Buttercup's Guide to Palace Building for Civilisation 3 Complete

[Buttercup]

Inspired by Rodrig0's thread inquiring about Palace Upgrades, and the apparent communal bewilderment about the topic, I set about determined to investigate ways to maximise my Palace building. The results will astonish and amaze you as some quite unexpected outcomes made themselves evident.

So, without any further ado, here's Buttercup's guide to getting that Palace up as quick as possible. You will require 17 upgrades for a full Palace:

1. Founding your second city.
2. Your Capital gets to size 10.
3. Your Capital gets to 1000 Culture.
4. Your entire civ gets to 5000 Culture.
5. Your 11th city gets to 100 Culture.
6. Your second city gets to size 10.
7. Being the First to Enter the Medieval Age.
8. Your 21st city gets to 10 Culture.
9. Making a Military Alliance.
10. Reveal every last inch of the Map (you do not need to be first AFAIK).
11. Have all 8 Luxuries either by ownership or trading.
12. Your Capital builds it's 5th Wonder*
13. Your second city builds it's 5th Wonder.*
14. Being the First to Enter the Industrial Age.
15. Making a Mutual Protection Pact.
16. Your 11th city gets to 1000 Culture.
17. Your Income gets to 500.
18. An enemy civ attacks one of your cities (also includes Barbarians) for the first time.
19. Being the First to Enter the Modern Age.
20. Completely defeating a rival civ for the first time (either capture or destroy last remaining city).
21. Your Capital city gets to 20 Citizens
22. Your second city gets to 20 Citizens.
23. Have all 8 Resources either by ownership or trading.
24. Your Capital city is remarkably happy (relates to We Love days, but may occur without "We Love" visibly triggering).
25. Attain your first monopoly of one Luxury, all existing examples of the Luxury appearing in your trade window.
26. Attain your first monopoly of one Resource, all existing examples of the Resource appearing in your trade window.
27. Trade out (not in) a Luxury for the first time to another empire. (requires a specific condition).
28. Unknown reason caused by building a random Wonder (possibly relates to favoured Wonders by trait - speculative).
29. Destroy your first Barbarian Camp (extremely temperamental? Requires a specific condition, like 'first to' or something?).

*I have built 5 Wonders in my Capital and got an Upgrade. I have built 5 Wonders in a random city and got an upgrade. I have built 5 Wonders in both my Capital and 1 random city and got two upgrades (one for each). I did not get an upgrade for building 5 Wonders in a third city. I have not tested if one of the upgrades requires it to be your Capital or if you can get both the upgrades from two non-Capital cities, but Capital+1 fits with other upgrades.

When you suddenly get two or even three Upgrades, it's not necessarily a bug of delayed Upgrades, but often some of the above occurring simultaneously, such as your 5th Wonder triggering a Golden Age which suddenly zooms your Income over 500 and makes your Capital really happy .

Found using Civilisation 3 Complete, Regent Level, Huge Map, Archipelago, all middle settings, 11 opponents, all usual Victory Conditions. I have tested these in many, many games.

There are more ways to get Palace Upgrades, this is not an exhaustive list and I welcome any new confirmed additions, but, as you can tell, by the time you get to Nationalism you will probably have a full Palace, so won't have any idea what after that triggers an Upgrade. I shall continue to investigate for more Upgrades by trying to manipulate my games to avoid some of the above.

And we now have a new, never before tried by anyone, max'ing challenge for all you civ'ers who are looking for a new twist:

I just finished a game where I maxed my Palace @ 1200AD exactly, one tech into the Industrial Age (Nationalism). Now, I know I could have been quicker as I couldn't hook-up all 8 Luxuries in this game because the nasty ol' AI only gave the game one solitary Gem square, so I'd have to have invaded a whole civ to get it, by which time in my game hanging out for Nationalism was quicker, but I 'should' have max'ed by 1050AD if there had been more Gems.

So what are you waiting for?

Get adding to my list or max'ing those Palaces...

Feel free to ask any questions.

 

[justanick]

Good work, let the nitpicking begin!

1. Founding your second city.

I suppose this means to have 2 cities. Or does it work to found one city, settler-raze it and found a "second" city? I wonder if conquering in order to have 2 cities will work.

5. Your 11th city gets to 100 Culture.

Similar here. I doubt one needs to find out which city the 11th one is, one does need to have 11 cities with 100 culture.

6. Your second city gets to size 10.

That would be having 2 cities at size 10.

8. Your 21st city gets to 10 Culture.

That would be having 21 cities with 10 culture.

15. Your 11th city gets to 1000 Culture.

That would be having 11 cities with 1000 culture.

16. Your Income gets to 500.

By which measure? I doubt you refer to income as used by F11 as that cannot reach anything near 500.

*As far as I can tell, triggered by the Capital's first "We Love" day, but possibly triggered by some unknown algorithm that doesn't necessarily require the "We Love" to trigger, but just requires a certain level of happiness at a certain city size beyond size 7.

WLTKD may trigger beyond size 5, so that can happen at size 6 or above.

 

[Buttercup]

Thanks for your input justanick

Edit: In answer to your question, the Income is the section in the top left of the Domestic Adviser screen entitled 'Income'.

 

[Jingo7]

If you have a revolution your palace should be burned down, or at least redecorated.

 

[Buttercup]

Lol, interesting suggestion, if somewhat frustrating from a gaming perspective

 

[Jingo7]

On a more related note, your inquiry is admirable, although it has been so long since playing unmodded civ3 that palatial mechanics don't really interest me. Isn't it quite nice though, and significant of that era of game making, to have something of such pomp and pointlessness as the palace. I can imagine the palace introduced into a new civ, with Steam trophies and some stupid upgrades at every palace improvement that simply unlock progressively like a civ5 worthless upgrade that the player just 'gets' as an instantly gratifying substitute for real choice and gameplay.

 

[Jingo7]

No I'm being stupid actually, the palace sucked and going by the rule of 'if it doesn't have an effect/affect or significance in some way then it might as well not be there', then it's pretty silly indeed.

 

[Buttercup]

If you treat it as a Victory Condition it's no more silly than any other victory condition...

But, yes, it's the old fashioned version of Achievement hunting.

From a gameplay perspective, it could be argued to be more relevant that any other victory condition, as the prize is something that is a metaphore for personal greed, the primary motivator for human achievement in a Capitalist system. When you wake up and go to work, do you do it so that you can conquer all your competitors? That might be a side effect, but is that your primary motivation? Do you hope to convince all your friends to vote for you to be the company's representative? Do you hope to fly to the stars?

Quite possibly all of the above. But the thing that makes you do it day-to-day is the basic desire to improve your Palace. Whether that Palace is an inner-city apartment or country house or standard terrace.

If you look at it from this point of view, the Palace is arguably the most relevant Victory Condition. You still have to play towards it if you wish to max it, same as any other Victory Condition.

So you won the war and killed everyone on the planet, you still live in a cave...

Edit: and for someone who claims to view the Palace as pointless, you've already contributed 3 messages to this thread, all of which are fun, but are ironically even more pointless than you're making the Palace out to be. There are plenty of other Palace threads for that, two currently on the front page, one even entitled "What's the point of the Palace" or thereabouts. This is primarily a factual thread, and while fun posts are fun and welcome, please bare in mind that people not familiar with your biases will be searching this thread on google for facts who have no interest in such time wasting and will be rolling their eyes as they scan the thread for 'facts'... (but no malice from me, just requesting you be a little more 'self conscious' )

 

[Jingo7]

Point taken, I will delete my posts if you like and take up discussion elsewhere as you have suggested.

 

[agonistes]

Shame on you both. I love the palace.

*veers battalion of modern armor towards Buttercup*



I will start a game just for the sake of the palace data. Maybe I will use some of the views as the background for the tech advisor on one of my biqs.

 

[Buttercup]

I look forward to your findings/results! However, I'm not sure I understand why I'm being read as anti-Palace? I'd have thought this thread suggests I'm quite pro-Palace?

 

[agonistes]

My palace start, first attempt, random map:

 

[Buttercup]

Lol, that's awesome , and quite fitting to the latest one I found (see new additions in OP) where getting to size 20 gives you an upgrade

 

[Quintillus]

Holy cow, that's a good start (pun intended). Do you have the seed (from the New Game screen) or 4000 BC? Looks like a start that I'd like to play someday.

Back on the main topic, that's a very interesting compilation of palace conditions, the likes of which I haven't seen previously. That takes some attention to detail to notice things like the 21st city reaching 10 culture triggering a palace upgrade! It also makes more sense why sometimes you get two or three upgrades at once.

I like the idea of the maximized-palace competition. 1200 AD is pretty good. Maybe this could be a new Fastest Finish table on the Hall of Fame? Divide it up by difficulty and map size. We could use some more HOF entries, after all! And I'm no exception, not having submitted any since early last year.

I do wonder if some of them vary by map size; it would be unusual to get 21 cities on many tiny maps.

 

[walletta]

Holy guacamole! Overrun by cows! Still, a lousy start - only one lux and no hills for your iron supply. Better give that one up.

 

[agonistes]

No, I don't have the seed from 4000 b.c., sorry. I tend to use one save for each game I play to reduce the amount of saved files I have. I have the current game, and that is it.

I just got a palace upgrade (my 4th I think), and can't figure out why. No wonders built, culture at 2710, no cities hit 12... maybe territory as I had a border pop. Also I had my golden age end. I checked culture on individual cities, I had 5 over 200, but the nearest to 200 was 210, and that city is only gaining 3 per turn.

Just had another pop. Maybe my first water unit?

And another. Possibly related to population? Sigh. And another. No idea why.

Next one was second wonder in capital, but you knew that one.

Another. This is getting to be pointless. Maybe 5000 culture?

Got one for wiping out the English. As you know.

I think you get one when your civ gets to 7000 culture. Just got one, 7010 culture. But I also have 11 cities at 200 culture, so not sure.

Thinking total of numbers of cities may have something to do with it. Just hit 41. Also think one or two of my unknowns earlier was 'We love the king' for both capital and civ, as already pointed out as a cause.

As a note, the English had MoM, Aztecs had Pyramids and Great Wall (same city), Egyptians had Lighthouse. I built Zeus and Sun Tzu's in Capital, am working on H. Epic. Also built Gardens and Templar in two other cities. Am working on Chapel on atm, in city with Gardens.

 

[Buttercup]

Back on the main topic, that's a very interesting compilation of palace conditions, the likes of which I haven't seen previously. That takes some attention to detail to notice things like the 21st city reaching 10 culture triggering a palace upgrade! It also makes more sense why sometimes you get two or three upgrades at once.

I do wonder if some of them vary by map size; it would be unusual to get 21 cities on many tiny maps.

Thanks for the kind words, yes, it's quite interesting figuring them all out. I thought about map size variants, but the Tiny game didn't change anything.

No, I don't have the seed from 4000 b.c., sorry. I tend to use one save for each game I play to reduce the amount of saved files I have. I have the current game, and that is it.

I just got a palace upgrade (my 4th I think), and can't figure out why. No wonders built, culture at 2710, no cities hit 12... maybe territory as I had a border pop. Also I had my golden age end. I checked culture on individual cities, I had 5 over 200, but the nearest to 200 was 210, and that city is only gaining 3 per turn.

Just had another pop. Maybe my first water unit?

And another. Possibly related to population?

It's at size 10 you get an upgrade, not size 12, so that's probably two of them, don't forget to check for your Income reaching 500. Things like first water unit (or any other unit) don't do anything. Amount of Territory is a dead end as well.

Also, I've added some more details to the OP having just run another experimental game. Only one new upgrade, and a variant on an existing one, but lots of small wording changes.

Edit: you're also looking for cities with over 100 culture, not 200.

 

[tjs282]

Just wanted to say, Buttercup, thanks for compiling this list. Haven't got anything to add to it at the moment though.

Off-topic (sorry!)...

No, I don't have the seed from 4000 b.c., sorry. I tend to use one save for each game I play to reduce the amount of saved files I have. I have the current game, and that is it.

Even if you didn't make a manual 4000 BC save, so long as you haven't started another game since, and you don't habitually wipe the Autosave folder, you will still have the 4000 BC autosave for that cow-licious start. But your 4000 BC save isn't actually needed.

By choosing the same map-seed and map-settings (size, landform, %water, geography, climate, age) as you did last time (and possibly also selecting the Persians as the home-civ, and the same opponents, difficulty, and barb-level -- not sure if that's necessary though), someone else could generate a new 4000 BC save, which will be (nearly) identical to the above (the opposing civs may get assigned to different starting positions, depending on which order they're selected in the list).

Spoiler :

If you are still playing that game, then there are several ways you could retrieve the Map-seed and -settings:

1. Select 'Play last world' at the start menu -- if the Map-stats screen opens (not sure if it does -- I never used this option), then the seed will be displayed at the top right; if it goes straight to the game, then you should get an identical 4000 BC (auto)save
2. Open your latest savegame in CivAssist, if you have it (if not, why not?!), open the WorldMap, (wait for the graphics to load ) and then right-click on the map. At the bottom of the pop-up menu, click 'Properties', which will give the Map-seed, along with all the other Map-settings
3. Open the Conquests.ini file using e.g. Windows Notepad: the Map-seed for the last start generated is stored there, along with the Map-settings -- the latter albeit only as numerical values, but copying them into our own .cfg file would give us the same starting conditions to 'Play last World'

 

[Kirejara]

I miss in Buttercups list "Conquering a barbarian camp".

This is my usual event for the first palace upgrade.

 

[Buttercup]

Because I've never had it. I've destroyed lots of Barbarian Camps though. I'll keep keeping an eye out for it, but I'm not seeing it. Perhaps it's not in Civ 3 Complete? If other people could experiment with it?