C3C Corruption: Whoa!!!

[Catt]

Originally posted by joncnunn
In that case, there was no need to change it if cities after the tied cities have the proper values.

I think by and large the civ community (at least the vocal part of it that haunts the forums here and elsewhere) viewed RCP as an "exploit" in the sense that it offered advantages not intended by the game's corruption scheme. In fact, RCP was seen as so powerful that unless it was banned under a gentleman's agreement between players, one player using RCP versus another not using RCP would have a substantial advantage. That is why there was a voiced need to change it.

On how to fix it: though I don't want to turn the problem into a statistics debate, I like Arnelos' "averages" solutions, or failing that, some other data point used as a secondary ranking value (date of founding for instance). The key, from my perspective, is (as Arnelos said) to be neither rewarded nor penalized for using a common-distance-ring placement scheme.

Catt

[Boris Godunov]

All of this rigamarole strikes me as a result of a bad idea for controling ICS (and a failed one at that).

I think they should have just set a limit on the distance one could build a city from one's capital, and then that limit can increase with technology, or change with governments, etc.

[isak]

Originally posted by alexman
A second FP does increase the rate of rank increase, but slightly less than three times the original. I didn't bother to figure exact numbers because by that point I was sure it was a bug, not a feature.

Oooh, so now, with three FP's in the DYP mod, we can officially start calling it the 'Kamikaze mod' - neato.

I'm sure this will be fixed. It's probably just some unforeseen sideffect of some other fix, and Arnelos is probably right that there were no statisticians on board the dev team to check that. Spotting a bug like this, does require a somewhat .. erm.. dedicated style of playing

(No offense, Alexman, I'm very glad you figured it out )

[mimi]

I just have to interject that, not only do I find it rather odd that someone wouldn't buy a game because of some intangible aspect (go ask some casual player and see if they have a clue what you're talking about in this thread)... but I ALSO haven't got a freaking clue what this whole thread is about.

Well, ok, I understand the corruption, etc etc... I just don't get the focus on it. I play all the time and, other than knowing I can't build a university in an outlying conquered town, I don't bother with corruption and just play the game - as a whole, not as an analysis of each bit of game play. Call me CRAZY!

[Harovan]

Originally posted by joncnunn
In that case, there was no need to change it if cities after the tied cities have the proper values.

Still you get much more production and commerce out of your cities than you rightfully deserve. Imagine, you have a capital and eight range-4/4.5 cities like in the picture below. Only one of these cities would be rightfully rank 1, the others would be rank 2, 3, ..., 8. But since they are placed in equal distance (4 and 4.5 are equal distances in terms of the game), they all get the rank 1 and are a kickass core, compared to what the AI would get. It doesn't matter at all, that the next ring of cities gets rank 9.

With the fix, all these cities get rank 8. That's for certain not the appropriate fix. Either they get rank 1..8 in some way (like by build order), or they get an averaged rank, like 4 or 5.

I applaud the fact, that it was fixed, but absolutely hate the way how this was done. And no, I won't buy the game till that's patched out.

[alva]

Well Mimi

[F. Gump]
Geek is as Geek does..

[bongo]

@mimi
You're not crazy, not by far. It's just that this forum is crowded with people who like to push the game to it's limits. You can play a zillion games without ever worrying about the RCP exploit but if someone would happen to use it against you in multiplayer you would face a serious disadvantage..

BTW, many poster that appears to be 110% anal in their playstyle if you were to judge them by their posts, actually prefers to play at the lower levels so they can have fun, without bothering with all that 'optimization'-crap....Me included

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Why should you need an anal playing style to notice that bug? Everyone who builds the FP and suddenly gets a higher overall corruption, and half of your empire turns in ultra corrupt cities, should notice it at once.
If you built the FP not in one of your well-planned cities, but rush it with a Leader in aborder town during war, the effects will turn out to be even more drastic (due to lacking a second core around the FP).

...and yes, I see no need to buy C3C before this is fixed.

[vmxa1]

mimi, in the main your are correct. The issue is that you could use RCP to improve (reduce) the corruption. This made you empire more productive. Now we are scambling to figure out how get the most out the cities.

[Boris Godunov]

A simple acknowledgement of the problem from Firaxis with the promise it will be fixed would be enough for now...

[OPD]

I've been thinking about the effects of the new rank corruption and FP system....

Say you have 2 palace cities and 10 other cities. With 5 nearer to each core. (ignoring RCP effects) Before finishing the FP the cities would have ranks of

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. (55)

After finishing the FP the ranks would be

0,2,4,6,8,0,2,4,6,8. (48)

Whereas under the old system the ranks would be (discounting rank exploit effects and assuming similar placements)

1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4,5. (30)

Am I right in thinking that this means the following?

The FP does little to reduce corruption due to rank, only slightly reducing it. (still reducing distance corruption considerably)
The FP does however redistribute ranks more evenly around your cities (assuming you put it in the right place) ranks near the capital go up and the ranks near the new FP go down. Basically averaging rank corruption rather than reducing it.
The FP must be built in the right place or it will screw up corruption rather than reducing it. I hope the AI can handle this.
Rank corruption is now a much bigger corruption factor?

And overall

FP is now more just a means to reduce distance corruption.
The FP is simply not as good as before. This could be a good thing if intended. Rather than being absolutely essential perhaps now it is just important.
Perhaps it was decided that corruption overall should come down (I think I read somewhere that it had) but that the FP should be less effective to balance this.
Good FP placement is now essential counting tile distances to minimize overlap?
With rank corruption eating more sheilds and commerce larger empires as less effective?
Building the FP before you have your second core developed is a bad idea. No more rushing the FP at a distant spot then building around it, to see positive effects it has to be built in an already good area.

If it was intended for rank corruption to work this way now then I think it's a nice change

[alexman]

OPD, I doubt the change is intended, as it makes the FP and HQ in Communism always increase corruption.

Speaking of which:

Originally posted by Willem
Certain effects still don't shut off with gov specific wonders. I haven't checked them all, but I do know that Reduces Corruption is still active after a gov switch. This was supposed to have been fixed a long, long time ago. This means that the new Secret Police HQ for Communism will still have an effect if a civ switches back to some other form of government. The only way around that is to have the Palace or Forbidden Palace as a building prerequisite.

[Nor Me]

That was one of the first things I was going to chack when I get conquests.

I'd heard that it was going to require the palace so wondered if this still applied. Requiring the palace is no good as you can rush it elsewhere.

I've had a mod for months in which there's a communism specific small wonder called the Kremlin which reduces corruption and requires the FP. Of course that still has some effect in other goverments.

[OPD]

Originally posted by alexman
OPD, I doubt the change is intended, as it makes the FP and HQ in Communism always increase corruption.

I suppose so, but that could just be a bug associated with the change.

Like you say cities closer to the FP no longer use the palace to work out rank corruption, so why would they tamper with the system further unless they meant to?

[Master Zen]

I think now the best city placement will be something like "Spiral City Placement" with cities in increasingly higher distances from the capital!

City placement is truly an art form...

[Niessuh]

Originally posted by Doc Tsiolkovski

...and yes, I see no need to buy C3C before this is fixed.

Agreed. Thinking every turn about not placing your cities on equal distance. It's a nightmare


Arnelo's solution is the best, just do the medium between equidistant cities

[heysewa]

So I was using the RCP exploit by accident, mostly because I was playing hub and spoke. It just seemed the most efficient way to run an empire. Also I noted that cities with roads to the capitol were less corrupt than those without. Was true in PTW at least. All roads lead to Rome theory. I think there should be some benefit to RCP (slight); like averaging the ranks and rounding down to nearest whole number. As for forbidden Palaces any formula with multiplication in it is going to cause problems.

[E_T]

I'm still reading the first page of this thread, but it's a game stopper for me at this point in time.

What they should have done, to remove the RCP was to not use Integer values for the city distances. This way, you only have a couple of "sweet" spots that you can place cities to have the same distance.

IMHO, It's a bad programming attempt to remove the results from previous bad programming.

E_T

[alva]

Bah, as long as they fix it soon enough, there are plenty of new things to play around with and get yourself used too IMO.
i DO expect it to be fixed, let me state that very clearly !! but I can get along for a couple of weeks? without it.
The (only) thing I find annoying about it, is that I'm abit weary to start up a PBEM game, in case a patch wouldn't be compatable with the current version and thus turn those played turns into a waste of time.

[E_T]

this would be very easy to Implement, atleast in psudocode:

Step 1: create a table for city corruption figures. Input city names and turn bullt

Table 1
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| City | Dist to Palace | Dist to FP | turn built | is Palace | is FP | closer Palace | closer FP | Same |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Step 2: figure the distance of each city.
a: using Pathagorian Math (use the SQRT(X^2 + Y^2)) with the X-axis as the NE-SW line through the capitol and the Y-axis as the NW-SE line through the capitol (or FP). Figure the distance to both and put into table.
b: flag that it it either closer to Palace, closer to FP or same
Step 3: Flag FP & Palace (is Palace/FP)
Step 4: Parse through table, sorting the cities to 2 separate tables with just distance, turn built, is palace/FP and same flag.

Table 2 & 3
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
| City | Dist | turn built | is Palace/FP | Same | Rank| City Culture |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Step 5: Bubble sort both tables, by the distance, keeping Palace/FP at the top
Step 6: Parse through table, looking for cities that have the same distance.
a: Bubble sort sort the ones that are they same distance by turn built.
b: IF more than 1 have same turn built, then also sort by city culture.
c: If more than 1 have same turn built AND same city culture, then sort by Random Number.
Step 6: Assign Rank from 0 to whatever.
Step 7: Parse through both tables, looking for same flag.
a: IF a city is same, toss from the table that has the highest rank.
b: IF rank on both tables is the same, then toss from the table that had the lowest Palace/FP culture.
Final Step: Assign Distance and Rank to each city for later corruption calculations.


What this would do, is to have the ranking of each city, first by being Palace or FP centric, then by distance, then by age, then by culture and possibly then by a random factor. Also, if a city is the same distance between both Palace & FP, it initially gets ranked as both, then the better rank wins.

This routine would be run every time a city is built, the FP is built, The Palace is moved or a city is gained or lost somehow. The distance and rank figures would be used for each city.

The distances are floating point values, the Rank is Integer.

E_T

[WarpStorm]

That could be tightened up a bit, but I like it.

[zorbop]

let me get this strait, the fp is bad, secret police is bad and my cities cannot be the same difference from the capital?
what were they thinking?

[Vlado]

Hmmm, I wonder if I ever would have noticed since I often don't build the FP. (no leaders, trying in a totally corrupt city taking 200 turns... ) So I hope they don't fix it since then maybe even I can have a chance in multiplayer...

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by zorbop
let me get this strait, the fp is bad, secret police is bad and my cities cannot be the same difference from the capital?
what were they thinking?

It wasn't intentional, it was a bug.

[notyoueither]

Why did they shut down the beta prior to the final release version(s)?

[steven8r]

Originally posted by Anun Ik Oba
I'm wondering, is there any interim fix that we could mod into the game, or is this stuff pretty hard-coded?

One interim fix would be to flag the 'Reduces Corruption' for city improvements. That could at least help some.

[Saint Marcus]

Why did they shut down the beta prior to the final release version(s)?

do you have to ask?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Why did they shut down the beta prior to the final release version(s)?

Money of course, but at some point you have to go forth. I would say they did a fair job and a lot better than most.

[stonewall]

Originally posted by vmxa1

Money of course, but at some point you have to go forth. I would say they did a fair job and a lot better than most.

I agree that at some point they just have to go forward, but it does not make much sense to me to do all of the work on something outside of the beta.

[nbarclay]

Dominae, I see what you're saying about how from a competitive perspective, good FP placement gives the human player a huge advantage pre-Conquests. But some of us enjoy Civ 3 more from an empire building perspective than because we want the AI to play us as close a game as possible. (Consider Arrian's "Ultimate Power" games.) From an empire-building perspective, the ability to benefit from good palace/FP placement is extremely important because without it, conquering additional territory starts to become almost completely worthless long before the domination threshold is reached.

Granted, the new specialists and the boosted power of scientists and tax collectors provide a way to get some value out of totally corrupt cities. But to me, something doesn't feel right about having huge numbers of cities where the only viable strategy is to make everyone farmers and specialists. So while I wouldn't mind too terribly accepting some increase in corruption as a price for the improved specialists (not that I'd exactly enjoy even that), I absolutely hate to see the ability to benefit from solid two-core empires taken away. Even if the FP bug/change helped make the AIs more competitive, I'd still regard it as a problem that needs fixed.

Regarding the RCP situation, the worst thing about the change in my view is that it increases the potential for a city on bad terrain to be a liability rather than an asset. The question, "If I build a city here, will it produce enough to be worth displacing more distant cities by a rank?" was already an annoying one when faced with desert or tundra near the capital under the original rules. Now, not only does building a mostly desert or tundra city near the capital hurt the rank of every city further away, but it hurts the rank of cities the same distance from the capital without even letting the poor city take over the displaced rank. (By the way, if I understand what’s going on with the FP situation correctly, the FP change adds still another penalty to low-value cities near the capital.)

At best, the RCP "fix" accomplishes little more than to replace one set of rules through which adjusting city placement to fit an "unnatural" quirk in the rules provides an advantage with another. As others have alluded to, replacing one set of winners and losers with another doesn't really fix anything. Arnelos’s idea of averaging the penalty is in line with what I’d already been thinking would be the ideal way to resolve the situation if Firaxis wanted to do something about it (I've had a couple statistics classes myself ), although I was never annoyed enough with the RCP bug to raise a fuss about it.

Nathan