Is the Corruption Level to High?

[Venger]

Uh, why not just keep the Courthouse and it's effects from Civ2 - Courthouse reduces Corruption by 50% (meaning with a courthouse no more than 50% corruption can occur) and having a Police Station also reduce corruption by 50% (meaning 50% after the Courthouse, so no more than 25% corruption).

This would make massive sense. Even in a far flung empire, a courthouse and police station would rid much of the corruption, but you'd still see some due to the distance from the capital. But at least you could have a productive city.

Oh - and one more thing - corruption cannot touch the first two shields. Meaning even under 100% corruption as far from the palace as possible, you will have at least two shields to play with. This allows you to build the appropriate improvements.

Just played my first game of it, quit after a maybe 80 turns, but saw enough to know that corruption is out of control - a city no more than 7 hexes away was producing zilch - all 5 shields down due to corruption.

SCREW THAT.

Venger

[cocodrylo]

Even though the corruption is the same, it makes it too difficult. My game is on cheiftan level (accident, but I got too far before I realized it), and yet its 1960 and I can't get to space. I am a civ veteran, and in civ2, I could get to space by 1850. I think I would have an easier time if 10 of my large super cities didn't have to support all of my other cities because they experience 98% corruption. It makes the game too unrealistic. I can imagine on a harder level having spearmen past 1300 AD.

[Akaoz]

How much does Courthouse help at the moment? Exactly? And why does distance seem to affect corruption under Communism?

And does anyone really believe that the editor will ever allow us to change things like this?

-Alech

[Akaoz]

*and a bump*

[accela]

Originally posted by player3
Finally, I'd just like to note that it's also realistic. People have used the analogy of the British Empire in trying to justify why the corruption system is unrealistic. In fact, that analogy shows why it IS realistic. Where is the British Emprie today? Gone! History has shown that EVERY attempt to create a far-flung empire across huge geographic areas has failed! Alexander the Great's conquests... gone. Roman empire... gone. British Empire... gone. Napoleon's conquests... gone. Axis conquests... gone. Soviet Eastern Bloc... gone.

Actually, none of these empires collapsed due to corruption. The British Empire and Soviet Union both suffered from economic troubles and Napoleon and the Axis were at war and lost. Alexander the Great's empire was lost because of a power struggle after his death. I'll give you the Roman Empire...I seem to remember learning about corruption problems - my history there is rather fuzzy. But none of these empires had real corruption problems throughout their reign.

[Rascalking]

The only way to get those far flung cities to produce ANYTHING is to ship out a half dozen workers with them. Then spend every turn having them plant and clear forests. On the right terrain with the right number of workers working the same tile you get 10 shields toward your project every turn with another forest reseeded ready for cutting the next.
This approach is the only way I was able to colonize Japan and the Korean penninsula (on the huge 16 player retooled civ2 map) and the only way to conquor Canada and South America (I"m Americans in America with all the happy/corruption fighting tactics in effect and on easy level.)
But this is extremely annoying and labor intensive on my part - every turn I spend more time hitting plant and cut on a several dozen workers than I do playing (and thus enjoying) the game
This HAS to be managed somehow in a patch, but for now instead of emptying your coffers rushing everything from temples to courthouses to harbors - try renewable resource exploitation.

[Akaoz]

60% of 400 people want something to be done by Firaxis... Are they listening? I’m very curious about what the patch will do for the game.

-Alech

[Akaoz]

And here it is:

"We will probably tone its effects down somewhat for the first patch"



See the whole story at:

http://www.civ3.com/asktheteam_110901.cfm

-Alech

[player3]

Accela:

Actually, none of these empires collapsed due to corruption. The British Empire and Soviet Union both suffered from economic troubles and Napoleon and the Axis were at war and lost. Alexander the Great's empire was lost because of a power struggle after his death. I'll give you the Roman Empire...I seem to remember learning about corruption problems - my history there is rather fuzzy. But none of these empires had real corruption problems throughout their reign.

'Corruption' manifests itself in a variety of forms, not the least of which is 'economic troubles.' The fact is that all these examples suffered from a form of corruption which contributed to their ultimate downfall. The Brits, Soviets, Alexander and Napoleon endured social and cultural unrest in all their far-flung conquests. The Nazi's situation was a bit different; they had to put up with a strong resistance movement which contributed to their defeat. But all these problems can be generalized by one catch-phrase: 'corruption.' Civ3 tries to capture all these problems and simplifies it into the form that we see in the game. Thus I feel it is very accurate from a historical standpoint.

[Madine]

Having corruption be a significant part of the game, and being something you need to deal with, and having high corruption levels in far-flung parts of a vast empire is good.

Having corruption levels approaching 100% that you can't effectively do anything about is bad.

[player3]

Look, I'm not saying that the corruption system as it stands isn't frustrating at times. But the way I understand it is that Firaxis wanted to give some incentive to more peaceful means of playing the game (after all, it IS called 'civilzation' and not 'barbarism.') It has a three-fold purpose 1) make world-wide conquests a less attractive option 2) effectively limit the number of cities you can control to keep micromanagment in check 3) model the historical difficulty in managing a far-flung empire. I would not object to a reduction in corruption levels, but I also reject the notion that the system as it stands make the game unplayable (which is flat untrue)

[Tani]

Originally posted by accela


Actually, none of these empires collapsed due to corruption. The British Empire and Soviet Union both suffered from economic troubles and Napoleon and the Axis were at war and lost. Alexander the Great's empire was lost because of a power struggle after his death. I'll give you the Roman Empire...I seem to remember learning about corruption problems - my history there is rather fuzzy. But none of these empires had real corruption problems throughout their reign.

i absolutely agree, corruption in rl appear worse in the capitial more than often, the maxim "power corrupts" comes to mind. if there's no power, there's nothing to corrupt. the only way far edge cities can corrupt is when it has power to control independent from the capitial. the city would come to a social unrest if it were the officals of the city that are stealing. however, the city would declear independence if it were the citizens that refuse to paying.

the point is when there's high percentage of corruption, there should either be constant civil unrest or city that declears independence.

i don't see how letting you maintain soverenty on cities that defies your order really make sense. neither is it more challenging than what i proposed. it look rather more like a temporary solution to defeating ics.

[D4everman]

I just read the response from Firaxis on the Civ3 home page. One of their answers to the current corruption dilemma was to build the forbidden palace in any city. ANY city? I thought the FP should be built further from the capitol to have the most effect.

They really need to tone it down a bit. I think corruption has a good place in the game but not at these levels.

[accela]

Originally posted by player3
Accela:

'Corruption' manifests itself in a variety of forms, not the least of which is 'economic troubles.' The fact is that all these examples suffered from a form of corruption which contributed to their ultimate downfall. The Brits, Soviets, Alexander and Napoleon endured social and cultural unrest in all their far-flung conquests. The Nazi's situation was a bit different; they had to put up with a strong resistance movement which contributed to their defeat. But all these problems can be generalized by one catch-phrase: 'corruption.' Civ3 tries to capture all these problems and simplifies it into the form that we see in the game. Thus I feel it is very accurate from a historical standpoint.

I agree that colonies suffered corruption to some degree, but they were still productive. In the current system, it is completely impossible for Britain to colonize the Americas and get anything worthwhile out of it. In history however, the colonies were expensive, but they were also productive.

Personally, I don't think its a good idea to take the problems of expansion and throw them all into a general 'corruption' idea - thats not what the problems were. If the designers of CivIII want to produce a realistic game, they should try to represent this accurately, with some corruption, additional economic expenses, unrest, etc.

Here's a thought I had a day or so ago. Perhaps controlling a city a certain distance away from your current borders requires you to pay an annual support fee - all those ships/caravans going to and fro cost money you know. If you ever couldn't pay the cost then you lose governmental control over the city and it doesn't do anything and its risk of cultural assimilation greatly increases. Of course, this probably wouldn't make its way into a patch...more like a addon or *gasp* CivIV ^_^

[Barchan]

FWIW, there's "corruption" which affects gold production and "waste" which affects shield production. I think "corruption" is being used to refer generally to both, but I'd like to make a distinction between the two.

While I do think the level of both are rather draconican, I'm not sure it's as bad as it intially appeared to me. Actually, I think it's an interesting twist that forces me to change the CivII strategies that worked so well in the past. Logically, it can be very difficult to have a far-flung empire and expect it to work properly. To be honest, I always felt that having a democratic government in Civ remove all corruption was bunk anyway. So if I must adapt, I will.

Frankly, I've less heartburn over corruption than waste. I can accept that perhaps even very high levels of gold will be lost on the way to my central coffers from my distant cities. But I cannot comprehend why all the production goes down the toilet as well. Arguably, if this was an enemy city, it was producing well before I took it. Now all of a sudden, and regardless of the resistance level or garrison strength, everything seems to be running off in the arms of mysterious looters. It's baffling. I'm not a programer, so forgive me if I'm positing "magic wand" type changes, but perhaps the corruption and waste rates could be decoupled. Waste, IMHO, should be a both function of resistance and distance, but more of the former than the latter. Distance from your capital *should* result in some waste, to reflect the challenges of efficiently managing production across time and space. But it shouldn't effectively nullfiy a town's ability to build it's own facilities.

As for corruption, I'm still out on this one. I think there should be a price to pay for overextending your empire, but the price should be paid in gold that fails to make it to the capital treasury, not the local timber and brick otherwise readily available to build a local temple.

[Zurai001]

Originally posted by accela


I agree that colonies suffered corruption to some degree, but they were still productive. In the current system, it is completely impossible for Britain to colonize the Americas and get anything worthwhile out of it. In history however, the colonies were expensive, but they were also productive.

They were productive, yes, but not neccesarily for the British Empire. A LOT of what the colonies produced never left their soil. Because of the distance to Britain, there would be months that would go by without seeing anyone official. THat created a vacuum that led to a lot of corruption.

[Sevorak]

Zurai001,

A lot of what any city produces never leaves its soil, just because it either can't or shouldn't. But I disagree about them not being productive for the British empire - English mercantilism from 1600-1700 or so (don't remember exactly) depended on, as one of its legs, transfer of goods from the Thirteen Colonies to Britain. Most historians will tell you that this was significantly profitable.

Just a historical note - I don't feel strongly about the corruption either way. Would be nice to see a courthouse actually do something though.

-Sev

[Grifman]

Well, given the severe limitations due to corruption, the only real option seems to be to raze captured cities and replace them with newly founded cities. I'm playing on a large map, and corruption is killing me after taking over the Romans. I can see corruption affecting money generation, but shields is too much. I can't build anything, they're hardly worth owning as they are now. I can get more out of a new city than I can out of a conquered one.

Grifman

[Yaga]

bump

[Trachmyr]

Like I've suggested in other threads, I think the best soultion to the corruption/waste problem is to put a Maximum Cap on corruption based upon it's government type (which should be a seperate field in the editor)... say 90% for anarchy, 80% for despotism, 70% for communism/monarchy, 60% for republic, 50% for democracy provided the city is "connected". Also, allow police stations to reduce corruption as courthouses do.

[Fugi the Great]

Corruption is way too high, just like pollution was way too high in CTP2. It now seems quite pointless to liberate your enemy's citys and win by conquest, since adding those cities actually makes the problem worse. Democracies are supposed to have "minimal" corruption, I guess I didn't know that "minimal" meant 95% corruption. Communism is supposed to have "communal" or equal everywhere, but here too I don't see it.

[Bakunine]

Originally posted by player3
Look, I'm not saying that the corruption system as it stands isn't frustrating at times. But the way I understand it is that Firaxis wanted to give some incentive to more peaceful means of playing the game (after all, it IS called 'civilzation' and not 'barbarism.')

Well they suggest that to deal with curruption when we go in long military campaigns we just raze city after city!

See the last faq in www.civ3.com.

[Malthis]

Corruption stinks.... but unlike most who want a flat reduction in corruption levels, I say kill two birds with one stone. Police Stations are useless, unless you're at war and unless you're a republic/democracy (even then they are weak solutions). Now, when I go Democratic, it's cause I don't want war anyway, and If I am Communist and go to War, what use are the Police Stations? ZERO.
This is a glaring misrepresentation of what Police Stations actually do (In real life) which is reduce crime, aka Corruption. Don't get me wrong, I like that it combats war weariness (even though I fail to see the real life connection), but to solve the imbalance in corruption levels that everyone is mentioning, let's whip Police Stations into what they should be, AN EXTENSION OF COURTHOUSES

[Akaoz]

*bump*

[player1]

I have an idea.
Lets Police Stations in Communism, Monarchy & Despotism reduce corruption (but not in Dem./Rep.)

This thing could make those governments more balanced compared to MIGHTY DEMOCRACY.

[Daetrin]

Originally posted by player3
Look, I'm not saying that the corruption system as it stands isn't frustrating at times. But the way I understand it is that Firaxis wanted to give some incentive to more peaceful means of playing the game (after all, it IS called 'civilzation' and not 'barbarism.') It has a three-fold purpose 1) make world-wide conquests a less attractive option 2) effectively limit the number of cities you can control to keep micromanagment in check 3) model the historical difficulty in managing a far-flung empire. I would not object to a reduction in corruption levels, but I also reject the notion that the system as it stands make the game unplayable (which is flat untrue)

Great in theory, however this level of corruption is keeping me from even _peacefully_ expanding. I have an empire that goes from the west coast to the east coast of the continent I'm on. Cities that I founded myself in the north east corner have 99% corruption. My capital is in the center of the continent, i'm in Democracy, the cities are connected and have courthouses and are in we love the king mode. It just doesn't make any sense. America could never have been formed under these conditions.

[Daetrin]

Originally posted by Zurai001


They were productive, yes, but not neccesarily for the British Empire. A LOT of what the colonies produced never left their soil. Because of the distance to Britain, there would be months that would go by without seeing anyone official. THat created a vacuum that led to a lot of corruption.

First, that explains the corruption level in my empire when i was in the early industrial age. How about now when my entire continent is crisscrossed by railroads and i've got airports all over the place?

Secondly, if the commerce and production never left the soil of my "corrupt" cities, then why do I still need to pay maintenance on the city improvements there? London certainly never shipped chests of gold over to the American colonies to pay upkeep for the things that were built here. The reason most of the stuff produced in America stayed in America was because it was being used for support and of and further development of the infrastructure.

Certainly getting rid of the shields makes no sense, the colonists were perfectly able to develop their own infrastructure with their own production. Getting rid of the commerce only makes sense if some percentage of the ammount lost to waste is applied to the upkeep that i need to pay for the city.

[player3]

I've had games where city's were far enough away to have 80% corruption, even with courthouses, democracy, and optimally-placed capitals. In those outlying cities, I found that the best use for them is NOT to build infrastructure, but rather use them as a 'breeding ground' for workers to build infrastructure and speed the growth of other cities. The nice thing about the corruption model in civ3 is that it doesn't affect food production, no matter how far away you are. So you can keep cranking out those workers (rush-build if you have to; they're cheap) and use those corrupt cities to boost your population.

The point is; civ3's corruption model does NOT cripple the game. It merely deters world conquest and forces the player to build infrastructure. The way civ2 was modeled, it was almost pointless to build infrastructure because you could build power through conquest much more easily. Civ3 changes that through corruption penalties.

[mathgoulet]

I've heard that firaxis will look at the corruption problem in incoming patches...

But up to now, the solution is to build a medium empire with courthouses and Forbidden palace. When your border cities are at 99% corrupted, stop expanding and build colonies to get resources. If you conquer a foreign city outside your palace radius, burn them to the ground . Of course, you can only use a republic/democratic government.

The corruption is a problem when you try to build a gigantic empire. You try to conquer as much as land you can, trying to limit the expansion of AI civs (which are expanding like crazy). Well that's it!

[player1]

I think that corruption & waste levels for distant cities with WE LOVE THE KING DAY, are OK.
Corruption is still high, but you can extract enought prodution from it (since WLTKD lowers only waste)

SO I PROPOSE:
Let's waste corruption be reduced, so cities without WLTKD have waste same as now they have with WLTKD.
Also new WLTKD should reduce both corruption (new effect) & production (lower then now effect).