palace jump, exploit? or strat?

[squidd]

just wanted to ask the esteemed ladies and gentlemen of this forum what they think...

is doing a palace jump an exploit? or a legitimate strategy?

i am of course assuming that we have the same definitions here which is that an exploit is something within the rules but not within the spirit of the game whereas a strategy is a legitimate course of action.

thanks all.

 

[Aggie]

Do you mean abandoning a city to get the palace somewhere else?

If so: I don't do it, because it's something I consider not within the spirit of the game.

Building a palace with a leader is no exploit imho. It costs you a very valuable leader to build.

But all in all I would say that everyone should determine for him- or herself whether certain things are exploits.

 

[pdescobar]

I believe it is generally considered a strategy but I'm just not comfortable with it so choose not to do it in my games. Perhaps if I played the higher difficulties or in more competetive situations I'd feel differently

 

[kryszcztov]

I'd like to add... to me, if the capital city falls in the hands of your enemy, then there shouldn't be a palace jump to "the largest city with the largest city core around it" (there is a formula to this, but it's hard to explain in 2 lines). Historically, the fall of the capital would mean the end of the empire or the beginning of the resistance, therefore in Civ3, I think you (or the AI if you attack him) should try to defend your capital at all cost, because loosing it would mean no palace anymore, unless you take the capital back or you build another palace in another city. No palace would be terrible in terms of corruption and waste, let's be it like communism (same level everywhere), but even worse of course.

Otherwise, I think that abandoning the capital city to get a free palace elsewhere (through the same formula) is clearly an exploit : totally unrealistic and unfair. If this was a rule for competition games here, it should calm down the best players, since I think some are fond of this "strategy" !

 

[Renata]

I don't much like it either, except in situations where it improves your situation from hopeless to merely dire -- like when you start on the tippy end of a skinny little desert peninsula with 15 tiles worth of crud before you get to any good territory. In situations where it improves an already good situation it seems like overkill to me. I have to confess I've never done it in that situation so I can't state for sure exactly what the impact is.

In any situation, even the hopeless ---> dire one, it does seem to me to be not in the spirit of the game. On the other hand, though, this isn't exactly in the same category as worker dogpiling or wholesale ROP abuse, I don't think; it's probably something on which reasonable people can disagree.

Renata

 

[wilbill]

Capitals do move. The U.S. has had 3, Brazilia was built in the '60's. I don't have a problem with it. On the other hand, I think I've only done it once.

 

[Stapel]

My standard strategy: Build the FP asap in a city near to the palace, in the centre of the core. Mostly, the capitol is not in the centre.

Then use a leader to rush a palace in a newly conquered / built core.

This way you have the advantage of an early FP (double ONC) .

 

[Quokka]

I'll use a Leader to move my capital but have never disbanded the capital to try and Palace jump.

My standard strategy: Build the FP asap in a city near to the palace, in the centre of the core. Mostly, the capitol is not in the centre.

Then use a leader to rush a palace in a newly conquered / built core.

This way you have the advantage of an early FP (double ONC)

I do this also especially when I can see where the Palace will be moved to. Another advantage of moving the Palace vs building the FP is that your capitol cannot flip while your FP city can and then its gone forever. This is especially important on the higher levels were your culture is usually much less than the AI's.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Well, the very early FP only improves the OCN by 10%, not double if you build your FP right next to your capital. I thought it would be double, also, but was informed by Alexman that it isn't.

Like has been said before, what is an is not an exploit depends on one's own opinions (or a group's opinions if playing competitively). The AI certainly would never do this. Is it game-breaking or very unbalancing? That is debatable. Certainly not as unbalancing as many other things, that is for sure. Some people have become really good at this, and if you can get your palace jumping ready at around 1000 B.C., or shortly after, the game is pretty much already over. But, with luck you could do better by getting a leader to rush the FP at or before 1000 B.C. So palace jumping is a more safe strategy than hoping you get a leader.

If they really wanted to get rid of palace jumping, then they should make it so that when you do disband your capital, the capital moves to the next oldest city (the second city you founded in the game). The second city you founded usually isn't too drastically far from your capital, so there wouldn't be a whole lot of improvement in jumping the capital, because then you'd still have the palace and FP right next to each other.

But then I can picture players throwing their first settler built out of the capital to the other side of the map.....

 

[Mercade]

I'd say it's a strategy. Btw, you could have made this a poll.

 

[dojoboy]

Definitely a strategy. Take a look at Brazil for a real world example. Brazil purposely moved its capital inland to encourage migration inland. In Civ3, one may get a reduction in corruption.

 

[inudog]

IMHO, I'd say that in the case of Brazil, it is as if you build the palace in another city. That will move the palace, within in the spirit of the game. I’m not up on my Brazilian history, but did they raze the city that the capital was in? I would guess no (although I don’t know). So, I believe that building a new palace to move the capital is OK, but razing your capital to move the palace is an exploit.

 

[dojoboy]

Originally posted by inudog
... So, I believe that building a new palace to move the capital is OK, but razing your capital to move the palace is an exploit.

I would have to agree.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by wilbill
Capitals do move. The U.S. has had 3, Brazilia was built in the '60's. I don't have a problem with it. On the other hand, I think I've only done it once.

Actually, we had 4. Annapolis, Maryland was the US capital for 1 day. New York, Philly, Annapolis, and Washington DC.

 

[Sailorstick]

I think if you 'lose' your palace (either through capture, razing, abandonment) you should have to go through a period of Anarchy. That would still allow you to move your palace around freely but would encourage you to defend the capital at all costs and make abandoning the capital much less enticing.

 

[Sirp]

I think that there should be a much more serious penalty for losing a capital. I think that you should have no palace at all, and no capital, and all cities should have lots of corruption.

Anyhow, building another palace elsewhere by any means is fine, but intentionally abandoning your capital so that you get a free palace is way outside of the spirit of the game imho. I would never do it.

-Sirp.

 

[Renata]

There was a big 'lost palace' penalty in CIV2, if I remember correctly, and I didn't much like it then. It made losing your capital a death blow, in effect, since re-building it with crippling corruption was prohibitively difficult. If a similar thing was re-implemented for CIV3, I think it would lead to too much simplification of war strategies versus the AI -- take out their capital and you'd have the war won.

A period of anarchy is an interesting idea, but balancing it would be difficult, I think. Too short and the palace jump isn't really discouraged. Too long and it becomes the death blow for the civ under attack again. My favorite idea of those proposed is forcing the capital to jump to your second-founded city, since I think that would discourage people from using the technique without being unduly harsh. Yeah, you *could* send your first-produced settler 40 tiles away to found a city, but who would want to give up 40 turns lke that? Or even better, the palace could just jump to the nearest city to its former location.

Renata

 

[Sirp]

I think a penalty of some kind is almost silly not to have. At the moment there is no penalty at all for losing your capital. (There could be if it moved to a poor location, but just as easily it could be an advantage moving to a better location).

While I don't think capturing the capital should wipe them out, I think it's silly how going after the capital isn't necessarily the best way to crush another civ. There *should* be the strategic aspect of going straight for the enemy capital, just like in real wars.

Jumping to the nearest city is the best option to stop the current exploit imo.

-Sirp.

 

[Hygro]

I say it's not an exploit because either you sacrafice a good city to do this or you sacrafice getting a good city to do this.

 

[squidd]

Originally posted by Mercade
I'd say it's a strategy. Btw, you could have made this a poll.

i fully agree sir. i was trying to. however, it seems that i'm too new in these chatrooms and have not been given the rights to. either that or am too dumb to figure out how to make a poll.

theres been some interesting discussion here and it would've been nice to see those colored bars showing the percentages.