XP Issue: Palace and FP costs

[dexters]

bongo, i don't like the idea.

[bongo]

Waaahh

On second thoughts my suggestion would make palace-jumping too easy.

[nbarclay]

Is moving the palace around a lot really that profitable a strategy? An established palace is surrounded by wealthy, productive, fully-improved cities. If you move the palace to a highly corrupt area, instead of being able to leverage libraries, universities, marketplaces, and banks in the surrounding cities, your capital is surrounded by cities with a lot fewer improvements. More importantly, if your palace is significantly off center for its region, the average distance (and hence average waste/corruption due to distance) is a lot higher. My instinct has always been that keeping the palace and FP centered within their respective cores, moving the palace only for the purpose of establishing an entire new core (rarely more than a one-time event for the entire game), is more fruitful than moving the palace around off-center trying to improve first one area and then another. But I've never made any attempt to test that belief.

If jumping the palace around like that would constitute a genuine exploit (rather than just a toy some people enjoy playing with), most of the problem could be dealt with by applying the special rules only to the first palace move in each era. Any subsequent moves (even if the first one was done by a leader) would follow the normal rules. Thus, a civilization could have up to five capitals in its history relatively easily if a player really wants to, but more would be more difficult. (I would also include a provision that if the capital is forcibly relocated due to capture in a war, the ability to move the capital under the special rules is re-enabled. That would keep having the capital relocated to an inconvenient place from being as potentially devastating, and from a realism perspective, it seems quite reasonable that an emergency capital may be just temporary. But that would not apply to capitals voluntarily abandoned or disbanded.)

Regarding the idea of shifting the waste to other cities, that could too easily upset delicate balances where cities are deliberately set up to produce a particular number of shields (e.g. enough to build knights in four turns). I think the benefit in terms of discouraging abuse would be more than offset by the hassle.

[nbarclay]

By the way, note that my idea #2 would not have to mean reducing waste to zero. Just capping it at 50% while the palace or FP is being built would go a long way toward addressing the problem.

[bongo]

Zero waste is a bit extreme, can't disagree to that. 50% is more reasonable. But I still consider the 'redistribute waste while capitol or FP is built' to be a good idea.

[Kloreep]

I think 50% max waste and rushability are both good ideas. Combined, they'd go a long way to helping a peaceful strategy. Reducing the palace's cost rise (or rather, cost slope ) would help too.

[Arrian]

Nathan, you make your point well.

I like the idea of 50% waste if a city is building the Palace or FP. I also think the Palace should be capped at 400 shields, instead of steadily increasing to 1000 (note that will hurt prebuilding later in the game, which is ok by me).

Of course, I'd probably still be a psycho warmonger, but now doing a FP build close to home & then moving the Palace would be even easier. The peaceniks would definitely get a bigger boost, though.

-Arrian