Corruption and # of Cities

[David Weldon]

I post this in the strategy forum because this seems to be where most of the informed people who care about game mechanics lurk:

What is the exact relationship between # of cities and corruption? I'm interested in the increased corruption due to empire size, not distance-based corruption.

I know that when you get to 1/2 of the "max cities" entry for your world size, you get a "build the FP" message. I don't think this level actually creates any corruption, it's just a friendly reminder that your empire is growing large.

I know that when you get to the "max cities" limit, you start suffering additional corruption above and beyond the normal distance-based corruption.

Is there a gray-area as you approach the "max cities" limit where your capital and inner cities begin to experience additional corruption? Or is it a switch that turns on only when you exceed the limit?

How much % corruption does each city beyond the limit cause in your inner cities?

Does population affect corruption? I don't think it does except that because of rounding you might see a small % corruption only when you get to larger population, and not when the city is small.

I'm not complaining about the fringe cities producing only 1 shield. I'm trying to determine the reward/penalty for growing your empire beyond the "allowed" size. Any hard information would be greatly appreciated.

[Blaupanzer]

Do you know what the limit is for each type of government? How would we determine that?

Since score is based mostly on citizens, does the additional corruption offset the additional citizens (or does score not matter, really)?

Which win methods would be most subject to corruption concerns? Space ship only? Maybe UN? Hard to get a cultural win without lots of cities. Maybe if you go for the spectacular city cultural win (20,000 points), corruption would matter. Can't believe the AI would leave you alone once that city crosses 10K or so. Would need a boatload of heavily armed cities to defend that golden place.

[David Weldon]

The limit isn't based on government type, it's based on world size. You can see and set the value in the editor. I think for standard size maps the normal limit is 16 cities. For tiny maps the limit is 8 cities, but I believe Firaxis is going to adjust this in their patch because of some analysis done in this forum that shows 8 is not proportional to map size and other factors. Of course, what happens when you exceed that limit might very well depend on the type of government...

I don't think # of citizens matters, only # of cities. I'm not 100% sure about this, though.

As for what type of win is most affected, I'm not sure it matters. If you have a large empire then the cities on the edge will always have corruption problems because of distance, even with an FP. Thus your 'frontier' cities are mostly for claiming territory, not for production. If you get too many cities, however, then even your inner cities start to get more corruption and therefor you will lose some production and trade. So any win which requires production and trade will be affected. I think that's pretty much all of them.

The question still remains, how much does it hurt to have 'too many' cities?