Cultivation of Generals

This Barbarossa was heavily improved. Hence the price of gem cultivation went significantly up. Gold cultivation went down as after 300 points it is effectively useless.

Cultivation is a strong, and relatively available option to increase your commander's characteristics: for player vs player (PvP), fighting monsters, or gathering.

Go to your Generals > Pick General and then click on "Cultivate" button. This will bring you to a window which looks like this one:

Approach

1. Start cultivating your general using gold, as gold cultivation does work only while each of four cultivation boosts attributes is less than 300 points;
2. Continue with gems afterwards. Unlike gold cultivation, gem cultivation could be done 10 times at once. Use it. It would help you with this process, which alone with all resources available can take 3-4 hours;
3. Don't expect all attributes to go up all the time. Only exception here are the first 20 boost points, they always positive;
4. Overall, result which improves total sum of four attributes is very good. Over time you will get each of four attributes improved. Only exception here is generals you going to have specific to gathering: see note on that below;
5. Later stages require around 10 attempts to get overall sum positive
6. Expect to spend 20-30 million gold to get to first 300 points, and another 150k-200k gems to 500 boost points for the attributes;
1. NB: as process of general training to first 300 points on four attributes could be laborious using gold only, good alternative is to bring cultivation to 50 points each, and then go to 300 points using 10x gems. This process would take some gold, and around 50k gems. Big benefit it can be completed within minutes as first 50-300 points  grow quickly with 10x gem cultivation
7. Keep in mind that Cultivation depends on Enhancement as the following table shows.

General Level	Star Level	Possible Cultivation Points
Level 5	Level 1	Up to 150 attribute boost points
Level 10	Level 2	Up to 220 attribute boost points
Level 14	Level 3	Up to 300 attribute boost points
Level 19	Level 3	Up to 400 attribute boost points
Level 23	Level 4	Up to 500 attribute boost points

Cultivating generals specific to gathering

Correction to common cultivation rule when it comes to training general specifically for gathering:

• accept cultivation result if sum of all positive or zero, and politics is positive.

Total sum here is +1, and politics is +2

Via this 10x dialog you can tell that "Politics" is important when cultivating using gems. Of course, when you reach 300 points for attributes via gold ;).

Final thoughts

• Start with your main and/or monster general when they arrive. That will be yellow, or red, historic epic general, when they come.
• When you have more resources it makes sense to improve your gathering generals as well.
• Duty officers arrive later in the game. You would want to improve them slowly, especially to junior level to assign them to appropriate bases.