Need some help on a few points

I've been doing fairly well with Civ after picking it up after a few months, but there are a few bits of strategy I'm in need of advice on.

1.) The Forbidden Palace:.....Where the hell should I build it? I always delay building it until I find that "perfect spot" but then I get to the end game without ever even building it! Also, does it still act as a second "palace" or did t change slights (I think it changed but I am not sure).

2.) Farms: I remember an upper end strat was to take the utterly corrupt cities on the edge of your empire and convert them into "farms" by maxxing thier population and then converting as many citizens as possible to tax men or researchers. However, I have difficulty in setting them up. Is there a guide to do so?

 

Forbidden Palace: You should really build it, and in my opinion even start prebuilding it 5 towns or so before you get the Forbidden Palace message.
The exact spot is slightly less important. Some players simply want to have the FP as quickly as possible, and build it in a productive town right next to the capital. I prefer to build it close second ring. I like it in a sort of central position, as towns adjacent to the FP town are profiting most from the corruption lowering effect.
It is not a second capital anymore like in Vanilla and PTW, but still a little bit. However, you will also see players put it 5 cities or so away from the capital when they've got a miliary great leader to rush it. A corruption lowering effect on adjacent towns is then lost, but they've created a nice powerhouse far from their core.

Farms: There's actually not much to it. You just irrigate everything, so that just a few citizens will privide enough food for themselves and the scientist. You'll put your towns close together in those corrupt areas, as you'll not be looking for border expansions, and only a limited number of citizens will be working tiles anyway.

 

Forbidden Palace: I think this one depends on what version of Civ you're using. If I'm not mistaken, in Conquests the Forbidden Palace lowers corruption and increases the optimal number of cities but it is NOT like a second palace because it doesn't affect the cities closer to it more than the cities far from it. It affects the empire as a whole, so it really doesn't matter where you put it. Since it doesn't matter, build it in one of your more productive cities other than your captial so that you can get it as soon as possible.

 

Don't forget that farms don't really come into their own, until you have rails.

 

I once checked specifically with CivAssist, and saw corruption percentages take a deeper dive among cities close to the FP than cities with the same distance to the capital somewhere else. Maybe a couple of dozen percent compared to just a couple of percent, but I have to admit I'm speaking from memory here, and I know what memory is like, you know.

 

What I found in my current game (Conquests) is that, in terms of effect on nearby cities, the FP is hardly worth it. (But bear in mind that I left construction of the FP quite late, so the cost has risen a lot by the time I started it).

I'll explain in terms of city "rings", where each ring is about CxxxxC from the capital - even though I don't consciously build "rings". I'm not really that interested in corruption, more in waste. (I'm still trying to find time to run the numbers from Alexman's formulas against my games to get a better understanding).

I put the FP in about the 4th/5th ring from the capital, hoping to get a nice little second core going, as there are 5 potentially productive cities each about 2-3 tiles from the FP site. The corruption and waste levels did drop in the FP's "mini-core" - but it really wasn't worth it! One city went from 90% to 75% corruption and waste, another went from 90 to 85, another from 90 to 83, and as for the rest - no change.

These changes will hardly get you another shield/trade coin in any but the most productive cities. This confirms what Optional said upthread - that the FP no longer acts like a second capital. Build it for its effects in its own city, not for any other reason - this is true at least once you have many cities (my empire currently has 76 cities on a Standard map).

(For those interested: I think the reason I saw so little effect from the FP is that true corruption in many cities is not the 90% you actually see. True corruption can be anything up to c.160% - but then this number gets put through an algorithm that caps corruption at 90% (no Courthouse/Police Station), 80% if city has Courthouse, 70% if city has Courthouse + Police Station. Reduce corruption by 25% (proportional), from 160% to 120%, and the end result after capping is still 90%!

This is why corruption is so ***** hard to understand. And this "capping", which makes it hard to understand, IMHO stinks of the developers going "let's unit-test these formulas.... Damn, they give ridiculous results! Shall we redesign them? Nah, can't be bothered - just stick a capping algorithm on the end of the process....")

 

There's a great article in the War Academy about corruption and ways to manage it:

Everything About Corruption: C3C Edition, by Alexman. It explains the difference between distance corruption and rank corruption, and ways to reduce their effects.

Here's a quote from it:

It's worth a read.

There's also a link at the bottom of the article that leads to a great thread on corruption.