XP Issue: Palace and FP costs

[Panag]

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

hi ,

imagine the same when in the real world , ......

its also a great place holder for wonders , .....

have a nice day

[Panag]

Originally posted by 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.

hi ,

seconded , no caravans , they would seriously undermine the game

have a nice day

[Tiberius]

The most elegant solution (one that probably we won't see) would be the introduction of peaceful leaders.

A peaceful player should be rewarded for his skillful leadership in his own specialty: building and development. I can imagine a bunch of possible conditions: his civ is no. 1 in culture, science or economy, has built a great wonder, has the literacy rate over xx %, whatever; it shouldn't be too difficult to find some well balanced prerequisites for a peaceful leader.
The resulted leader could rush any building (including the palace and the FP), but could not build an army.

Reducing the cost of Palaces could be also a solution. Unfortunately the disadvantage of this solution is that it'd make culture-bombing too easy. Culture-bomb a city, move the capital, culture bomb again, move again, etc. I have however an idea how could this be avoided: make the cost of the palace dependent on the distance from the frontier. The closer to the border a city is, the more expensive building a palace there would be (which is also realistic; moving all those resources to the far end of an empire is difficult, expensive and time consuming).

[Tiberius]

Btw, what's the problems with caravans? Who said they would work like in civ2? If we could use them to relocate food and shields, then I support the idea (but if the relocation could be done in a better way, go for it).

[bongo]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I intended the 'worker caravans' to be built for the single purpose of disbanding in cities that needed some help with production. No civ2-like trade-routes or anything like it. Maybe calling them caravans was a bad idea.

Tiberius, the introduction of peaceful leaders is a good idea I've been thinking of a similar model where traits are not given at start but granted when certain goals are met. If you are the first civ to eliminate another tribe you become militaristic, if you are the first to build libraries in 50% of your cities you become scientific etc.

[statusperfect]

I 100% support Tiberius proposal.

Peaceful leaders would add a LOT to the enjoyment of the game.

cheers

[dexters]

I like the peaceful leader idea.

If caravans exist to relocate food and shield to "direct" production, then I have no problem with it.

Sorry if I closed the door on it too early, but the Civ2 caravan system didn't exactly left me wanting for more. I was quitr happy when I first heard trade in Civ3 would be abstracted.

[bongo]

I guess using the word 'caravan' brought back more memories from civ2 than I intended too. I don't want the old trade model back, the current model is much better

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by bongo
Tiberius, the introduction of peaceful leaders is a good idea I've been thinking of a similar model where traits are not given at start but granted when certain goals are met. If you are the first civ to eliminate another tribe you become militaristic, if you are the first to build libraries in 50% of your cities you become scientific etc.

Hey, that's not bad, either. Maybe it could work not for primary traits (I mean, if you know from the beginning that you will build libraries, you choose scientific and you build libraries; why would you do it reversed?) but for secondary-traits. These "secondary-traits" would be based on your decisions as events unfold, have a lesser effect than the primary ones but would help in differentiating civs even more.
One example that comes to mind: maritime (there's no point to choose maritime from the beginning, and then find yourself on a big continent).
Maybe there are not so many such traits and the secondary traits list should include the basic ones, too (but having less effect this time).
Not a bad idea but needs some work.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Tiberius
The most elegant solution (one that probably we won't see) would be the introduction of peaceful leaders.

A peaceful player should be rewarded for his skillful leadership in his own specialty: building and development. I can imagine a bunch of possible conditions: his civ is no. 1 in culture, science or economy, has built a great wonder, has the literacy rate over xx %, whatever; it shouldn't be too difficult to find some well balanced prerequisites for a peaceful leader.
The resulted leader could rush any building (including the palace and the FP), but could not build an army.

Reducing the cost of Palaces could be also a solution. Unfortunately the disadvantage of this solution is that it'd make culture-bombing too easy. Culture-bomb a city, move the capital, culture bomb again, move again, etc. I have however an idea how could this be avoided: make the cost of the palace dependent on the distance from the frontier. The closer to the border a city is, the more expensive building a palace there would be (which is also realistic; moving all those resources to the far end of an empire is difficult, expensive and time consuming).

hi ,


, why not just let the reputation of the peacefull one go up , ....

have a nice day

[DaveMcW]

*Cough*Free Palace Jump*Cough*

[WarpStorm]

Kind of a cheesey exploit, but...

[Randolph]

Wasn't the game going to have "peaceful leaders" (or the equivalent), but it was latter cut? I certainly like the idea. The whole leader issue is IMHO is one of the big unbalancing factors between builder vs. warmonger.

I don't like the idea of further specializing civs. The character of your nation should depend on what you do in the game, not which civ you pick.

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by DaveMcW
*Cough*Free Palace Jump*Cough*

I regard "free" palace jumps far more as part of the problem than as a solution. The idea that a capital can be moved for "free" if it is deliberately destroyed by its owners, but not otherwise, makes absolutely no sense. And the logistics of getting the palace to jump to the right place are far more complex (and undocumented) than can possibly be justified for a legitimate, intended feature of the game.

I've had a couple ideas for possible changes that wouldn't upset the game design too much.

Idea 1: Have the production for palaces and forbidden palaces come from the capital instead of from the target city, or perhaps come jointly from both the capital and the target city (i.e. both cities are set to build the palace or FP). That would keep the number of shields a civ has to sacrifice the same, but would make the target city's production capacity (and, hence, corruption level) either less of an issue or not an issue at all in how quickly the palace/FP can be built. The rationale behind such a mechanism would be that the logistical groundwork for shifting the seat of government (or setting up a second one) is a significantly bigger consideration than the buildings themselves, and such logistical costs center around the existing capital more than they do the new one.

Idea 2: Add a provision through which a city where a palace or forbidden palace is being built has its waste greatly reduced, but keep track of the production difference so that the extra shields will be lost if the city changes its production away from a palace or forbidden palace. That could dramatically reduce the number of shields a civ has to give up for a palace move or FP build, since the majority of the shields used would often be shields that would not exist otherwise, but it would keep time as a fairly significant issue.

Neither of those changes would be particularly difficult to code, and neither would have much effect on overall game balance beyond giving players without great leaders essentially the same flexibility in palace/FP location that players with great leaders have. Great leaders would remain valuable for their ability to speed up the process, but it would no longer be the case that great leaders make it trivial to build palaces and forbidden palaces in places that would be ridiculously impractical if not outright impossible (e.g. taking 500 turns to build a palace when only 300 turns are left in the game) without them.

Nathan

[bongo]

I like your idea #2. May I suggest a small change? When you build a palace of FP little or none corruption/waste are experienced in that city but shifted to other cities in your empire. That way your total production(after waste) stays the same but build speed goes down.