Capital Defense Bonus?

Spoonwood

Grand Philosopher
Joined
Apr 30, 2008
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I've long accepted that the capital gives units a defensive bonus. Someone today asked if I was sure about that. The civ III combat calculator says that it does. But, if I look at the section for the improvement Palace in both editors I see 'Center of Empire' checked, but also '0' for defensive bonus, unlike walls. Does 'center of empire' yield some sort of defensive bonus? Or does the capital not provide a defensive bonus?

How have people inferred that the capital yields a defensive bonus for units?
 
At least this calculator doesn't list the capital as a defense bonus. Maybe people are mistakenly applying the city (level 2) defense bonus to the capital since it uses the graphics of one?
 
The game does use the "City Size 2" graphics for Capitals at Pop1-6, and the "City Size 3" graphic for Capitals at Pop7-12, which at least visually implies that the game is treating a Capital city as being bigger than it actually is... :dunno:
(Damn ninjas... :ninja: )
 
It's worth noting that there are multiple Civ3 combat calculators. There's also the BomberEscort one, and I believe someone created one that works within an Excel worksheet as well, although I'm having difficulty finding it now.

That said the BomberEscort one doesn't show anything special for capitals either, nor have I ever heard of that being the case in an unmodded game. My guess is Arexander's theory of why that may have been reported is correct.

For modded scenarios, one of the features of my editor is showing the cumulative defensive bonus of a city (including terrain bonuses), as some scenarios give cities significant defense bonuses via pre-placed wonders or other unbuildable buildings, which are hard to discover in-game except through unfortunate attacks against brick walls. That is another source of potential reports of capitals having defensive bonuses.
 
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