Concerns about the reduction of Corruption

[Pembleton]

Soren didn't state anything directly, but he hinted that something will change as related to corruption in the upcoming patch. But I have 2 main concerns about this.

1) The AI currently razes cities that would potentially have high corruption. They might have to tweak the AI to account for a change.

2) To me, the best reason to reduce corruption would be to make conquest easier. Right now, with the way it is, conquest seems to be a very difficult way of winning.

However, by doing so, I'm afraid the other victory conditions will be made less attractive. With the way corruption is now, I find when I get to the point it's becoming almost pointless to expand, I will go for a cultural, diplomatic, or space race victory.

My 2 victories in Civ so far were cultural in my first (on warlord), and diplomatic (on regent). For the diplomatic victory I had 2 furious enemies, but I basically either gave gifts or fair trades to everyone else. The 2 furious enemies were necessary because they were both itching to get into my territory and the best defense was to go on offense against them.

If corruption is significantly reduced, I see no reason but to play in an expanding, militarily dominant style. ICS again returns as the easiest and most tempting strategy to use. I like the way that now, if you aren't the largest civ you can still win. This will still be possible after reducing corruption, but I'm afraid that I will with the patch, I will always expand when possible, whereas before I would have slowed down in many situations.

[Steve Clark]

I agree, folks thinking that corruption is too high are not using their imagination or skills to solve the problem. I see corruption as a logical way to prevent overbuilding, for you and the AI. It's an artifical barrier, but it does work. If you think you and the AI can expand greatly right now, just wait if they reduce the corruption factor.

Soren said it best (to paraphrase): think of it as a strategic problem.

Firaxis: Please do NOT substantially alter the corruption factor. Instead, permit (and provide instructions) those that are whining about this on using the editor or perhaps adding it as an optional Preference.

[VetteroX]

I think the people who say corruption is not a problem are playing on chieftan and can win with 7-8 city empires. The fact is that on monarch/emperor the corruption is so horrible the a city 10 squares away from the capital has like 25% corruption. What if I was playing as the americans in the large world map? LA would have like 60% corruption, and If I build the FP there, then cities in mexico and canda would have extreme corruption, and cities made/captured in europe and asia would have 99% corruption. Isnt a little dunb that in cities far enough from the capital, under a democracy AND with a courthouse AND with WLTKD STILL has 99% corruption? Fact is, they have to do something to deal with corruption, right now its just stupid.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by VetteroX
I think the people who say corruption is not a problem are playing on chieftan and can win with 7-8 city empires. The fact is that on monarch/emperor the corruption is so horrible the a city 10 squares away from the capital has like 25% corruption. What if I was playing as the americans in the large world map? LA would have like 60% corruption, and If I build the FP there, then cities in mexico and canda would have extreme corruption, and cities made/captured in europe and asia would have 99% corruption. Isnt a little dunb that in cities far enough from the capital, under a democracy AND with a courthouse AND with WLTKD STILL has 99% corruption? Fact is, they have to do something to deal with corruption, right now its just stupid.

My 2 finished games were on Warlord and Regent. Granted, Regent isn't Monarch/Emperor but give me a break. I don't win with 7-8 civs and although I won diplomatically I had the second largest civ in the game, and pop was one of the few things I wasn't leading in (The English had the Pyramids and granaries were taking forever to build in my conquered cities).

I could have also won with a cultural victory or by score, but I felt just like ending the game then since I believe the endgame is still tedious because the queue system is pretty bad (not saving or loading from a file, for instance) and the worker automation is not to my liking, and you can't issue stack orders.

And people who only make 7-8 cities on chieftain can't win unless they go for a diplomatic victory, believe it or not, or unless you are a Civ veteran who is able to OCC on Civ2, etc.. Although the computer cheats for you at that level through happiness and production bonuses, the AI doesn't act any stupider.

I would agree, however, that if you invested a *lot* of work, such as perhaps a courthouse AND democracy AND WLTKD AND perhaps even changing the way the Police Station works, then you should have better than 1 shield.

What I am concerned about is a *SUBSTANTIAL* decrease in corruption.
I think you can reduce it safely, but I'm afraid that they will just change it too much.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Corruption: I've had as many as 19 cities on a normal map, and have been using a non-commercial civ for the majority of my games. Corruption has been an issue, but never a crippling one.

Originally posted by Velociryx
Distilled Notes
Combating Corruption
Despite the numerous complaints about how debilitating corruption is, there are a number of things you can do about it, such as….

1) Under Despotism, sacrifice your population to further your own glory. Doesn’t matter how bad the corruption is, you get the same benefit, production-wise.

2) Assign a worker or two to each town you’re looking to hurry production in and chop down trees. When you get the tech for it, replant and repeat. Ten shields a pop. Not terribly efficient, but if you need something built fast out on the fringes, it’s better than one shield a turn.

3) The old standby….cash. Use #2 above till you get a good start on whatever you’re building, and rush it with coin for the rest.

4) Troop shuffle. Build troops in towns with good production, shuffle them to the fringe and disband. Won’t help you with wonders, but….

I wasn’t speaking from personal experience but what from others have said, like Velociryx and Soren. However, recognizing that there might be some extreme situations, I’ll modify my original post.

[Pembleton]

Besides, I don't know if you always play on the World Map, but I would find it much easier to beat it on Monarch/Emperor on that map than on a random map on Regent, with enough practice.

This is because you can practice enough to know where the strategic chokholds, and resources are and adjust your strategy accordingly. Not knowing your map is more interesting because you can't use an exact strategy every time.

I have only played on the World Map on Civ2 once, and I never plan to on Civ3. I understand the appeal of "rewriting" history as close as possible, but the predictability of the map makes it much less interesting.

[Trachmyr]

Ok, my thoughts on corruption:

1) I like the higher rates at the beggining... it's one of the few elements in the game that dosen't support the massive rapid expansion at the game's beggining.
2) I do not like the fact that there seems to be no cap for the max. amount of corruption in a city... this is what I think needs to be addressed.

My experience: In one game (standard map, Warlord), I had 33 cities (A big increase from my normal builder/perfectionist strategy of civ2 with 5-7 cities)... Most of the cities in the heart of my empire had no real signifigant corruption. Those on the edge of my empire had signifigant but understandable and manageable corruption... However, a few cities on far off islands (recent conquests for resources and strategic airbases) had 60 corruption out of 61 gold! And 22 waste out of 23 shields! On top of it I'm playing Greece (Commercial), the cities have courthouses and I'm in a democracy! That's simply too high.

My Suggestions:
1) Allow Police Stations to reduce corruption.
2) If the city is "Connected" via road/harbor/airport... place a max. cap on corruption and waste based upon the goverment type (For Instance: Anarchy 90%, Despotism 80%, Monarchy 70%, Republic 60%, Democracy 50%).

Just my 2 cents.

[jgflg]

I don't think corruption represents a huge problem once you've hit the economic level where you can afford to rush buy things all the time, but it can really kill you in the early to middle game. It would be nice to see something available to reduce it at least a little. As it stands now, after a certain distance and/or empire size, there is absolutely nothing you can do outside of manipulating/micromanaging things. I'd like to see a Public Hanging/Flogging improvement added that reduces corruption at the expense of happiness.

Overall corruption wouldn't really matter to me, except for the fact that a huge chunk of your final score is derived from land area. Why provide an obvious incentive to expand as much as possible, but then drastically restrict that expansion?