How effective should Forbidden Palace be in Conquests?

[SirPleb]

Background:

o There is a lot of discussion about this in other current threads - it is time for a thread dedicated to the subject I think.

o It seems that Firaxis is interested in what the community thinks about the corruption model.

o Most of the current posts on this subject were triggered by bugs in C3C related to the Forbidden Palace.

o Yeti's summary in the "Firaxis: Corruption Breakdown" thread, copied below, is the best summary of the issues so far I think.

Originally posted by Yeti

There appear to be three slants on this:

1) Fix the bugs and leave the FP as it was in PTW. This is the currently planned design.

- Effect: The FP both increases the OCN (decreases corruption due to number of cities) and acts as a new capital (decreases corruption due to distance for those cities closer to the FP than they are to the palace).

- Pros: This makes the FP very powerful, allowing a civ to have a second cluster of highly productive cities. As a non-change it also minimizes coding and testing efforts and associated risks.

- Cons: The AI is not good at placing the FP, and therefore human players gain a substantially greater benefit from the FP. It creates an environment where the palace jump trick/exploit thrives. It rewards war mongering as well (Sorry, I'm not clear on this portion of Alexman's argument. Did he mean the fact that it can be built using a leader in a highly corrupt area, the fact that when you take over another civ's core you often gain a prime spot for your FP (or to jump your palace to), or that those that take over a lot of territory / cities benefit the most from the FP's reduced corruption? Isn't the first point no longer a factor with science leaders, and the third one not really a point since the OCN increase would exist regardless of which FP format is used?)

- Possible tweak: The FP could be made more powerful for the AI to help rebalance things. Perhaps remove the distance benefit for the AI (to avoid overpowering it in cases where the AI accidentally did place it well) and instead have it give a civ-wide percent reduction in corruption.

- Possible tweak: Reduce the distance benefit. Have corruption increase faster as you get further from the FP than it would at the same distance from the true palace. For example, being at a distance of 15 from the palace might give the same distance corruption as being 10 from the FP.

- Possible tweak: Anyone have a good suggestion for how to solve the palace jump issue without changing how the FP works?


2) Leave the FP as it is in C3C 1.12.

- Effect: The FP increases the OCN, but does not act as a new capital. It also appears to act like a courthouse / PS, providing a small corruption decrease in the city where it is built.

- Pros: Balances player vs AI better. Addresses the palace jump issue. Improves war monger vs builder balance (I'll be clearer on this point hopefully after some clarification on Alexman's points).

- Cons: More significant game change, therefore slight risk of unforeseen issues arising. Greatly reduces the power of the FP, which will change people's game play and strategies, possibly making some folks cranky

- Possible tweak: If the distance benefit of the FP is removed, then it should probably be strengthened in some other way. Perhaps make it work like an additional corruption reducing building (PS / courthouse) in every city. Or make it reduce by some percentage (25%?) the effect of distance related corruption in all cities, while still using the palace as the center for that calculation. It could also be given a continent wide effect as the system for implementing that already exists.

3) Leave the FP as it was in PTW, but improve the AI's use of it.

- Effect: Same as with PTW.

- Pros: This would help address the player vs AI benefits received from the FP issue. Does not affect anyone's playing style or strategy, while making the AI a bit more competitive.

- Cons: Significant design / coding change as AI behavior algorithms can be a bear to implement. More likely to introduce new bugs or exploits. Does not address palace jump or war mongering issues.

- Possible tweak: As above - does anyone have a good suggestion for another way (without changing the FP) or addressing the palace jump issue?

Comment away folks What did I miss? Where are the holes in my thought process? What are your opinions and further suggestions?

My comments on Yeti's comments:

About (1):

I disagree with some of the cons.

Yes, the AI doesn't place FP well, and yes this creates an area where the human has an advantage. But there are many such areas and because of them the AI gets other advantages, which become huge at the hardest levels. I think that if you take away one of the human's strong advantages, you then have to rebalance the difficulty levels to correspond. A patch doesn't seem to me like the time for changes which may require a lot of rebalancing.

And yes the strong FP is what makes the Palace jump useful. But I don't understand how the Palace jump became a big part of these conversations. It isn't something Firaxis was trying to fix. I personally don't think it needs fixing. It creates some advantage but not a huge one. And it is not a "trick" which those who've mastered it can casually use - it requires careful setup to do a jump and requires tradeoffs in other areas. It is far from a free trick. I think it isn't overpowering and doesn't need to be addressed.

And one more pro for (1) I'd like to add: This way it remains familiar to all the people who have played CivIII and PTW. That's not a great reason by itself, but in the absence of clear reasons to make a change I think this reason should always prevail for not making it.

About (2):

I don't think this is a good option at all. Two cons in addition to those Yeti listed:

With the 1.12 bug, sometimes adding corrupt cities to your empire through simple expansion will reduce your empire's total productivity. I think that should never happen. Adding a city should always increase total empire production by at least 1 gold and 1 shield, never reduce it.

The 1.12 FP approach is very difficult to concisely explain to new players of the game. It will also be somewhat confusing to many experienced players. Only those who understand the difference between rank and distance corruption can properly understand it, and that is a small minority of players of the game.

About (3):

Great if possible but it seems an awful lot to ask for in a patch, considering that it hasn't been done in all releases so far.

I agree with Yeti's cons on this one - risk of introducing new exploits, e.g. by "baiting" the AI into developing toward a particular region for its FP.

So I've started the poll with my vote to not change from CivIII/PTW

 

[Qitai]

Well, I would do (1) first since 10 Jan is not really alot of time for them to improve AI. Then give us (3) eventually.

Also, I would rather have them tweaking the courthouse, police station eventually to have an added function to reduce the max corruption rate from 95% to 90% to 85% with each corruption reducing improvement. This way, at least you get something for spending effort to build those improvements. And my estimate is that it does not unbalance the game at all since the incremental shields would be insignificant. But yet, this gives alot of players the "feel good" effect of seeing the painfully builded courthouse, police station doing something!!

Also, I agree that it is puzzling to see Palace Jump becoming the issue!!! when the current problem is not directly related to that at all!!

 

[Torisen]

My input, FWIW:

Make it the way it was. It is OK to make the benefit stronger/different for the AI. Do not have faster corruption dropoff for FP.

As for Palace Jumps - You should go anarchy, or it should move to the closest city, or both. Not the largest city. Your government types should scurry only as far as they have to when the capital burns.

Um, how is communism corruption implemented for C3C? Is it still the case where a very large communism winds up with max corruption everywhere?

 

[Yeti]

So many excellent suggestions and ideas. This is definitely a complicated issue

First I wanted to respond to some points that Akots raised in the previous thread:

Originally posted by akots
1) The effect of FP on rank corruption can be lower than the effect of Palace. For this to work, rank corruption must be split in 2 components, one includes a rank from palace with high benefit and another rank from FP with lower benefit. SPHQ effect on rank will require another component which is specific for Communism. It also makes sense because the head of the state actually resides in Palace city with most of government and visits FP city only from time to time. May be program code can be complicated but equations are supposed to be very simple.

2) After the Palace is destroyed/captured/disbanded, let it jump into FP city if these two are allowed to co-exist. This way you are really in trouble. If there is no FP, then Palace jumps to the next city in the build order or rank versus previous Palace. But not to the largest city. On the other hand, it would be possible to do FP prebuild in the first core, abandon the new second core Palace+FP city again and jump to some nearby city in the second core and finish the first core FP. Which will make 2 cores again. Ont the other hand, this is major effort indeed and with devaluated FP, it would not worth much. the major disadvantage of this would be for AI. If you get their capital, they are done.

3) Would not it be just easier for everyone that FP does very-very slightly decrease rank corruption but increases OCN considerably?

On 1 - I think things can be simplified by just adding a modifier to the distance from the FP. I'm assuming (no jokes please ) that currently the distance to the palace and the distance to the FP are both calculated, and whichever is less, is the distance that is then compared to all of the other city distances to assign ranks. Instead compare, for an example, the distance to the palace against 130% of the distance to the FP, and use whichever is less to assign a rank. This would result in a smaller ring of productive cities around the FP than around the palace.

This would be a piece of a plan you could call "Leave the FP mechanics as they are in PTW, but scale back its strength."

On 2 - Those are some good ideas if the Palace Jump issue (which as SirPleb pointed out isn't that big a deal since it is quite complicated to pull off and has its own down sides already) is considered significant enough to warrant a change.

On 3 - I don't think that would work well. With a larger empire you have cities that would be totally corrupt just from the distance (rank) portion of the corruption calculation, regardless of the OCN.


On SirPleb's comments:

- Good point about the AI having many weaknesses and receiving compensation already. This is one of the reasons I worry about any significant change here - it has the potential to create lots of balance issues.

- And I'm fine with disregarding the Palace Jump issue. It was raised by others as a benefit of the C3C 1.12 FP model, so I included it, but it's not something I've ever used. I'd definitely have to review some threads and triple check my city size and distance calculations to figure out where my palace would land if I ever did.

- I agree with the rest of SirPleb's points as well, which leaves me wondering not if the FP should be totally changed (from PTW flavor to C3C 1.12 style), but more generally if other aspects of the corruption model should be tweaked - to weaken the strength of the FP and / or to give the AI more of an advantage.

That brings me to Qitai's ideas. I agree that it would be nice to have the construction of those improvements always make at least some difference (I often see the construction of a PS (2gpt upkeep) not even pay for itself, and that's in cities that aren't totally corrupt. Totally corrupt ones... forget about it!). This should also be a change that would equally benefit the player and the AI.

Something I hadn't thought of in regards to #3 (from my original list) - If the AI is smart enough to place its FP in the best spot, then players will be able to figure out where that spot is. Capturing (or nuking I suppose) an optimally placed FP from a civ would really damage its productivity.

 

[Buckets]

I am in the camp that likes the FP in 1.12. That said, there may be a better way.

This may be overly simplistic, but...

For the sake of argument, imagine your empire consists of 20 cities. The OCN (optimal city number) is 20. The capital suffers 0% corruption (or as near to it as the game allows) The next closest 5%, the next 10% and so on down to the minimum. By building a FP, You would then have two 0% cities, but then the rest follow: 5% for the next nearest to the palace, 10% for the next to the FP, 15% for the second to the Palace, 20% for the second to the FP, and so on. So effectively one's empire suffers the same % overall corruption, but just redistributes it. Add to that the fact that the FP increases OCN 20% (if memory serves). I think that would satisfy most, if not everyone. You could then have two cores anywhere in the world, reduced corruption, and it won't really matter where you build the FP in because there is only one 'city list'.

I am hoping this is the way it is meant to be implemented in the next beta, but i won't hold my breath. i've been wrong before.

 

[Marlor]

The FP in 1.12 just isn't strong enough.

As it was, many of us were frustrated at the inability to reduce corruption in Civ3. Reducing the effectiveness of the FP just exacerbates this problem.

So leave it as it was in Civ3/PTW please

 

[Black Waltz]

I like it in 1.12. Finally something that mixes the game up slightly. Those who are against it are probably just those that mod their game to get 30,30,3 units anyway so they can wipe out the AI easier... *rolls eyes*

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

The FP should be less strong than Civ3/PTW. It could very well be that once it is working as intended, it will seem that way to me anyway. Not alot, just some.

From some recent reading and stressing this overly tired brain, it seems i had been unintentionally taking advantage of the rank bug. Not because i fully understood it, but rather trial and error had shown me certain things worked well.

The palace jump became an issue solely as a side effect of 1.12 since moving the palace a long way away is not a good idea.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Black Waltz
I like it in 1.12. Finally something that mixes the game up slightly. Those who are against it are probably just those that mod their game to get 30,30,3 units anyway so they can wipe out the AI easier... *rolls eyes*

Well in my case I'm a Civ and Civ2 veteran who hates the way that corruption is implemented in Civ3. The Civ3/PTW FP was one of the few ways that this corruption could be managed effectively, to reduce the micromanagement teduim that comes with massive corruption.

Anyway, I just want a working old-style FP. Once the current bugs are fixed, they can do what they like to the FP in later patches, I just wont install them. But until we have a working FP, I don't think they should change it, or there will be a lot of us dumping C3C and going back to vanilla Civ3 or PTW.

 

[cgannon64]

I want my old FP back. This one is too confusing, its effects to hard to guage. I'm still not sure if my FP does anything in my current game...

 

[Bam-Bam]

I have to throw my hat in to the "old-style FP, with some lessening of its effects" camp. I like the suggestion of increasing distance corruption for cities affected by the FP. That is, a city 10 spaces from the FP should have distance corruption similar to a city 15 spaces from the palace. Those numbers are examples--I think this should be an easy to implement and easy to understand fix--think of the FP as not having as great an influence as the palace.

 

[Catt]

I didn't vote, but improving the AI to make better use of available options is always a good thing!

I don't have a strong opinion on the 1.12 version of the FP versus the traditional FP; I would default to favoring an implementation that is straight-forward and easily-understood and employed, and that would favor the traditional FP implementation. Although the 1.12 implementation might help the AI, I'm not convinced that that reason alone is enough to make a change. In any event, not enough play experience for me to cast a vote and express a strongly-felt opinion.

 

[Turner]

I rather like the thought of having it act more like a corruption-reducer, stronger than a police station and courthouse combined, and weaker than a palace. This would really work out better if there was an improvement that was dependent on how many cities you have. Call it a regional capital, and you need, say, six or ten, or however many cities to get a regional capital. You couldn't really put a restriction on where to put it, but common sense would keep them from being right next to each other. Of course, some code would need to be put in to keep the AI from putting them right next to each other. There would still be corruption, but not as bad.

Of course, if corruption is really a problem, you could always mod it out of the game. . .

 

[nihil8r]

i think that they should patch conquests to be a ww2 shooter. i hear those are very popular those days and it would make roughly the same level of sense that changing the forbidden palace from a second palace to a regional garbage dump does.

 

[Turner]

Wow. . . .someone's bitter.

 

[Aggie]

I like the effect of the old FP back. With a better ability of the AI to use it. The current FP effect is IMHO indeed to difficult to grasp for the average player.

I'dd go for option 3, which is not in the poll So I choose option 1.

I like the suggestion in SirPleb's post to make the FP more powerful for the AI (on HIGHER levels).

 

[ERIKK]

Option 1, but too I would like to see the ai using it better of course!

I am one of the die hard PBEM players and must say that I still support a
strong FP although in a PBEM (against 1 human opponent) getting an early leader
(and thus an early FP) disbalances the game. But I see it as a reward for the
risks you take and as a part of the luck factor this is present in this game.

 

[Turner]

Well, I like the idea of multiple 'regional capitols' as I always have a hard time finding a good spot for my FP. If I had a regional captiol I could build, then as I expand later in the game there would be less corruption over all.

Two productive rings?

Or one really productive ring, followed by multiple rings that while aren't as productive, have a lot less corruption over all?

Really, what should be done is a preferences choice, old-style FP or 'new' one, and when the new one is enabled, allow multiple rings. Then everyone is happy.

 

[akots]

Originally posted by SirPleb
Yes, the AI doesn't place FP well, and yes this creates an area where the human has an advantage. But there are many such areas and because of them the AI gets other advantages, which become huge at the hardest levels. I think that if you take away one of the human's strong advantages, you then have to rebalance the difficulty levels to correspond. A patch doesn't seem to me like the time for changes which may require a lot of rebalancing.

It is indeed a very strong point. However, I voted for Yeti's option number 3. On the other hand, trying to beat the Sid level "normally" (without worker dogpiles/early wars and with trade income fixed) is extremely difficult. However, for Deity this is OK, no need for major exploits just to win the game. It might be that Sid level is created just specifically for some very few players (10-100 all over the world) who like extreme challenges. Hope that there is no GOTM on Sid.

Also, it looks like in Firaxis, they don't like very much the system that was in PTW. And it might be changed anyhow. Alas, we will know only in June. It seems, they read and reply, and think some time, and then do what they want. Actually, they do well with the sales. It might be that the more the people argue, the more intriguing it gets for everyone, and the better the sales are... And the players are supposed to benefit from better sales because the more money they have the more time and resources they can spend at improving AIs. Which is the ultimate goal.

Regarding this, though slightly off topic, are there any ideas on how placement of FP by the AI might be improved?

 

[Commander Bello]

I voted for the "old" FP, since I like to play on huge maps. Sometimes I change them to more than 250*250 tiles. Anything which supports expansion and large empires is fine with me.
The argument that the FP has to be weakened because the AI doesn't make the best use of it, would eliminate artillery, tanks, bombers and other stuff as well. Even mining then would be an option to be disabled.