Palace shields

Renata · Apr 11, 2003

The answer to this should be pretty simple if someone knows it, but I don't think it quite qualifies as a newbie question, so here it is.

Does anyone know the cutoffs in number of cities and/or population where the shields needed to complete your palace changes?

The reason I ask is because I had a palace pre-build for UN going recently and was surprised to see that when the palace reached 1 turn to go and I switched production, I still had 3 turns left on the UN. In a previous game they had finished the same turn.

Renata

Lt. 'Killer' M. · Apr 11, 2003

the more cities, the more expensive the Palae.

Obvious.

In one game I saw the price go up with every 8 cities. I was well beyong OCN at that point.

This held for two increments of 100 shields IIRC, then I won.

Sorry, can't help you any further.

Renata · Apr 11, 2003

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
the more cities, the more expensive the Palae.

Obvious.

Gee, thanks.

Seriously, though - 8 cities? I think I had 40-something cities in this game, and the palace cost was apparently 900 shields, so that seems off a bit.

Renata

Lt. 'Killer' M. · Apr 11, 2003

it doesn't start witht he first 8, it seems to start after you hit OCN, and that is map size dependednt

Shillen · Apr 11, 2003

I'd love to know the answer to this myself. In one of my games I tried building my palace in 300AD and it cost 1000 shields already! I was only in the early middle ages. I had conquered a couple civ's though.

pdescobar · Apr 12, 2003

OK, I ran some tests this afternoon and believe I have a formula for Palace Cost. As Killer surmised, it is based upon OCN. Additionally, it seems to be strictly based upon OCN and the number of your cities; other factors such as difficulty level, number of tiles on the map, and number of AI cities seemed to have no effect. Only when the OCN varied did the relationship between player palace cost and number of player cities change. Comments, corrections, and refinements are requested.

Preliminaries:

Optimal City Number (OCN) is the number in the "Optimal Number of Cities (Corruption)" entry for the world size of the map.
Palace Cost (PC) is a multiple of 100 shields with a minimum value of 300 and a maximum value of 1000.
Number of Cities (NC) is the current number of cities the player has

Summary:

Palace cost is 300 shields until you have a number of cities equal to 2/3 of OCN. At that point it becomes 400 shields and continues to rise by 100 shields for every additional OCN/6 cities you get until it hits 1000 shields at 5/3 OCN which is the maximum. A side effect of this is that the Palace will cost 600 shields if you are at OCN. If you understand that, the rest will probably just confuse you, so you should stop reading

Otherwise, continue to the gory details.

1. What number of cities will result in a given Palace cost?

Formula:

Code:

Note that PC is never less than 300 nor more than 1000

                  PC * OCN
Minimum NC = INT( -------- + .5)
                     600

In other words, (PC * OCN / 600), rounded up.

Table:

Code:

Palace  Minimum Number
 Cost     of Cities 
------  --------------
  300    1
  400    OCN*4/6
  500    OCN*5/6
  600    OCN*6/6 = OCN
  700    OCN*7/6
  800    OCN*8/6
  900    OCN*9/6
 1000    OCN*10/6

Examples:
Note that this formula corresponded exactly to the results of my tests with 3 different OCNs.

Code:

            PC->  300     400     500     600     700     800     900    1000
           OCN
Expected    4       1       3       3       4       5       5       6       7
Actual      4       1       3     N/A       4       5     N/A       6       7

Expected   18       1      12      15      18      21      24      27      30
Actual     18       1      12      15      18      21      24      27      30

Expected   36       1      24      30      36      42      48      54      60
Actual     36       1      24      30      36      42      48      54      60

2. What will be the Palace cost if I have a given number of cities?

Formula:

Code:

IF (NC < OCN*2/3), PC = 300

ELSE IF (NC >= OCN*5/3), PC = 1000

              ( 6 * NC )
ELSE, PC = INT(--------) * 100
              (   OCN  )

Examples:
Again, the formula and observed 3 tests are identical; only 1 column for each is shown for simplicity. Note that the first 2 tests were stopped at 40 cities.

Code:

NC  OCN->  4      18      36
--      ----    ----    ----
1        300     300     300
2        300     300     300
3        400     300     300
4        600     300     300
5        700     300     300
6        900     300     300

7       1000     300     300
8       1000     300     300
9       1000     300     300
10      1000     300     300
11      1000     300     300
12      1000     400     300

13      1000     400     300
14      1000     400     300
15      1000     500     300
16      1000     500     300
17      1000     500     300
18      1000     600     300

19      1000     600     300
20      1000     600     300
21      1000     700     300
22      1000     700     300
23      1000     700     300
24      1000     800     400

25      1000     800     400
26      1000     800     400
27      1000     900     400
28      1000     900     400
29      1000     900     400
30      1000    1000     500

31      1000    1000     500
32      1000    1000     500
33      1000    1000     500
34      1000    1000     500
35      1000    1000     500
36      1000    1000     600

37      1000    1000     600
38      1000    1000     600
39      1000    1000     600
40      1000    1000     600
41                       600
42                       700

43                       700
44                       700
45                       700
46                       700
47                       700
48                       800

49                       800
50                       800
51                       800
52                       800
53                       800
54                       900

55                       900
56                       900
57                       900
58                       900
59                       900
60                      1000

farting bob · Apr 12, 2003

pdescobar, youve got to get out more........

Shillen · Apr 12, 2003

Great work pdescobar! Wow I thought you'd need a bigger empire to reach the maximum palace cost. You don't even need double OCN. OCN doesn't even include your FP. In just about every game you should build 2*OCN as far as I know. So if you're doing things right then the palace will be 1000 shields pretty early on in the game.

Renata · Apr 13, 2003

Thanks for the work, pdescobar, but I don't think it's right. Could it be a version thing? I was using PTW 1.21f.

I went back and did a reality check from my last save. 39 cities, standard size map with 7 opponents, no mods or anything. I had one turn left on the UN in this save; when I switched the city to palace I got the message that I would be wasting 86 shields, indicating that the palace was 900 shields.

OCN on a standard size map is 16, I believe (someone correct me if I'm wrong), making the number of cities needed for a 1000-shield palace according to the given equations only (5/3)*16 or 27.

Renata

pdescobar · Apr 13, 2003

I was using PTW 1.21f as well; it's always possible there was an error in testing, but the results correlated perfectly across differing OCNs. It's also possible that there was another factor at play which I missed in testing. If the hop of 900 to 1000 palace shields was from 39 cities to 40 then my formula expects your map to have had an OCN of 24. Can you post the saved game?

Renata · Apr 13, 2003

I'll do so when I get home tonight.

Renata

Palace shields

Renata

homicidal jungle cat

Lt. 'Killer' M.

Deity

Renata

homicidal jungle cat

Lt. 'Killer' M.

Deity

Shillen

Deity

pdescobar

Moo, baby. Moo.

farting bob

ThEy MaDe Me Do iT.

Shillen

Deity

Renata

homicidal jungle cat

pdescobar

Moo, baby. Moo.

Renata

homicidal jungle cat

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