The rule about "Spending Culture" on pg 17 is a sub-heading under City Action B) "Devote to the Arts", but it says that a player can use it "At any point during their City Management Phase...".

Is it a requirement that you must select Action (B) in order to spend your culture to advance on the Culture track?

Or, may you take City Action (A) or © and ALSO spend any culture accumulated via other means to advance on the Culture track?

Thank you.

You don't need to devote a city of the arts to spend culture. Remember later in the game you may be getting culture from multiple sources and have multiple cities. It's just that the tim when you CAN spend culture is the City Management phase. This cuts down on the potential for simultaneous victories.

scimon said:

I disagree. I think you must take action (B) with one of your cities in order to spend your culture on the Culture track. It plays better that way too.

brokasaphasia said:

Well I respect your right to free speech but there's nothing in the rules that makes you devote a city to Culture before spending culture (and later culture and trade) to move along the culture track. As some civs can advance on the culture track by other actions (I'm look at you Julius) forcing everyone else to lose a turn of production would be unfair, especially if they have other sources of culture points.

I agree with Scimon.

From the rules page 17, column 2, "Spending Culture", paragraph 2: "At any point during their City Management Phase, a player may choose to spend some or all of their culture tokens to advance their culture level marker up the culture track on the market board."

TK

I definitely agree that it is written that way... I just wonder if, because of the placement of that rule within the section dedicated to action (B), that Spending Culture is only allowed when you "Devote a city to the arts".

In reality, when I've played the game, the players trying for the culture victory always took the "Devote..." action in order to harvest Culture and they ended up spending it at that point too. And since they are allowed to spend as much Culture as they want to advance many steps all at once, it didn't seem like too much of a restriction on the Culture centric players to force them to take the action in order to also spend the Culture.

Also agree with scimon

It becomes a problem if you're producing so much culture that you can't draw enough cards into your hand without going over your hand limit. Saying you can only spend culture when you take the culture action would be incredibly wasteful.

Agreed with scimon...it seems like people are over interpreting some of the rules

"Any time during your city management phase" includes the very beginning of the phase, before you've even decided what actions to take with your cities.

If the intention was to restrict it to a city producing culture, the wording would be very different.

Yeah... I guess I should play it as written. It just doesn't feel right to me.

I asked this as a rules question:

Question:

If you have enough culture on hand to advance on the culture track, do you still have to devote one of your cities to the arts in order to spend culture?

Or can you do something else with all of your cities and still spend your previously earned culture tokens to advance on the culture track at any time during your city management phase?

It's a little ambiguous in the rules since the section on spending culture is located within the the Devote to the arts section, while at the same time it says you may spend culture anytime during the city management phase.

Gustaf Bengtsson

Answer:

You don't have to devote a city to the arts in order to spend culture points. So, that second one, below [2nd alternative in the question].

-Kevin Wilson