This guide is meant for single player on Normal. I don't play multiplayer so I have no thoughts or comments on how Cultist perform against other players or good strategies. This is guide is meant to provide a basis for developing your own strategies and pass on a few of insights on units, research and tactics.

Endless Legends offers the 4x player a medium learning curve. You'll have to play a few games to get a sense of the game's mechanics, probably around 30-35 hours. After which you'll be ready to branch out and try new factions and strategies. If you choose Cultist to start off, hopefully this guide will make those first 30 hours enjoyable.

I'd like to thank the many players whose postings were invaluable to me when I first started playing for their strategy tips, game mechanics insight and city management theorizing.

Cultists have only one city. Therefore, city placement and borough building is an important key to success. Because you have only one city, Empire and city approval are exactly the same.

Cultists convert minor factions to build their armies, gain resources, and grow their city.

You cannot conquer other cities. When you take them, they are destroyed and you receive a stockpile of Industry (and Science if you have researched the tech for that in Era II). The region is returned to neutral.

You are not going to expand and conquer the world. You're just going to conquer it. If you like to build and see your faction's color spread across the map, Cultists may not be the faction for you.

Certain kinds of victories are beyond your reach, Expansion, for instance. But you can win a Wonder, Quest, Elimination or Supremacy victory easily.

1. Minor Factions. Tribes native to each region of the map. When the game begins all minor factions are hostile. Minor faction villages generate hostile units. If left unpacified, hostile minor factions will gather enough strength to attack your city.

2. Pacification. Turning a hostile minor faction peaceful. This is done either through a quest granted directly from the tribe using Parley or through bribery. Attacking and destroying the village does not pacify the village. Only pacified villages can be assimilated.

3. Assimilation. Using Influence on the Empire screen, accept a minor faction into your empire. You receive a worker for each village of the assimilated minor faction in your empire as well as the perks granted by the faction. These includes pluses to research, unit hit points, vision, defense and so on. Once assimilated, you have access to that minor factions unit, can recruit it in your city and update it using the Military screen.

4. Conversion. Cultists are the only major faction that can convert a minor faction to their side. Once converted, minor factions give you a worker in your city, the FIDSI in the hexes directly surrounding their village, and generate a minor faction unit for your army occasionally. It also leeches resources in that region.

5. Leeching. Each minor faction village that is converted gives a small percentage of the resources in that region to you. This leeching allows Cultists to acquire strategy and luxury resources through their converted villages. Each village leeches separately, so multiple villages in a resource rich region will each provide the same percentage of leech.

Because Cultists have only one city, city placement is extremely important. Actually, city placement and borough building is a key to success for any faction.

As with most 4x games, you want to place your city as soon as possible. Split up your beginning army (Hero, Preacher, Preacher, Settler) and send them off in different directions to scout your beginning region. As a Cultist, you don't really need to worry about rivers or forests. If they are there, nice, if not, it is no significant drawback to you. You can ignore them for purposes of placing your city, although, obviously, regions rich in these things will be more advantageous at the start.

What are you looking for? When placing your city, you are primarily looking for Industry and Food, with a smattering of Science and a few Dust. And, if possible, Approval, which comes on terrain near an anomaly. I prefer to pick a spot with Approval, Food, Industry, Science and Dust in that order of importance. With strong Food and Industry on your starting spot, you can put all your Population in Influence. Strong Food will also mean your city grows fast without needing to put any Population into it, which generates more Population and Boroughs.

Be sure that you have a full six buildable hexes around your City Center. You will need to get your City Center upgraded to Level 2 for your Faction Quest. Therefore, you will need to build 4 boroughs around your City Center. A poorly placed starting spot will hamper your doing this. In other words, don't put your city next to your border or any unbuildable hexes, such as a village. You can see if a hex is buildable if you can put your city on it.

Using your Settler, click on the City Build icon in its action panel. You then have an overlay you can move around the board to determine a good spot. The overlay will turn red at the center if you cannot build on a hex. You can move the overlay around to see what resources a build spot will give you.

While you are doing this, think about where you are going to build your Boroughs. There are two formulations for Borough building, Stick and Triangle. Rather than go into detail here, I refer you to this thread:

http://forums.amplitude-studios.com/showthread.php?28694-Building-Big-Efficient-Cities-Borough-Streets-amp-Leveling-Districts

For Cultists, Stick layout is the most efficient because your city will be very big. You will easily build 15 or more Boroughs. In a Stick layout, Boroughs are placed two hexes wide in a straight line. Therefore, when placing your city, look to which direction you will expand in and make sure you have plenty space in a two-hex line. Look at the resources on the hexes you will likely expand into, as these will determine the FIDSI your boroughs generate.

Once you grasp this concept, city placement and borough building will be easy, after the first 3 boroughs, your city will grow efficiently and districts will level up every borough placement.

You start with Language Square, which gives you the Parley and Bribe actions with minor factions.

You also start with Military Science, which gives you city fortification and garrison XP.

What should be your first research?

You can safely ignore anything to do with Approval. You will likely get to Fervent quickly and remain there the entire game.

Ignore anything that says "during summer". After turn 150, summers will be shorter and come less often and those buildings will do you little good. It is better to give your city Governor the Cold Operator skill, which safeguards your city from winter's depredations.

Here is a research suggestion:

Mill Foundry (more Industry)> Public Library (more Science)> Empire Mint (more Dust)> Mercenary Market (Heroes).

You may want to rearrange the first 3 depending on the strength of your starting spot. Mercenary Market is crucial, for you will want to acquire a first Hero as soon as possible, but you will not be able to afford to do so at the outset. Spending research on city improvements allows you to build up your city, but it will not be the source of gold for Heroes. That comes from ruin exploration.

After these important initial acquisitions, Alchemist's Furnace and Open-Pit Mine are next. When you have greater familiarity with Cultist gameplay, you may decide not to research these and simply buy your Strategic and Luxury resources off the Market. However, please note several things:

1. Your converted villages will not leech strategic or luxury resources if you have not researched them;

2. You can't build on the resources in your territory without researching them;

3. If one of your opponents is Roving Clans, they will lock you out of the Marketplace as soon as they are able;

4. You need 8 reseaches before advancing to the next tier and very few of the other available researches are sensible for Cultists; and

5. Trinkets, through Armor research, are important for your city governor.

For your last two Era I researches, choose Topography and Cultivation. It isn't very productive to research Advanced Alloys and Advanced Armor at this point, although you certainly can. You won't have enough Strategic resources this early in the game to make these viable and they aren't necessary for your units' success.

You will now have advanced to Era II. Research:

Nameless Guard>Meritocratic Promotion>Public Granary>Imperial Coinage

Then, depending on how you are progressing the following in any order that works for you:

Destructive Analysis (gives you Science on city capture)
We Are Legion (XP on conversion)
Native District (additional assimilated minor faction)
Alchemical Alloy (Tier 2 weapons)
Alchemical Armor (Tier 2 armor)
Glory of the Empire (Influence) (Quests will sometimes reward this for completion, so watch for that.)

It makes sense to research armor and weapons at this point because you should have done sufficient ruins exploration, quests, and converting to have Titanium and Glassteel readily available to you. You have also now opened up the Marketplace for resources, so you can buy them as well, provided you remain friendly with Roving Clans.

Glory of the Empire can be picked up later or received through a quest. As your city grows it will provide a good source of Influence.

You don't care about approval, trade, or peacemaking. You should have abundant approval. You aren't going to be trading with anyone. And you aren't going to be friendly with anyone.

By Era III, you will likely be at war with one or more factions, have half the map's villages converted, and begin working towards your final strategy--destroy your opponents.

Era III research priority will depend on how things are going for you, what minor factions you've assimilated, and so on.

Here are the things to ignore:

Highway Outposts
Bread and Circuses
Plow Factory
Guardian of Dust

Get:

Borough Government
Dust Refinery
Dust Alchemy
Public Works
Statistical Methods
Smelting Station
Smelting Methods
Unskilled Labor

(Note: You will need 8 researches on the Era III wheel for your Faction Quest.)

If you are on water, also consider:

Cargo Docks
Fluid Biomechanics

For Era IV, concentrate on Military researches, picking up Cultural Indoctrination for another assimilation slot along the way. By this time, you'll have a pretty good idea of what you need to finish off the game.

As you finish off your research, prioritize research in areas you are weak in so that you can build buildings to bolster that aspect of your city allowing you to put as much Population as possible into Influence.

Governor

As soon as you have researched Marketplace, get your first bought Hero. It is crucial that this be a Cultist hero. You can finance this by selling your converted units.

Place him in your city as governor.

Go to Academy>Inspect>Equipment and equip him with the best trinkets you can afford for city management. You are looking for pluses to FIDSI and can ignore pluses to defense or unit health. If you have no city management trinkets, do some research in armor to get some.

Each time he levels, put points in this order:

Point 1: Inspirational Leader
Point 2: Will of Akili
Point 3: Proseltizer
Point 4: Inspirational Leader
Point 5: Cold Operator

Cold Operator is the crowning skill here, as it will protect your city from the adverse effects of winter. You are now free to manage your city as you wish, without regards to seasonal downgrades.

Invest the rest of your Governor skill points in the Faction tree, ignoring Will of Cilginka and Will of Isiver. As boosts to city resource trinkets become available, equip them on your Governor.

Population

As soon as you are able, put all of your Population into Influence. This will be your general strategy throughout the game. Influence is your lifeblood. You will be severely crippled without a very large pool of Influence. Put only enough Population in Dust to stay in the plus. In the early part of the game, you may need to put Population in Industry and Science, but after you've converted half a dozen good villages, this should be minimal.

Be aware that the first Era will require constant attention to how your city is doing, balancing your army needs vs. your building and research needs with your number one priority of pushing your Influence as high as you can get it.

Once you have converted a number of minor factions and your Governor levels, your Population need for Dust, Industry and even Science will be minimal. You should only need to put Population into Dust during the winter months and then only until your Governor gets Cold Operator.

The first thing to build in your city is Founder's Memorial. After that, build each of the researched buildings as they become available. In my experience, your building outpaces your research until about Era III. You should be able to build everything as it becomes available.

Boroughs.

Prioritize the building of Boroughs whenever one becomes available above all else. If you use the Stick layout, the first 4 boroughs will pop your City Center to level 2, which increases all its resources. Thereafter, every borough should level a nearby borough to level 2.

Notice on the following on the Borough description:

-10 to Approval on city tile
+20 to Fortification per level on City
+15 Approval per level on tile

This means that your first 3 boroughs are going to give you -30 Approval. Then your 4th borough, if placed properly, will give you +15 Approval because one of your other boroughs will pop to level 2. It does not have to be your City Center. Beginning with your 4th borough, you will get at least +15 (and possibly +30 if another district pops to level 3) approval with every borough placement for a net increase of at least +5 per borough.

Content approval gives no perks. Happy gives you +15% to Food and Industry; Fervent gives you +30% to Food and Industry. This is why Borough placement is so key to success, not to mention the additional resources higher districts give you.

In addition, each borough gives your city +20 to Fortification per level. Fortification makes it harder for attacking enemies to take your city. Most cities will have 350-500 Fortification. Yours will have 1500 or more, unbuffed by Luxury items and 2000 or more buffed, making your city almost impregnable to your opponent's armies, which you, of course, will be ravaging with your converted minor faction horde.

So for three reasons it is important to prioritize Borough building: 1) Approval rating; 2) District resources; 3) Fortification.

Conversion is the key to victory for the Cultist. For the single player, by mid-game (turn 150), you will have a large enough army to sweep the map.

You don't need but two heroes, your main hero given at the start and your governor hero. But you'll be rich enough that you can certainly afford as many heroes as you'd like.

You'll immediately get a quest to convert 2 minor factions. This is the beginning of your faction quest line.

Convert the village in your home region. There is usually only one. If there were two, you'd be OP in no time.

You can use any Cultist unit to pacify or convert. However, I usually use my hero at the beginning of the game in order to get the XP these actions give.

Take your hero to the village and click on it. An action screen will come up. The far right option is Parley. Click on that. The village will give you a quest to complete in order to pacify it. It will often be the seeking out of a villain, destruction of another village, protection of the region for a length of time, or the delivery of a resource. Perform the quest. Upon completion of the quest, the minor faction is pacified and can be converted.

Move your hero to the village, click on it and choose Covert from the screen. You'll notice that Conversion will cost you 25 Influence. The next conversion will cost you 30, and so on. Each village is more expensive than the last to convert. With your first two factions, it's important simply to convert them to progress the quest. After that, you need to more discerning in what villages you convert.

Village placement is very important to consider. Villages give you their resources. There's little point in converting a village in a cul-de-sac on the border that's going to give you 2 or 3 hexes of resources. Villages that are surrounded by six free hexes will give you a considerable FIDSI boost. I always convert a village surrounded by six hexes. Or, if the region has valuable resources, like Titan Bones or Redsang, I will convert all the villages to increase the amount of these resources I receive.

Once you've converted your village, go the City List screen. At the top you'll see your actual city, but below it you will see each of your converted villages: What region they are in, what faction they are, what FIDSI they give you and what resources they leech. Lastly, it shows you when the next unit will spawn.

Village conversion is powerful. After you have converted the first 4 or 5 villages, you'll have few resource concerns. Not to mention the army it gives you.

Take that first unit and put it in your Hero army. You're now ready to go out and multiply.

As you move across the map exploring ruins, questing and converting, you need to consider that the other factions are doing the same. They will consider your converted villages as fair game and attack them for the XP they give. Generally, I will leave spawned units in their villages, but you need to consider the unit's weakness. Jotus and Delvers are miserable on their own. Give them an Eyeless One and a tough cavalry unit to protect them. You need to consider the make up of your guarding units as much as your own army: Ranged, frontline (cavalry or infantry) and support. Shuffle your spawned units around to provide better protection, particularly in regions with valuable resources or for villages that provide high FIDSI. If you have a safe region, send those troops to your vulnerable villages to protect.

Units of any kind can enter a village, just like a city. The maximum units in a village is determined by your army unit maximum (4/6/8). You can park units outside a village to help protect it. Other factions can attack your units freely in unclaimed territory. If they attack units outside the village, the village will not reinforce. However, if they attack the village, guarding units outside the village will reinforce.

Sometimes a village will give you a difficult quest, providing 30 of a rare resource, for example. If you don't have the resources, but want the village, you can simply attack the village and then convert it. There are two drawbacks to this: 1) This only affects the village you attacked; other villages in the region will not be pacified; 2) the cost of converting a destroyed village is twice the Influence. If you go the attack/convert route, be sure the advantages of the converting the village are worth the cost to you.

What to do? What to do?

Here are some things to consider.

1. You can build the unit provided by the assimilated faction in your city, including upgrading it through the Military screen. (To do this, choose the unit and select either Edit or New.)

2. Assimilated factions give you a specific faction bonus. And the more of a particular faction you have converted, the more bonus you get.

3. Your assimilated choices are going to be determined by what's spawning on the map.

I like Kazanji Daemons because of the Influence boost, but on some maps they are a rare spawn. As you progress through the map, you may change what factions you have assimilated. There's no point in keeping a one-village faction, even if the bonus is good, because it is minimal.

Here's a convenient recap of the faction bonuses:

http://endless-legend.wikia.com/wiki/Minor_Factions

(This link is not updated for Guardians.)

Here's a Steam thread discussing the varies attributes and strategies related to assimilated factions, which presents different perspectives on what works. As a Cultist, some of the issues in the thread won't matter to you:

http://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/app/289130/discussions/0/620700961014024437/?insideModal=1

Influence for your Empire Plan is generally not a problem. Nonetheless, plan ahead so that you don't short yourself. For your first plan you'll need 40 Influence, 20 for Economy and Population (Dust on population) and 20 for Science and Industry (Research). This will be your plan until Era II unlocks. If you have spare Influence, +Vision is nice, but hardly necessary. Better to use the early Influence points to convert.

By the time of your second Empire Plan, Era II should be open, allowing you to get +25 to city approval. This plus 20% on research and Dust on population will cost you 100 Influence. With this additional approval and the approval from the luxury items from quest rewards, you should reach Fervent, with its 30% Food and Industry bonus.

You can simulate the Empire Plan at any time by going to Empire> Empire Plan> Simulate. You can find the number of turns until the next Empire Plan in the Empire Plan window. This will allow you to determine which plan you want and to save Influence for it.

In the beginning you'll have your starter hero and 2 Preachers. Quite a few commentators and posters have dubbed the Preacher one of the most worthless suckiest units in the game. But is it?

Support units in Endless Legend are buffers. That is what they excel at. So let's look at the lowly Preacher. Unleashed Potential buffs every unit attribute but speed by 10%. Give your Preaches high initiative and have them buff your frontline units at the start of the battle for 10% increase in attack, defense, initiative, life and damage.

For your starting army, you may well have whimpy Delvers or Jotus. Have your Preachers buff them rather than attack and you'll see a noticeable difference in their performance. Buffing Gauran Minotaurs, Kazanji Daemons, or Dorgeshi Burdeki just gets better.

One strategy for your army is to sell all your village spawned units and use only city built units, which would include your Cultists units and your assimilated units. Preacher and Nameless are excellent units, buffer and ranged.

You'll need a good heavy for your front line. I like the Gauran Minotaur as a cavalry killer. Given a movement trinket and a good weapon and buffed by Preacher, it is fast, hardy and deadly on the field. I also like Daemon for it's multiple hits. Daemon needs movement trinket, a good weapon and some additional life, but once you achieve this a couple of Daemons, Nameless and Preachers are a very resilient army. Both Gauran and Kazanji have good assimilation bonuses. Gauran give you 5% life on units per assimilated village. Kazanji give you 5% Influence per village.

A lot of this depends on what minor factions spawn on your map, how many there are, and how close they are to your city.

In general, you want at least one frontline cavalry/infantry unit, one buffer, and one ranged in your army. All buffers (support units) have ranged attack, although not as damaging as bow-wielding units. Give your buffers a wand with Unsteady affix so that when they do attack, they debuff the target.

Eyeless Ones are an excellent secondary support unit, providing good healing to your units. When out in the field and making armies from your village spawns, try to put an Eyeless One or Ceratan arachnoid centaurs in your armies for their healing.

At 8 units, my typical army will have 3 Minotaurs/Daemons, 3 Nameless, 2 Preachers. Two Minotaur/Daemons and 4 Nameless is also a good combo with 2 Preaches or Eyeless Ones to buff/heal.

Remember, the makeup of your army is going to depend a great deal on what minor factions spawn on your map. My battle strategy may be different from yours. An all Nameless army with one Preacher buffing is certainly a viable option.

You'll develop your own strategy as you play, here are some of mine:

1. Destroy Roving Clans as soon as possible. They will Market Ban you and then bribe you to make the Market available. Over and over again. Just kill those suckers and put an end to it.

2. Don't be afraid to go to war. As soon as you have a decent army, begin attacking, destroying cities and converting villages. One of your first Faction quests will be to destroy a city. Do it and never look back.

3. Be watchful of the Victory progress messages. If you are playing against 3 opponents and wipe out 2 of them, the 3rd will win an Expansion victory. Oops! So be sure to go after the faction that is near an Expansion victory first.

4. Ignore the Status screen numbers. You just aren't going to make much of a dent in them, particularly early on. Later, that will change as you roll up the map.

5. Use Luxury Resources. by mid-game, you should have a fairly good supply of Luxury Resources. Use them. They will buff your city, units and heroes. Purchase resources in the Market if you aren't receiving them from quests or leeching. With a number of villages converted, you should be leeching enough of the predominate map luxuries to not have to buy them, but can sell them instead.

6. Be careful when you upgrade your units. Upgrades in weapons, trinkets, and armor will cost Strategic Resources, which only trickle in to you. Until you can afford to buy them on the Market, be cautious about equipping units with items that require a lot of strategic resources. Otherwise, you won't be able to build units for lack of resources. This is no big deal, since you can easily Edit or create New, but it is annoying and will strip down your resources without your really thinking about it.

7. Likewise with building. From Era II on, buildings require Strategic Resources to build. Be aware of that and make sure you have enough. (This and other resource tips are really only an issue if Roving Clans have Market Banned you. This is why it's important to take them out as soon as you can.)

8. The Order of Isivar trinket is rewarded for an early Faction quest. As soon as you are able, equip it on your Cultist units. It requires Titanium and Glassteel, but is worth it.

9. Put Movement increase trinkets on all your units, especially your heavy frontline units. They all benefit from it.

10. Get Cold Operator on your main Hero as soon as you can. I start with Strength of the Wild and Iron Taskmastker, then switch over to the middle tree at No Idle Hands and go up to Cold Operator. It forces you to take one irrelevant skill, city perks, but provides the most over benefit. Once you've got Cold Operator, you can fill in the army/hero perks on the left hand skill tree.

11. Convert, convert, convert. Once you have received Hand of the Unspoken as a quest reward, your converted villages will immediately spawn 4, that's right, 4 units. Cross the map with your army of newly spawned units taking down everything in your path. Once you have 2 or 3 8-unit armies in tow, even the most advanced cities will fall.

12. Save early. Save often.