Forbidden Palace placement

[MotoMojo]

I'm playing at a fairly easy level (2nd level - warlord I think?) on a large map with 4 other civs. I have the vanilla, unpatched original game (1.07?)

My civ has a large presence on 3 continents (soon to be 4), with a Republic gov't, and I'm wondering where would be the best spot to build the Forbidden Palace. On my main continent, to take advantage of older, highly productive cities that have a lot of waste? Or would it ultimately be more effective to put it on another continent; although it would take longer to build, it could give me a second productivity powerhouse area. Is it possible to build it in one city, then destroy (or sell) it and build it elsewhere?

Any advice?

 

[pedrov]

I've also been interested in this issue. The civolopedia seems to suggest that the nearer a city is to its capitol, the lower the waste and corruption. If the forbidden palace acts as a second capitol, then there are two possibilities for how the placement would work. The possibilities depend on the question of: "If, theoretically, the palace and forbidden palace were build in the same city, or at least very near one another, would their effect on waste an corruption be cumulative?" If so, you could place it near your older cities (and palace) and really bump their production up. However, if the benefit of a forbidden palace is by spreading out the ability of other cities to be "near a capitol" (i.e., not a cumulative effect), then it would be wasteful to build the forbidden palace near the original palace.

Maybe you should try it both ways (saving your current place), and see how it effects your old cities or your newer (other continent) cities.

 

[Smellincoffee]

It depends on what version of the game you have. If you have vanilla Civ or PTW, then it's really up to you. If you have C3C, though, don't bother building the FP if it's not on your main continent. In C3C, the rules have changed- it's no longer a second palace. In C3C, it still lowers corruption, but not by as much. I've read that it's besto build it in cities that are 50% corrupted

 

[TimBentley]

There are articles in the war academy about corruption, although the threads about them in the strategy articles forum have been updated, so there may be minor inaccuracies in the war academy. I don't know anything about the unpatched version, so I'll just answer for patched vanilla Civ 1.29. I would suggest building the forbidden palace on your main continent and building the palace on a different continent (if you want to be exploitive, you could even manage to get the palace to jump there by abandoning your capital, as described in another war academy article (again, the thread in the strategy articles forum is more accurate)). This is effective because of a bug that causes all cities closer to the forbidden palace than the palace to be considered rank 1 (ie similar corruption to the city closest to the palace), significantly reducing corruption. If you want to be non-exploitive (although I would not consider it exploitive if there was a core of cities around your new palace), just build the forbidden palace on another continent if it can be finished in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[SanPellegrino]

the distance from the palace/FP is the most important factor for corruption and waste in Vanilla Civ3. try to build 2 cores of productive cities. if possible try to rush the FP with a leader.

another good strategy, but not an exploit:

1.build the FP fairly early at the center of what you think is your first core.

2.benefit from the ultra low corruption of having Palace and FP near to each other

3. rush the Palace to the new 2nd core after you conquered it.

(this method needs a leader, because a palace can get quite expensive in shields)

 

[WackenOpenAir]

One option is to rush the FP in a second core by a leader. Just make sure you produce only veteran units, and try to have as many elite wins as possible. For this, do the easiest fights with your elite units to optimize their chances and lifetime.

Another option is as said to rush the palace with a leader after building the FP in your first core.

You can also do it without a leader however.
Build your FP in your first core, probably close to the palace.
Now build or conquer cities for a second core.
Grow the central city in your second core to be your largest city by adding workers to it.
Disband your capital and have the palace move to your largest city, being in your second core. The FP will now provide for the first core while your palace has moved to the second.
When you disband your capital, the game will decide the new capital city by city size and by the number of surrounding cities. It counts the cities in an 8 tile radius around the cities. (i believe it divides that count by 3 and adds it to the city size) The city that gets highest on this calculation will become the new palace. So if your second core has less cities in an 8 tile radius around the central one than the large cities in your first core, you might need to grow it a few extra citizens so that the size difference with other cities is enough to make up for the less surrounding cities.

Finally, you could use city ring placement.
All cities that are at the same distance around the capital will have an equal corruption rank. If you have say the closest 8 cities at the same distance, they will all have the low corruption like they are the single closest city to the capital. when counting distance to the capital, diagonal tiles are counted as 1.5.
When you get at a non integer number like 4.5, it is rounded down and it will be treated as 4.

There also is a bug that causes all cities that are close to the FP to get their rank not by cities that are closer to the FP, but cities that are closer to the palace.
This bug can be abused in 2 ways:

-Make sure your capital is remote from all your other cities, like on the other side of the map and have your FP somewhere in the middle of your empire. SImply make sure all your cities are closer to the FP than to the capital and all your cities will have no rank corruption. This abuse is illegal in gotm.

-Have a large ring around your capital, say distance 7 or 8, while having many cities around your FP at a distance closer than that. Now all the cities in the capital ring and all the cities closer to the FP will have no rank corruption. This abuse is not stated illegal, but it is one of the strongest and most abusive abuses you can use in civ3.

Note, none if this works in C3Conquests.

 

[MotoMojo]

Thank you! A lot of interesting ideas here, and I think I have a couple of option in my current situation. I like the idea of saving, trying one thing, then trying another. Well, that's what the easy levels are for!

 

[michael4000]

This is a question that has given me a lot of trouble too. I think that taking too long to get the FP on line has been a real problem in my game. (I don't usually rush it with a leader because I don't tend to be very aggressive in the early game, and so don't have leaders -- arguably another real problem in my game.)

What I like about the idea of building the FP in the original core and then jumping the palace to a second core later is that the FP will get built much faster in the original core. The palace, I can build with a leader -- if I've got a second core, I must have been doing some warring.