How to use "Naturalist"

[Brew God]

Hello Fellow Civ Fans:

I have a question on how to use "Naturalist" are they useful for a Cultural Victory? or other victories. What do you need to build in order to use them. I bought one with Faith and then I could never use them.

Brew God

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

They have one function, to construct a National Park. When the Naturalist is active, all potential locations for a NP will be highlighted in white. The rules defining where a NP can be built are in the Civilopedia.

 

[bbbt]

Note that you may have to remove tile improvements to make an area suitable for a natural park.

They are primarily for cultural victories, but they also give some amenities as well.

 

[Ben Vimes]

Here are the rules for using a naturalist:

1. The tiles must be natural wonders, mountains, or a tile with an appeal of Charming or better
2. All four tiles must be owned by the same city
3. The four tiles must form a contiguous vertical diamond shape
4. No tile can have an improvement or a district

Personally, it was the third rule that messed me up the most, namely the 'vertical' part. I personally think it's kind of odd that the diamond can't be in any other direction, but maybe the devs have a very good reason for doing it this way?

 

[LethalLeigh]

If you have a placement for your Naturalist and the Highlighted area isn't quite where you want it, place a tile improvement such as a Farm or Lumber Mill on the tile you don't want included in your NP and the Highlighted area will shift up, down or across 1 tile.

There are 2 Main things the Naturalist does! First it helps with a Cultural Victory by providing Tourism. Secondly it can help improve your relationship with Environmental Agendas. EG America will denounce you if you chop too many woods/rain forests. Placing NP can counter that affect.

Also note you can build/improve NP tiles with Placing Woods with builders which will go further to help you with Environmental Agendas.

 

[DJ_Tanner]

Here are the rules for using a naturalist:

1. The tiles must be natural wonders, mountains, or a tile with an appeal of Charming or better
2. All four tiles must be owned by the same city
3. The four tiles must form a contiguous vertical diamond shape
4. No tile can have an improvement or a district

Personally, it was the third rule that messed me up the most, namely the 'vertical' part. I personally think it's kind of odd that the diamond can't be in any other direction, but maybe the devs have a very good reason for doing it this way?

Yeah the vertical diamond seems like a misstep as it feels very clunky to get to work.

Also, to point 2, you may have to swap the tiles around under the city manager. Just because they are within your borders doesn't mean the correct city "owns" those tiles.

All in all they are a lot of trouble for their worth currently.

 

[peurojoque]

All in all they are a lot of trouble for their worth currently.

I like this kind of trouble. I usually plan way ahead, whenever I'm going for the cultural victory and have means to generate a lot of faith. From the very start I'd choose a faith generating pantheon, build holy sites, send envoys to religious city states, use pins to mark potential locations and plan districts and improvements accordingly not to decrease appeal. Eiffel tower is a must, but I haven't had a game yet when an AI would beat me to it even on Deity (when I was going for it). It is a lot of micromanagement, but in one game I had more than a dozen of NPs. That and a few archaeological museums got me a victory.

Funny thing is, I have literally just found out that they give amenities as well thanks to this thread

 

[Siptah]

Funny thing is, I have literally just found out that they give amenities as well thanks to this thread

If you have a large empire or there is suitable unclaimed land, they are often worth it even when going for a science victory just because auf the amenities. Having 4 or 5 of them often brings my high production cities to +5 amenities, which gives a very nice production boost in 120+ production cities.

 

[peurojoque]

If you have a large empire or there is suitable unclaimed land, they are often worth it even when going for a science victory just because auf the amenities. Having 4 or 5 of them often brings my high production cities to +5 amenities, which gives a very nice production boost in 120+ production cities.

Not just science. I'm in the middle of a total domination game right now, planning to conquer every AI city on a huge map. After 4 thousand years of continuous warfare I have only just started suffering from amenities deficit, so I build entertainment districts pretty much everywhere. The thing is, I play Russia and I have about 350 FPT, so this information really comes in handy.

 

[Victoria]

I have an Interest in just how many have been created in a single game. Anyone created like an entire continent of them? As it does not cost a charge to destroy an improvement you can have your builders disassemble everything in cities you no longer want to build in anymore.

 

[MantaRevan]

The only time they aren't worth it is if you're going for a religious victory, at which point you really have better ways to spend faith. Bonus points if you're Teddy.

 

[LethalLeigh]

If I get a range of Mountains I usually plan to turn them into NP with adjacent Holy site/ Campus. More often than not I get a group of 3 mountains in a city boarder. And seeings they don't do anything other than adjacency bonuses I turn them into NP.

 

[peurojoque]

I have an Interest in just how many have been created in a single game. Anyone created like an entire continent of them? As it does not cost a charge to destroy an improvement you can have your builders disassemble everything in cities you no longer want to build in anymore.

Your post made me curious too, so I decided to try. Behold, a park to end all parks!

My last Naturalist cost 8000 faith, which means there are 30 national parks on the screen, three more are at random locations on the map. Then I decided to build one continuous park, which made it a bit more challenging. Although this is not a fair experiment because I was delaying the victory trying to get the achievement. Otherwise, the game could have been ended a hundred turns ago, so I wouldn't have that many.

The amenities are ridiculous.


Do not try this at home.

PS Wish Teddy were in this game, he would have loved it

 

[Victoria]

wish I could like like like... sooo much effort....thank you!
3592 tourism too! Definitely the highest single tourism creator.... a naturists dream world

 

[agonistes]

I like this kind of trouble. I usually plan way ahead, whenever I'm going for the cultural victory and have means to generate a lot of faith. From the very start I'd choose a faith generating pantheon, build holy sites, send envoys to religious city states, use pins to mark potential locations and plan districts and improvements accordingly not to decrease appeal. Eiffel tower is a must, but I haven't had a game yet when an AI would beat me to it even on Deity (when I was going for it). It is a lot of micromanagement, but in one game I had more than a dozen of NPs. That and a few archaeological museums got me a victory.

Funny thing is, I have literally just found out that they give amenities as well thanks to this thread

Yep, I'm trying to recreate the Soviet empire on the giant earth map, and I'm going to be using the parks for amenity boosts, since I'm not planning on limiting city growth. Thank god I'm generating so much faith. Russia's synergy is just amazing.

Really, though, with Muscat, the parks aren't that necessary. But I have some 'submarine bases' scattered about that won't have cz or ed.

 

[Mr. Shadows]

I've made a number of naturalists but never once saw a white diamond indicating an elgible spot even though it seemed to meet all the requirements. Maybe swapping tiles would help. One way or the Civolopedia entry really let me down, and none of the threads I've searched up here or elsewhere seem to have the answer either. There must be something I'm missing that others find too obvious to explain. Hopefully swapping tiles does the trick.

 

[Siptah]

I've made a number of naturalists but never once saw a white diamond indicating an elgible spot even though it seemed to meet all the requirements. Maybe swapping tiles would help. One way or the Civolopedia entry really let me down, and none of the threads I've searched up here or elsewhere seem to have the answer either. There must be something I'm missing that others find too obvious to explain. Hopefully swapping tiles does the trick.

Swapping helps a lot. All tiles have to belong to one city. And the diamond shape has to be in 'standing' order, not horizontally, for some reason. Look for mountain ranges to find tiles with enough appeal.

 

[peurojoque]

I've made a number of naturalists but never once saw a white diamond indicating an elgible spot even though it seemed to meet all the requirements. Maybe swapping tiles would help. One way or the Civolopedia entry really let me down, and none of the threads I've searched up here or elsewhere seem to have the answer either. There must be something I'm missing that others find too obvious to explain. Hopefully swapping tiles does the trick.

Maybe you can post a screenshot of the area, where you want to create a park?

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Thanks, the more I think about it the more likely it seems that the tiles belonged to different cities. I wasn't thinking about that, and I stopped making naturalists when I realized I couldn't use them. There was one game where I couldn't figure out why I couldn't make one out of the Pantanal but that was several patches ago and I don't know if the save file is still there. I think tile-ownership was the issue though; I'll have to try it this weekend.

 

[peurojoque]

Pantanal is a wrong diamond too, you can only use three tiles of it and an adjacent tile to make a vertical diamond.