[NFP] Cultists - how to use them effectively?

[Abaxial]

I had a first go with cultists yesterday and found them underwhelming apart from generating lots of relics. I could spam a city with multiple cultist actions and at the end it's still "Full loyalty in 1 turn". What's the best way to take advantage of them?

 

[RealHuhn]

Usually you just surround a city with 6 fully charged cultists and then it flips on turn 2-3. I'm pretty sure the patch broke cultists completely though. I cannot flip cities with them anymore, at least not in dramatic ages game mode.

Edit: Even worse, I used the last charge on 10 cultists on the same turn and only got one relic xD
Edit 2: Actually, the relics all spawn in the same city and override themselves. Moving the relic to a different city before "killing" the next cultist fixes this issue at least.

 

[IsabelBraganca]

A few tips:

• Use loyalty lens (click on the lens on top the minimap). It shows how much loyalty the city has and how much it gains per turn.
• Get all cultists all-round before starting
• Put extra cultists behind where there is road or flat terrain. The cultist with fewer charges should be the first. When the nearest cultist finishes all their charges, advance the other one step and use again.
• Grow your cities near the border.
• If the target civ has found a religion, convert the city. This generates grievances and you'll get a permanent minus 9 in your relationship with the target civ.

Cultists work best when you are in a golden age and your victim in a dark. They work to lower Free Cities loyalty as well. Free Cities will attack them, so you have to protect them with a strong military unit that is able to receive some hits without dying. I have successfully taken about 5-6 from a civ using my golden age against their dark. Lowering the Free cities loyalty was important to speed up the process and get as many cities as possible before the era had ended. I could have gotten more if I hadn't declared war to their friend.

 

[Vargas1]

Other than relics I think cultists suffer from an issue with the loyalty system generally, which is that aside from a few border cities (maybe) or cities captured at war, cities tend to either have lots of loyalty or very little. It’s rare to be in a situation where a one-time drop in loyalty will matter much, since most cities will just grow their loyalty back up. So as others have said, it seems the only real use is to use a whole bunch of them on one city, to try and take its loyalty all the way down via cultists. The other time they can help is coupled with the neutralize governor spy action if it’s a city relying on the governor for loyalty.

 

[King Rad]

I reported a bug report with regard to cultists. Before I could surround the city, and in two or at most three turns, generally flip the city to free. So long as the negative loyalty generated by the cultists brought the total to below zero, I think it used to flip immediately. But even if it didn't flip until the end of the turn, so long as their annual increase in the city loyalty was less than the negative caused by the cultists recruiting, it would still flip. Now, it doesn't appear that the cultists can bring the city to below zero. I've only been able to use cultists to speed up the flipping of a city to a free city when it was already losing loyalty.

 

[NukeAJS]

Use them like you would use spies -- to flip cities that are already losing loyalty.

 

[UWHabs]

I don't terribly mind them not being able to flip anything. It's a little ridiculous to send them deep into land and flip a 100% loyal city. They're still a cheap and easy source of relics.