Alexman,
Glad to see you're still reading this thread! I have a question
for you (or anyone else who knows the answer).
About seven months ago I posted a strategy guide on how to work
around corruption and waste in order to maximize the overall
production and efficiency of one's empire, to the "Official
Corruption Solotions" thread. I'm now working on a complete
overhaul of that guide, as it's now quite out of date. Some of
the things in it are no longer true as a result of patches, and
others were based on empirical observations I had made without
fully understanding the mechanics behind what I was seeing, and
your post that started this thread has some important
implications to that. Also I just have a lot more experience
with the game now, and I've changed my mind about some things.
Anyway my question has to do with FP placement, and what happens
with cities that are more or less equidistant from your capital
and FP.
You said that the FP gives you a whole new set of cities where
Ncity starts at one. Basically what I want to know is, is the
set of cities whose Fc is determined by their distance from the
FP completely distinct from the set of cities whose Fc is
determined by their distance from the capital, or is it possible
for one city to be a member of both sets?
For example, suppose you're playing as the Americans. Your capital
is in Washington, and you built your FP in Chicago, which is 10
squares away from Washington. Now suppose you have 3 cities within
5 squares of Washington, those being Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston. The next farthest out city from Washington, after Boston,
is Detroit. Detroit is 7 squares from Washington, but only 6
squares from Chicago. Then comes Atlanta, which is 8 squares away
from Washington and 11 squares from Chicago. Philly, New York and
Boston are all at least 12 squares away from Chicago.
Now the question is, what is Atlanta's Ncity value? 3, 4, or 5?
Atlanta is the 5th farthest city from Washington, coming after
number 4 Detroit. However Detroit is closer to the FP in Chicago
than it is to the capital in Washington. Does that mean that it
doesn't count towards Atlanta's Ncity value?
In other words, do the Ncity rankings look like this:
0 Washington
1 Philly
2 New York
3 Boston
4 Atlanta
0 Chicago
1 Detroit
or like this:
0 Washington
1 Philly
2 New York
3 Boston
4 Detroit
5 Atlanta
6 Chicago
0 Chicago
1 Detroit
2 Washington
3 Atlanta
4 Philly
5 New York
6 Boston
Does each city belong in both lists, or just one?
And if each city appears in both lists, then is its Ncity value
that is used to compute corruption based on the minimum of its
rankings in the two lists, or on its ranking in the list for
whichever "capital" it's closest to? In other words, would
Atlanta's Ncity value be 5, because it's closer to Washington
than to Chicago, and it's the 5th farthest city from Washington,
or would it be 3, because it's only the 3rd farthest city from
Chicago?
The major implication of this question is that, if each city
only appears in one of the two lists, putting the FP a great
distance from the capital is much less important that it would
otherwise appear.
Whenever you have a lot of cities, Fc is going to be the primary
limiting factor to your overall productivity, rather than Fd.
Basically you get a cluser of approximately Nopt productive cities
surrounding your capital, and another cluster of Nopt productive
cities surrounding the FP. All of your other cities will have 95%
corruption, or close to it, and will be net liabilities to your
empire rather than assets. But if each city appears in only one
of the two Ncity ranking lists, then the only thing that changes
by putting your FP right next door to your capital is that you
get one cluster of 2*Nopt productive cities, rather than two
clusters each contaning Nopt. Either way you get a total of 2*Nopt
productive cities.
Of course it would have to be a bigger cluster, in order to avoid
the cities' production radii from overlapping, which means the
average distance from the capital/FP of your productive cities would
be a bit greater, which means you get a bit more Fd, which means
your empire's total productivity would take a bit of a hit. But it
would be far from disasterous, and that loss might actually be
outweighed by the advantages of putting the FP close to the capital,
such as that you can build it with the city's native productivity
rather than always having to use up a Great Leader, and your
perimiter would be smaller, making your home territory easier to
defend.
What do you think?
Also, anyone from Firaxis want to comment on this?