Cultures

*All information on this page is as of v4.0.2.*

When you begin a new game, the first thing you must select is a culture. There are 7 different cultures from which to choose, with each offering its own advantages. Each culture has 3 primary buffs. The first buff is related to resources, increasing how much can be obtained or carried. The second buff is related to troops, increasing an attribute of one of the troop types. The third buff is related to development, improving activities within your city or monster-related activity.

When you unlock your primary subordinate city at Keep Lv11, you'll also gain two additional buffs related to your subordinate city. These two additional buffs complement each other, and the amount of the buff depends on the quality of the subordinate city (e.g., Epic will be better than Common). Note, you can acquire additional subordinate cities and gain the buffs related to the culture of that subordinate city, but your primary subordinate city is always tied to your chosen culture.

## Culture Profiles

These are the culture profiles that you can choose from when beginning a new game.

## Changing Cultures

You can also choose to change your culture for 2,000 gems. To do so, go into your city, then click on your Keep. Select the Culture Feature option, which will bring up the Change Culture screen. Scroll left and right to find the culture you want, and click on Change Culture when finished. After you click on Change Culture, the game will reload. All of your progress will still be there, but your city, primary subordinate city, and troops will now be for the new culture.

## Benefits of Changing Cultures

The main reason to change your culture is to get the benefits of the buffs related to the culture. This includes not only the main buffs from the culture itself, but the buffs associated with the primary subordinate city, since it will change if you change your culture. As mentioned above, changing a culture costs 2,000 gems, so temporarily changing to a culture and then back to your original culture costs 4,000 gems. Even for 4,000 gems, it may be beneficial to temporarily switch cultures.

For example, if you're going to upgrade a building that would normally take 100 days, switching to Europe will save you a minimum of 3 days if your primary subordinate city is only the Common quality (i.e., white). When used as a direct speedup, 4,000 gems is worth roughly 2.5 days, so you'd save about 12 hours. If your primary subordinate city's quality is higher than Common or if you begin multiple buildings before switching back, your savings are even greater.

You can see similar savings with other activities such as research, troop training, healing, crafting, and trap building. For bulk Shrine offerings (ignoring tributes and starting at the first offering), 71 offerings is the breakeven point, costing 91,675 gems for 31,830 prestige vs. 31,847 prestige for only 87,175 gems with the 5% bonus from Arabia. Starting after the first 15 offerings, 4,000 gems is worth roughly 3 offerings, and the 5% bonus from Arabia is like "make 20 offerings and get 1 free."

Some changes may not have direct savings in terms of gems, but you may decide they're worth it based on the benefits you gain. Korea and China can enhance your resource gathering and production, respectively, enabling you to amass resources faster. Japan and Russia can provide you with a set of buffs focused on PvP, which may help you in Battlefield, Server-vs-Server, and the Kill Enemies competition. Japan can also help with PvE-based competitions like Arctic Barbarians Invasion; Russia's buffs are more defensive in nature, and aren't as suitable for PvE. In these cases, switching cultures may be what enables you to score higher in a particular competition (thus getting better rewards), or may be what enables you to complete a particular quest or event.