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Rise of Cultures Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Build a Mighty Empire

Hail, noble leader! Our people are without guidance; lost and stumbling around in the mud. They need someone to lead them out of these lands and to found a civilization that will rise and shine above all others.

rise of cultures tips

Rise of Cultures is an empire building game from InnoGames, where you assume the role of village chieftain, then monarch, then emperor. It’s a very relaxing civilization builder, and as far as we’ve seen, there’s no direct PVP. Rise of Cultures is available on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.

That doesn’t mean you can just laze about though. Running an empire is a tough job, and we’ve compiled a Rise of Cultures beginner’s guide, including tips, tricks and strategies to help you start your empire.

Rise Of The Economy

No civilization can stand without any resources. From food, stone, and raw materials to coins and advanced production, here’s a guide to establishing a strong economy in Rise of Cultures.

Buildings

All empires need infrastructure to function, and yours is no exception. Buildings in Rise of Cultures come in four different flavors. These are homes, farms, barracks, and cultural sites.

rise of cultures build
Building…construction complete…new construction options…

Homes are places for your people to live in. Each home gives you additional workers, and also passively generates coins, which you’ll need for just about everything.

Farms and other production sites are where you can assign workers to toil to generate production. More on that later.

Barracks are where you can produce combat units to carry out your campaign. Note that each barracks can only house a certain number of units, so if you want more units, build more barracks.

Cultural sites provide happiness to adjacent buildings, and we’ll talk more about those later.

Buildings in Rise of Cultures are limited – you can only build a certain number of each structure. With that in mind, remember to always upgrade your buildings whenever you can, so that you can make the most out of the limits.

rise of cultures placement
This is handy!

When placing buildings, you can rotate them so they can fit in different spaces. If you decide you want to move a building, tap hold on it, then drag it around. Neither of these options cost anything, so don’t be afraid to experiment with different city layouts.

Via the same menu, you can also sell buildings. This gives you back a fraction of the building’s construction and upgrade costs. Beware that in the case of any barracks, any units that are housed within are lost if you sell the building.

You can also upgrade buildings that you’ve already placed by tapping the building then tapping the upgrade icon on the upper left. Note that you cannot upgrade a building if there’s an ongoing production order.

Premium Buildings and Building Info

rise of cultures premium buildings
Worth the price? You decide.

As you may have already noticed, some buildings cost Gems instead of resources. These premium buildings are far more effective than other buildings from the same era, but use important Gems to build. You should carefully weigh the pros and cons of a premium building versus a standard one before you commit to a building.

rise of cultures building info
Numbers and more numbers.

To help you with your choices, you can tap the info button to flip the building’s card around. This will give you a quick readout on what the building produces, how much space it occupies, and how long it takes to produce stuff.

Building Pieces

rise of cultures puzzle
No, only I can find out. By tapping on the icon to the side.

Building pieces are items that become available starting from the bronze age. These special puzzle pieces require you to assemble a large amount of them, after which you’ll be able to place their corresponding building. There’s usually no other way to build these buildings, but they do provide sizeable bonuses.

Wonders

Once you reach the bronze age and research the appropriate technology, you’ll be able to create wonders. These are huge monuments that offer powerful, unique bonuses.

rise of cultures wonder
Wonderful.

However, building a wonder takes a large investment of resources. Not only will you have to pay in coins and production, but you’ll also need to invest research flasks in a wonder’s construction. On top of this, you can’t just choose a wonder and build it – you will need to acquire enough pieces of that wonder to either construct or upgrade (yes, you can upgrade wonders) it.

Workers

Workers are the foundation of any economy. In Rise of Cultures, you’ll need workers any time you need something done, whether that’s gathering or producing resources, constructing buildings, or resolving events.

rise of cultures work
Ow! Okay, okay, I will work!

Unlike other city builders, you’re not limited to a few builder slots per city. Instead, each home you put up increases your total number of workers. The helpful worker info panel at the top of the screen tells you how many idle workers you have, over how many total workers you have. Ideally, you should keep a few workers idle to respond to incidents, while putting the rest to work in either production buildings or construction.

Any time there’s a production queue, whether that’s farming, butchering animals, or training new units, you need a worker. Keep that in mind, especially when incidents pop up.

Production

Your workers will just bum around your city unless you assign them to perform tasks at any farm or production building.

rise of cultures farm
I’d like to know exactly what they’re growing that they can harvest stuff every 30 seconds.

You can queue up to 3 production orders at once, and you can shell out some Gems to unlock a 4th slot. It also bears underlining that production buildings will not passively generate resources – they must have a worker assigned and production queued. If you’ve changed your mind about committing workers to production, you can also cancel an item in the queue, but you won’t get anything from a cancelled order.

rise of cultures p2
Upgrading your farm to level 2 changes the production options so you don’t need to tap as frantically.

As you upgrade your farms and facilities, you’ll gain access to more time-efficient production orders, removing the need to check on the game every minute. This is especially valuable for when you first break through to a new era – new technologies and upgrades tend to cost much, much more than usual.

Your City Hall

rise of cultures hall
Not a palace? Okay then.

Your city hall is a special building in that it produces both coins and production automatically, every 8 hours. With that in mind, make sure you pop in from time to time to get your town hall’s resources – they don’t stack, and they’re quite a lot of resources.

Goods

Goods are a tertiary resource that you’ll need to research more advanced technologies as well as for trading with your allies.

rise of cultures goods
The warehouses are empty. This is totally on purpose.

Goods first become available after you research Wool in the bronze age. Once your ability to produce goods is unlocked, I’d recommend always producing whatever contemporary good you’ve unlocked as you will usually need copious amounts of it.

Culture

While your workers are content to plod along in the hot sun, toiling to farm 30 second crops, you can make them happier to boost production.

rise of cultures bonus
The merrier, the more.

Once you’ve researched cave paintings, you’ll be set to start building your first cultural buildings. These buildings are unique in that while they don’t contribute anything by themselves, they raise the happiness of nearby buildings, improving their performance! With that in mind, it’s wise to plan your economic districts around cultural buildings.

Note that the info panel will tell you exactly how much happiness you need to generate to activate a building’s production bonuses. In the image above, we’ll need at least 300 happinesss to trigger the highest possible boost.

rise of cultures happy
The people don’t realize that their government is incentivizing them to work harder at no additional cost.

When you place a cultural building, a ghost outline will be drawn around it, showing the radius of happiness that it will produce if placed in that area. If you’d like to see the current happiness of buildings in your city, as well as all sources of happiness and how much they produce, tap the happiness button on the upper right of the screen.

Incidents

rise of cultures incidents
Incidentally, Felix, rhinos are the self-appointed fire marshals of the jungle.

Keep an eye out for incidents, as indicated by blue arrows. You can also tap these arrows to be brought immediately to the event. These offer lump sums of resources without you having to supervise production. Some incidents can even yield valuable research flasks, so keep an eye out for them.

Incidents will disappear after some time if they aren’t attended to. You’ll also still need to tap the event once their timer is finished to resolve them and claim your prizes.

Advisor Quests

rise of cultures advisors
I agree, excellency.

As you play Rise of Cultures, your advisors will give you quests. These quests are a great way to learn basic game mechanics while also giving you healthy infusions of resources (particularly expansions and research flasks) to help you blitz through the early game.

To check your current advisor quests, tap the portrait in the upper left of the screen. Double arrows will appear if you have an objective that hasn’t been fulfilled yet, while a check mark means that a quest has been completed and you can turn it in. You can also tap the chests on each quest to see what the quest’s final reward will be.

Note that quests often have several stages, so don’t be surprised if your quest isn’t complete after a single turn in.

Events

rise of cultures event
Pirates discover a tribal community. I have a bad feeling about this.

Events are a staple in any game. To participate in events in Rise of Cultures, you’ll first need to research the Tribal Celebrations technology. Once you’ve unlocked the secrets of partying, any active event will appear as a button below your advisors.

Event quests have their own rewards and require you to do different things. Like advisor quests, you can also tap the chest to see what the final reward will be.

Keep An Eye On Your Research Tree

Your culture can’t rise if your people are left digging in the dirt and wondering what to do with all those precious shiny rocks that come out of the ground. Better science makes for better living, after all, and you’ll need to research new technologies to progress from one era to the next.

Research Flasks and the Research Tree

Rise of Cultures’ technology systemrequires you to not only spend gold and resources, but also research flasks. These all-important items regenerate at the rate of 1 point per hour, and won’t go over the default limit of 10 flasks. Be sure to maximize your flask usage by logging in and spending your flasks before they hit the limit.

rise of cultures flask
Even just one flask makes me happy.

At the beginning, you won’t need that many flasks for technologies, and you’ll often be able to buy multiple technologies with each login. However, as your civilization and scientific understanding grow, you’ll need much more flasks than ever before.

There’s a specific trick you’ll need to master in Rise of Cultures; namely, that the flask cost of technologies must first be paid before the gold and resources cost. This means that you can invest flasks in available technologies even if you can’t afford them yet. By using this method, you minimize research downtime as you’ll be constantly spending and regenerating flasks.

Era Advancement

rise of cultures era
Gated by mundane chores!

Not only do you need to research all technologies from a previous era to advance to the next one, but you’ll also need to complete all the quests from that era. Since these quests give you large amounts of resources and research flasks, always to do them in tandem with your research.

Claim New Lands

You’ll soon realize how quickly space runs out within your little slice of the world. Before you can claim new lands, you’ll need to train fighting men and research new technologies to not only conquer, but hold new territories.

Expansion Pieces

rise of cultures fence
Alas, great leader! A waist-high fence stands in our way, and we are afraid we cannot claim this land.

Let’s be frank – the starting space you’re given is tiny, and you’ll need more land if your city is to grow. To claim more land around your starting area, you’ll need to use expansion pieces.

Expansion pieces are, more often than not, given as quest rewards for completing levels on the campaign map. You also have the choice of shelling out Gems for them, but you can only do this thrice. Don’t go thinking that you can forego expansion, either – many quests require you to build certain amounts of buildings or conquer a certain amount of territories, so you’ll need to train up an army

To Battle!

By tapping on the map button on the lower right, you’ll be brought to the campaign map where you can scout and attack adjacent regions. Note that a region must be scouted before you can conduct any operations in it. Once a region has been scouted, you’ll be able to zoom into it and tap any of its districts to duke it out with whatever resistance there is.

rise of cultures hunt
Yeah, about 30-50 feral hogs.

At the onset of battle, you’ll be asked to position your available troops on your side of the field. Common sense should prevail here – make sure that your vulnerable ranged units remain behind their more durable melee comrades.

Combat plays out almost automatically, with each unit simply charging forward and engaging the nearest enemy they can find – this means that melee units can and will be swarmed.

The health bars that appear on the battlefield represent the combat strength of that unit, essentially the sum of health of all of its constituent parts. In spite of this, each unit actually has its own stats which you can view in the info panel when you train them.

rise of cultures hogs
I WAS JOKING ABOUT THE HOGS, PLEASE DON’T RUN OVER MY CIVILIZATION.

What you can do in combat is use abilities. During your first battle, you’ll gain access to the huge rock ability via your default commander Harald. This ability hurls a boulder at a targeted area, damaging your foes caught in the impact zone. As you progress in the game, you’ll gain more commanders, who each have their own unique abilities that can turn the tide of combat in your favor.

rise of cultures commander
By putting more rocks on the big rock, it does more damage. Genius!

Commanders can be strengthened further via commander medals. These allow a commander to level up, increasing the efficiency of their skills. The fastest and easiest way to earn these medals is via the campaign map. To access your commander menu, tap inventory in the menu panel.

Dealing with Casualties

rise of cultures victory
Owie wowie.

Using force to subjugate your enemies is also expensive. Casualties will often be high, and rarely, if ever, will you find yourself fighting a battle against a foe with inferior technology.

After battle resolves, you’ll see a quick summary of how many units you’ve lost versus how many your enemy lost. In this menu, you’ll be given the opportunity to instantly restore your units to full power via Gems.

It’s usually a far more economical option to just train new units at the barracks. Because of how often you’ll have to fight, always set aside some resources and workers to train new units if you’re planning to fight.

Join An Alliance

rise of cultures ally
All these civilizations and somehow the world isn’t stripped bare of resources.

While alliances are currently limited in scope in Rise of Cultures, it’s still important to join one. Before you can join an alliance, you’ll need to have reached the bronze age and researched the alliances technology.

As of writing, alliances have 2 major functions – trading and wonder building.

Trading

rise of cultures trade
I would trade, but I don’t understand what money is.

Alliance members can directly trade goods with one another. These trades don’t even have to be done in person as each member can simply set up their own trade offers in the alliance menu. However, you’ll need to first reach the Minoan age and research the appropriate technology before you can trade.

Wonder Assistance

rise of cultures stonehenge
Together strong!

We’ve already talked about wonders, and if you’ve ever built or upgraded your own, you’ll know that it’s expensive. True, they provide powerful buffs and generate resources – but they eat a ton of base resources and need research flasks too.

This is where your alliance comes in handy. By requesting help for your wonder, your alliance members can donate resources – like flasks – to help you complete your wonder. They don’t go home empty-handed either, as anyone who contributes to a wonder gets a prize at the end of it, which can include pieces of wonders. This goes both ways; you should chip in and help your alliance members too!

Standing Up To The Test Of Time

As I like to say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your empire. Only a steady and decisive hand will allow your people to rise up from their humble beginnings and become a major player on the world stage. But in spite of the trials and challenges that will inevitably come to test your empire’s might, your people trust in you to lead them to glory.

rise of cultures end
We’ve got a long road ahead of us.

That concludes our Rise of Cultures beginner’s guide, and we hope that the pointers and tips we’ve laid out here will help you start your empire on the right foot. If you have any comments or anything else you wish you knew when you were first starting the game, let us know in the comment area below!

Mar

Friday 6th of May 2022

How do you level up an evolving building? Like the Trojan horse etc?