Guide to "Higher level = More Dignity" Achievement

This guide covers general recommendations and techniques to unlock the "Higher level = More Dignity" Achievements, which requires to upgrade all Agencies to level 3 within 3 years with all Agency-related constraints active. In order to do so, it also covers agencies mechanics in-depth.
==Cheatsheet==
This cheatsheet will be referred to later and used as a reference.
Agency 	Day 	Setup	Talisman ? 	Stability	Population	Unbelievers	Pop/d	Sect stats	Sect stats	Sect stats	Sect stats	EarthQuake	Flood 	Cold 	Drought
 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	CHA 	INT 	B 	S 	All 	Autumn	W-> 10 Spring	Summer
Mt. South 	17 	1 	noNotable exception discussed in #Talisman_of_Spiritual_Travelling	25 	60000 	all 	3668 	7.01+ 	 	15 	15+ 	0.007 	 	 	0.007
Riverbank Plains 	38 	2 	noSee #Spiritual_Travelling_Talisman_desirability for exception 	25 	350000 	35000 	1394 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	0.007 	0.007 	
Central Plains 	44 	2 	meh 	25 	350000 	35000 	1394 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	 	 	0.01
Great Desert 	48 	2 	yes 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
70000 	14000	0 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	 	 	0.01 	 	 	 	 	
The Great Snowland	51 	2 	meh 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
50000 	20000	0 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	 	0.01 	 	 	 	 	 	
Wild South 	54 	3 	yes 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
50000 	35000	0 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	0.01 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
City of Abundance 	57 	1 	no 	75 	350000 	35000 	2788 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	0.01 	 	
City of Desolation	59 	2 	yes 	75 	100000 	15000 	6888 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	0.01 	 	 	
Seascape 	61 	2 	no 	25 	350000 	70000 	1394 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	0.007 	0.007 	
Snaketail Village 	63 	3 	yes 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
100000 	20000	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	 	0.01 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	 	
Riverback City 	65 	2 	no 	25 	350000 	122500 	1394 	7.01+ 	7.01 	15 	 	0.007 	0.007 	 	
With the following meaning for columns :
*Day : day (in played time) of departure of the abbot to the agency
*Setup : travel days (assuming no Talisman of Spiritual Travelling) and 1 extra building day. Day + Setup Time have to be added to determine when the agency actually opens (and consumes wheat).
*Talisman ? : whether using a Talisman of Spiritual Travelling is desirable and impactful.
*Stability / Population / Unbelievers : see the corresponding Agency sections.
*Pop/d : natural extra population daily. Only valable on the first day but is an acceptable early approximation (details here).
*Sect stats : recommended (cumulated) stats for the player sect's agency in that location. The colour scheme shows the relative importance of the stats (Bright green : very high importance to bright red : very low). A stat with a color is still desirable, whereas no stat means it can be ignored.
**CHA : charisma
**INT : intelligence
**B : Battle Skill Level
**S : Social Skill level
*EarthQuake / Flood / Cold Wave / Drought : daily probability of the related disaster to occur in the location, provided the season conditions (one row below) are met.
==Techniques==
While using them or not is at your discretion, this guide will refer to several techniques throughout, some of which make use of mechanics in probably unintended ways. We'll explain them now to make the rest of the guide clearer, or if you're just looking for tricks and methods to trivialize the achievement. 
===The focus tech===
This will divide the interval between events on the agencies it is used on by 2 on average. 
==== How to use==== 
#When an agency event triggers, resolve it normally. Wait to get the popup informing you of the result
#Afterwards, choose to "Watch" the agency where the event just occured. If it was already watched, unwatch it then watch it again in quick succession.
#Afterwards either keep the watch on that agency, put the watch on a disaster or don't watch anything depending on what you prefer.
====Explanations====
Once an event is finished, the game puts an extra cooldown timer on that agency equal (on average) to the cooldown for that policy, essentially doubling the actual cooldown. And when you "watch" a location, the cooldown timer before an event occurs is reset to 0, regardless of whether you keep the focus or not. Thus "watching" removes the extra cooldown timer, and leaves you with the base cooldown (and less if you keep the "watch" afterwards but it is not necessary).
===The abbot loop===
This maximizes the Attractiveness in an agency.
====How to use====
#When an event with an extra attractiveness outcome triggers, choose that outcome. Alternatively, use the Phoenix pet's Auspicious Signs power.
#When the result appears, immediately choose to replace the abbot with an outer of your choice, equipped with a Talisman of Spiritual Travelling (ideally ) of high tier.
# When the first Abbot comes back, equip them with another (optionally) high tier Spiritual Travelling Talisman, then switch the abbot again.It is of course possible to send yet another one outer when the second abbot settles for even faster gain.
#Do so until the attractiveness of your sect in an agency becomes "high", then switch abbot once more.
#Switch once every 15 days to keep high attractiveness.
#Repeat 1-5 in as many agencies as you like.
====Explanations====
When you switch the abbot and the new abbot arrives, it adds Attractiveness to your agency equal of half its current value. Since the Attractiveness tends to be 0 with the base loss of 2 per day, this usually has no effect. However, just after an event adding attractiveness resolves you can progressively increase it to max.
The minimal amount of attractiveness given by an event is 15, and the maximum travel time (without any talisman) for an abbot towards an agency is 2.46 days, so in the worst case you still lose attractiveness but even with just a T2 90% exquisite talisman (64.8% bonus) you reduce the travel time to 1.49 days, which gives a (worst case) increase of attractiveness to 16, 21, 25,34,45,64,90 and 100, maxing it in 12 days and 8 abbot changes.
====Benefits ====
As attractiveness is not clear on its effect, you might wonder how exactly it helps you. Passively, a maxed attractiveness adds its amount of followers per day as long as there are unbelievers. More importantly however, events adding population will take followers from other sects depending on your attractiveness, the more you have and the more you can steal. This makes (in cities) the Preaching policy massively better, and event charity benefits a lot from it.
===One distinct policy per agency===
This maximizes policy events.
====How to use==== 
#Keep only 1 agency each on - depending on your needs and income - preaching, plotting, abstinence, manual labour, treasure hunt, the rest on charity.
#only switch out of these unique policies after an event.
#Add unique policies (that you care about) as yourinfluence income progresses.
#if you're not using the focus tech and can afford it, add an extra agency on the policy of your choice and watch it
====Explanations====
For most policies in the game (disaster relief being the most important exception), the interval between policy events depends on how many agencies are on that policy, with the sharpest increase when going from 1 to 2. The interval follows this table below.
Nb	Interval	Interval (Hard Policy)
1 	20.0 	40.0
2 	28.6 	57.1
3 	33.3 	66.7
4 	36.4 	72.7
5 	38.5 	76.9
6 	40.0 	80.0
7 	41.2 	82.4
8 	42.1 	84.2
9 	42.9 	85.7
10	43.5 	87.0
11	44.0 	88.0
Note that these are the average durations and there's a variability of 30%. Moreover, this is assuming you're not using the Focus tech, in which case you'd be dividing the duration by 2. As a result, having as many agencies on distinct policies (you care about) that your influence income can afford is optimal for events.
The reason you only switch out after an event is that just like the "Watch" button does, switching policies reset the cooldown timer for events as discussed in the Focus tech section.
==Setup considerations==
An important detail is that "Life of Luxury" constraint doubling cost for agencies buildings is improperly set for agency setup and new agencies still only cost 100 but you need 200 to press the button. It is also technically possible to setup Mt. South on day 16 but you need excellent coordination and it should not be worth it (see annex for details).
===Setup order===
The given setup in the Cheatsheet maximizes resources income while considering the difficulty of those agencies. However, while the first three are pretty much immovable either by default, or due to a combination of their inherent difficulty and the wheat needs, you can freely shuffle the order around after them (any agency after Central plains) depending on the abbot stats you have available. In fact, you are encouraged to do so.
You can also opt to minimize setup time by installing agencies in ascending setup time, which will result in the 11 agencies being ready a few days earlier and is a sensible choice.
===Wheat consumption ===
As agencies consume twice the normal amount of and a day on no set policy is a 5% decrease in population (and no chance for events to occur), it is important to setup in such a way that agencies self-sustain early on, and to build a large number of plots in your guild. Luckily Mt. South and the two hardest regions produce wheat, even if you might not want to maximize wheat income as will become much more of an issue later on, so this gives you an adequate time to prepare.
Assuming as the worst case that you'll always be watching Central plains and as soon as possible, and that all agencies are on charity you'll need 320 /day, which means 1195 plots of wheat on fertile soil, maintained at proper temperature for their growth, and adequately lighted. This also assumes your farmer has at least 111.2% harvest yield (which is trivial with even a T2 Talisman of Fertility and an outer with decent int and perception) and doesn't take into account weather events. As Fertility raises over time if you setup bodies and you ought to switch from charity pretty soon as discussed in the policy strategy section, this is still an acceptable estimate. If you use a combination of normal and fertile soil, you need 1672 plots total where every 2.5 fertile plots removes the need of 1 normal one.
The suggested shape of wheat fields is a 7x7 square with a Lamp post in the middle as shown in the image. In any case, the building of the necessary plots can be scheduled as detailed in the table below, following the schedule of the Cheatsheet.
7x7	day planted	Plots ready needed	Total plots needed	Agency 	Day (est)	w/d need
1 	1 	 	 	Mt. South 	18 	
1 	1 	 	 	Riverbank Plains 	40 	
1 	1 	 	 	Central Plains 	46 	
1 	1 	11 	150 	Great Desert 	50 	40
1 	1 	40 	299 	The Great Snowland	53 	80
2 	15 	51 	448 	Wild South 	57 	120
2 	15 	95 	598 	City of Abundance 	58 	160
3 	19 	131 	747 	City of Desolation	61 	200
4 	21 	197 	896 	Seascape 	63 	240
5 	24 	222 	1045 	Snaketail Village 	66 	280
6 	25 	251 	1195 	Riverback City 	67 	320
7 	27 	310 	 	 	 	
8 	28 	339 	 	 	 	
9 	30 	397 	 	 	 	
10 	32 	455 	 	 	 	
11 	33 	484 	 	 	 	
12 	35 	542 	 	 	 	
13 	37 	600 	 	 	 	
14 	38 	630 	 	 	 	
15 	40 	688 	 	 	 	
16 	42 	746 	 	 	 	
17 	43 	775 	 	 	 	
18 	45 	833 	 	 	 	
19 	47 	891 	 	 	 	
20 	48 	920 	 	 	 	
21 	50 	979 	 	 	 	
22 	52 	1037 	 	 	 	
23 	53 	1066 	 	 	 	
24 	55 	1124 	 	 	 	
25 	56 	1153 	 	 	 	
26 	58 	1195 	 	 	 	
Obviously if you take into account random influence events allowing to setup an agency earlier, it is better to err on the side of caution, but this gives a decent idea of the frequency required.
===Talisman of Spiritual Travelling===
The Talisman of Spiritual Travelling recommendation is assuming you always give 100 spirit stones to abbots, making use of the agency-specific travel events. If you don't have any always use Talisman (see annex for details). Having enough spirit stones is a reasonable assumption to make as the Merchant always shows up on day 20, and if you made use of the stacks (need to travel twice as one of the stacks always has low initial amount) found in the Taiyi Sect map to make Bows you should have enough unless Gear is the merchant's forbidden category.
Mt. South is unique in that you start with 15k pop and 10 attractiveness here, which combined with the low travel time means abbot loops are available on the first agency day, and as such the use of a Spiritual Travelling Talisman has to be considered depending on if you want to make use of this mechanic or not.
Finally, as discussed in the annex you can consider drawing Fake Talismans of Spiritual Travelling : the base boost is a bit too good for Riverback City and Plains so Fake talismans could be used instead. Since making a "Fake" talisman for your first disciple early on is a valuable strategy in itself, it can be worthwile to use the multiple draw mechanic and make a few extra for your future abbots. 
==Policy Strategies==
Here are different policy strategies that can greatly reduce your reliance on disasters to reach the 100k population in all agencies. Keep in mind that it is ideal to use One distinct policy per agency, so try to only use complex policies on a few agencies at a time while leaving others on charity.
=== Natural population growth===
====Criteria and Applicability ==== 
* Criteria : agencies with low starting population and low stability (<0) but not too low (>-50)
*Applicable to : Great Desert, The Great Snowland, Wild South
*Abbots requirements : 15 battle matters most, then 7.01 int is good.
As all the applicable agencies have the same (-25) stability, we will assume this starting value in the next section.
====How to use====
#First phase : you can (and should) raise stability a little (one + in the Policy Events table) one and only time while growing population 
##in events, favor outcomes : grab population / +population / remove other sect population / remove other sect attraction in events in that order.
##if any of the above outcome also raises stability, you can't choose any stability raising option again unless you lower it later (not desired but acceptable)
##once your followers count reaches more than 40% of the total city population, go to second phase.
#Second phase : you want to raise the stability to (at least) Thriving.
##If you did one event raising stability in the first phase as advised, this should only require one extra event with + stability outcome
##in case you get an event raising stability with negative outcomes, don't select the option if it also has : extra other sect pop or less of your followers. Any other negative is fine.
## From now on, favour the same outcomes as first phase but ignore any outcome lowering stability.
====Effect and explanations====
Without any other event, once 2.2 is done this will raise your followers count to 100k within 60 to 118 days (worst case with a 50k starting population), depending on stability.
This strategy makes use of the fact that the sect's followers count grows in proportion to the population growth of an agency if that sect has at least 40% of the agency population. This means that an agency whose population multiplies by 4 over time will have your followers count multiplied by 4 too, without any other intervention. Moreover, the population growth is decently fast in this game (given the objective).
The idea thus is that once we get enough base followers count in an agency with low and stagnating population, we can just raise the stability to >0 to launch the natural growth and take our followers count to our objective naturally.
===Early game preaching===
==== Criteria and Applicability==== 
*Criteria : cities with high amount of unbelievers
*Applicable to : Seascape, Riverback City
*Abbots requirements : none.
====What to do and explanation====
Just use Preaching to grab unbelievers until there's none. That's it, that's the strat.
It is good because Preaching events (outside of the shared events who have a low chance of occurrence) have no Agency stats requirement at all and they all have a base reward of followers of 20.000 compared to 6.000 for most charity events.
Once you use up the amount of unbelievers in the city Preaching becomes near useless unless you're using abbot loops to maintain high attractivity (in which case it is the strongest policy by far), but this is still very good to kickstart two cities on throwaways abbots.
===City plotting and charity===
====Criteria and Applicability==== 
*Criteria : any city not named Snaketail Village
*Applicable to : City of Abundance, City of Desolation, Seascape, Riverback City.
*Abbot requirements : 7.01 INT, 7.01+ CHA. Priority depends on the city, see Cheatsheet.
====How to use ====
#Start with charity until there's no unbelievers left or close to it.
##in events favour outcomes : grab population / +population / remove other sect population / remove other sect attractiveness in that order.
##raising stability can be good too if you fall below Thriving.
#Switch to plotting. 
##in events favour outcomes : grab population / remove other sect population / remove other sect attractiveness in that order.
###Try to get other sects to 0 attractiveness. For this, first reach "Low" as the attractiveness on the displayed window
###Then either get 3 - Other Attractiveness event for that sect, or 1 -- and 1 -, or 2 -- events.
###Do this for all sects in the city (or ignore if that's too bothersome)
###afterwards you can ignore remove other sect attractiveness as an outcome
##once there's enough free pop (10k+) switch back to charity 
###if you managed to get every (or most) other sects to 0 attractiveness then replace "remove other sect attractiveness" with "raise own attractiveness" as favourable outcome
====Explanations====
This is the bread and butter strat for cities, as it has no particular requirement. The idea is that events raising population become mostly useless once there's no more unbelievers, so you switch to plotting to make some by removing the other sect population or directly grab population.
The game makes it too hard to precisely track attractiveness and there are drastic differences between an opposing sect's attractiveness being at 0 or 29 (the limit for "Low") so feel free to ignore that stat altogether if you're not using the abbot loop.
===Snaketail Village===
==== Criteria and Applicability==== 
*Criteria : Snaketail Village
*Applicable to : Snaketail Village
*Abbots requirements : 15 battle, 7.01 INT, 7.01 CHA. If you have to choose dump cha, if you really need to dump battle as well.
====How to use==== 
#Use abstinence until you raise the stability twice
#Switch to the City plotting and charity strat but be wary of stability
#Once your followers count reaches more than 40% of the total city population go back to Abstinence
# Once the city is Thriving treat Snaketail Village like a Natural Population Growth agency.
====Explanation====
Snaketail Village has stats peculiar enough that a dedicated strategy is best. While it is one of the easiest cities to raise to 100k if you follow this strat, it also has the most stringent abbot requirements as abstinence is the best policy for Snaketail Village at two points. It is possible to raise stability through charity instead but the low amount of unbelievers and their fast decline means you'd want to free some by plotting, and good plotting outcomes often involves lowering stability again, so really a strong abbot able to resolve abstinence events is optimal.
== Agency stats ==
Mt. South is the only place where social skill (as high as possible) matters for the bonus influence kickstart. However it only makes a difference if it is strictly above 15 so unless you find the exact 20/20 abbot during your recruitment rounds just ignore it. The social skill is otherwise never used for policy events despite an option being named "Social".
Obviously you still want to have the best possible stats but the Cheatsheet gives the relative importance. To give a bit more detail : 
* 15 battle matters especially in districts as they are limited to charity and 15 battle is the only source of stability with no downside. As we rely on it for the Policy strategy Natural Population Growth it has to be reached eventually. 
* 7.01 INT is needed for the only shared event that has no other good outcome (unless you have spare spirit stones), and it necessary for Plotting, which we rely on in City Plotting and Charity for pretty much every city, 
* 7.01 CHA gives access to some grabbing population outcomes, which are the best possible outcomes (in general) and especially good in cities with high population and other sect attractiveness. More CHA is always better but your high CHA abbots should go there first.
* Your best early game abbot should always go to Snaketail Village as it needs to use the Abstinence policy which has 7.01 CHA, 7.01 INT and 15 battle stats requirements. 
* CHA affects all followers counts raising events so it is the best stat to get high once all basic requirements are met. 
== Disasters==
Disasters give a massive amount of population when resolved, which has the particular effect of ignoring any attractiveness reduction when taking population from other sects. As your attractiveness is always low unless you're using the abbot loop, it makes them crucial.
The game starts in early spring and you start establishing agencies other than Mt. South in summer so Drought-only agencies are worse. On the other hand, earthquake happens all year round so agencies with a chance for earthquake can be assumed to be able to get to 100k through disasters only.
Only 2 disasters can happen at a time, and they take up to 20 days to resolve. Using a sufficiently advanced cultivator (Golden Core or above) to raise disaster aid, we can freely adjust when a disaster ends. This means it is ideal to try to end your current disasters on the last day of a season so that cities limited to one season disasters have a better chance to trigger it. 
This is espcially important to consider in spring since only earthquakes can happen between 11 and 28 spring, and as discussed earthquakes cities have enough disasters anyway, while drought-only cities start with a disadvantage.
==Annex==
=== Day 16 in Mt. South===
The secret Rebuild Agency is triggered 15 days and 12 hours after the sect's creation, which occurs around 8:00 on day 1 by swallowing the forming pill immediately and establishing the sect right away. Moreover, an agent will arrive in Mt. South in 3 hours and 20 minutes on normal fly speed (no talisman).
This means if you coordinate an inner disciple to travel to Nanping Village exactly as the secret triggers you will have 40 minutes of leeway before the end of the day and can save one extra day of setup.
The map flying speed is visible in the detailed stats panel of a disciple and depends on artifact mastery so to get the exact time of departure refer to the table below.
World fly speed	Departure before trigger
1.0 	10:48
1.1 	10:15
1.2 	9:48
1.3 	9:26
The general formula is \frac{138.51}{WorldMapFlySpeed * (1+ WorldMapFlySpeedAddP)} +120, which gives a result in seconds.
===Spiritual Travelling Talisman desirability===
When opening an agency, abbots encounter events on a 300s cooldown with a variability of 270s-390s. 2 of the 3 events add 1000 to 2000 base followers, which especially helps for agencies with low population or low amount of unbelievers, and shouldn't be neglected in all cases. As such, we'd rather not use a Spiritual Travelling Talisman if it reduces the average of events too much below 2, as then having at least one event raising our amount of followers becomes unreliable. 
Name 	Duration	Duration	Duration	Events	Events	Min events
 	 	Tali 	Diff 	 	Tali 	
Riverbank Plains 	1.55 	0.92 	0.63 	3.1 	1.8 	2.62
Central Plains 	1.34 	0.79 	0.54 	2.7 	1.6 	2.29
Great Desert 	1.93 	1.15 	0.79 	3.9 	2.3 	3.21
The Great Snowland	1.34 	0.79 	0.54 	2.7 	1.6 	2.29
Wild South 	2.46 	1.46 	1.00 	4.9 	2.9 	4.02
City of Abundance 	0.69 	0.41 	0.28 	1.4 	0.0 	1.29
City of Desolation	1.64 	0.97 	0.66 	3.3 	1.9 	2.75
Seascape 	1.06 	0.63 	0.43 	2.1 	1.3 	1.86
Snaketail Village 	2.21 	1.31 	0.90 	4.4 	2.6 	3.63
Riverback City 	1.48 	0.88 	0.60 	3.0 	1.8 	2.51
Another factor to consider is that whenever the undesirable event occurs (bandits), choosing to keep spirit stones adds 30s to the travel time, or +0.1 avg event. As such, The City of Desolation for example with 1.9 average event with talisman is in reality 2.0 average events (since if the first one is a bandit, it adds enough time for a second to proc on average). 
As can be seen we can directly decide whether a talisman is worth it depending on whether they still are above 1.9 avg event after equipping a Talisman, or if the time gained is too small. The two notable exceptions are Riverback City and Plains, who stand to earn a good amount of time by using a talisman, but it brings them just below the comfortable level we'd want them at. Something to consider in this case is to have 2 "Fake" Talisman of Spiritual Travelling (which can be put to good use on your outer disciples beforehand) drawn, as they'll allow you to gain some travelling benefits while still keeping the avg event at a good level. 
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