The Culture Rating depends on the level of citywide coverage of various entertainment, religious, education and health services. The rating goes from 0 to 100 in steps of 5 and the requirements are cumulative, so each advance in the rating requires some new services as well as those required for all the lower ratings.

Citywide coverage is determined by a percentage that I call the Coverage Index. It is the fraction of your population that has access to a particular service. In the case of health services, this is the percentage of your population that lives in houses passed by the appropriate walker. In the other cases, each building services a given number of people, and the Coverage Index is the percentage of your population that can be serviced by the number of buildings in the city (I'll cover this in more detail later).

With the exception of religion (which is more complicated), the appropriate Overseer reports citywide coverage using one of eleven descriptions depending on the Coverage Index. Here they are (notice that the "Average" range is wider than the others).

Overseer's description	Coverage Index
	At least	Less than
None	-	1%
Sparse	1%	10%
Very Poor	10%	20%
Poor	20%	30%
Below Average	30%	40%
Average	40%	60%
Above Average	60%	70%
Good	70%	80%
Very Good	80%	90%
Excellent	90%	100%
Perfect	100%	-

I'll describe the calculation of the coverage index for each type of service and then move on to the requirements for each level of Culture Rating.

The Coverage Index for each entertainment service is calculated in the same way as it is for the bonus entertainment points for housing evolution. Unlike housing evolution though, you can't mix and match entertainment types for culture rating purposes. If the Ratings Overseer wants jugglers, no amount of Senet Houses will increase your Culture Rating.

For each entertainment type, you multiply the number of venues by the capacity of the venue and divide by the population of the city. The venues need to be staffed in order to be counted, but it doesn't matter whether there are any performances, so (as far as the Culture Rating is concerned), you don't need any entertainment schools and you don't need to supply Senet houses with beer or Zoos with game meat and straw (Zoos were added in the Cleopatra expansion, they don't exist in the original Pharaoh game).

For juggling, music and dancing, the number of venues is the number of stages (remember that a Bandstand has a stage for juggling as well as for music and a Pavilion has stages for juggling, music and dance). The capacity of each of the venues is:

Venue	Capacity
Juggling stage	400
Music stage	700
Dance stage	1200
Senet House	5000
Zoo	7500

For example, if your city of 5000 people has two bandstands and a pavilion (three music stages) the Coverage Index for music is
3 * 700 / 5000 = 42%
which the Overseer will describe as Average.

The Coverage Index for religion is the average of the Coverage Indexes for all the gods known in the city. The Coverage Index for each god is calculated by adding the capacity of all the temples and shrines to that god and then dividing by the population of the city. Temples must be staffed in order to count, shrines must be within 2 squares of a road. As the average Coverage Index is used for the purposes of the Culture Rating, a high Coverage Index for one god can make up for a low one for another god (to a point, the Coverage Index for a given god can never exceed 100%).

The Overseer of Temples does not report the Coverage Index as the other Overseers do. The god's mood reported by the Overseer is related to the Coverage Index, but also to other factors such as the length of time since the last festival or blessing. I believe that 100% coverage is enough (without festivals) to keep the god's mood at Congenial. The capacity of religious buildings is:

Building type	Capacity
	Patron god	Local God
Shrine	150	300
Temple	375	750
Temple Complex	8000	8000

The Alter and Oracle add-ons to the Temple Complex have no effect on the Coverage Index.

The Coverage Index for each education service is calculated in a similar way to entertainment. This is simple for libraries, you multiply the number of libraries by 800 and divide by the population of the city.

It's harder for Scribal Schools because they only serve children so you need to divide the capacity of your schools by the number of children in the city. There is no way to accurately calculate the number of school age children in your city (I'm not even sure what ages go to school) although you can get an idea by looking at the census graph provided by the Overseer of Granaries. During my tests, the percentage of the population that were of school age varied between 32% and 38%, but in some of my real missions it was less than 20%. In any case, your demographics may vary. It looks as though 300 children implies somewhere between 800 and 2000 total population.

Buildings must be staffed in order to count, but don't have to be supplied with papyrus (although, of course you still need 500 papyrus just to be able to build a library).

Building	Capacity
Scribal School	300 children (maybe 800-2000 total population)
Library	800 total population

The Coverage Index for each health service does not depend on the number of buildings, it is simply the percentage of your population that lives in houses passed by the appropriate walker. The walker has to pass within 2 squares to give the house access to his type of health service for 6 months. The types of health service that are used in the culture rating are Dentist, Physician and Mortuary. Since Mortuaries don't send out a walker unless supplied with linen, you will need linen in order achieve the Culture Ratings that require Mortuary coverage.

The requirements for each advance in Culture Rating is shown in the following table. To save space, I show the Coverage Index required rather than the overseer's description. You find the equivalent overseer's description by looking up the Coverage Index in the column headed "At least" in the table of overseers' descriptions near the beginning of this article. Don't forget that each level needs all the coverage required for the previous levels as well as the new ones listed.

Culture Rating	Entertainment					Reli- gion	Education		Heath
	Juggler	Music	Dance	Senet	Zoo		Sch	Lib	Den	Phys	Mort
5	-	-	-	-	-	1%	-	-	-	-	-
10	1%	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
15	-	1%	-	-	-	20%	-	-	-	-	-
20	20%	-	1%	-	-	-	-	-	1%	-	-
25	-	20%	-	-	-	-	-	-	20%	1%	-
30	40%	-	20%	-	-	40%	-	-	40%	20%	-
35	-	40%	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	40%	-
40	-	-	40%	-	-	-	-	-	60%	-	1%
45	60%	-	-	-	-	60%	1%	-	-	60%	-
50	-	60%	-	-	-	-	20%	-	-	-	20%
55	-	-	60%	1%?	-	-	40%	-	80%	-	-
60	80%	-	-	20%?	-	-	-	-	-	80%	40%
65	-	80%	-	-	-	80%	60%	1%	-	-	-
70	-	-	80%	40%?	-	-	-	20%	90%	-	-
75	-	-	-	-	1%?	-	-	40%	-	90%	60%
80	100%	-	-	60%	20%?	-	80%	60%	-	-	-
85	-	100%	-	-	40%?	-	-	80%	-	-	-
90	-	-	100%	80%	60%?	100%	100%	-	-	-	80%
95	-	-	-	-	80%	-	-	100%	-	-	-
100	-	-	-	100%	100%	-	-	-	-	-	-

Some entries in the table for Senet House and Zoo coverage are marked with a question mark as I didn't build a big enough city to verify them. The ones shown as "1%?" are the rating levels at which those buildings are first required. The remainder of the entries with question marks are guesses based on the overall pattern.

Finally, a couple of disclaimers. First, these tests were all run with the Cleopatra expansion installed. I doubt if that affected anything except to add the requirements for Zoo coverage, but I haven't verified that. Second, I ran the tests with the entire population housed in Huts and using a version of the Very Easy difficulty level modified to remove fire and damage risk (to make it simpler to manage the test city). I checked some of the results on Hard difficulty and found no differences, but you never know.

If you've read this far, congratulations! You are now a Culture Vulture. Thanks for reading.

Nero Would

[This message has been edited by Nero Would (edited 09-20-2000).]

Wow Nero Would,
I wanted to start reading, but when I saw the length of it... I decided to read it an other time (it's already too late tonight). But I'll do it later.
I'm always very amazed by the way you investigate every little or big feature in Pharaoh (probably also other games)!
I'm too lazy for such things (well, I mean the formulating & writing down of the observations).
Thanks for this information!

PS: This also counts for other dedicated investigators.

[This message has been edited by Freskin (edited 09-17-2000).]

Excellent work again Nero Would,

I just have one question. If I interpreted you post correctly, it would seem that you could not get a CR=100 with a population over 8000, due to the 100% coverage index requirement for religion and the capacity of a Temple Complex of 8000 (when you can only build one Temple Complex).

I know that this is not true. My recently completed cities of Bubastis and Sauty both had CR=100 and a population over 8000. (Both have just been added to the downloads section.) If the number of 8000 is correct for the capacity of a Temple Complex, then festivals must make up the difference. Do you have any idea how this works?

VitruviusAIA: You should be able to get a Culture Rating of 100 with a population of more than 8000. It's just that the Temple Complex on its own is not enough to give you a Coverage Index of 100% for that god. You would need additional Shrines or Temples to that god in order to meet the requirements.

Nero Would strikes again!

Now if I had just had this in Cleopatra's Alexandria... Oh well, I can use it on future missions.

I wonder how long its going to take Grumpus to find this and post it on his site.

Nero Would,

Now I understand. For the 100% rating (for a Patron God) and a population of 8000, you could build 54 shrines OR 22 temples OR one temple complex (or a combination thereof, i.e. 10 temples, 29 shrines and no temple complex) to that God.

Thank you, this is a great help.

Excellent /no , perfect/ job , Nero Would /again/ ! Printed out immediatelly , these are the sheets i always use when playing .

Two observations : are You sure about the capacity of shrines /150 and 300/ ? Isn't it 50% of the temples ? About the other i'm not sure , but i think i have already built a quite big /8-9K/ city with only some 3-4 schools but still with reported perfect school coverage . After your table , i needed some 10 /again , not sure/.

Tomek: Thanks.

About the Temple and Shrine coverage. I realise that conventional wisdom is that Temples serve twice as many people as Shrines (that's the ratio I always used), but as a result of these tests, I'm now convinced that they serve two and a half times as people.

About the Scribal School coverage. It may be that in my tests, the fraction of the population that was of school age (32%-38%) was higher than it would normally be. Also, the overseer is definitely telling me that Scribal Schools serve 300 children and Libraries serve 800 people, but I have an old note that says the numbers are 500 and 1000. Is it possible that the capacity of these buildings was decreased in Cleopatra?

Good info on shrines !

About schools , i check some completed cities at home .

Great stuff!

I'm thinking about changing the name of my site from "Which Way to Thebes?" to "The Nero Would Reference Library"

Thanks Grumpus!

More on the ratio of school children to total population. I checked some of my saves from real games (rather than these tests) and found school children to be about 18% to 20% of the population in those cases. This shows how much the demographics can vary (I had up to 38% in my test). I've edited to main post to suggest that the 300 children supported by one school imply a total population of 800-1600.

I found 3 cities with perfect school coverage , here are the data : 4 school for 8093 people , 1 school for 1496 people , 1 school for 2413 .

This school coverage in CR stuff seems to be just another nice random element of the game we love so much .

Marvelous work, Nero. I play Pharaoh without Cleo at work (Cleo won't install here and I can't afford to mess with this computer since the company books are kept on it) and the schools are 300 children and libraries are 800 adults. I am using the patched Pharaoh. Perhaps the Pharaoh patch reduced the coverages that you remember?

Bumping up the thread. I have thought for this info in vain at the major sources, my fault?

I checked the data for a stand alone version of Pharaoh, patched to V1.2, and as far as I was able to see they appear to agree. I tested with a city of 5000 at difficulty level hard.

This is one exception to the rule that you should never trust your advisors. You really need what they ask for. One caveat though, the rating is adjusted only at the beginning of the month, while the reaction of the overseer is instantaneous. So the overseer may be asking for extra musicians to increase the rating, while actually your rating will go up 5 point on the turn of the month, you need the musicians for the next increase. The best way, unless you know the full matrix, is to add only one type of item each month, and wait for the next month to see what the effect on your rating is.

[This message has been edited by joshofet (edited 08-12-2002 @ 05:13 AM).]

joshofet,
When looking for this kind of information, first check the "Links for beginners" thread (the sticky thread at the top of the Game Help forum list). (The title is somewhat of a misnomer, since many of the threads are a little advanced for beginners.)

Sorry, posted in the wrong thread.

[This message has been edited by Brugle (edited 11-09-2007 @ 04:26 PM).]

this is great Nero!!

Please keep this up

I ran the tests with the entire population housed in Huts and using a version of the Very Easy difficulty level modified to remove fire and damage risk

Is this easily done, because i would love to be able to test some housing blocks of mine in this environment. Perhaps i'm talking rubbish, i don't know much about this field

Thank you for the help


-RA

Quoted from RA God of Egypt:

this is great Nero!!

There are links to this and other useful threads by Nero Would and many other players in the Links to Pharaoh Heaven's most useful posts "sticky" thread.

Quoted from RA God of Egypt:

Please keep this up

Nero Would last posted in this thread over 7 years ago. While he has done some superb work since then, my guess is that he isn't doing any Pharaoh work at the moment.

Quoted from RA God of Egypt:

I ran the tests with the entire population housed in Huts and using a version of the Very Easy difficulty level modified to remove fire and damage risk

Is this easily done, because i would love to be able to test some housing blocks of mine in this environment. Perhaps i'm talking rubbish, i don't know much about this field

It isn't hard: just modify the entries for fire risk and damage risk in the Pharaoh_model_veryeasy.txt file, using a text editor.

But why bother? Very Easy difficulty has very low fire risk and damage risk to start with.

And why would you want to test housing blocks at Very Easy difficulty? A housing block should be tested at the highest difficulty that it is intended to be used. (If some houses are deliberately prevented from evolving by insufficient desirability or entertainment, then the block should also be tested at the lowest difficulty that it is intended to be used.) Very Easy difficulty is a "sandbox" mode, with some fun parts of the game eliminated and some others greatly reduced. All other difficulties have the full game experience, so I recommend that everyone play at at least Easy difficulty.

Hi Brugle

Quoted from Brugle:

It isn't hard: just modify the entries for fire risk and damage risk in the Pharaoh_model_veryeasy.txt file, using a text editor.

Ahh. I thought that that was just something they added to help us our, i didn't know it was a game file

Thank you Brugle

I'd heard often before that Water Supplies provide "cleaner" water than wells that is a boon to city health; do water supplies impact culture in any way considering their benefits to city health?

Quoted from brainwasher5:

I'd heard often before that Water Supplies provide "cleaner" water than wells that is a boon to city health; do water supplies impact culture in any way considering their benefits to city health?

As far as I can tell, there is no difference between well water and water supply water, except that houses can evolve to much higher levels with water supply water. (High level houses do improve city health.) I remember running some tests a while ago that showed that some sturdy huts developed malaria at the same rate whether they had well water or water supply water.

Water does not contribute to Culture. A city can have Culture 100 when no houses have water.

Thank you for your informative post.

Quoted from brainwasher5:

I'd heard often before that Water Supplies provide "cleaner" water than wells that is a boon to city health; do water supplies impact culture in any way considering their benefits to city health?

You may be thinking of Emperor where "fancy" wells provide benefits

You may be thinking of Emperor where "fancy" wells provide benefits

I doubt that, considering he has never played the game (or if he has, he doesn't admit it). :P

no, I haven't. I'm not quite sure what that jab was supposed to illicit.

@brainwasher5: There was no jab. I was simply responding to another user pointing out that, to my knowledge, you haven't played Emperor as they assumed you were thinking about it. If you just want to take all my posts as being hostile for no reason, then feel free to do so: I know you don't like me in any way whatsoever.

[This message has been edited by Sajuuk (edited 03-10-2016 @ 02:45 AM).]

Seriously man...chill out. I never said I played the game; I don't need to admit anything, considering how I didn't even bring ROTMK up. Besides, this is the Pharaoh forum, not the ROTMK one.

[This message has been edited by brainwasher5 (edited 03-21-2016 @ 09:39 AM).]