does location of FP matter?

[Captain]

does location of FP matter?

i heard that it doubles the # of optimal city, so it does not affect corruption due to distance (only courthouses/police do that).

is this true? if so, wouldn't it make sense to build FP in capital (where production is probably highest)?

if this has been answered somewhere already, perhaps by Soren?, please point me in the right direction, thanks!

[Travathian]

I was under the impression that a FP works like this.

When checking for the distance to the Palace, which ever is closer FP or Palace is used to determine corruption.

I dont remember hearing/reading any mention of double optimal cities.

[simwiz2]

i think it works as another palace, because the city with the FP has always had little/no corruption in my games, and the cities around it have little corruption also.

[Inverse Icarus]

the FP acts as a palace, it's in the civlopedia. it's like having 2 palaces, it serves as a center for "no-corruption". so it's best to have them at opposite ends of an empire.

[Jon Shafer]

Pretty much what they said. Though I'm not sure if the effects are cumulative, or whether they just replace the effects of the first palace or not...

[Captain]

ok, that's what i originally thought, but i heard something about optimal cities and distance being 2 factors, and that courthouses don't affect optimal #, so it must be FP. no one remembers a thread like that?

(I've also seen the ai build it next to the capital, perhaps a reason, or that could be just stupidity)

[Flanker]

I don´t think you can build the FP in your capital. And I usually try to wait a while to build it, so I can get it in a city far away, which is rather large though - preferably on an island or so.

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Captain
ok, that's what i originally thought, but i heard something about optimal cities and distance being 2 factors, and that courthouses don't affect optimal #, so it must be FP. no one remembers a thread like that?

Courthouses and Police stations both decrease corruption on a percentage basis. They don't care what is the cause of the corruption just the resulting loses. I haven't played enough yet with 1.21F but prior to that they both decreased loss of money and shields twenty percent rounded down. Its supposed to be more now.

[nato]

So with two capitals, the optimal shape for your empire ends up being like an ellipse.

I would love to have multiple FPs, with each one not quite as good as the capital maybe. Then you could set up regions ... like one regional FP capitol for each continent, or for each conquered civ's area.

As it is you can bascially set up an ellipse, kind of like just two regions.

[Jon Shafer]

I remember in one of my fun Civ II games (not may Civ III games seem to be as fun anymore), I had a huge continent, and I had different "Districts", like the Capitol District, and the West District. I would monitor population of each, and when the population was great enough I'd split it into a new district... ahhh, the good old days...

[alexman]

Originally posted by Captain
ok, that's what i originally thought, but i heard something about optimal cities and distance being 2 factors, and that courthouses don't affect optimal #, so it must be FP. no one remembers a thread like that?

(I've also seen the ai build it next to the capital, perhaps a reason, or that could be just stupidity)

Courthouses didn't used to affect corruption due to number of cities prior to 1.21f, but now they do (they add 25% to your optimal number of cities for the corruption calcualtion of that city). There is a thread somewhere in the strategy forum that goes into detail on the parameters that affect corruption.

It is generally not wise to put your FP close to your palace. It's still better than not having a FP at all, but much worse than having it far away from your capital. When your palace and FP are far away from each other, you get a whole new set of cities with low corruption due to distance. If your FP and palace are close to each other, you will have basically the same corruption due to distance, but your optimal number of cities will increase by one (the cities with the FP and palace don't count when counting number of cities for corruption). So the FP does to your optimal number of cities exactly what the commercial civ trait does. By the way, one situation when it's good to build your FP near your palace is when you intend to get a free palace jump by disbanding your capital, but that's another story.