Repairing corruption

[Ray K]

This is for those players that do not like the incredible amount of corruption added to Civ3 since Civ2.

In the scenario editor, go to "World Maps" and you'll see a 'Optimal # Cities' variable which controls the max. # of cities you can grow to before corruption is used to protect the AI from your growing empire.

For the different map sizes, here is the limit set by the Firaxis designers:
Tiny - 8 cities
Small - 12
Standard - 16
Large - 24
Huge - 32


I did an experiment and started up an earlier save game. I was playing the Greeks (commercial) and the furthermost city was having the following corruption, before and after rush-building a courthouse:

before courthouse: 4 good shields, 6 corrupted shields
after courthouse: 6 good shields, 4 corrupted shields


Then I used the editor to effectively remove the city limit by changing the "Optimal #of Cities" variable to a high limit (256). I reloaded the saved game and saw this:

before courthouse: 7 good shields, 3 corrupted shields
after courthouse: 8 good shields, 2 corrupted shields

This city was on the same continent as my capital, I was a Republic and playing a commercial civ. Corruption is not eliminated (which I don't want anyway), but it is at a more Civ2-like level. Basically, it will be based on distance now, not distance and # cities. Far-flung empires will still be hard to hold onto.

Note that this change does not unbalance the game in favor of the player, since the AI will benefit from reduced corruption as well. What it does do is restore the original intent of the Civilization game: to build an empire and try to conquer the world.

Problem solved!

[CygnusZ]

1) You have to learn to deal with corruption, it's part of the challange. It really isn't so bad.
2) The goal of Civilization is not "Take over the world"
I won by making the world very good freinds with me.
You could by getting votes in the UN.
You could also win by building a Space Ship.

None of these victories are easy, all must be earned.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by CygnusZ
1) You have to learn to deal with corruption, it's part of the challange. It really isn't so bad.
2) The goal of Civilization is not "Take over the world"
I won by making the world very good freinds with me.
You could by getting votes in the UN.
You could also win by building a Space Ship.

None of these victories are easy, all must be earned.

What's really cool is that now I can win with the UN, win with culture, build a spaceship OR win with conquest. It's my choice. Nothing has been taken away.

Note that winning by conquest is one of the options described for the game. Also note that fixing the corruption problem benefits the AI as well.

If you don't think corruption is so bad, play on a Tiny map

[CygnusZ]

You can win with conquest even with the curroption. It's not impossible, just harder.

You'd be suprised what's possible with a big enough bankroll

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Ray K
If you don't think corruption is so bad, play on a Tiny map

Why would you need more than 8 cities on a tiny map?

I suppose on that map you can win with 8 or less cities.

[yavoon]

u complain for months on how civ2 is too easy, and how civ3 will be no different. the game is out no more than 3 days, u alrady deem a feature too hard, and make it more like civ2.

does no1 else find this hilarious? and I guarentee you that the ur performance against the ai will be greatly improved by weakaning this rule of the game.

but hey, now u can complain about it being too easy again, right?

[Ray K]

Originally posted by yavoon
u complain for months on how civ2 is too easy, and how civ3 will be no different. the game is out no more than 3 days, u alrady deem a feature too hard, and make it more like civ2.

does no1 else find this hilarious? and I guarentee you that the ur performance against the ai will be greatly improved by weakaning this rule of the game.

but hey, now u can complain about it being too easy again, right?

who are you talking to? when did I complain about Civ2 being too easy? oh yeah, you're making making a weak point. Have you played Civ3 yet? I'm not the only one who thinks corruption is way too strong. Go score your brownie points with your Firaxis pals somewhere else.

personally, I don't appreciate the Firaxis designers dictating an upper limit for your Civilization's size. It has never been part of the Civilization series and it shouldn't be now. Corruption is still in the game, it's just at 50% on the edge of my empire rather than 99% (i.e. only one good shield allowed).

I played with this patch last night and, for the first time, an AI from another continent aggressively expanded onto mine!

[dainbramaged13]

Originally posted by CygnusZ
It really isn't so bad.

theres where youre wrong, if i have 13 production in a city, no matter how far away from my capital, i should have more than 1 active prodoctuion. This is ridiculus!

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Comrade Tribune


Why would you need more than 8 cities on a tiny map?

I suppose on that map you can win with 8 or less cities.

Well, the game limits you to only 4 total civs on a small map, so 8 cities apiece would leave half of the Tiny map unpopulated! I helped that out by modifying the game to allow me to playing against any number of civs on a Tiny map (I usually play with 8 total).

The whole point of the change is to allow "win by conquest" to be a viable option again.

I never used the Infinite City Sleaze on Civ2, and preventing that is obviously one motivation for the "Optimal # Cities" rule.

#1: "um, how are we going to stop the Infinite City Strategy in Civ3?"
#2: "well, we could fundamentally change the way tiles are worked so that size-1 cities are not proportionally advantageous"
#1: "ooh, that will be hard. how about if we just set a cap on the number of cities"
#2: "that's too simple. think of something better."

...a month passes...

#2: "did you ever figure out a fix to the ICS?"
#1: "um yeah, how about a cap on the number of cities?"
#2: "sounds intriguing, keep brainstorming"

...another month passes....

#2: "did you ever figure out a fix to the ICS?"
#1: "yeah, we came up with a great idea! how about a cap on the number of cities?"
#2: "that is a great idea! put it in the alpha code for testing, and we'll replace it if something better comes up"

...another month passes....

Tester: "this corruption is killing me!"
#1: "it's a new feature. read the manual, dude"
Tester: "I did. How am I supposed to build a courthouse or a Forbidden Palace in these cities? This blows chunks"
#1: "hey, check out these new animations!"
Tester: "cool! oh, and thanks for the donuts"

... software released....

[Scott_S]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Ray K

I did an experiment and started up an earlier save game. I was playing the Greeks (commercial) and the furthermost city was having the following corruption, before and after rush-building a courthouse:

Then I used the editor to effectively remove the city limit by changing the "Optimal #of Cities" variable to a high limit (256). I reloaded the saved game and saw this:

(end quote)


Pray tell how did you utilize the editor to edit the saved game?

I can't find the map file for my saved game.

Any help here would be GREATLY apprecaited!

Best Regards,

Scott

[Nikolai]

RayK: You evil, evil man... Guess Dan Magaha is crying now!

[General Ludd]

If I am going to change corruption it's going to be to add more. The more difficult the challange, the more fun the game is.

I just don't see how someone can find steam rolling over the world any fun.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Osweld
If I am going to change corruption it's going to be to add more. The more difficult the challange, the more fun the game is.

I just don't see how someone can find steam rolling over the world any fun.

Please tell me you are being sarcastic. The current scheme has the corruption so bad that you could have 15 shields of production and 14 are corrupt. You can't make that worse, since the game is obviously giving you one token shield.

Besides, reducing corruption back to Civ2 levels cuts both ways. In my first game, the AI seemed more expansive. Could have been a fluke, though. Regardless, I'm not a sado-masochist. I play the game to have fun, not beat my head against a wall.

[Ray K]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by Scott_S

Originally posted by Ray K

I did an experiment and started up an earlier save game. I was playing the Greeks (commercial) and the furthermost city was having the following corruption, before and after rush-building a courthouse:

Then I used the editor to effectively remove the city limit by changing the "Optimal #of Cities" variable to a high limit (256). I reloaded the saved game and saw this:

(end quote)


Pray tell how did you utilize the editor to edit the saved game?

I can't find the map file for my saved game.

Any help here would be GREATLY apprecaited!

Best Regards,

Scott

Well, I didn't edit the saved game.

I used the CivEdit editor to modify the default parameters file (civ3mod.bic, I think) to raise the "Optimal # Cities" parameter for each of the maps. I set the limit to 256. I loaded the saved game before and after this change to see the effect of corruption on a distant city before and after building a courthouse.

VERY IMPORTANT WARNING: before modifying the default parameters file, make a backup copy in case you muck things up. This warning comes straight from Firaxis.

Hope that helps.

[Kristjan]

who are you talking to? when did I complain about Civ2 being too easy?

I did for instance and many others did it as well.

oh yeah, you're making making a weak point. Have you played Civ3 yet? I'm not the only one who thinks corruption is way too strong. Go score your brownie points with your Firaxis pals somewhere else.

Could you please avoid flaming like that in the future? Please?

personally, I don't appreciate the Firaxis designers dictating an upper limit for your Civilization's size. It has never been part of the Civilization series and it shouldn't be now

That is not true. Civ2 has unhappyness caused by civ size.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Kristjan


I did for instance and many others did it as well.

Not me. Civ2 deity was always difficult, but of course I never used exploits like ICS. Too cheesy.

Could you please avoid flaming like that in the future? Please?

Chill out. That comment was not for you, but for someone who said "u complain for months on how civ2 is too easy, and how civ3 will be no different. the game is out no more than 3 days, u alrady deem a feature too hard, and make it more like civ2. "

That is not true. Civ2 has unhappyness caused by civ size.

As far as I could tell, corruption was caused by distance from the capital. If there was also a size limit, I was unaware of a specific problem with unhappiness. Everyone was unhappy on deity level!

[wotan321]

I went back and looked at some of the gameplay screenshots that have been released over the last few weeks, and it appears that civs are sprawled out across the map in many of those games. Corruption must be a pain, but not a ceiling to expansion. I have heard that boosting your culture really helps cut down on the chaining influence of culture.

Its true that the strength of corruption really prevents ICS, and that is something the civ community BEGGED for as one of the top changes they wanted. So here it is.

Fewer cities with more developed infrastructure is gonna cut WAY back on micromanagement, which is good. Its also going to require the player to put some effort into deplomacy. And if you want to roll over the map..... well it doesn't appear that is going to happen too often, whereas in Civ2 it almost always happened... it had to if you wanted to win.

[Kristjan]

I went back and looked at some of the gameplay screenshots that have been released over the last few weeks, and it appears that civs are sprawled out across the map in many of those games. Corruption must be a pain, but not a ceiling to expansion. I have heard that boosting your culture really helps cut down on the chaining influence of culture.

Someone from Firaxis said that computer dows not cheat on prince level. So how does the computer manage corruption? There has to be a way.

I will start finding it this evening...

[gremalkin]

It seems to me that changing the design specs of the game after three days is being a bit of a lightweight isn't it? You could try and beat the game on it's standard settings..

Whatever...

From what I have read (and I don't have the game yet) - Military victories are way more difficult.. perhaps the civ2 method of expanding by war has been disabled to a certain extent.. Many threads have mentioned the importance of razing cities rather than trying to assimilate them.. Perhaps this is a way forward?

Why don't you try some different strategies? After all it is a "strategy" game....

[Ray K]

Originally posted by gremalkin
It seems to me that changing the design specs of the game after three days is being a bit of a lightweight isn't it? You could try and beat the game on it's standard settings..

Whatever...

Lightweight? Whatever.

It's already been demonstrated that corruption is worse on the smaller maps and easier on the large maps.

To balance the map sizes, the Tiny map limit for "Optimal # cities" should be raised from 8 to 12, and the Huge map limit should be lowered from 32 to 26.

From what I have read (and I don't have the game yet) - Military victories are way more difficult.. perhaps the civ2 method of expanding by war has been disabled to a certain extent.. Many threads have mentioned the importance of razing cities rather than trying to assimilate them.. Perhaps this is a way forward?

Perhaps you don't realize that I'm getting corruption from expanding, not conquering. After just 8-10 cities on a Tiny map, corruption is around 90% -- in a republic with a commercial civ.

Why don't you try some different strategies? After all it is a "strategy" game....

why don't you try playing the game? When you've successfully dealt with corruption on a Tiny map, then come back with your smug attitude.

[albiedamned]

By naming this thread "Repairing Corruption", you imply that it is broken. I understand everything you are saying about how difficult it is to expand, especially in the early game and especially on a tiny map. However I really think you should make an effort to look into some other strategies before you declare corruption to be "broken". There are plenty of others here, myself included, that are learning new techniques and strategies and are having success.

I am not a warmonger and conquering the world is not usually the victory path I choose to pursue. However I think it should still be very possible to conquer the world in Civ3. You won't be able to use captured enemy cities as a base of production. You could either raze the cities you capture or keep them and hope to improve their corruption problems later, but either way you're going to have to bring in fresh troops from your home cities to continue the war. This is not impossible, especially on a tiny map since travel time from your home area should be less. This is also very realistic from a historical sense - invading armies can't immediately make use of a conquered city to build new military equipment. They have to bring it with them from their home base.

[Stuie]

IT WOULD come as no surprise to learn the US government spent a staggering amount of money on the military during the Cold War. But $436 for a hammer and $640 for a toilet seat? These details were revealed in a recently uncovered audit report from 1983. Other expenditure includes $748 for a pair of pliers, $7,600 for a coffee pot and $76,000,000 to replace the army's electric batteries-which were rechargable.

The US Navy also ordered $8,800,000 worth of army uniforms it did not need. The airforce spent $1,118.26 on plastic caps to put on the bottom of table legs to stop them rocking during flights.

Looks like the numbers should be increased for modern Democracies.

[Crankses]

Thankyou Ray! I plan on putting this change in as soon as possible. Corruption is extremely out of balance in my opinion especially since the AI doesn't *seem* to suffer from it as badly.

[yavoon]

I dont know ray, u obviously think highly of ur skills, yet are unwilling to undertake a challenge. seems to me like your just another whiner. if after 3 days u can't solve a problem u simply revert it back to the way it was so u don't need to solve it anymore.

and the obvious complaing that this brings back ICS in its full glory. asnow u can have as many cities as u wnt, and since only distance matters, u best smack em really close together.

but I think it goes deeper than that, ur just not a problem solver. ur a complainer.

[Jack_www]

The reason why you people have so much of a problem with corruption is that courthouses are not going to do it like in Civ2. You must keep your people happy. I am playing as the Greeks and not have that much of a problem with corruption. The things I have done is I made sure that I got access to a lot of luxuries, second I make sure I build at least a temple in all my cities, so I have a strong culture(captured two A.I. cities already with just culture). I also made sure that all my cities are connected to my capital so that they can have access to the luxuries. I have not had to build courthouse in the cities the far most regions of my empire( I have 15, still expanding).

In short you need to keep your people happy and have a strong culture to keep corruption down. I think you guys who have this problem is that all you do is build settlers to expand, ignoring temples and other things that make your people happy. You think that the Civ2 way of dealing with corruption is going to work, but I am sorry to say that is not the case anymore in Civ3. Thus corruption in your cities grows. In order to keep corruption at bay you need to keep your people happy!!!!! The corruption problem is not a bug or game blancing problem, is you habits form Civ2 that you borught to Civ3, which are bad habits in Civ3!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ray K]

Originally posted by albiedamned
By naming this thread "Repairing Corruption", you imply that it is broken. I understand everything you are saying about how difficult it is to expand, especially in the early game and especially on a tiny map. However I really think you should make an effort to look into some other strategies before you declare corruption to be "broken". There are plenty of others here, myself included, that are learning new techniques and strategies and are having success.

albie,
Actually, it is "broken" in the sense that cprruption levels are not balanced across the map sizes. Another poster did the math regarding land tiles and # of civs and came up with "Optimal # cities" totals that *are* balanced across the map sizes. It turns out that the Small and Tiny maps have it worse, and the Large and Huge maps have it easier. So there was an unbalanced field for players on different map sizes. I have been playing Tiny maps (probably the only person on this forum), so I have been getting the corruption really bad.

Here are the originally "Optimal Cities" limits for the map sizes (Tiny/Small/STandard/Large/Huge):

8/12/16/24/32

Assuming that the "Standard" map is the optimal setting, here are the balanced numbers for "Optimal Cities":

12/14/16/21/26

You can see that there is a big difference for the Tiny map. Going from 8 to 12 is a 50% improvement. That is the setting I will be playing on. I wonder how many players on Large and Huge maps will be lowering their settings to make corruption as difficult as on the Standard map?

I am not a warmonger and conquering the world is not usually the victory path I choose to pursue. However I think it should still be very possible to conquer the world in Civ3. You won't be able to use captured enemy cities as a base of production. You could either raze the cities you capture or keep them and hope to improve their corruption problems later, but either way you're going to have to bring in fresh troops from your home cities to continue the war. This is not impossible, especially on a tiny map since travel time from your home area should be less. This is also very realistic from a historical sense - invading armies can't immediately make use of a conquered city to build new military equipment. They have to bring it with them from their home base.

The thing is that I usually am crippled by corruption on a Tiny map before I can even consider warmongering. It's the early expansion phase that is stifled, and that precludes any chance for capturing cities.

Typically, I like to establish my borders early and just build from there.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by yavoon
I dont know ray, u obviously think highly of ur skills, yet are unwilling to undertake a challenge. seems to me like your just another whiner. if after 3 days u can't solve a problem u simply revert it back to the way it was so u don't need to solve it anymore.

and the obvious complaing that this brings back ICS in its full glory. asnow u can have as many cities as u wnt, and since only distance matters, u best smack em really close together.

but I think it goes deeper than that, ur just not a problem solver. ur a complainer.

Sorry, yahoo, but maybe I can just recognize a design flaw faster than you. It turns out that on Tiny maps, the max cities limit for corruption levels is set too low. Maybe you want to beat your head into a wall until Firaxis finally acknowledges that the problem is there, but not me. I am glad that they put controls in the game so that pro-active gamers can fix the problem.

Secondly, I am not such a loser that I resort to cheesy strategies like ICS to beat a computer game. Read about it, never tried it once. There is a difference between playing a game in the way that it was designed and playing it in any way that is allowed just to win.

[Iloveculture]

Stupid Noobish question

What is ICS?

[albiedamned]

It appears there may be some truth to both sides of this argument. Soren has now posted on the Forbidden Palace - Catch 22 thread that the corruption city limits may have been off for small and tiny maps. He didn't say for sure yet, but the mere fact that he said he is looking into it lends credence to what you are saying, Ray K.

At the same time, those playing on normal maps (like me) are still experiencing levels of corruption that are nothing like in Civ2. But we are exploring new strategies and techniques to deal with it.

So Ray K, even after you modify the corruption city limits, you will probably still have to look into new strategies for dealing with the corruption. As has been mentioned over and over, just building a courthouse won't do it anymore!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by albiedamned
It appears there may be some truth to both sides of this argument. Soren has now posted on the Forbidden Palace - Catch 22 thread that the corruption city limits may have been off for small and tiny maps. He didn't say for sure yet, but the mere fact that he said he is looking into it lends credence to what you are saying, Ray K.

As the 'other poster' Ray K referred to, I have to say that the issue of additional corruption hardship on tiny maps is not just a matter of 'credence', but strongly backed by rather simple calculations regarding map sizes, numbers of civs and the 'optimal cities' setting.