It's all about culture. On the city bar on the map, where the name is, you'll see a little culture icon (mask, harp, cup, etc) which indicates culture level. The bar there will fill up slowly as culture grows. When full it pops the next level. You can also go into the city screen and bottom left it'll show more detailed culture bar.
The Oden line of buildings plus giving excess luxuries to the cities in the city manager. Its in the bottom left hand corner, the "Manage Luxuries" button.
Go into game editor and give the city a few wonders and holy sites?
you can look at throwing specialists into those buildings as well. iirc, they also increase culture.
Luxuries increase culture? What is "excess" exactly?
Luxuries are mainly sent to cities to battle discontent, but late in the game you have other ways to reduce it, so you might not need the luxuries for that. Then they become "excess" and you can direct them to cities just for the culture generation.
I never knew that was possible! Ah, the "luxury" of not having to use luxuries to battle discontent... I've achieved negative discontent in some cities before, but not in general. So far my plan has involved trying to win before discontent becomes overwhelming!
All luxuries given to a city give -2 discontent and +2 culture.
Once, as Egypt, I got a couple of early bonus luxuries like Silk and Porcelain and giving them to my cities really boosted their culture growth in the early game.I appreciate the help. I'll start a new game to see what I can do. just got overrun by the Greeks to the west and the barbs to the east.
