One of the things that I’ve always wondered is how the game determines what the palace will cost. So I decided to make some tests to get it cleared out. After extensive testing I came up with the following results. The test was made with C3C 1.22:
* The number of cities in your empire determines the cost of the palace
* The Optimal City Number also has an effect
* The palace can never cost less than 300 shields and never more than 1000 shields
During the tests I also found a lot of things that I concluded to have no effect on the palace cost. All of these are verified to have no effect. If you have any ideas not listed here that could have an effect please point it out:
* Difficulty level
* The size of the map
* The distance to the capital from the different cities
* The sizes of the cities in your empire
* The government you are currently in
* The amount of time that has passed or the current technological level
The cost of the palace is calculated as follows
PC = (C * 600) / OCN
where PC is palace cost and C is number of cities. This only works rounding fractions down per 100 (e.g. 23 cities on standard map (OCN 20) would be (23 * 600) / 20 = 690 which would round down to 600). Also keep in mind the maximum and minimum costs.
For those who dislike math just compare to the following chart. The first is number of cities and the second is palace cost in shields.
Tiny Map
up to 9: 300
10-11: 400
12-13: 500
14-16: 600
17-18: 700
19-20: 800
21-23: 900
24 or more: 1000
Small Map
up to 11: 300
12-14: 400
15-16: 500
17-19: 600
20-22: 700
23-25: 800
26-28: 900
29 or more: 1000
Standard Map
up to 13: 300
14-16: 400
17-19: 500
20-23: 600
24-26: 700
27-29: 800
30-33: 900
34 or more: 1000
Large Map
up to 18: 300
19-23: 400
24-27: 500
28-32: 600
33-37: 700
38-41: 800
42-46: 900
47 or more: 1000
Huge Map
up to 23: 300
24-29: 400
30-35: 500
36-41: 600
42-47: 700
48-53: 800
54-59: 900
60 or more: 1000
Also, for the mod makers if you change the cost of the palace (it is set to 100 in the standard game) just use this instead:
PC = (C * 6 * CE) / OCN
where CE is the palace cost as set in the editor. Also the minimum and maximum costs will be CE * 3 and CE * 10.
That’s all there is to it. Hopefully this knowledge can help to plan when to wait building a city, when to start building a palace etc. As usual feel free to make suggestions or point out mistakes (if any).