Forbiden Palace dilema

Hi you all.
I know that this point should have been discussed before for several times...
But my dilema stills remains.

"Where and when should we build Forbiden Palace?"

I know that the patch we use (C3C) is very important cause the bug of FP is corrected by the 1.22 one.

By my experience I notice that without the patch, building the FP is a disaster, because the core citys become much less productive (increase of corruption), while the far way citys just become a little bit better.

You masters of Civ, can you give me some ideas concerning this point?

Thanks in advance: RR

I tend to build it in a corrupted city with high shield/commerce potential. If you have a MGL, it may be rushed in a totally corrupted city; if not, choose a city that would build FP in a reasonable time (e.g. less than 30-40 turns).

Edit: and yes, the patch is essential.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

Just build the FP in a city near the palace which has high shield potential. The FP increses the optimum number of cities (OCN) which in turn allows you to have more cities with less corruption, thereby indirectly decreasing the overall corruption. The sooner you build the FP the earlier on you'll enjoy it's benefits on the long run.

And yes get patch v.1.22 asap.

Thre's an ongoing debate on this issue, so there's no straight answer.

Where to build FP
Time considerations:
1. It's big. You want to start as soon as reasonable because it's gonna take a while. Also, the farther away you try to build it, the mor difficult it becomes to do so because of "distance" corruption (C:d). Of course, a Great Leader would obviate both of these.
2. The empire-wide reduction in "rank" corruption (C:r) from raising the OCN by 37.5% of its base value. While probably not essential for your first 5 or so core cities, it is essential later on. Assume Regent, Republic, Std map: OCN = 20. In your fourth non-capital city (your fifth overall), C:r = 10%; in the eighth, it is 20%. Reducing C:r in the fouth city is a minor concern, but doing so for your eighth city is very important. While benefits accrue no matter how early you build it, you'd really like to have the FP up by the time your eighth or tenth city hits size 6 or 7.
3. In the early game, even small resource gains can yield huge advantages over the AI. Reducing corruption as soon as possible means more commerce and shields in the Ancient Age - and that always helps.

Distance considerations:
1. The farther away it is, the more benefit you get from lowering C:d.
2. The farther away it is, the more benefit you get from the 70% "corruption immunity" that the FP confers on the city where it is built.

HOWEVER, even for the cities closest to the FP, the reduction in C:r will be three to five times larger than the reduction in C:d!

I think the answer is: build it as soon as you can. If you can't rush it, pick your most productive city that is not too close to the capital (2d ring, probably), preferably in the direction you are expanding (to maximise future C:d benefits). Ideally, this would be an early-founded city. Advice: if you have 'backfill' city locations that are closer to the capital than this FP city, don't found them until the FP is completed - no point making C:r any worse than it is already.

If you can rush it, put it about 15-20 tiles from your capital (3rd ring or more) along the axis of your expansion, in a city with a very nice natural resource endowment to get the most benefit frm the 70% reduction. The distance depends on OCN (map size, mostly) and also on the shape or your empire. If your empire is long and thin, put the FP farther from the palace. If your empire is more circular, you'll want tho FP closer. This is because you don't want the C:d benefits to the surrounding cities to be swamped by too-high C:r.

In a recent game I MGL-rushed the FP in a captured distant (but not culture-threatened--wiped out that civ) Colossus city for a very big commerce boost as this city has many floodplain/river tiles and lots of coast. I had to wait much longer for the MGL than I had hoped, though.

In the future I may reserve the FP for an enemy capital (MGL-rushed) or other potentially productive city or just build the FP in a partly corrupted city near my core to get it finished sooner to increase OCN.

At this time I don't intend to plan carefully for its C:d benefits. In fact I think I may start abandoning some cities to minimize C:r depending on city sites and tiles.

sprang said:

HOWEVER, even for the cities closest to the FP, the reduction in C:r will be three to five times larger than the reduction in C:d!

Click to expand...

What I've read and experienced says that in Conquests C:r of other cities is unaffected by the FP. Before I realized the FP didn't work the same way in Conquests I prebuilt a 2nd core on a 2nd island that had horses and iron my start lacked; I finally got an MGL and rushed the FP, but to my horror the surrounding cities still sucked badly--little or no improvement, although they improved slightly more when my harbors could connect the two islands.

If you don't like the current location of your palace, then build the FP where you would like your palace to be. If you already have a well placed palace, then build the FP where it can be completed the fastest.

If the palace is located like this:

C C C
C C C
C C P

Then build the FP here:

C C C
C F C
C C P

Otherwise if the palace is already well located:

C C C
C P C
C C C

Then build the FP ASAP, preferably in the direction of most cities.

C C C C
C P F C
C C C C

For what I understood, in Conquest
-> FP increase OCN -> Benefit only for the first cities above OCN
-> FP has no impact on distance corruption
-> FP might have a positive impact in the city it is built.

So I build it to a big city with high shield near my capital.

Choffy said:

-> FP has no impact on distance corruption

Click to expand...

This part is not correct.

The FP does act as a 2nd palace in distance corruption calculation. It does NOT act as a 2nd palace in rank corruption calculation.

The problem is that most areas that needs the benefit of reduced distance-based-corruption also has a lot of rank based corruption, so much so that even after the FP is built, the player won't notice much difference in the cities around the FP.

For what I understood, in Conquest
-> FP increase OCN -> Benefit only for the first cities above OCN

Click to expand...

This is also wrong.

The OCN is NOT the number of cities you get "for free". Rather, it is the number of cities you get (after the capital) before rank corruption (C:r) exceeds 50%. Your OCNth city will have C:r of 50%. Every city with rank less than OCN will have C:r proportional to its rank, increasing linearly from city N=1 to N=OCN. However, for cities with rank greater than OCN, C:r increases twice as fast.

EXAMPLE: If OCN = 20, C:r rises by 50/20 for each rank up to the OCN. Thus, the 10th non-capital city as C:r of 25% and the 20th has C:r of 50%. However, the rate doubles once you go over the OCN, so that the 30th non-capital city has C:r of 100% (although total C is capped at 90%).

Building the FP increases the OCN for your whole empire, reducing C:r in every city by up to 37.5%. While this benefit may be largest for those cities with rank at or slightly above the OCN, it will be significant in in a far larger number of cities.

Is there a way to use the editor to make another wonder that's exactly like the forbidden palace, to be used to incrementally allow for higher optimal number of cities and reduce rank corruption as time progresses.

Actually, ideally I'd like to create a small wonder like the Forbidden palace except that it does not decrease the distance corruption. I'm just looking to drop the rank corruption -- I tried doing this in the Conquests editor, I raised the optimal number of cities for the map size I was going to use to something like 400 (just to see what would happen) and for some reason the rank corruption im getting is still completely unbearable...I'm a Republic (no commercial trait) on a huge map (with the edited number of optimal cities changed from 36 to 400 in the editor) with the forbidden palace and 29 cities, and the outer cities are at the 90% corruption level. I'm very confused, it would seem like the edit I made to the OCN for the map size didn't work. Even worse, when I put the save game file into corruption calculator, it told me the map size was "standard" -- is this because something got messed up and the corruption is really being calculated as a standard size map, or because the calculator doesn't work with edited world sizes?

Zinthar said:

Is there a way to use the editor to make another wonder that's exactly like the forbidden palace

Click to expand...

There must be because it is done in Rise and Rule (Summer Palace and Winter Palace) and AFAIK some other mods/scenarios. Perhaps there is some option like "acts as a second Palace" to check.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

stachnie said:

There must be because it is done in Rise and Rule (Summer Palace and Winter Palace) and AFAIK some other mods/scenarios. Perhaps there is some option like "acts as a second Palace" to check.


Best regards,

Slawomir Stachniewicz.

Click to expand...

The flag is "reduces corruption" in the wonders section. any building with that flag cannot be built until the OCN is reached.

Is that how the forbidden palace works as well? So basically I could add a bunch of various corruption-reducing palaces and build one every time I reached half the OCN level? If I did this would that mean they would all be available at same time, or are you no longer allowed to build one once you drop below half the OCN again? My main concern with trying this as a solution is that it also shortens the distance corruption as well. But I guess this may be the only alternative since when I went to the editor to raise the OCN level for the map size I was going to use, it didn't seem to have any effect at all (I put the OCN at a huge number like 400, but it still gave me rank corruption as if it was 20).

they would all be available but once one of them has been built, you can't build another one beacuse the OCN went up. these improvements have to be great or small wonders so the "reduces corruption" flag on the far right can be checked.

If you made changes in the editor, they won't affect a save game - you need to start a new game to see the changes.

As far as I know, the ability to build FP-type wonders is not linked to the OCN. The FP can be built after a certain number of cities are founded (8 or 10), and that is set in a different part of the Wonder/Improvement editor screen. You could add another Small Wonder: "Forum Justicia - available after you have built 5 courthouses." Rise uses a different model, making the FP a pre-req for the Summer Palace, etc..