Palace cost

[Siegmund]

There seems to be an undocumented "feature" whereby your palace increases in value over time.

The Civilopedia simply lists the cost of a replacement palace as 100 shields (which seemed pretty low!) ... but in practice, this increases in steps of 100 steadily throughout the game. I discovered this the hard way yesterday:

I had read that a handy way to take advantage of the Forbidden Palace was to built it in a productive city near your original capital, then rush a new palace at the opposite end of the empire ... and I was distressed to find the cost of the new palace rising faster than I could amass gold or disband units for extra shields!

Seems the steps up in value occur each time you get a "the people want to expand your palace for you" screen - but there isn't any way I've ever found to tell when that is about to happen, or to avoid making it happen if you are trying not to increase the price tag of a new palace.

Can anyone else shed more light on what is going on?

EDIT: Forgot to say, this was single-player Civ with the 1.29 patch.

 

[Yoda Power]

yeah i discovered the same thing. I had a city with 9 shields, so it should take like 9-8 turns to build the palace, insted it took me 50.

 

[Mercade]

It doesn't really have to do with the palace enhancements.

In the README.TXT on Patch 1.16F of Civ3 (vanilla)
The cost of building a Palace is now based on the number of cities in your civilization.

In the PtW 1.14F bug forum, now archived, I posted:

The Civilopedia still says that that the cost is 100 shields, regardless of the size of your empire. Now I understand that (most of?) the Civilopedia is static text, but it would be nice to know the cost of the palace from the documentation rather than having to select it in a city and doing the math based on shield production and the number of rounds it predicts.

Or otherwise, the Civilopedia should carry the formula using which you can calculate the cost based on the number of cities in your empire. Unfortunately, Firaxis didn't change this in the 1.21F patch.

 

[Hygro]

The cost of the palace changes?!?

I always thought it was 600!

 

[Siegmund]

I can see why they needed to make some kind of a fix to the "capital moving exploit."

I do wish they'd not be so secretive about how the formulas work.

 

[kirbtron]

This is where a great leader comes in real handy!

 

[anarres]

Originally posted by Siegmund
I had read that a handy way to take advantage of the Forbidden Palace was to built it in a productive city near your original capital, then rush a new palace at the opposite end of the empire ... and I was distressed to find the cost of the new palace rising faster than I could amass gold or disband units for extra shields!

Unfortunately, the Palace counts as a wonder. This means you can not rush it with gold, and you can not get any shields from disbanding units.

If you decide to build your FP locally, your only hope of moving the Palace is by rushing it with a Leader.

 

[Renata]

Originally posted by kirbtron
This is where a great leader comes in real handy!

Once I rushed the palace with a great leader early in a turn, then later that turn founded a city.

I came back the next turn and wondered why the palace wasn't done - it had 99 turns to go!

Gotta be careful with those things.

Renata

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Renata: same here, except I rushed it, then the town flipped instead of completing the Palace.