XP Issue: Palace and FP costs

[nbarclay]

One thing I've found very annoying in Civ 3 is that it can be next to impossible to get good palace and forbidden palace placement through peaceful means. Warmongers can usually get their palace and FP where they want them with leaders, but players desiring peace tend to be stuck either building their FP uncomfortably close to their palace or taking half of forever to build it. To me, that situation seems more than a little ridiculous; why should warlike civilizations be so much better at such things than peaceful ones?

The situation is made worse by the inability to rush palaces and forbidden palaces and the inability to assist them with forest chops. I can understand disallowing those speed-up techniques for building wonders, and since wonders can be built in core cities, it's not that big a deal. But the best places for palace moves and forbidden palace builds are often very highly corrupt, and that can make the inability to speed up their production through anything but leaders crippling for players who do a good job REXing and don't want to fight (or don't want to fight yet).

Do other players agree with me that it would be better if it were easier to build forbidden palaces and move palaces through peaceful means? Or am I unusual in that regard?

[WarpStorm]

I find that since palaces are fairly cheap (assuming you are builing in a low corruption zone) and can be rebuilt at will I build my FP at the core of my empire and move my palace repeatedly towards where it needs to be at any given moment. This can give me advantages for culture bombing and pacifying conquered cities. The thing to keep in mind is that this won't work if you are trying to build it outside of the low corruption area.

[nbarclay]

Fairly cheap? It doesn't take a huge number of cities before palace moves get as expensive as the Pyramids or Great Library, or even more expensive. If moving the palace from Point A to Point B would require two hops, that makes a leader who rushes the job in a single hop worth as much as two great wonders. Except he's really worth a lot more than that, because he gets the job done right now, not in another hundred turns.

And the situation on archipelago maps can be a lot worse. Sometimes there's a land mass that would be well worth setting up a second core on, especially for a builder-style player, but that's so far away from the original core that it's totally corrupt or nearly so. And building a palace in the middle of the ocean to go part of the way at a time is not an option.

[Spiffor]

I concur that I don't understand why it is impossible to rush-build a palace. Since rush-built buildings can't be turned into wonders, I don't see what the exploit from rush-building the palace can be.

I also think palaces are generally too expansive. I like them getting more expansive with the amount of cities, but the current price is overkill IMHO. I almost never relocate my palaces in my games, except if I have a leader for whom I have no use.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by nbarclay
Fairly cheap? It doesn't take a huge number of cities before palace moves get as expensive as the Pyramids or Great Library, or even more expensive.

Yes, fairly cheap. If you have that many cities, you should have production going. In addition, you can bail out of your move if a good wonder comes along.

[Konquest02]

Yes, production should be going really well. The only problem is that you don't want to build your palace in one of your core cities, it would just be a waste of time.

Moving the palace is nice when you move it to a corrupt area, not just move it one city at a time in your core...

--Kon--

[nbarclay]

If you bail out for a wonder, you have to start the palace move all over again, so that's hardly a factor in making palace relocation more practical. And the cost issue is as much a matter of time as it is of raw shields: the high shield cost, coupled with the fact that a palace move to a city without significant corruption accomplishes little, tends to make palace moves take a long time. That's especially painful for players who set a fast research pace, for whom the same number of turns is a significantly higher fraction of an era.

The fact is that a palace move that would take two hops, a hundred turns, and a thousand shields for a player who is not fighting (or who is unlucky trying to get leaders) can be done instantly with a leader. That is a disparity of truly gargantuan proportions, and rewards warmongers on a scale far beyond what seems reasonable to me. Consider not just the thousand shields total (give or take) for the two palace moves themselves, but also all the extra commerce and shields generated during the hundred extra turns with the palace relocated, and the extra gold and science generated even beyond that time because cities in the new core have had a lot longer to build improvements.

Nathan

[WarpStorm]

It's true that a lucky warmonger will generally do better in Civ3 than a peaceful technologist, but that's a totally different issue. I feel there should be a way for peaceful players to get the benefits of leaders also. This has little to do with how much a palace move costs IMHO.

[Kuciwalker]

The Palace can be relocated for free if the Capitol falls, so why should it cost so much when moving it manually?

[Randolph]

It would be nice if the game was generally rebalanced a bit to favor more peaceful tactics, this is a good example. Another option would be to remove the ability of leaders to completely rush wonders (maybe 50%?).

[JPGray]

How about this

what if there was a chance for leader production when a wonder is built that matches a civ-specific trait? In the high levels, wonders are mostly captured by human players, not built, and leaders are hard to come by in any case.

[dexters]

Provinces.

I absolutely think it is a disgrace for a 4X game to encourage players to move their capitals just to achieve optimum corruption fighting power.

The capital has historical and emotional significance and I am really reluctant to move it.

They should have implemented a provincial system with multiple provincial capitals.

[Egbert]

I NEVER move my Palace. (Only London can be the English capital). I heartily agree with dexters.

The cost of the Forbidden Palace can be edited. You can also use the editor to create additional second capitals. (The Double your pleasure mod has four, Summer Palace, Winter Palace, supreme Court and Forbidden Palace and that works well. It further advantages the human player as the AI now has 4 FP's to put in useless places).

I think the FP is so costly as to reward aggression.

[bongo]

Maybe we could resurrect the caravans from civ2? Apart from setting up trade(and food!)routes caravans could also add shields to a wonder in production. This feature allowed almost instant wonders and weren't used at all by the AI.

So, enter the 'worker caravan'. Cost: 100? Special ability: when disbanded in cities it will return 50% of shields(normal units have 25%) to anything getting built except for Great Wonders.

[dexters]

No caravans please.

It gets too bogged down in the late game and they are annoying to move around and to keep trade routes in your head and have the optimal route for each.

For Civ 4, we need provincial capitals. Unlimited FPs with much smaller effects. But this will make the need to move capitals less attractive.