[SPOILER] Survey for those who joined several Cultural Figures

Ok so i was finally able to achieve this victory with my hero, blue.  I decided as soon as i could build a pantheon to try it out and i'm glad i stared right away, as i didn't realize how long it would take with regards to gathering all of the cultural figures.  I found out early that the figures only appeared depending on how many of the 25 pantheon requirements you had completed.  It was pretty easy for some of them, like lending resources, so this was a good way to get your first visitor and then gradually work on the other ones.  I had two of the figures die, before i realized after reading herkin's post that what you chose in your interactions with them determined if they lived or died.  Up to that point, i hadn't really paid all that much attention to the dialogue, but once i realized that the choices mattered, i paid more attention to what i selected and was able to keep the remaining visitors alive.   

Out of the 25 pantheon requirements, I found that getting the rainbows on your towns was the most challenging, because it was a bit confusing to me how this worked and am still not sure if there was a bug in that somehow.  I had focused on building all buildings with decent culture to pop ratios, like the clock tower, fountain, shelter, monastary, chamber of commerce, catacombs, etc.  Took down really bad buildings like the courthouse and didn't build anything military which was kind of a downer for someone that normally plays despot.  So, by this time i had all of the other pantheon requirements set, (90 priests, over 4000 culture in all towns, lent 5 resources, hero wisdom 45?) and after demolishing all military buildings, i ended up with four rainbows showing up in my pantheon.  My last town was not as developed as the other 4, different constructions, etc. but the pop to culture ratio was much better, and i could not figure out why it didn't register  in my pantheon.  The only way that i could get my last rainbow was if i put my hero in that last town, which made no sense to me, because i had taken all of the culture perks off of my hero, so i don't know what value or benefit the hero brought to the town to get the last rainbow.  So it may be helpful to give players some more guidance as to how this requirement works, instead of trying to guess.  It was very helpful that the note was added on the town info for which towns were 'unprecedentedly cultural', as it was very difficult to tell from just the rainbows themselves.  

I would like to suggest, that a better 'summary' be provided when you open up your pantheon as to how close you are to meeting each of the requirements.  I know you can probably figure some out by clicking to other screens, but it would be very helpful to see this summarized better in the pantheon.  For example, a line under the hero wisdom level saying 'your hero wisdom is xx', this way you know how many more points you need to get to the next level.  Or, total country culture, a line saying, 'your total country's culture is xx', for rainbows, 'you have achieved the highest culture in towns a, b, c...', resource lending, 'you have lent x, y, z to your neighbors', and lastly, for priests, 'you have trained xx priests'.

Overall, i found the whole idea with the visitors a bit 'meh'.  I found myself getting a bit annoyed that it took so long for each of them to finish doing their thing so you can move on to the next one.  Like some of the others that posted, i found that i was able to meet the pantheon requirements much quicker than i could get all the figures, so this is what people are talking about with the 'waiting', i think.  You had to make sure you kept all the requirements as you waited out each visitor to finish.   Since it takes 5-6? days for each figure, i wish there was some way to be able to speed this up, rather than having to wait 24 hours for each bit of dialogue for 5 or so days in a row.  It also drove me crazy that the figures would keep saying 'let's meet again in a few days', when it was always 24 hours later, so i'm thinking maybe time works differently on teya? lol  Would have rather they say, 'let's meet again tomorrow', instead.  Although not too bad, there are still a few awkward phrasings and grammatical issues with the dialogues that i saw.  There were definitely too many for me to be ambitious enough to take screenshots each time and post.  As for the final dialogue, i didn't like having to go through all of the figures again one by one, i found myself trying to click through that as fast as i could because i just wanted to get the victory finished at that point.

Lastly, i will address the biggest criticism i have about this victory....the whole thing about the cultural conversion.  I've mentioned before that this is the most powerful 'weapon' in this game, and it really is.  As a despot player, i naturally used this in an aggressive manner against a neighbor that decided to border build.  I was able to wipe out an entire town on my second attempt with my priests (first attempt i was just short, and had to train a couple more priests).  I didn't have to attack first to take out towers or the town hall, and as promised there was no fighting back, i didn't lose any priests on my first try, so it was very easy to go back and try again right away.  For the person achieving this victory, it is built up saying, 'oh, this country simply could not resist how great your culture is and decided to join you'.  But the truth is, if this 'tool' is used aggressively as i did, i'm pretty sure the person losing an entire town isn't exactly pleased that they have no way to fight or try and save their town from this sort of attack.  So this doesn't make any sense for several reasons.  First, that you would give such a powerful tool to a player that essentially probably spent much of their game not building up any sort of army or defense of their own towns.  For someone in an alliance, they'd have to rely heavily on defense of their country on their other members.  Additionally, someone that would typically try and achieve this victory (namely a collect player), i think most would not feel entirely comfortable using a cultural conversion aggressively, unless it was against someone that maybe was attacking them constantly....in which case, it would be a huge 'victory' if they even made it so far.  But i think most people that have achieved this victory has done so by finding a willing friend to make a town for them to convert.  So the criticism is, if cultural conversion is used aggressively, there is only one way this might be 'fair', and that is, if it is in retaliation towards someone that had been attacking you.  Yeah, i took one of my neighbor's towns and justified it by saying she border built on me, but really, it was not even a fair fight and it really felt cheap.  If you just take someone's town randomly, how can that be fair at all to the defender?  I know if someone came after one of my towns and i hadn't done anything to provoke it, i would be pretty angry that i was facing losing an entire town and couldn't even fight back.  In the case of having a friend make a town for you, what kind of 'victory' is that?  So why is this even a requirement for achieving this victory?  There is absolutely no challenge in it, and in my opinion, does not belong in this 'victory' at all.  If you insist on keeping this as part of the victory, i would suggest at the very least, allowing the defender to be able to fight back.  This would make it much more challenging for the person achieving victory, and fairer to the defender.  

Hint about rainbows: save them until the end, then just destroy all buildings with negative culture when the rest is done.

In my opinion, this strategy wouldn't work very well, since the cultural figures seem to visit your town based on how many of the pantheon requirements are met.  So if you meet all requirements, except for the rainbows, you'd have 20 out of 25.  I don't know how many cultural figures you could get with that, but in my case, I was missing one rainbow (24 out of 25), and my last figure would not show up until I got that last rainbow.  So after destroying all those buildings, it was still another week of waiting for that last figure to finish.

After achieving cultural victory I thought I would add to this.

In general I found this victory very tedious. It is boring waiting on the visitors to turn up. I would happily have killed them all as soon as they appeared if given the chance. In the end I had two statues and the rest were alive which was quite surprising considering I skipped through the dialogs. I had built pantheon before with previous heroes so had met some of the visitors before. It was Ok for 1^st visitor but after that just couldn’t wait to get it over.

I was in industrial when I finished – I would have been Ren but it took so long I fell into industrial since I was still collecting research points in dens.

Getting wisdom to 45 took time due to the lack of figurines but having the new building where you can cook figs helped although I do think this building needs to be earlier in the tech tree.

Getting the rainbows was the hardest. I was lucky to have one silk but because the visitors took so long it meant that I was sitting with bright rainbows advertising that I had no army buildings and I had taken out most of my towers – in other words an ideal target for attack – for a couple of weeks.

Waiting on the last visitor, day after day, when you have bright rainbows is very uncomfortable. You do not want to change any buildings in case you lose rainbows and you do not want to lose any troops since you can’t retrain so you are very limited in what you can do. My game play time dropped significantly and I found myself just logging on for the visitor and I really started to lose interest in the game especially since I was playing a single hero.

I disagree with the final challenge of converting a town. I do not see what this has to do with cultural achievement. Attending x operas, reading y books in library, building an art gallery and collecting art from different locations would be much more cultural in my opinion. I am not an aggressor and do not like taking someone’s town for any reason. Fortunately, one of my alliance colleagues built a town for me to convert.

The final scene was tiresome especially since I was suffering with red and green lights and had to go through it multiple times ☹. In my opinion over 20 different screens that you have to click through is excessive.

The idea of the cultural victory is good but I do think it needs reworking to make it less tedious and there needs to be a different cultural challenge instead of conversion.

I attempted this victory for the first time now. I had heard and read about it here and there previously, which was the main reason why I never went for it, because it didn't sound very interesting. But obviously you can only really form an opinion once you've actually given it a go :)

I did not achieve the victory because I ran out of time. I think I started when hero was around 90-100 days old and thought that would be sufficient. I did check for the visitors daily except during a few vacation days, so I don't think I dawdled too much. At one point I was stuck for a couple of days because a visitor wanted a character from Karfaree that I had never clicked on, and it took me a couple of days to realize that.

When the hero reached the apocalypse, I had 7 figures in the pantheon. I would have gotten the 8th, but then my only remaining neighbor vanished to whom I had lent the required globals, so I lost those achievements and the next visitor didn't show.

Before that, I had all the requirements, full wisdom, all the priests, the rainbows, etc. But even if I had started a wee bit sooner, I think I still wouldn't have made it due to the vanished neighbor.

I did a lot of prep for the rainbows while I still had maxed army buildings and was still going on attacks, and also looked into which other buildings that are high pop and low culture would have to go down. Just taking down the military buildings as suggested by bers would not have been enough. Moreover, I had 6 towns playing despotism and had to take the 6th town down also. A friend had given me the formula to check how much more culture I needed, and it became obvious that with the culture corruption of the 6th town it would not be possible (at least in info age where I was at, maybe it is in a lower age, but I didn't really seem so).

I don't mind not getting the victory, but I will most likely not attempt it again because I didn't enjoy it much. The dialogues with the visitors were not very entertaining and included too many clichees/stereotypes for my liking. There were a couple of small bits that required a bit of "action", such as having to go to Karfaree to make the salad for the chanteuse. This made me think that there could have been a lot more of those "do this or that in order to proceed" bits.

The other main reasons why I wouldn't go for it again is that I think it takes too long with little to none "entertainment value", the dependency on having neighbors who will actually still be there until the victory is achieved, and the inability to keep building anything once the rainbows have been achieved.

I think in order to make this victory interesting for me, it would have to change so that once a pantheon achievement has been reached, it remains as achieved even if things change (e.g. once you have the rainbows it will count and you can continue building and losing them again). But also the interaction with the visitors would have to be improved.

Sorry for the rather negative review. It's of course very subjective. Quite a few people seem to be doing this victory anyway, so I'd still say that it is a good addition to the game. :)