So you conquered half the world...

[Truman_Capote]

Given that, how do you make your new territories profitable, instead of dungheaps stuck building temples and courthouses for the rest of the game?

I didn't use to have to worry about this when I played on Regent and Monarch, but I'm starting on Emp so my core cities are not enough to sustain frequent military actions against the AI.

I'm not looking for help in any specific example, rather advice that is good in most situations. I've heard about use of taxmen and scientists, as well as starving the population and then building it back up, but when people discussed these strategies, they mentioned them in passing and in no great length due to the fact that they already understood them. I've also heard about a very powerful exploit called the Palace Rank Jump?

Commence abuse. Presume I know enough to win on Monarch but from that point on talk to me like I'm an idiot, especially when it comes to the finer points of micromanagement. (I still have trouble with Settler Pumps. I'll try to start one only to realize I've failed and frittered away 1500 years doing so.)

[Jaybe]

The best way to go is with C3C (1.15 beta, to avoid corruption bugs). With Civil Engineers and Police specialists, you can use extra population to build those basic improvements in just a few turns.

[Truman_Capote]

You've already lost me. Remember: Me Tarzan, You Nuclear Physicist.

How is this done?

EDIT
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I don't have the patch and that was the source of confusion. I guess I'd better put off my questions until I get the patch. Thanks you guys.
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EDIT

[vmxa1]

He is saying that in the expansion pack called Conquest (C3C) there is a corruption issue. It has been addressed by the beta patch called 1.15.

It also introduces an new specialist called Civil Engineer. It will produce 2 shields regardless of corruption (IIRC).
Police is another new one. So if you have captured a large city and it has lots of extra food you can turn some citizens into these specialist as well as taxmen and get production.

[vmxa1]

Palace rank was a method of arrainging cities on an equal distance from the palace to get ranked at the same level. The cities would have the same corruption and you could keep them productive. C3C nuked that and basically killed the FP (forbidden palace).

The current beta patch has restored the FP to a useful function.
Alexman has a thread to explain things.

[vmxa1]

So to get production out of cities that are far from the capitol you have specialist that can be used. You can just pop workers or settlers from the city or units.
You could build the FP in their mist (if it was not already up).
You could jump the palace to this new location with a leader.
If it is very late in the game you could just accept the low production.

Really the starving is mostly a means of getting the city to not flip and not cause rioting. It is mostly used for metros that have lots of resisters and cannot produce anything anyway.
(metros are cities with greater than 12 pop)
Palace jump is not mean (in this case) as the abandoning of the capitol, but rather just moving it,

[Truman_Capote]

I saw a strategy where a person built his FP in the middle of his best lands, and then rushed his palace on an island in the middle of the ocean far far away from any other city. What does this do to corruption?

From what I could understand, it shot up effeciency and production around the FP and created a black hole of production and commerce in any city around his Palace.

[vmxa1]

I never have done it so I am only speculating, but...
First if the FP was close to the original palace then the core cities would be fairly good still in C3C 1.15.
The new core would be able to have minimal corruption, since they palace is there.
Without the patch the original core with get a lot of corruption.
In PTW or CivIII both cores would be fine.

[geniemalin]

Being in a situation like that in my current game (Emperor level) my first suggestion is - FOOD.

Don't bother mining anything. Irrigate, railroad if you've got the spare workers, and assign the citizens to maximise food production.

Then, depending how late in the game and how hopeless the city is you can

Just use it to get a few coins/science by converting 'excess' citizens to taxmen/scientists

Use it for culture by converting 'excess' citizens to Civil Engineers and building Temple and/or Library (especially if you're Religious or Scientific and they're cheap)

Go into Communism or Fascism and rush-build things

Bleed it for Workers repeatedly - this is a good strategy while you're still railroading your massive empire, and with a good food supply, they'll still grow while you do it

No matter what ou do with them, though, don't expect them to be 'profitable' in the same way as your core - they won't be.

[CerberusIV]

As Geniemalin said, railroad and irrigate every possible tile around the corrupt cities. You are trying to support as many specialists as possible. For a size 12 city you should aim for maybe 5 citizens working food tiles and the rest as specialists.

I don't use policemen, I don't think they are particularly effective in really corrupt cities. Civil engineers are good for building improvements. If the city is only managing 1 uncorrupted shield then 2 CE's will give 4 more for a total of 5 shields, slashing the build time for a city improvement by 80%.

Every scientist is 3 beakers without corruption, every taxman 2 gold. If you have enough cities like this they do make a worthwhile contribution to your empire.

The exact mix of specialists depends on what you are trying to get - cultural improvements, gold or science - so it needs a little experimentation.

These cities are never going to contribute as much as a low corruption core city, it is just about getting what you can from them.

[Zero]

I usually depop the city by building alot of workers and moving them into core empire. But with C3C you should be able to make cities productive with civil engineers and police.

[zorbop]

Ok, all these tactics work fine, but i have a slightly different method.
step 1: Irrigate everything, build or rush granery, barracks and marketplace(this one for happiness, if you control half the world, this should give about 50 happy faces). once this is finished ignore shields. e
step 2: POP-RUSH!!! This works even better if you are agricultural. Once your citizens are the majority you can draft citizens too.

[vulture]

Originally posted by Truman_Capote
I saw a strategy where a person built his FP in the middle of his best lands, and then rushed his palace on an island in the middle of the ocean far far away from any other city. What does this do to corruption?

From what I could understand, it shot up effeciency and production around the FP and created a black hole of production and commerce in any city around his Palace.

There was a bug in CivIII and PtW whcih allowed you to get very low corruption doing this. Basically, there are two sources of corruption. Firstly there is a component determined by the distance of a city from the palace or forbidden palace (whichever is nearer). Secondly is the component due to the city 'rank' - the number of cities closer to the palace than this city (the FP doesn't count as a palace for this).

The bug in the earlier versions was that the rank corruption was worked out incorrectly. What was meant to happen was that a city 10 tiles from the FP and 30 tiles from the palace would have its distance corruption based on the 10 tiles to the FP, and the rank corruption determined by the number of cities closer than 30 tiles away from the palace. What was actually happening was that distance corruption worked as expected, but rank corruption was based on how many cities were closer than 10 tiles from the palace (the distance from the city to the FP). This gave the impression that the FP acted exactly like a second palace, with a new set of city ranks centered on the FP - as long as you had similar distributions of cities around your palace and FP and didn't look too closely, you'd never notice anything was wrong.

However, it opened up an interesting exploit. If you build your palace in the middle of nowehere, 100 tiles from your nearest city - then (obviously) there are no cities within 100 tiles of the palace. Going with out example above of a city 10 tiles from the FP, its rank corruption is based on the number of cities within 10 tiles of the palace, so its rank corruption (the largest part) is essentially reduced to zero. We assumed (incorrectly, as it turns out) that what was intended was that its rank should be based on the number of cities closer than 10 tiles from the FP. What was actually intended was that all the cities closer to the palace than this city count for rank corruption, and the FP only reduces the distance corruption (which is the way it now works in C3C v 1.15 - earlier versions had bugs in trying to sort out the rank problems).

So the strategy you mention above is basically an exploit to use the results of the bug to eliminate rank corruption in the empire, leaving only the distance corruption (which typically is about half of the rank corruption for a democracy IIRC) - effectively cutting the total corruption in the empire by a factor of 3! (More or less...)

[UnOrthOdOx]

You could always try out communism.

I've found there is a happy medium point when it really becomes the best govt for my personal style.

And, those new border towns? Pop rushing temples in them certainly proves effective in helping against flipping.

[Drachen]

Here are a couple of tricks I find helpful on higher difficulty. The tiles close to a city will yield 10 shields when a forest is cut down the first time so move in a gang of workers and cut down the existing forests. Then have them plant and cut forests on the other tiles and then terraform all tiles to maximize production. I use the shields generated to build a courthouse if the city seems likely to gain production not lost to corruption. I’ve had useless cities become decent producers after courthouse, police station, factory, hydro plant, and railroads. I also usually use forest cutting to build the cheapest culture providing building available to me to expand the city/empire borders. If a courthouse won’t help the city then I set them to building workers or settlers which are so cheap that even corrupt cities can crank them out. Settlers are very useful in late game wars. You can encroach upon enemy territory by founding new towns on the outskirts of your empire in your own land or by moving them into enemy territory with an adequate guard. When the next turn comes you found your new town and enemy territory/roads/rails etc become yours. Now the enemy city that used to be 4 tiles away is two tiles away and your tank armies or Cavalry can take them in one turn allowing you to plant a new settler even deeper in enemy territory while your defensive units move forward in territory that is all yours. Who cares if the new cities are poor producers because you can abandon them or use them to build more settlers. You can devastate an enemy’s productive center in a handful of turns using settlers in this fashion. Hope this helps.