How soon to build Forbidden Palace, and where?

In Conquests, how soon do you build the Forbidden Palace, and how close to the capitol is best? Do you pick a city near to the capitol with strong production so you get the FP early, or do you wait and build it slowly when you find a great spot for it in a distant location.

Is there a general opinion on whats best?

I build it fairly close to the capital, in whatever city I think will be the most productive. As I understand it, the FP's main effect in C3C is to slightly reduce rank corruption in all cities. It does not create a second core the way it did in vanilla/PTW (I haven't played those versions, but the effect is well documented). I think that's also the general consensus. As for when, I build it after the expansion phase is over and after I have enough units for my first war (usually late AA/early MA).

For more detail on the effects of the FP in C3C, check out alexman's article on corruption in the War Academy.

The FP's major effect is to increase the OCN, the number of cities you are allowed to have before additional corruption sets in. It also has some secondary effects. It affects distance corruption but not rank corruption. This means that it will provide some protection from corruption to the cities around it. The FP city itself will be almost corruption-free.

Thus, the ideal location would have these characteristics:

1) Built in your second or third ring in the direction you want to expand
2) Good productivity so you can get it up fast but...
3) A fair amount of corruption for maximum benefit from the effect.

Since it is desirable to build it in a semi-corrupt city, building a courthouse first might be worthwhile. OTOH, as Norton says, the most important effect is to increase the OCN. Thus you want to get it up quickly. You should really have started it with a pre-build before you even see the message.

You can use CivAssistII to help you decide whether building it out in the boonies is worthwhile in your particular game.

Abegweit posted about what I was going to say, but more clearly.

@AT I saw your post. You're too modest because you certainly added additional information. For the benefit of everyone, here's what he had to say:

It reduces max corruption in the city it is built by 70% (it can only be 20% corrupt - thus, a city with the FP, a courthouse and a police station will have no corruption)
For cities closer to it than the palace, it reduces distance corruption (distance is figured to it rather than the palace)
It reduces the cities ranking such that, for some core cities, rank corruption is much less - you will get about twice as many core cities that are relatively uncorrupt.

Basically, if you can build it, it is always worth while. Usually, you want to build it in a city near your capitol (so it builds fast) and in the direction of your expansion, probably within the 1st or 2nd rank of cities.

You should really have started it with a pre-build before you even see the message.

Click to expand...

I like to build up my army first, but maybe I'll try that.

I usually dont build it, because building it means a core city is not producing troops during the build.

Even with a leader I dont usually rush it as Id rather make an army.

I usually dont build it, because building it means a core city is not producing troops during the build.

And stay in despo too, as I recall? Maybe you should move up a level?

Even with a leader I dont usually rush it as Id rather make an army.

In general I agree but then I usually will have my FP well underway before I get one - and the FP is too important to take chances with anyway.

Also, with the FP, you can build more units and finance a larger army in the long run.

I build it as soon as it is available in whichever city will produce it the fastest.

Getting the FP done is more important than getting that fifth ring city no corruption.

Well, perhaps you should look into the benefits of putting it out further from time to time. Wacken's SGOTM8 is instructive in this regard. They had it way out, far further than I have even imagined possible and it was very beneficial. The FP discussion starts on Page 4.

I don't know if the game was in vanilla or C3C, so I'll assume it was in C3C.

The discussion was very confusing and what I got from it was that most of the team members wrongly assumed that the FP worked in C3C the same way it does in vanilla.

grahamiam said:

I think, that as long as we ensure that the rank corruption of our FP (Philly) is below the OCN (which is 16? for this map (not sure)), then we should have 2 effective cores.

Click to expand...

Either graham here is mistaken and is using vanilla logic, or by "2 effective cores" he means "one mishapen effective core", which would exist no matter where the FP was built.

I build it as soon as i feel i can afford it and when i have my city planning ready.

Where to build it depends on how you build it.

A: with a great leader.
If you have a great leader, the perfect place would be a city ~70% corrupt, surrounded by cities that are say 50-60% corrupt and at some distance from the capital.

B: hand build.
A city with low corruption so that you can bulid it fast. Surrounded by cities 50-60% corrupt at some distance from the capital.

I will now include an example picture:
In this picture, i numbered the towns according to their corruption rank. It is a std. size map emperor level.
The corruption gradually increases by about 5% per city rank here. City 12 and 13 are around the 50% corruption mark.
City 6 in this picture is very obviously the right place to handbuild the FP. This will reduce the corruption by distance for towns 12,14,15,16,17 These are exactly the cities in the corruption range that need help. City 6 is good enough to be able to hand build it.

If i would build it with a leader however, i would rush the FP in city 15. In here it would almost totally eliminate the corruption in city 15 and it would reduce the distance for 16 and 17 even more. Under republic on std size map, cities 14-17 are the ones you should aim to help with the FP. Cities beyond 17 are too corrupt and will be ICS land. On higher difficulty levels, lower this number by maybe 2 cities per difficulty level.

Btw, notice that in this picture, i do not build anymore cities closer to my capital than city 17. Looking back, i even regret building city 13 as it does not recieve help from the FP, it is corrupt and it increases the rank for those cities around the FP.

PS: this is spoiler info for my opponent in this PBEM, but that doesn't matter anymore at the point where we stand in this game. And for those that look at too many details: no i am not god who builds such an empire at 925BC, we started with 2 settlers, 3 workers and 4 food boni.

Oh and another edit:
I am assuming everyone knows how the FP now works, but i'll explain anyway.
The ranks for the cities do not change. the ranks do not change when you build the FP. So you see the ranks here 1-17, they remain the same. The FP in C3C only reduces the distance corruption and increaes OCN (wich is the same as reducing rank corruption in every city by 25% i believe) It is however important not to build cities closer to the capital than those that you intend to actually make productive as that would increase the rank for other cities.

Wow, now that I know that...

It appears the cities that I've been bulding the FP in have been fairly optimal ones. That's because the cities with the highest production are usually the ones that are completely landlocked, and the ones that are completely landlocked are more likely to help more cities further from the capital.

Yes, i think most people will build the FP in the right place by feeling. I think the most important thing people may be able to improve is not to build any cities like my city 13 here and worse. Just leave space open around your core if it helps the cities around your FP.

Normally i won't build a second core so soon though. But in the linked SGOTM thread, this is a special situation because of the land layout. There was only space for very little cities around the capital so a second core was feasible there.

The biggest thing is that if you get the FP note, and you are planning to expand... you should build it. It probably doesnt' matter too much whether it is 1st or 2nd circle... it just matters that it is built, because it's like a courthouse for a bunch of cities.

Wow, thanks everyone for for all the detailed replies. Visual aids, even. Cool.

I was thinking about that because I had built the FP in a current game in a great spot, on a river with several nice bonus squares, and in the middle of a captured continent. I did no math, dont really understand all of that, but it turned the continent into a productive area, pumping out some military though with generous corruption.

Biggest problem is it did not get built until 1315AD, so the benefit would have been better earlier.

From the info posted here though, I may want to build much earlier next time. Thanks all.

There is something else to think about, which is that the impact of the forbidden palace is much larger on larger maps and on higher levels.

On a tiny chieftain map, it doesn't matter much. But on a Tiny Sid map, for instance, you only get about 11 reasonably uncorrupt cities under republic. With forbidden palace, you get 14. if you add courts to all of those, you can get the number up to about 20, and with police stations, about 25.

On Huge Sid, you get about 24 uncorrupt cities without FP, with FP you can jump that up to around 33, with courthouses, 47 or so. All that depends on distance, of course.

So, on a huge map, you may not need to build courthouses for some time if you get forbidden palace.

As far as i know, the FP is procentual advantage and thus should fit itself to the mapsize and difficulty level.

11 on tiny SID ?
You are talking about how many cities are less than totally corrupt ? (never try tiny maps, but 11 seems reasonable maybe on std when you have republic AND FP)

oops - thanks WOA - I misread my spreadsheet.

But on a Tiny Sid map, for instance, you only get about 8 reasonably uncorrupt cities under republic. With forbidden palace, you get 11. if you add courts to all of those, you can get the number up to about 17, and with police stations, about 22.

Basically, subtract 3 from all those numbers