Optimal FP Placement

[Flip McWho]

Hey All,

Just wondering what all u fellows think is the optimal forbidden palace placement. I mean, u don't want to overlap the palace and FP zones of influence but u don't want to have cities not utilized because the two zones are to far apart. So, just wondering if u guys would share u knowledge, or show me the respective link if i have missed one on this.

[GusSmed]

There are two basic approaches to building the Forbidden Palace. Build it, or rush it with a Great Leader.

If you have a Great Leader handy, the Forbidden Palace really can be anywhere, even another continent.

If you're going to build it, you need enough production in the target city to make it practical. I've had fairly good success building it 3 "rings" away from my palace.

The way I see it, each government center (palace or FP) has an inner ring of cities 3-4 squares from the center that has minimal corruption, typically 15% or so. Overlapping those inner rings, so that some cities are adjacent to both the Palace and the FP, seems like a serious waste.

A city 3 rings away, which means the inner rings touch but don't overlap, typically has 75% corruption. A courthouse will cut that to roughly 50%, which means it's well worth building a courthouse before starting the FP.

Fortunately, unlike the FP, you can rush the courthouse. You can chop down adjacent forests, or if you've got a lot of newly conquered population, pop-rush it.

You may want to add a few spare workers to the city to bring up production. I strongly prefer to use a city on a river so I can bring the population above 6 without building an aquaduct. Typically the I end up with 5-6 shields production, which means the FP will take 34-40 turns to build.

- Gus

[Mazarin]

I agree with GusSmed...I usually don't hope for a leader, but try to build the FP asap. If I receive a leader later, I will relocate the palace into newly conquered territory which also means that my new cities are less likely to flip back.

If you have a couple of luxuries, rushing a marketplace might be useful as well, WLTKD also lowers production, so you might save another 15 rounds which are worth the 400 gold you'd have to invest.

[vmxa1]

One other tactic that is not unheard of, is to slap the FP near the palace. This lets you move the palace as often as you wish. It also has the advantage that you can build the FP in a city that has good production. The palace can be built with a leader later.

[Flip McWho]

Thank u all for ur replys.

Never had much luck with getting Great Leaders but thats my poor use of elites and plain lack of warring skills, so i usually stick to building it if i can. I just don't like taking a city out of the production loop to wait for a FP to be built that could take 100 or so turns.
I'm also sentimental to which city my Palace begins the game in and so i never really move it.

I've heard that placing the FP in a rivals civs empty capital city can be a good idea, thoughts?

[Usually Insane]

how about:

If you have an F lying down, or standing on it's legs or something, you start in one leg, when you come to the bend or t-cross you build your FP and when you come to the other one, you relocate your palace, that way you keep everything in as small a corruption as possible.

That is of course , only if you plan on conquering that continent and that continent only

[The Pioneer]

Originally posted by vmxa1
One other tactic that is not unheard of, is to slap the FP near the palace. This lets you move the palace as often as you wish. It also has the advantage that you can build the FP in a city that has good production. The palace can be built with a leader later.

That's the strategy I use, the flexibility that you get is very important, as you never know how and where you will expand at latter stages of the game.

So long...

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by vmxa1
One other tactic that is not unheard of, is to slap the FP near the palace. This lets you move the palace as often as you wish. It also has the advantage that you can build the FP in a city that has good production. The palace can be built with a leader later.

I'm a newbie, but I like this tactic too. The other advantage it has is that, the sooner you build the FP, the sooner it starts generating culture.

[aaglo]

In most of my games I have placed the FP to relatively close to my capital. Then in later phase I have moved my capital to further places (rushbuild with a leader). This won't damage very much the production in former core cities, because they are fully developed, huge and happy (WLTKD).

In my current game My homeland is huge continent. The americans on another continent declared a war against me. So I captured some of their cities and rushed palace to the new continent... My income (gold production surplus) increased 50%!!! (I had several other cities in that new continent already).
When I checked the old capital and cities near to it, there was only very little corruption/waste (less than 5% corruption)...

[Arrian]

I too like building the FP close to the original capitol and then using a leader to rush a palace elsewhere. There are times when I have been able to merely rush a FP in a perfect spot, with the palace also optimal, but those are relatively rare.

In the game I was playing last night, I built the FP two cities over from my capitol. It was roughly the center of my empire at the time, and later, when I moved my palace to occupied Egypt, it took care of my original core cities well enough.

Flip,

Check out a thread called "FP + Palace Placement" or something like that (use the search function). It's all about this type of thing, and has some screenshots and stuff.

-Arrian

[Jawa Jocky]

Originally posted by vmxa1
One other tactic that is not unheard of, is to slap the FP near the palace. This lets you move the palace as often as you wish. It also has the advantage that you can build the FP in a city that has good production. The palace can be built with a leader later.

Dido on what Arrian posted. I'd also like to mention that the FP city can be flipped, but the Palace can't.


Here is the only valid arguement against this strategy.
You end up with less culture in the long run.

And the stock rebuttle.
Good, I don't want a cultural victory

[joncnunn]

FP and Palace dont' have overlapping zones of control.

Every city is ranked by order of distance to both the Palace and Forbiden Palace with the lowest rank chosen.

So what you want to do is pick a FP location that roughly splits the empire in half when the cities are ranked by distance from each of them.

If your building the FP with a normal build you will want the following structures pre-built first. (Rushing after 1 turn normal build is a good idea)

1. Temple
2. Court House
3. Market Place
4. Catherdrial.
5. If needed an Aquaduct. (But natural aquaducts are highly prefered)
6. Perhaps a Collosum if it means the difference between having a WLTPD and not having one while the FP is under construction.

Size of the map matters, because optimum number of cities varies by map size.

[Jawa Jocky]

joncnunn - that is an aweful lot of pre-builts on you list. I'll take your top 3 but the rest are putting off build for to long IMO.

I've also been told that FP flipping is not very likely since 1.29. It would still be a gamebreaker or at the very least a good reason to quit.

[joncnunn]

On the Emperor level, you often need the Catherdrial on a FP with a natural aquaduct to ensure it reamins in WLTPD throughout the build. Without a natural aquaduct you often need an aquaduct to use some more tiles with shields. (If it wouldn't the city probably isn't a good choice for a FP anyway.) Having a WLTPD is usually very important to ensure the FP gets built in a reasonable timeframe.

And you don't wait for all those structures to finish naturally, you rush all of them as fast as possible because you'll make the money back very quickly.

[Jawa Jocky]

I've never tried to get a WLTPD to build the FP or P. I assume you use the luxury slider too? And max the # of luxuries too? I will have to keep this in mind.

I always use a GL to build these projects, so I don't have much experience building them. Other than build the FP next to my capital (which is harder challenging).