[SPOILER] Survey for those who joined several Cultural Figures

Here are several questions for those who joined at least a few prominent cultural figures, no matter live or dead. Your feedback will help us to make story and dialogues in the game more interesting, entertaining or dramatic, so feel free to share any opinion :) 

1. How many prominent cultural figures have you joined so far? State their names.

2. In general, how do you find cultural victory dialogues? Did they catch your attention or standing in your way? Are they too long/descriptive or good enough? Was the pace of the dialogues enjoyable or too slow?

2. Which of cultural figures died and which of them joined being alive? Was it expected or unexpected?

3. Which of them were the most interesting and appealing? Why? What in particular you most like in them?

4. Which of them you find the most boring and/or repulsive? Why? What in particular you like the least in them? 

5. Did you skip some of the dialogues with cultural fugures? If the answer is yes, how often?

6. Did you have hard time dealing with one of the prominent figures (no suitable answers etc.)? State the situation and explain the problem.

7. Do you like the ideas and cultural context used in the dialogues? Which of them are the most memorable?

8. Have you reached Cultural Victory? Do you like the final scene? Do you find it enjoyable and rewarding enough? Boring? Slow-paced? 

9. State any other things you have found interesting in cultural figures, not mentioned specifically above.

10. State any ideas, remarks or criticism that would help us to improve our English writing, and make the language of the dialogues more vivid, well-paced and easy to percieve.

We have had similar surveys for the:

• Opposition Hideout
• Keepers Village and Ruins of the New Kyiv
• Karfaree
• Caves
• Dungeons
• Anomalies
• Places of Interest

They were quite helpful so if you havent filled up those, it would be great if you will do them too.

I have 4 cultural figures so far: the Chanteuse, the Philosopher (RIP), the Artist and the Composer. The first was fun, because it was new. The others less so, because it was more of the same.

I think for most people the dungeons are most popular, they are def my favorite. Reason being that within 1 dungeon there is diversity: spike rooms, trigger rooms, beacon puzzle, monsters or not, timed hidden object rooms etc. Dens are popular for the goodies we get. But Karfaree is a lot of the same. clicking random people to get info about either Ranyus, or to find out what happened to the opera singer etc. And the one thing that would make me go back to Karfaree again and again, the Colosseum, is hardly ever available. I have done it with about 5 heroes now and I got to fight once! i expected to go back and fight over and over again, but no. to me that is boring. Same with Anomalies, walk around very carefully and find items and randomly click items to get hints. to me BORING.

For the cultural figures, why not end with a puzzle. for instance for the Chanteuse or Composer where you have to duplicate a few of her tones (although i really dislike those puzzles :)), for the Artist fill in colors without identitcal colors teaching each other etc. In other words more diversity.

I will finish your questionnaire later.

I have 4 cultural figures so far: the Chanteuse, the Philosopher (RIP), the Artist and the Composer. The first was fun, because it was new. The others less so, because it was more of the same.

I think for most people the dungeons are most popular, they are def my favorite. Reason being that within 1 dungeon there is diversity: spike rooms, trigger rooms, beacon puzzle, monsters or not, timed hidden object rooms etc. Dens are popular for the goodies we get. But Karfaree is a lot of the same. clicking random people to get info about either Ranyus, or to find out what happened to the opera singer etc. And the one thing that would make me go back to Karfaree again and again, the Colosseum, is hardly ever available. I have done it with about 5 heroes now and I got to fight once! i expected to go back and fight over and over again, but no. to me that is boring. Same with Anomalies, walk around very carefully and find items and randomly click items to get hints. to me BORING.

For the cultural figures, why not end with a puzzle. for instance for the Chanteuse or Composer where you have to duplicate a few of her tones (although i really dislike those puzzles :)), for the Artist fill in colors without identitcal colors teaching each other etc. In other words more diversity.

I will finish your questionnaire later.

Thanks for your early response!

Bad news: we can't implement puzzle for every cultural figure for a variety of reasons. These NPCs were designed just to make endgame victory experience more vivid and entertaining, so their quests ain't no replacement for side quest locations content. Good news: currently we're working hard on dungeons-like quest locations, so you'll enjoy them sooner or later.

Also, I wonder - why everybody kills The Philosopher? :)

Only started, so limited perspective.

. How many prominent cultural figures have you joined so far? State their names.

Two - Philosopher and Writer

2. In general, how do you find cultural victory dialogues? Did they catch your attention or standing in your way? Are they too long/descriptive or good enough? Was the pace of the dialogues enjoyable or too slow?

Initially I thought it was interesting, but after two visits with the first person I was bored with them and stopped reading very hard. 

2. Which of cultural figures died and which of them joined being alive? Was it expected or unexpected?

I can't remember for sure, but I think the philosopher died. It was expected because he was obviously a thug. There are no notes on the people in my pantheon.

3. Which of them were the most interesting and appealing? Why? What in particular you most like in them?

The coolest part about the philosopher is that he looked like a caveman in my town.  I also enjoyed making him mad.

4. Which of them you find the most boring and/or repulsive? Why? What in particular you like the least in them?

I thought the writer was repulsive. I did not like her story line she seemed to only complain the entire time. 

5. Did you skip some of the dialogues with cultural figures? If the answer is yes, how often?

Yes, I started just clicking next because there was so much dialogue. 

6. Did you have hard time dealing with one of the prominent figures (no suitable answers etc.)? State the situation and explain the problem.

Not yet.

7. Do you like the ideas and cultural context used in the dialogues? Which of them are the most memorable?

Um, I don't know what this question is asking. 

8. Have you reached Cultural Victory? Do you like the final scene? Do you find it enjoyable and rewarding enough? Boring? Slow-paced? 

No.

9. State any other things you have found interesting in cultural figures, not mentioned specifically above.

10. State any ideas, remarks or criticism that would help us to improve our English writing, and make the language of the dialogues more vivid, well-paced and easy to perceive.

1, 7 of them, The Artist, Writer, Philosopher, Chanteuse, Composer, Sculpture, The Poet, I am now working on the actress.

2. In General the length of Dialogue is fine. The choices were a limited bunch, there were a few I would have picked something totally different then was offered. I will say so far only one of the characters bothered me A LOT. 

2A. The Philosopher and Poet, both unexpected.

3.  Everyone of them was interesting and appealing since they are getting me to the end of the Victory.  I guess the Chanteuse since I had to make something for her. Instead of just conversation. 

4. The Poet, Ugh awful horrible, depressing I was so upset by the whole thing I whined at Ber's about it.  And Why I will not say it would be a spoiler. 

5. I did not know I could skip dialogue 

6. I should have kept better notes. The Poet just so depressing.

7. The Composer and Chanteuse I really liked her cause I had to leave to make something for her.  The Composer not sure why I think it was because of the choices given. 

8, 9 & 10 I will let you know in a couple weeks.

So far it has been something different, I think this victory might be easier in Renaissance age. Thank goodness you adjusted the rainbows or I might not have made it in Information age. You need a town that has a lot of food since the Priests eat so much of it.  

The choices were a limited bunch, there were a few I would have picked something totally different then was offered. 

Interesting. Could you please remember a few examples of such inconvenience? This would be a great deal of help for us!

The choices were a limited bunch, there were a few I would have picked something totally different then was offered. 

Interesting. Could you please remember a few examples of such inconvenience? This would be a great deal of help for us!

I did not keep notes, the next time I do it I will

1. 5 - Artist, Chanteuse, Writer, Composer and i started with Philosopher, my hero was wiped before end of conversation with him, at last i sent him to Karfaree to discuss with Rayanus about human-animal relations

2. length is OK, they are good enough, pace - i accelerate them by mouse click :)

2(b). died only Writer, it was expected

3. most interesting was Philosopher, maybe because he is rebel

4. Writer  - depressive, helpless

5. yes, mainly with Chanteuse, they was almost same

6. no

7. sorry, i do not remember

8. i do not reached victory

9. and 10. nothing

I had four, the writer, the composer, the philosopher and the game developer. Writer and composer died, the other two guys have been living happily ever after.

I found them quite entertaining, especially the game designer made me laugh.

Dialogues had a good length, and in my opinion they are a nice addition to the game, even if you are not aiming at achieving cultural victory.

1. I have 4 prominent visitors - the Artist, Composer, Philosopher and Opera Singer.

2. I liked them all.

3. My Philosopher was murdered in Karfaree

4. I liked the Artist5. No

6. No

7. Yes

8. Not yet

9. I think the Pantheon could be improved - when trying to train 95 Priests, it would be helpful to know how many I already have, same with culture points. So if we could hover over the 'to do' achievements in the Pantheon and get information about how much stuff is missing - that would be great.

Done it was a great ending, I enjoyed it all. Very funny and made me grin a lot. I just love Bulat. 

Totally worth the time and effort put into it. I will try to change my reactions and answers next time round. Great job by the whole team. Well worth the wait.

SPOILERS BELOW!!....I finally achieved Culture Victory with my hero Heather and I say 'finally' because I made a lot of mistakes before I got it right!I enjoyed meeting all the prominent figures even if I didn't like them all, as I was always keen to see what they would say and who would show up next - it was great fun and some of the characters made me laugh :)I found it a little slow towards the end. It was hard to get 5 brightest rainbows, especially in my less developed towns and although Heather was in Info Age when she got the victory, I think it might have been easier to achieve in Industrial. I may be wrong but it seemed to me you have to get all 25 Pantheon achievements before the final visitor shows up in your town. As each visitor takes quite a long time to complete, this means my country was sitting with 5 brightest rainbows for quite a long time (my own mistakes made this worse!). Had my alliance been at War, I think it would have been impossible to achieve, certainly in Info Age. I found that once I had got my 5 rainbows, I did not want to do anything to affect them so there was very little to do - I didn't want to build because of the risk of changing the population/culture ratios that were so hard to get right in the first place and I didn't want to do anything with my army as I had to destroy my military buildings to get the rainbows and if my troops had died, I would not have been able to retrain them. At that point it just became a waiting game, as I did not want to make my country more vulnerable.Overall, I really enjoyed the new content and I think the team of game devs and designers have done an amazing job but I do have two suggestions:1. As suggested in my previous post, I think it would be good to get more information about the Pantheon achievements by hovering the mouse over them, particularly when it comes to the rainbows. It can be difficult to discriminate visually what is a 'brightest rainbow' and what is not. I ended up making a spreadsheet so I could check my progress towards this achievement and used it constantly to check each of my 5 towns! It would be nice if, by hovering, you could see how close you are to getting the brightest rainbow in each town, even if it is just basic information ...e.g. by hovering over an empty achievement window in the Pantheon, it could say 'your town XXX does not yet have a brightest rainbow'. At least, this way you would know which town to work on.2. The instructions for conversion are not explicit enough, in terms of when to convert. I had got a little bored once I got all my achievements in the Pantheon and was waiting for my last prominent figure to appear in my Pantheon. I finished all my dialogue with him (Game Dev) and was waiting for him to turn up in my Pantheon the following morning. I thought that, as he was already secured, I could go ahead and attempt conversion of another player's town. I sent my priests and the conversion was successful but it took place after my final dialogue with the figure and before the Game Dev was securely in the Pantheon. The game did not recognise my precocious conversion and as a result of corruption with gaining a 6th town, I lost my hard-won rainbows and the Culture Victory did not move on. I had to destroy the converted town to regain my rainbows and then try again. The second attempt at conversion was successful and Heather got her victory. I was wondering if you could change the wording in the Culture Victory screen to say something like 'You have to persuade all 9 prominent figures to join your Pantheon and finally you will be asked to convert a barbarian town', making it clear that conversion is the last part of the puzzle and that you will be prompted to do it.

Not for the first time, I tried editing a post but it doesn't work - the above post should not be continuous text but instead have paragraphs and spaces to make it easier to read, as per my original message, but this noticeboard does not seem to recognise paragraphs. I'd be grateful if someone more knowledgeable could let me know if I could do something to change this - thanks!

I was wondering if you could change the wording in the Culture Victory screen to say something like 'You have to persuade all 9 prominent figures to join your Pantheon and finally you will be asked to convert a barbarian town', making it clear that conversion is the last part of the puzzle and that you will be prompted to do it.

I've fixed the description a little bit, so after the next update the order of tasks should be more evident.

Also, I would like to encourage everybody to post more criticism / critical suggestions. I do not think that everybody likes the way how the Culture Victory works. Please, keep in mind that only your thoughts expressed here can help us to make new updates better and more entertaining. If nobody wills to share their opinion about recently added content the game has less chances to become better eventually. 

Silence is not helping, constructive criticism often helps a lot.

Well, culture victory seems fine to me except the random waiting once you have all 25 objectives, but you ask for criticism and there is a lot on war victory and it doesn't seem to be listened to.

Well, culture victory seems fine to me except the random waiting once you have all 25 objectives, but you ask for criticism and there is a lot on war victory and it doesn't seem to be listened to.

There is no random waiting once you achieved all 25 objectives and joint all prominent figures: just find a proper target for Cultural Conversion and go ahead with this.

War victory is clearly a matter of another topic, so if you have any suggestions - please, find a proper thread for this.

I was the first to reach it. I really think you could get this done by the end of Ren, I am trying a different idea of how to reach it this time round. The most difficult part was the rainbows, and I want to thank Ber's and the team for revamping the loyalty aspect to help with that issue. Having to wait till the end to convert a town was difficult since you have to find someone close by to convert. Some of the characters and their actions bothered me greatly (Ber's got my anger on that one). I met some great neighbors willing to help me, thanks to Kona and Udivegirl for assistance, he loaned me the silk and tried to set up a town for me to convert, having a strong alliance is a total plus too, so DragonRiders you all Rock. They were the ones to help me find a town to convert.  

Since I am, so far, the only player I know that got two culture victories, I think is time to write a few lines.

I got two culture victories, with two different heroes, both collects. With one of them I finished all research (including Info age) before I decide to go for the culture victory, I think I had two or three figurines in my Pantheon by the time. I had four towns so I had to built and culture up a fifth one, something turned to be the most difficult thing in the whole process. As stated, the bigger the town the easiest the rainbow.

With the second hero, I decided at first to stay and try the victory in Ren.I got my five towns built up, I culture them up as much as I could and left the rainbows for the last two weeks ( I had the other 20 preqs fulfilled). I finish Ren research, shut down research for a couple of weeks, but then I restarted it, things went really boring. So, I went through all Industrial research in a very slow pace and got Info the last week before the victory. Even this time, the most difficult part was the rainbows. They took me more than three weeks to get them done. Three weeks without any military building and a simple tower. Only defense was the walls. Very very risky...

The first time I found the dialogs long and tiring. Lot of bla bla bla with not much sense. The second time I was reading them carefully, trying to get the best of them (to keep them all alive :)) Still the Philosopher and a couple of the others ended up dead. Next time I will try to kill them all :)))

The second time I found the dialogs quite wright, not long or boring or anything else.  After all is only once a day, a couple of minutes. But the whole nine week project could be tiring in the end, esp If you don't have another hero around.

For the conversion I choose the safe path both times. A friend build a city for me to convert. The first time I had no idea about the special culture conversion, the second I knew about it but didn't use it (except the silly attack to Bers's town). Conversion is pretty easy since you already have the priests and a lot of culture.

Overall, the culture victory was quite interesting, esp the first time when we were walking in the dark. I am willing to try again with a hero who has it, to see if there are any changes in difficulty (PLEASE do not ask for six towns - six bright rainbows!). I will try to keep all prominent figurines alive.

P.S.1 If you think that my post has a lot of spoilers, delete it. I kept a copy I can send through e-mail.

P.S.2 Maybe they can send us to do small quests like the chanteuse ask for the food. Something like I lost my favorite brush there, dig to find it. Or fish... Or talk to Old Herald and he will ask for something to be given or found... Just some random thoughts.