricky.

Depends on how well the game is going and convenient or inconvenient the objectives are.

Generally, I neglect the main quest after I pick up the Order of Isivar. This is because, at this point, I've usually started my war effort and my attention, resources, are being directed towards victory!

PotatoesAreBland wrote:
I've yet to proceed beyond the part of the quest where you have to raze another factions city. Without spoilers. Should I bother. By the time this part of this quest comes up I'm already falling behind other factions. I like to play on challenging difficulties (I'm playing on the one past Hard, because the one after that at my current familiarity and skill with the game is a no-win no-fun scenario. But it seems like the quest victory, would be the best experience and strategy given the natural advantages toward building one huge mega city has. Edit: Or the other extreme. You survive, you're still behind, but ... you don't even know where, or what faction is the owner of said territory... and you may not enough influence to trade maps! Heh. Tricky.

I actually appreciate this part of the cultists main quest line because it indicates the point where your snowballing should be reaching an appreciable speed. Of course, as Rudest said, you need to do a cost-benefit analysis and go for the objectives that hold value. When I play the cultist (on impossible), I tend to go for a wipe-the-map-clean strategy. You should pretty much expect (and be comfortable with) being a few hundred points behind until you start imposing yourself on the rest of the map. Many of the factors that the scoreboard counts are stacked against you (expansion, food and industry/turn, diplomacy).



Don't be afraid to march into your enemies territory with a few cavalry/flying scout units to check things out and bait their armies away. Another tactic I really like is to concentrate a few armies on one siege so that the fortification bonus gets eaten up quickly.



Also, I just want to echo the common sentiment on this thread that influence truly is the name of the game for the cultists.



Happy indoctrinating!