question re. palace

[cronullasharks]

Only recently got BTS.........Played lots of Civ 3 and one of my main problems was building a new palace. (hated corrupting my improved capital)

It seems to me that in Civ4 building a fresh palace is cheap and wont actually harm your capital just add maintenance.

Is this correct and do you guys regularly build a fresh palace or even do it more than once as you expand?

 

[mystyfly]

If you start coastal and you find yourself expanding far, and mainly in one direction, it may be very wise to move the palace. An alternative is to build the Forbidden Palace.
Just watch out: When you move the capital, make sure it is worth to run Burocracy, it has high cost and there are many good alternatives.

An example where moving the capital clearly was a good thing to do, you can find here.

 

[cronullasharks]

Is it as simple as "expand , move palace to better location , expand or fight....rebuild palace again " or are there other things to consider?

 

[Refar]

I wouldn't move it to often.

The most common reason to move capital, is to make a better city benefit from Buercracy. This shouldn't be necessary more than once per game.

If Maintenance is your problem build Courthouses, FP, Versailes or just switch to Staate Property.

 

[cronullasharks]

Got ya ! the penny just dropped............ I often want to switch to beurocracy but cant justify it cause my capital is not that flash........so build a palace in your best city and switch!! so obvious cant believe i missed it.

thanks again and thread now closed !

 

[Willem]

Got ya ! the penny just dropped............ I often want to switch to beurocracy but cant justify it cause my capital is not that flash........so build a palace in your best city and switch!! so obvious cant believe i missed it.

It's not as simple as that. Rebuilding your Palace is a fairly major effort production wise, you don't want to do it unless you have to. Doing it just for the sake of getting more out of Bureaucracy isn't enough of a reason IMO. It's probably the weakest civic in the game and you won't be using it for very long as you'll get a better one soon after, when you achieve Feudalism.

The main reason why you should want to move your Palace is so you can reduce the maintenance costs in as many cities as possible. The best location for it is in the centre of a ring of cities. With the Palace in the middle of perhaps 6 cities, you're empire's overall costs are going to be as low as possible. If you start on the coast, there are going to be some directions that you can't have any cities benefiting from the maintenance reduction the Palace provides. In those case it's best to move it inland more until you do have a ring of cities around it. Otherwise there's really no point. The only other reason would be so you can get even better cities within that inner ring, ones that can contribute more to your empire if their costs were lower.

You certainly don't want to move it just to get more out of Bureacracy, it's not worth it. Chances are by the time you get Feudalim, you'll be wanting to switch to Vassalage for the extra XP points for your troops, so that particular civic has a very limited usefulness. I never bother with it myself, I just wait for Vassalage.

 

[Validator]

Doing it just for the sake of getting more out of Bureaucracy isn't enough of a reason IMO. It's probably the weakest civic in the game ....

I don't think many people would agree with that assessment. Wasn't early access to Bureaucracy the reason that the CS slingshot was developed? And didn't Firaxis decide to nerf it because it was too powerful?

If you're running a full blown SE and haven't gone the route of cottage spamming a capital city then I can see that you won't get much of a benefit. Otherwise Bureaucracy is very powerful. Others may be a better choice depending on the situation of course.


IMO moving a capital just to maximize the Bureaucracy bonus or just for the reduced maintenance is a bit questionable. But if you can accomplish both then it's usually a good option.

 

[cronullasharks]

damn it...........as usual with civ 4 , for every good idea there are 5 counter opinions

But my main question is solved in the sense that if I build a new palace the only negative to my (previous) capital is higher maintenance unlike crippling corruption in civ 3

 

[Willem]

And didn't Firaxis decide to nerf it because it was too powerful?

And they did a good job. It's the now weakest civic in the game, especially with Feudalism just around the corner. If it had a longer lifespan, which it used to have, then I can see going through all that trouble of moving the Palace. But not with the way things are set up now. You're much better off with a bunch of Cottages and Vassalage, for those extra XP points, rather than a few more gold and hammers in a single city.