Economics and Considerations for Relocating Capital

Following from an article VBraun linked us, give an idea on the costs for relocating the capital in line with the cities we own.

Small Map
up to 11: 300
12-14: 400
15-16: 500
17-19: 600
20-22: 700
23-25: 800
26-28: 900
29 or more: 1000

Click to expand...

The ideal number of cities for a capital relocation is 400 shields, then a forbidden palace should be built on the southern hemisphere.

Everything About Corruption: C3C Edition

Author: alexman; Date Added: 3/27/04

This is a guide about how corruption works in Conquests. It's slightly different than how it used to work in PTW and vanilla Civ3.

The information that follows was discovered by extensive testing and contributions by numerous members of the Civ3 community, including Aeson, DaviddesJ, Nor Me, and Qitai. We also recently got some inside information (a look at some of the actual corruption code), which helped find the last few missing pieces of the corruption puzzle.
DEFINITIONS

Corruption in Civilization 3 is commerce from city tiles that cannot be used by the empire. Corrupted commerce is indicated graphically in the city screen by stacks of red coins. There are numerous factors that influence corruption, all of which are addressed in this article.

Waste is the loss of production as opposed to commerce, and is governed by almost the same rules as corruption. Everything in this article that applies to corruption, also applies to waste, unless otherwise mentioned.
CORRUPTION BASICS

The total corruption in each city is equal to the sum of two independent components: distance corruption, and rank corruption.

For non-communal government types, distance corruption depends on the distance of each city from its closest palace. Rank corruption in a city depends on how many other cities are closer than that city to the palace.

For communal government types, distance corruption does not actually depend on distance. Each city is considered to be the same distance from the Palace. Rank corruption depends on the total number of cities in the empire.

You can reduce corruption in your cities by building appropriate city improvements and Wonders, changing to a more efficient government, choosing a Commercial civilization, and connecting your cities to the trade network of your empire. In addition, you can reduce waste by bringing your cities into a WLTKD celebration.

You can determine the total number of 'red' commerce in a city by multiplying its total corruption by the number of raw commerce produced by citizens working the land, rounded to the closest integer.
DISTANCE CORRUPTION

For all non-communal government types, the distance corruption component is proportional to the distance of a given city from its closest Palace. For communal governments, the distance to the closest Palace is considered to be the same for all cities on a given map. The "closest palace" to a city can be the Palace, the Forbidden Palace, or any other Wonder with the "reduces corruption" ability.

For corruption purposes, distance is always an integer number, and is given by:

d = max(x,y) + min(x,y)/2
where
max(x,y) denotes the maximum between x and y,
min(x,y) denotes the minimum between x and y,
x is the distance in the NW/SE direction,
y is the distance in the NE/SW direction,
and the integer division is rounded down.

In the special case of communal governments, the distance for all cities is taken as:

d = (MaxD) / 4

where MaxD = (MapW+MapH)/4, MapW is the width of the map, and MapH is the height of the map, as given in the editor.

The distance, d, is used to get the adjusted distance, da, as follows:

da = 0.5^Ni * min(Gd * t * d, MaxD)
where
Ni is the number of anti-corruption buildings,
t = 1 if the city is on the trade network
5/4 otherwise
Gd = 3/2 for Rampant corruption (Despotism)
3/4 for Minimal corruption (Democracy)
1 otherwise

So each anti-corruption building, which is a city improvement with the "reduces corruption" ability in the editor (Courthouse and Police Station), divides distance corruption by 2.

Finally, the exact value of the distance corruption component is given by:

Cd = da /MaxD

RANK CORRUPTION

The rank corruption component depends on the rank (R) and optimal city number (Nopt) of each city.

In a non-communal type of government all cities of an empire are ranked in order of distance to the capital, starting at zero for the capital itself. If several cities have the same distance to the capital, they are ranked in order of founding, and if they also have the same date of founding, they are ranked by their order in the database. In a communal form of government, all cities have the same rank, which is half the total number of cities in the empire, rounded down.

Each city also has its own optimal city number, Nopt, given by:

Nopt = max(OCN * (L/100 + c + Gr + Gp*Nwe + 0.25*Ni), 1)
where
OCN is the optimal number of cities for the map size,
as found in the editor
L is the percentage of optimal cities for the current
difficulty level, as given in the editor
Nwe is the number of active Wonders in the empire with
the "reduces corruption" ability
(Forbidden Palace, SPHQ)
c = 0.25 for a commercial civilization,
0 otherwise
Gr = 0.1 for minimal or nuisance corruption
2 for communal corruption
0 otherwise
Gp = 3/8 non-communal corruption
3 for communal corruption

For waste calculations only, when the city is in a WLTKD celebration, add OCN/4 to Nopt.

The rank corruption for a city is then given by:

Cr = R / (2 * Nopt), if R < Nopt
(2 * R - Nopt) / (2 * Nopt) otherwise

MAXIMUM CORRUPTION

The sum of the distance and rank components of corruption can be greater than 100%. The game sets an upper limit for the total corruption in a city to be equal to 90% minus 10% for each city improvement and minus 70% for each Wonder in the city with the "reduces corruption" ability:

Cmax = 0.9 - (0.1 * Ni + 0.7 * Nwc)

POLICEMAN SPECIALISTS

By assigning one of your citizens to be a policeman, you can cause one corrupted commerce and one wasted shield to become uncorrupted. This reduction in corruption comes before applying the maximum corruption limit described in the previous section, so the city may not show any reduction if was already taking advantage of that limit.
SUMMARY

To summarize the above, distance corruption depends on the distance of the city from the closest palace (or a constant number for communal governments), multiplied by a factor that depends on the government type, and another factor if the city is not connected to your capital by road, harbor, or airport. Each corruption-reducing building in the city halves distance corruption.

Rank corruption depends on the ratio of the city rank to the adjusted optimal city number. The city rank is equal to the number of cities closer to the capital (or half the total number of cities for Communism). The rate of increase of this corruption with rank doubles after rank exceeds the optimal city number. The optimal city number of the map gets modified by the difficulty level, the commercial trait, the current government, and the number of improvements and Wonders with the "reduces corruption" ability.

Courthouses and Police Stations decrease distance corruption and increase the optimal number of cities. They also each decrease the maximum corruption limit.

The Forbidden Palace acts as a second Palace for distance corruption calculations, but not for rank calculations. The Forbidden Palace itself will have low corruption, but if there are many cities closer to the Palace than the Forbidden Palace, the cities around the Forbidden Palace will have high rank corruption. However, even though it doesn't provide a new set of city ranks, the Forbidden Palace reduces rank corruption throughout the empire by increasing the optimal number of cities.

A Rank Corruption Discovery & Exploit to Negate Rank Corruption

Author: Qitai; Date Added: 12/8/03

Editor's Note: The following article describes tactics that are regarded as an exploit in GOTM/RBCiv. The article has been retained in the War Academy because the tactics are valid, and serve to further an understanding of the game, but using these tactics is not allowed in certain games played in the Civ community.

I think I just discovered the reason for all the corruption discrepancies and phenomenon that troubled me for a long time. Things like why did I often observed corruption reduction in my old core when I just made a palace jump and also the recent lower corruption I see in my distance 7 ring around the FP in GOTM22 which later increases for no apparent reason.

And it looks like this can be huge exploit, which can reduce corruption tremendously. With this exploit, it is possible to make most, if not all, of my cities rank 1! This effectively negates almost all corruption due to rank.

Before you read this, you should get yourself familiar with Alex's "Do you understand corruption"? At the minimum, you should understand the difference between corruption due to rank and corruption due to distance.

The discovery is actually very simple. The city rank as we all know really has ONLY one set, not two sets! All rank calculation in Civ3 depends on the number of cities with distance less than Fd from the palace only, regardless of whether the city is nearer to the FP or the Palace. Note that the gist of the above statement is that rank depends on the number of cities with distance less than Fd, and not the number of cities nearer to the palace for the city concern, nor the number of cities nearer to the FP.

Mathematically, the formula should be:
(For the full corruption formula, please refer to Alex's thread - Do you understand corruption?)
Distance of a city (Fd) = min(distance from Palace, distance from FP)

Rank of a city (Fn) = 1 + Number of cities with distance FROM PALACE less than Fd (i.e. ignore the source of Fd, just count the number of cities with distance less than Fd from the palace, even if the city is nearer to the FP)

If the above does not sound like something new, then you might not have understand it correctly. Here is an example to illustrate what the above really means.

Let say you have cities with these distances from the palace and FP respectively

Palace - 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12 etc
FP - 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 etc

Let say, I am trying to determine the corruption of the distance 8 cities from the FP. Previously, I had always thought that the rank of the distance 8 cities would be 5. But my discovery says it is NOT.

The rank of the distance 8 city would actually be 9! This is because there are eight cities with distance less than 8 from the capital. They are 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7. The number of cities nearer to the FP does not matter.

Similarly, the rank of the distance 10 cites from the FP is not 12. It will be considered as rank 9 again since the same cites - 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7 - would be closer to the palace.

I am not sure if this example is good enough. If this is not clear enough, I would suggest trying the exploit below and you should be able to understand what the above means.

The Exploit

To exploit the above, basically, all you need to do is to put your palace as far away as possible without any of your own cities near it. This way, all your cities near the FP will be considered as Rank 1! Try this on a recent game you finish by abandoning all the cities near the palace and see how your corruptions near the FP reduces like magic(You may need to remove and put back the population to see the changes). So if the nearest city to the capital is distance 20. Then all cities less than 20 distance from the FP is considered to have a rank of 1. Imaging that!! Even those cities that are considerable distance from the FP now become very useful. I tested it on a recently finish game and I see my previously fully corrupted cities in the outer ring of my FP turning into low corruption power cities.

I have attached an example of this. You can check the city New Argos which is at a distance of 12 from the FP and with a rank in excess of 20 if I calculate it the old way. You can check with Alex's calculator that the corruption level is of a city with distance 12 and rank 1. Note that this sav is mod but none of the mod affects corruption, just to facilitate testing.

RCP impact - The above basically means you just need to do RCP on the palace. Cities around the FP gains the benefit automatically, provided the city distance is not more than the rings at the palace. RCP around the FP does not help at all.

Additional Comment 1 - Even a simpler approach of ICS near FP and sparse city placement at palace will help greatly in this battle against corruption since the sparse placement near the palace will help the city corruption near FP.

Additional Comment 2 - The above also resolved the question about how is the corruption calculated when it's rank is nearer to Palace and distance is nearer to FP or the opposite.

Additional Comment 3 - This exploit would make commercial trait useless since this effectively negates almost all corruption due to rank.

I guess GOTM should ban the above exploit this since this will be overpowering. I don't think there is any reasonable way you can ban the method in additional comment 1 though since it starts to gets into the gray area.

Tests are made on Vanilla Civ3 1.29. I suspect it should be the same for PTW. Credit must be made to Alex for having discover and fine-tune the corruption formula which serves as the basis for me to investigate this. Also, Daviddesj's RCP is what really re-kindle my interest to make this investigation.

(All information contain herein are the result of extensive testing made by the author. Although, diligent effort has been made to ensure that the results are true, there is always a possibility that insufficient test has been made. Everyone is welcome to either confirm or show results which contradicts the information shown here)

Initial analysis tells me the following parameters would be optimal for a palace relocation:

10 Parameters

14 cities for a cost of 400 shields, and we need more than 12 cities to gamble on this

Relocation should be towards the center of the continent and towards the eastcoast

One Continental capital with rivers, mountains and hills for max shields

One Naval capital with intent to dominate our Eastern Ocean defense

Corruption levels at 14 cities could mean 20-40 shields lost per turn, which makes 400 shields a minor investment. This will be repaid in 10-20 turns at this size. We should initiate the build as we reach 10 cities and complete it before 14 cities.

Capital City should be built in defensive terrain with hill and rivers

Capital city should have excellent growth material

Capital city should have a strong regional influence

Capital city should have infrastructure ready to handle its new status

Capital city should ideally have enough forest to logrush improvement

Qitai's article is obsolete in C3C, since rank is based only from the palace now, not the forbidden palace as well.

The land around the capital seems good enough that moving the capital wouldn't reap an incredible benefit (however, I've never moved the palace in my solo games (that I can remember) and thus don't have the intuition regarding this, and trying to calculate with a lack of data would not be worth the time (yes, I could create a dotmap, and calculate the corruption of the cities with the palace in different locations, but more map revealed would make that better)).

Good Tim Bentley, we wait for more of the map to be explored, I will develop a more extensive city plan bordering up to 14 cities, and we figure out two locations, one for Forbidden Palace and one for Palace. Yet, we need to build enough military parity to go through with this.

Ahh! To.. much... information! Brain..... cra *thump* *gurgle*

Seriously... I still think it is FAR to early to relocate our capital.

We are just planning the city placement with the future relocalizations in mind.
This will be at 14 cities, which is about 10 cities from now.

Strider said:

Ahh! To.. much... information! Brain..... cra *thump* *gurgle*

Seriously... I still think it is FAR to early to relocate our capital.

Click to expand...

hehehe I so so know what you mean...

I stand here with Smith, my Horse. My sword is sharp. My Shield is strong.

Lets get out there and find a fight

I even found a cheaper way to do it, using Dave McW's formula, free palace jump.

Free Palace Jump Tired of ads?


After weeks of testing I have found the exact palace jump formula.

When the capital city is razed or abandonned, each city in the empire scores

* 1 point for each of your citizens
* 1/3 point for each foreign citizen
* 1/3 point for every neighbor town (1-6)
* 2/3 point for every neighbor city (7-12)
* 1 point for every neighbor metropolis (13+)

The city with the most points is the new capital!

Only your civ's cities within 8 squares (a 17x17 area) count as neighbors. The old capital does not count at all.

If there is a tie for the most points, the palace jumps to the first city in the database, which is usually the oldest city. After some old cities have been razed the database gets out of order and it's impossible to tell where the palace will go in a tie.

This means the following. I intend to, with your blessings, to abandon Dancing Banana and relocate the capital to the central part of the continent, which will enable us to have more shieldpower close to the hills and mountains, as well as shorter logistical lines to the southern neihbor.

The plan is to build settlers and workers, and no improvements in Dancing Banana, and develop a larger industrial powerhouse next to the mountains, then organize a cluster of cities down south with low corruption, but high production and commerce, and shorter supply lines to the Southern enemy.

I don't see anything in the rules against it, but I do not recommend it at all. The Free Palace Jump is considered an expoit by many and may ruin our reputation if we do such a thing, which is not something that we want to do.

It is not an exploit, and I want our nation to be strong, not a pillow for frail emotional adversaries. This will not ruin our reputation, as it is not in the rules.
On that note, not bring it up as a rule proposal, that will be considered espionage.

To moderators and lurkers, do not let this idea out!!!! Classified.

It might hurt our reputation amoing Team Kiss because most of them are SG players and normally this kind of thing is frowned upon. But fine if we end up doing this, I'll be able to live.

I'm in favor of any seemingly dirty trick if its allowed by the rules. But wouldn't it really mess up our plans for building the SoZ and everything?

If Team Kiss was so capable and ethical, as well as observant, they would have amended the rules for the palace jump. If they try to hit our reputation based on a legislation they did not alter, they already lost reputation in my eyes. Anything not written in the rules, and everything permissible by Civ3 gaming code is fair game. I am certain we can consider deceptive diplomacy an exloit as well, not to mention the skirting and relativization of the 24 hour rule.

Running an agro civ, is in one way an exploit, as agro civs are too strong for demogames.

For purely balance of powers reason. I would relocate Dancing Banana to Carpetbomb, as a palace Jumo. Carpetbomb is exactly in the center of the northern jungle tile and southern ocean tile in the north.