Location and date for the FP

[Lord AJ]

After having played many games, cotm 113 being the most recent one, I finally discovered a major issue with my play style. I NEVER KNOW WHEN AND WHERE TO BUILD THE FP. Although I have read through articles explaining corruption in C3C and I have all the formulas and the other math at hand, still I don't think I'm even close to perfecting the technique of getting an FP set up at the right place and at the right time. So I'd like requesting all the experienced players on this forum to share their strategy as to the placement and timing of building the FP. I hope to learn and improve a lot from this discussion. Thanks a lot.

 

[justanick]

First i like to link to the article about corruption and then quote myself:

The VP has 3 uses:

1. Reducing (global) rank corruption.
2. Reducing corruption in the city with the VP itself.
3. Reducing the distance corruption by working as secondary capital for distance corruption only.

In my opinion this list also implies an order of importance. The distance corruption is of low importance. You are lucky to get a long term corruption reduction of 50 percentage points in total. But to get such a high value you may easily have to pay unreasonable cost like not having a VP for many turns. Reducing the rank corruption as early as possible is the most important issue as this is easily worth a corruption reduction 100 to 200 percentage in total from the first turn on. As the corruption in the city with the VP can be reduced to zero it is important to have a high output before corruption, also (else) having some significant corruption without the VP will increase the total net gain from the VP.

In communism distance corruption does not depend on distance. Therefore there is no effect on distance corruption with the exception of the city with the VP itself. In the long run communism tends to be the best government in C3C.

On standard maps the first founded city of the (future) second ring around your capital is a good place for your VP. On bigger maps the third ring may be better, on smaller maps the first ring may be the better choice. There needs to be some flexibility. Coincidence has it that the popup warning you about the option to build the VP indidicates that the cities founded around that time have an adequat corruption to build the VP. It needs to be high enough to profit adequatly from the vp, but it needs to be low enough to have it finished early. Building and possibly gold rushing a courthouse prior to the VP can be (very) helpful, also a building a like a marketplace that increases happiness may help to build the vp at an adequate pace. That the city can grow beyond size 7 without having to build an aqueduct first seems like an inevitability. The extra commerce from the river will be fully utilized once corruption in the city is down to zero. The capital and all secondary capitals are those city that in the industrial age should reach size 20+ to utilize all 20+1 tiles they possibly can utilize. That should be calculated in when placing cities near those capitals. In communism you can have 3 capitals with zero corruption. Those 20+1 tiles of them should offer an adequat combination of food, shields and commerce. Those cities should have significant potential. Ideally you can build the great iron works there, but that is only a real option(if at all) for the secret police in communism. If somehow you can manage to get those cities to producing 120 shields for one modern armor per turn or 134 shields for one army every 3 turns it is of some use. Having reserves against the annoyances of pollution is relevant, too.

 

[Lanzelot]

Building and possibly gold rushing a courthouse prior to the VP can be (very) helpful, also a building a like a marketplace that increases happiness may help to build the vp at an adequate pace. That the city can grow beyond size 7 without having to build an aqueduct first seems like an inevitability.

This is excellent advice. The time "lost" by building these imporvements first, can in most case be re-gained by the much faster construction of the FP. And these structures will be needed anyway.
So what I usually do in long-running games is, look for a powerful city site in the first or second ring (depending on map size/available land), use forest chops and cash rushes (if it's a second ring town, otherwise it's often faster to (pre-)build the VP directly) to get courthouse and marketplace up asap and then start pre-building for the VP.

 

[justanick]

Often it is only the better choice if such methods like chopping are used. Else VP directly might be better. Also one needs to consider difficulty setting. At Demigod and above the relative worth of courthouses increases dramatically.

 

[Lord AJ]

:
On standard maps the first founded city of the (future) second ring around your capital is a good place for your VP. On bigger maps the third ring may be better, on smaller maps the first ring may be the better choice. There needs to be some flexibility. Coincidence has it that the popup warning you about the option to build the VP indidicates that the cities founded around that time have an adequat corruption to build the VP. It needs to be high enough to profit adequatly from the vp, but it needs to be low enough to have it finished early. Building and possibly gold rushing a courthouse prior to the VP can be (very) helpful, also a building a like a marketplace that increases happiness may help to build the vp at an adequate pace. That the city can grow beyond size 7 without having to build an aqueduct first seems like an inevitability. The extra commerce from the river will be fully utilized once corruption in the city is down to zero. The capital and all secondary capitals are those city that in the industrial age should reach size 20+ to utilize all 20+1 tiles they possibly can utilize. That should be calculated in when placing cities near those capitals. In communism you can have 3 capitals with zero corruption. Those 20+1 tiles of them should offer an adequat combination of food, shields and commerce. Those cities should have significant potential. Ideally you can build the great iron works there, but that is only a real option(if at all) for the secret police in communism. If somehow you can manage to get those cities to producing 120 shields for one modern armor per turn or 134 shields for one army every 3 turns it is of some use. Having reserves against the annoyances of pollution is relevant, too.

That almost fully explains my relatively slow pace and lesser income in the early ma and the aa. I don't think I ever built the fp in the first ring although I have played many small maps. This piece of advice should really help. Also most of the time I built the fp quite late, much later than the fp popup on reaching the optimal city count. Thanks a ton. [emoji1] [emoji1] [emoji1] [emoji106] [emoji106]
You said that I should plan size 20 towns while city placement but that would mean losing a lot of uncorrupted, potentially useful tiles unused for 2 complete ages. Wouldn't that hurt my economy? Also the pollution that pops up everywhere is terribly annoying so mostly, I don't even research sanitation and go straight for the compulsory techs.
Generally, I have my victory condition decided in the beginning itself so my game is played accordingly. With a diplomatic or 20k victory, I simply irrigate everything except the capital and for a spaceship a leave a couple more cities mined. 100k is just a mixture of the 2 and if I have planned a domination or Conquest, I try getting it as early as I can because in the late game wars cost a lot. Anyways, if I do get into wars in the late game I simply rush the units in let towns and if I have a complete railroad network, then I order the idle stacks of workers to mine some of the core.
Oh but my question was about Corruption and that has been answered very well. Thanks Lanzelot and justanick. [emoji4] [emoji4] [emoji4]

 

[justanick]

You said that I should plan size 20 towns while city placement but that would mean losing a lot of uncorrupted, potentially useful tiles unused for 2 complete ages. Wouldn't that hurt my economy? Also the pollution that pops up everywhere is terribly annoying so mostly, I don't even research sanitation and go straight for the compulsory techs.

It depends. At the higher difficulty settings it is more likely to be required to the get the most out of each city, so getting cities up to no less than size 16 on average might be required. On lower difficulty settings corruption is less harsh and so is the strenght of AI. One approach i like is to build about 10 temporary cities per 20 permanent cities for the time when using limited land is more important than using a limited amount of low corruption cities. But in the very long run it is best to abandon any city that will result in losing less then ~6 used tiles in total. If you want to get the very most out of your empire things tend to get complicated.

With a diplomatic or 20k victory, I simply irrigate everything except the capital and for a spaceship a leave a couple more cities mined. 100k is just a mixture of the 2 and if I have planned a domination or Conquest, I try getting it as early as I can because in the late game wars cost a lot. Anyways, if I do get into wars in the late game I simply rush the units in let towns and if I have a complete railroad network, then I order the idle stacks of workers to mine some of the core.

This is a an enormous waste of potential that greatly exceed any consideration about the VP. It might be worth to discuss that in detail in a different thread.

 

[Lord AJ]

I do realize that this is a waste of potential (although I tend to slightly disagree with the ENORMOUS) . I do this to make sure all my towns are at size 12 and at this point with a courthouse and police stations, even highly corrupt towns can give upto 15 commerce (could be mode but this is the max I've seen) and the remaining can be used as science farms. This also helps save a lot of time that would otherwise be spent on deciding what to do with each tile of my empire.