Is the Corruption Level to High?

[jbird]

I would have much less of a problem with corruption if I could somehow get Great leaders. I have had *very* little luck while playing the Americans to get Great leaders at all. And honestly, I only want two.

1. Forbidden Palace
2. My first Army

That's all I want. If maybe the first leader was somewhat easy to get (much easier than the current system imo), the second leader was somewhat harder to get (a bit less difficult than the current setup), and every other leader was as difficult to come by as they are now, i'd be fine with it.

However, as it is in the released version, I simply can't get a leader to either get my first army or complete the palace. I wouldn't mind it if I could have *two* clusters of good cities, and the rest were stuck with the crappy 1 shield 1 commerce model. However, a 90% (or 80%) cap in Democracy with a Courthouse and Democracy would be better imo than a 99% cap.

Jbird

[Zurai001]

What's the answer to corruption? Make your people happy and they're less likely to steal from you. We Love the Ruler Day seriously reduces the shield corruption penalty, and that's what everyone's complaining about anyway. The first thing I do when I build on another continent is to rush a harbor to give me access to my resources. This generally boosts me from 1 shield to 5 or 6, shich is perfectly manageable as far as I'm concerned. On a related note though, they do need to fix Communism in relation to corruption; the 'communal' effect just plain doesn't work.

[jbird]

I would have much less of a problem with corruption if I could somehow get Great leaders. I have had *very* little luck while playing the Americans to get Great leaders at all. And honestly, I only want two.

1. Forbidden Palace
2. My first Army

That's all I want. If maybe the first leader was somewhat easy to get (much easier than the current system imo), the second leader was somewhat harder to get (a bit less difficult than the current setup), and every other leader was as difficult to come by as they are now, i'd be fine with it.

However, as it is in the released version, I simply can't get a leader to either get my first army or complete the palace. I wouldn't mind it if I could have *two* clusters of good cities, and the rest were stuck with the crappy 1 shield 1 commerce model. However, a 90% (or 80%) cap in Democracy with a Courthouse and Democracy would be better imo than a 99% cap.

Jbird

[ProfessorPhobos]

I think corruption does need a little tweaking- it's a bit excessive, as it stands now. Probably the simplest fix is to make Police Stations deal with corruption and\or improve the Courthose slightly. I think some corruption is a great challenge and adds to the game, but I need some more tools to deal with it.

[Arrian]

Ok, to clarify:

I have built the forbidden palace in all the games I've played to date, and have gone to democracy at the earliest opportunity. I have paid special attention to happiness in order to control the effects of corruption as much as possible. I have only gotten two great leaders - and they were both in one game, in the modern era, so I actually dealt with building the forbidden palace. It is, in fact, far and away the best minor wonder.

Yet I still think the corruption is too high. Again, it is a good idea that I heartily approve of, but I personally believe it needs to be toned down a tad. What do I mean by a "tad?" I'm not sure...I still want developing a city or cities halfway across the world to be difficult and expensive, and I have no problem with captured cities filled with foreign nationals losing nearly all production/gold to a combo of corruption and resistance.

I my latest game, I was exploring the world with a caravel when I happened upon an island (5 total tiles - forested grassland, two hills and a mountain). I went and got a settler and built a city on the forest. As it took roughly 3 turns for my caravel to get to the island from the mainland, I figure it was roughly 10-15 squares away from my south coast (I had magellan's), and thus about 20-25 from my capital). This was on a "Normal" Map. I had no illusions about that city ever becoming a powerhouse. That being said, I built (or rather, bought):

Harbor (to import my luxuries)
Courthouse (duh)
Temple (happiness)
Marketplace (happiness)
Cathedral (happiness)
Bank (happiness)

I'm a Democracy and most of my cities (the one in question included) are celebrating. Result: It now produces two useable shields instead of one. The hills and mountain are mined and railroaded (although the mt. isn't being used, as the city is a size four). If I've failed to do something about the corruption, then tell me. Otherwise, I think it's a bit too much.

That's just my opinion, and frankly it's an annoyance issue rather than a "I can't win because of this so I think it should change" issue.

-Arrian

p.s. To be fair, I'm playing as the Babylonians, not the Greeks I've played as before, and have thus lost the "Commercial" special ability, but that doesn't really seem to help anyway.

[Farmer]

This make the citizens happy and you will solve the corruption problem is a myth. I have a size 12 city in central africa, two screens away from the capital in eastern europe. It has a courthouse, it is communism, and each and every one of the 12 citizens is happy, and corruption is still 20 out of the 21 commerce. It has improved the corruption on the production, but only from 99.9% corruption to 75% (6 production out of 24), which is barely an improvement, especially for a city so close to home with all the available luxuries, temple, market, JS Bachs, etc.

If 25% production is the best I can get, it's not good enough.

[jbird]

So sorry for the multiple posts, I was getting an error message, and didn't check, so I re-submitted the same thing multiple times. I'll be more careful in the future. If a moderator can/would delete the multiple posts, i'd appreciate it. Again, my apologies for the clutter.

Jbird

[Zurai001]

Originally posted by Farmer
This make the citizens happy and you will solve the corruption problem is a myth. I have a size 12 city in central africa, two screens away from the capital in eastern europe. It has a courthouse, it is communism, and each and every one of the 12 citizens is happy, and corruption is still 20 out of the 21 commerce. It has improved the corruption on the production, but only from 99.9% corruption to 75% (6 production out of 24), which is barely an improvement, especially for a city so close to home with all the available luxuries, temple, market, JS Bachs, etc.

If 25% production is the best I can get, it's not good enough.

No, it's not a myth, you even said so yourself. No one ever claimed WLTRD affects commerce corruption. However, it does signifigantly lower the production corruption; your own results bear that out. Additionally, I wouldn't expect anything a continent and a half away to produce at full effectiveness anyway. 25% is more than enough to get culture going and to process resources, and that's what colonies are for, not to be big bad major cities that are producing wonders left and right.

[Jolard]

Corruption is indead a problem, and while I see the need, I wish it was a little less drastic. When you have a large number of cities which you cannot get above 1 shield per turn no matter what you do, it becomes difficult and frustrating. There should be a way, and it should be difficult but not impossible, to at least decrease curruption to 75%. That way you still have huge corruption, but at least you are able to get 25% production after some works, or something.

Also, corruption like this makes no sense in a modern democracy, as someone else once said, Seattle is probably less corrupt than Washington DC! In the Civ universe, Boeing would not exist, as you would not be able to build all those planes in Seattle.

All that said however, I like the balancing that corruption provides. I just wish it was still really drastic 75% but not overwhelmingly stifling 98%.

[player1]

Hey, player3!

One of topic question.

Since you have username similar to mine (player1),
have you tried using name player1 & it didn't worked, or you just wanted to be player3?

P.S. I would normally not post this here, but you don't have enabled Private messaging.

Sorry, to others!

[Auslander]

Originally posted by Akaoz
It’s not that easy anymore. Courthouses don’t do much and Democracy is laden with corruption.

-Alech

Oh great...another Clinton's in the White House.

[player3]

Player1, I didn't even notice that! I used to be on the Civ2/SMAC boards (when they still existed) and back then I was player2. Someone took that name so now I'm player3

[Farmer]

No, it's not a myth, you even said so yourself.

- Zurai001

No, I said that "we love the president" days reduced corruption from an impossible 99.9% to an unbearable 75%. I do not believe that this solves the problem, hence it is a myth. Look at realistic examples from history: the corruption rate in Jamestown, US, or Melbourne, Australia, was not anything like 75% under the British empire, and they were much further than a continent and a half away from London. They certainly weren't regularly celebrating "we love the king day", let alone every day, and yet still managed to survive as a community and build everything that they needed. The corruption in Boston wasn't 99.9% prior to the Boston Tea Party, and I'm sure they weren't celebrating their love of the King either.

The implementation of corruption as a means to quell massive expansionism is not a bad idea, imo, but it needs to be tweaked if people who like to immitate the expansionist civilizations of history can enjoy the game as much as everyone else.

[Lung]

These posts are not exactly endearing me to buy CivIII the moment it becomes available here Now i know why Craptivision released CTP everywhere simultaneously!

For what possible reason, may i ask, is the corruption model from Civ2 abandoned in favour of this apparent crud of a model? Perhaps Fircrapxis forgot that we play Civilization for fun?? From what i've seen so far, it's a joke!!

[Daetrin]

Having run into the corruption problem myself and read a couple threads on it, here's my opinion.

Corruption as an idea is a valid one, and I don't think it should necessarily be toned down, but the player should be able to deal with it in some manner.

Building a courthouse should make some noticeable difference in every city where you build one. Either that, or Firaxis should tell us the equation they're using so that you can know whether or not building one will do any good before you waste the money on it.

There should be more of a noticeable difference between the government types. Democracy doesn't seem to do much about corruption despite what the Civilopedia says, and Communism is obviously broken.

There needs to be some way for more advanced civilizations to reduce corruption in far off cities. Either as a factor of the Age they are in, or through specific advances (Nationalism, Radio, etc) or through additional specific city improvements (Police Station, Newspaper Office, etc.)

High culture should probably make some kind of difference.

As for real world examples, England held onto India and Australia for quite awhile, more importantly, the United States of America hasn't really had any trouble holding onto Alaska and Hawaii has it? And look at China which was huge even back in our Ancient era, and although I'm sure there was corruption that needed to be dealt with, they still managed to get things done.

Corruption was supposed to stop ICS I believe, but it seems to have stopped all expansion beyond a well defined point. It would still be doing it's job if it forced you to stop your expansion and/or military conquests after your empire epanded a certain amount so that you could build corruption reducing improvements or wait for further advances before you could expand again.

[Akaoz]

Wow, it almost seems like we are playing two different types of games... I have a feeling though that the perfectionist/builders, who never like to expand over a large portion of the total landmass, don’t see the problem as well as those going for domination.

-Alech

[Kc7mxo]

I like to build a perfectionist empire now and then. My secondgame was on a small map, five civs. Conquered my continet and just settled down. Corruption was a problem, but it didn't cripple me. But not long after I started an intercontinetal war. . . .. Yeesh. I had to selll the damn cities back to the ai. Now all my wars are of extermination.

[Howling Chip]

Originally posted by jbird
However, as it is in the released version, I simply can't get a leader to either get my first army or complete the palace.
Jbird

Don't know how many games you have played or at which difficulty level, but I have gotten leaders in the ancient age three times playing at Regent level. Seems the generation is OK, based on getting them a total of 5 times in about 8 games that went past the ancient age. In the game I actually finished in 1986, got leaders twice. One in ancient, one in middle ages. I was fighting less often after the middle ages age.

Anyway in all the games they showed up, it took elite units, and I had to be warlike in playing style at the time for them to be generated.

[Trachmyr]

And just as important... the ability to tweak corruption levels and the amount of reduced corruption from improvements needs to be available in the editor.

[cherub96]

The corruption levels are not only game-ruiningly frustrating, they`re also highly UNREALISTIC.
How the hell should the British empire have worked?
They had colonies all over the world which provided income for Britain. India, America, Hongkong, lots of African and Middle East countries.
With the CIV3 corruption model, the British empire would have gone BANKRUPT subsidizing their colonies!
I can`t imagine what they were thinking when they created this model.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Zurai001


No, it's not a myth, you even said so yourself. No one ever claimed WLTRD affects commerce corruption. However, it does signifigantly lower the production corruption; your own results bear that out. Additionally, I wouldn't expect anything a continent and a half away to produce at full effectiveness anyway. 25% is more than enough to get culture going and to process resources, and that's what colonies are for, not to be big bad major cities that are producing wonders left and right.

re-read your post and see what you are justifying. With a perfect government, perfect happiness, and every necessary improvement and wonder, you are saying that getting 25% of your shields (i.e 75% corruption) as the absolute best-case scenario is OK with you.

I, on the other hand, think this is ridiculous and that most people would agree. Does Los Angeles operate at 75% corruption? OK, bad example. Does Seattle operate at 75% corruption?

[Earthling7]

Originally posted by Ray K
With a perfect government, perfect happiness

Is there such a thing?

If corruption in Civ3 capitals was as bad as Washington, we would never get anything done. The game would be crippled from the start.

[D4everman]

Corruption is way too high. I like a lot of the suggestions on how to deal with it with a patch, like the Town Sherriff's Office, but something should be done. Considering the fact that the AI will expand like a rabbit on viagra its kind of crippling to see my empire's growth grind to a halt due to rampant corruption.

In one game the egyptians and I shared a border. on the other end of my empire the corruption had gotten so high I was having trouble producing anything. Even on the end facing the egyptians the corruption was pretty bad. This is at warlord level! The egyptians kept sending settlers through my territory to reach the open land on the other end, the japanese were closing in trying to make headway through a dense jungle and barbarians were pounding my outlying cities hard, even though my horsemen and hoplites were oblitering thier camps every few turns. Don't get me wrong, it was fun, but the corruption level was so high that I knew the outlying cities would never produce anything fast enough to beat the japanese to the valuable iron deposits I was trying to claim and when I asked Cleopatra to withdraw her troops she declared war. (Why is the option only "Withdraw or declare WAR!"...why not at least one other option like "In order to maintain peace between us, we would like to withdraw your troops immediately.")

Anyway, I just threw my hands up in frustration. My border cities could barely build a wall in a reasonable time, let alone withstand the egytian chariots. I'd never make it to the iron in time, and I'm certain the japanese would destroy or assimilate any colony if I could have gotten a road and worker there fast enough. Besides, the ridiculous corruption made building temples there too long so the cities went in civil disorder every five minutes.

I sure hope they fix this in a patch.

D4

[Tigen]

I just hope they don't "fix" corruption too far the other direction.

Currently, it's severe, but I didn't think the Civ 2 model was realistic either.

It makes sense to me that when you conquer cities in far flung lands you don't get to harness those people the way they were being harnessed by a more tightly knit government.

I'm not sure corruption is the best model for this behavior (there is also the "resistance" factor). But even looking at the British Empire, sure they technically owned vast far off lands, but those lands weren't productive or useful in the way that British cities were. Britain would send British troops to these places, and the primary payoff was the luxury and trade goods. They couldn't really, say, use India's cities to build lots of armies and structures and use them to conquer China.

That reminds me, the game doesn't seem to model gold very well. You don't really get the historical Spanish/America gold situation in Civ 3.

[Kc7mxo]

Actually, the way corruption is modeled, hmmm. Maybe firaxis based their corruption model on the way the spanish empire operated when it was at its. . . . height.

And while everyone points to gold for that era, the real money maker was silver. Gold deposits were hard to track, and ended up being constantly smuggled out of the new world. But spain had an extremely tight reign on the silver.

Perhaps in an expansion pack, firaxis could add silver resources which give a direct payof to your tr3easury. Then we could blame all our corruption on that resource.

[Cougz]

Another thought about corruption...

Of the USA's big cities, Philadelphia suffers the most corruption. Yet it is about as close to Washington as you can get without actually being there. Cities on the west coast... Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, are less effected by corruption.

In Australia the state that brings the most wealth per capita based on resources is Western Australia (due to all the mining). It is also low on corruption, despite being furthest from the capital.

I'm sure people can think of other cases in large countries that are similar.

Which all goes to question whether distance from the capital is really a reliable basis for level of corruption and therefore production power.

Thoughts anyone?

[Daetrin]

Originally posted by Tigen
I just hope they don't "fix" corruption too far the other direction.

Currently, it's severe, but I didn't think the Civ 2 model was realistic either.

It makes sense to me that when you conquer cities in far flung lands you don't get to harness those people the way they were being harnessed by a more tightly knit government.

I'm not sure corruption is the best model for this behavior (there is also the "resistance" factor). But even looking at the British Empire, sure they technically owned vast far off lands, but those lands weren't productive or useful in the way that British cities were. Britain would send British troops to these places, and the primary payoff was the luxury and trade goods. They couldn't really, say, use India's cities to build lots of armies and structures and use them to conquer China.

That reminds me, the game doesn't seem to model gold very well. You don't really get the historical Spanish/America gold situation in Civ 3.

I agree that corruption shouldn't go back to the way it was in Civ2. Corruption should be cripling, but only if you don't deal with it. If we were given tools to fix the problem, at least to some degree, then i would have no complaints. It's just that building a courthouse in a city while i'm in a democracy and seeing the city still at 99% corruption is frustrating.

As for the historical aspect, what about Britain's American colonies? Up until the rebellion the American colonies weren't particularly more corrupt than cities in England. I believe that the colonies in Canada continued to be loyal and productive for quite awhile after the American Revolution.

As for the cities in India, i don't know the history well enough, but the area was very underdeveloped by England's standards when the colonies were founded. Presumably a lot of developments were made during that period, just because they hadn't caught up to England's level of industrialization by the time the colonies were lost doesn't mean there was no improvement.

And i just thought up the best example i've heard so far in this discussion. Hong Kong. Highly productive British colony that remained in their power until 1997, yet was about as far away as you can possibly get from London.

[cocodrylo]

Here is an example of one city of mine:

I am the Greeks (commercial - gives you less corruption).
I am a democracy.
I have a courthouse
They are celebrating we love the king day.
It is about 35-40 squares from my capital, linked by RR.
This is my city (established early from a goodie hut)

It would have 14 production and 38 trade, but because of corruption, they are at 1 each.

Given the other improvements in my city (it has a lot), It cannot even support itself; hell it can barely support its own courthouse.

One other thing that I noticed was that my domestic advisor constantly switches what he calls me. It ranges from "sir," "commander," "president," and "mr." These sound like different titles when you have certain governments. (democracy, anarchy, communism, monarchy etc)

I think there is a problem, and that no matter the government, you always get horrible corruption.

As for "real world" examples that the non-patchers cite, corruption in the US and other democracies is very low. The government recieves over 1.5 trillion dollars a year, and I am quite sure that they don't experience the 35% corruption level of my entire empire (2700 commerce, 971 loss due to corruption - which doesn't even count my shield loss).

Patch it up, or if they don't, I suggest you edit and make other improvements corruption reducers as well (I think they can have multiple functions).

[Frugal_Gourmet]

Nope.. corruption levels are just fine. As long as every player experiences the same rules for corruption, it doesn't bother me.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Frugal_Gourmet
Nope.. corruption levels are just fine. As long as every player experiences the same rules for corruption, it doesn't bother me.

What if all of the chariots had an attack rating of 50? Since every player would experience the same rules, would that bother you?

The excessive corruption has essentially removed the conquest form of victory unless you are willing to raze every city you conquer.