Do We Want to Move Our Palace?

[Furiey]

There has been talk since the start of the game when we discovered we were on the edge of the continent, about moving our Palace from its present position in Camelot to a more central location in the continent. As we now have a large portion of the continent, it is time to decide whether or not we want to do this.

The discussion thread is here, but to summarise; a central Palace would reduce corruption in our nation and give us more productive towns, but we would lose a link with the history of our nation.

It is important to note that the Forbidden Palace will not give a second productive core as it did in Vanilla Civ or PTW, so we cannot balance a poor Palace location with a good Forbidden Palace location.

Map showing location of Camelot and the other cities on our part of the continent


So the question for now is simply:

Do we want to move our Palace?

Yes - We need to move it to a central location
No - leave it where it is
Abstain - I'll party wherever that Palace is​

Once we have decided this we can move on if required to decide where, when and how.

Poll will be open for 72 hours and is Public.

 

[GenMarshall]

I voted for yes to move the capital. It should help a bit with lowering the corruption in our empire.

 

[greekguy]

Yes, this would really help with corruption. I believe it should be the "green dot" btw.

 

[Ashburnham]

No. No. No. No. No. No. NO! NO! NO!

Making a move like this would be the worst case of "powergaming" in what has thusfar been a very true-to-life Demogame. We've had judicial debates, legislative debates, military debates. In my opinion, we've had an excellent government so far. But now we're going to throw that all away just to be "gamey". It's deplorable.

Anyway, I already went on a rant about this, so I'll save you all a fresh one and repost it.

Looks like I'm the minority here, but I'm extremely against building a new palace. There's more to government than simply rooting out corruption. That's what the FP is for. Let's build that in a central location and be done with it. Moving the capital is, in my mind, an extremely gamey and unsporting move. Should America move their capital to South Dakota? Should China move their capital to the Gobi? It's simply not something a responsible government does. Let's not forget, we are trying to simulate a real government.

There's history in a capital. There's tradition. There's the feeling that no matter how for we expand or how much we advance, this city was our foundation, our rock. Rejecting all that simply because it will net us a few more gold per turn would be a great diservice to the cultural roots of our nation. Let's not forget, this is Camelot we're talking about. The mythical court of the greatest ruler in England's history. Arthur was the paragon of all that English royalty aspire to, and Camelot is an embodiment of that fact. Removing the palace from Camelot is tatamount to killing off the only ties to our civilization we would have.

Don't let this happen. Don't sever the roots of Fanatannia solely for the sake of being gamey.

 

[Furiey]

Making a move like this would be the worst case of "powergaming" in what has thusfar been a very true-to-life Demogame.

True to life? I'm sorry, but capitols are moved in real-life to form the new centre of power in expanding empires and ancient palaces become the stuff of legend...

 

[Double Stack]

United States had changed capital twice in its history. The first one was Philadelphia, PA then New York City, NY and now to Washington D.C. as it has been for over 200 years. So captiol changes is real life.

 

[zyxy]

I hate decisions like this.

In my own games, I almost never move the palace. I think I tried it once, using the free palace jump trick -- my palace jumped all over the place, except where I wanted it too

My sentiments are the same as those of Ashburnham. The palace is part of our history, let's not throw it away too lightly.
On the other hand we need a lot of production power to build 100+ towns with libraries and temples. So reason suggests that a palace move might be useful.

Now the question is: will the palace move significantly reduce corruption? Reading alexman's analysis, it seems that distance to the palace plays no role for rank corruption (except that it determines the ranking), only for distance corruption. The FP can reduce distance corruption, but not rank corruption (except by increasing the optimal city number Nopt). This means that the whole idea of two cores is out of the window, there is only one now, and the function of the FP has changed: it reduces corruption in the city where it is built, and can act as a second center for distance corruption in the (only) core region.

So: we could build the FP in a central location, e.g. Husborne Crawley. Then all cities near the FP will have low distance corruption, while at least those in the southern half of our lands will have low rank (and distance) corruption. An off-central palace means that even fairly distant cities still have low rank. We will probably end up with fewer cities at very low corruption, but more at intermediate levels of corruption.
I don't know how this evens out. But in any case it might be a reasonable compromise.

Intimately connected to this is the question how we will move the palace. (You can try to separate the principle from the implementation, but that's not entirely fair I think). Palace moves come at a significant cost. We either have to handbuild a new palace, or sacrifice Camelot and jump the palace, or use a great leader (that we don't have, and that could also be used to build the FP or an army once we get it).

I'll think another day or so before voting.

 

[Furiey]

Using the new version of Civ Assist (yipee!) we can see the percentage corruption in each of the towns. The following shows the corruption for the Palace in Camelot and Husborne Crawley (as the green dot has been mentioned) in both Despotism (left hand tables) and Republic (Right hand tables). I have not shown how it changes actual spt as this will change as cities grow, but the percentage will not. The percentages in both case will be affected as we get more and more cities.

I move my palace more than I used to, at first I never moved it (except when I forgot a pre-build ), now I tend to move it when it's stuck on the edge of the empire or in Vanilla to set up a second core. If necessary I'll build by hand, or use a leader. On the occasions I've tried it the free palace jump has worked like a charm (and I've just noticed that the new Civ Assist will do the calcs for you).

If we say yes in this poll we can go ahead and work out the mechanics of the move. If at the end of all that we decide the cost is too great, there will be an option not to move it in the final poll. There's just no point discussing at length the how and where if the majority don't want to move it at all.

 

[GenMarshall]

I have to go with the data Furiey presented .

 

[zyxy]

Hm, I'm going to download that package...

One thing though: it looks like your figures don't take into account the effect of an FP. Building the FP in a central location is crucial if we want to reduce corruption and keep Camelot as Palace.

Oh, two things really: your tables also nicely show that distance corruption does matter quite a bit, despite what everyone always claims. Unless I really don't understand it, rank corruption alone would show exactly the same figures independent of where the Palace is (only the order of the cities would change)

EDIT: I have also played with CivAssist - nice . Here's the corruption in Republic, on the left with Palace in Camelot and FP in Husborne Crawley, on the right the other way around. It makes very little difference - unlike in Vanilla. Of course FP in Camelot may not be the best location, but I played around with it a bit, and with the Palace in HC the location of the FP hardly matters for the corruption percentages.

 

[Nobody]

Making a move like this would be the worst case of "powergaming" in what has thusfar been a very true-to-life Demogame. We've had judicial debates, legislative debates, military debates. In my opinion, we've had an excellent government so far. But now we're going to throw that all away just to be "gamey". It's deplorable.

I agree, camelot is our capital naming it is the honor of the first president, i dont want to dishonor president shack

 

[Furiey]

No my figures don't inlcude the Forbidden Palace, I just didn't have to time to play with the Forbidden Palace location and find the optimum for each site. Sir Pleb did some work on optimum locations in one of his games which is referenced in the C3C corruption conquest thread referenced in the war academy. Either way it will be interesting to see how this works out as our empire grows.