A study of corruption

[padillah]

No. X, Y Waste/ City Name, Size
To Capital Production (FYI)
1) 5,0 -1/+10 New York, 8
2) 10,0 -4/+8 Atlanta, 10
3) 4,3 -1/+6 Oxford, 6
4) 9,4 -4/+6 Exeter, 6
5) 14,3 -8/+7 San Francisco, 7
6) 10,1 -3/+11 Boston, 8
7) 13,6 -6/+5 Philidelp7hia,
8) 17,8 -8/+4 Seattle, 11
9) 19,12 -8/+2 Chicago, 6

This was without Courthouses. If I added a courthouse (actually I took the reading and then sold the Courthouse but that shouldn't matter):
1) 5,0 -1/+10 New York, 8
2) 10,0 -2/+10 Atlanta, 10
5) 14,3 -5/+10 San Francisco, 7
6) 10,1 -3/+11 Boston, 8

Now, the first thing this says is that at 5 or 6 squares away (and possibly as many as 10 but I'll get to that caveat in a little while) there is no bonus in a courthouse... so don't bother wasting your time or shields.

Next, size does matter. (sorry, I had to get that in ) Even Chicago, at 19,12 away from the capital, gets more than 1 shield eventually. Get a border town big enough and anything will produce 2+ shields.

The next thing I noticed you can't see in the chart. Atlanta, Exeter, and San Francisco are not "culturally attached" to my capital. (Hey I tried but the Aztecs got to the site before I could. I'll get it back.)
Knowing that, the chart above tells us that this is important because Boston is about the same distance away as Atlanta but it has less corruption. Especially if corruption is based on a percentage of the total production of a city. Boston 21.4%, Atlanta 33.3%. 10+ percentage points... big difference.

Also, when they make a difference Courthouses really make a difference! Especially in cities not "culturally attached" to your capital. San Francisco without a courthouse has 53.3% loss, with one it has 33.3% loss (20 points difference). Atlanta without a courthouse has 33.3% loss, with one it has 16.6% loss (16.7 points difference).

And last, is it me or are you noticing a "corruption cap" of -8? Is that just because none of my cities produce enough to have more than -8 or is this a real cap? San Francisco definitely has enough shields to warrent more than -8 loss, and Chicago is certainly far enough away to fault more than -8. Of course this is 80% loss so maybe it's just that way.

Anyway, with this at our disposal what thoughts have I stirred up?

[Aeson]

What difficulty are you playing at? What government were you in? How many total cities? And what size of map? These all play a part in when corruption will start kicking in. At regent level on a standard map, it seems corruption becomes close to complete outside of 10 spaces from my capital. There certainly isnt any cap of 8 on the games that I have played. On my last game I had a city just 13 spaces from my capital that was losing 19 of 20 sheilds to corruption in Democracy. Building a courthouse changed it to 18 of 20 shields IIRC. Of course I had close to 60 cities, which is well over the maps prefered city count.

The main problem I have with corruption is that the forbidden palace is so dependant (if you want anything near optimal placement) on getting a great leader to rush it. I sometimes dont get any in a game, even in constant warfare. That can make the forbidden palace almost impossible to build outside of already productive area. If I start building it at 1725 BC, at 1 shield per turn, I can finish it around 1760 AD! (300 turns) My games usually dont last that long.

The way I work around it, if I have the time, is to build my FP near the current capital, and then by steps move the capital farther and farther out until its in the area where it serves the most benefit. Of course this usually entails 30 turns per step, sometimes more, which if you have to move the capital very far is almost just as bad. And if your empire is on 2 or more continents its not going to work.

I think the way corruption is, it makes despotism, and later communism, the only ways to run large empires. If the point of corruption is to limit the size of a civilization, then it needs to effect extra food production as well as shields and commerce. Its not hard to have as many cities as you want be productive in despotism, but switch governments and most become next to useless. There really need to be some ways of combatting corruption for commerce. Shields you can get around by pop rushing or logging, food isnt effected at all.

[padillah]

I'm so sorry. I feel so stupid having left that out.

These stats are from a Warlord level, normal map, in Republic with 10 cities (the nine I cited and my capital).

Some of this is invalidated by these stats but I think the "culturally attached" thing I noticed is quite interesting. That could be interesting when you are thinking of leaving the continent and realize that you will only ever have 1 shield in any of those cities.

Hank P.
BTW does anyone know whether you can sell the FP and build again in another location? That might help to change the location. speed build the palace to within one or two turns and then sell the FP and change production at the last minute.

Thoughts?

[Aeson]

I may be wrong, but I dont think the palace can be rush built. I know on my last game I tried step rushing from a temple-> courthouse-> colloseum-> palace, but it wouldn't allow me to switch to the palace at the end. It also won't allow switching if you've contributed to the sheilds through forestry.

I haven't played on warlord yet, other than my first "getting familiar with the interface" game on cheiftain I haven't played below regent level. I remember on that cheiftain game that corruption wasnt much of a problem at all, and I had well over 50 cities. There may well be a cap on corruption for the lower difficulty levels.

Something I would like to see added to the game is a true police unit. Their attack/defense would be low or nonexistant, but having them stationed in a city would decrease corruption. As a trade off, they would consume one food each, so that you couldn't completely wipe out corruption feasibly. Of course they would have to be paid as well, so they would also take one gold per turn support (and not applicable to the free units). Of course just having the police station help reduce corruption would be much the same thing. Maybe they could be a specialist type, where instead of an entertainer, taxman, or scientist, you could have a policeman.

On another note it would be nice to have an environmental specialist as well, to help combat pollution. Even with mass transit, recycling plants, and no factories, much of the later stages of the game is spent cleaning up pollution. Even with worker automation it is a big hassle that has to be dealt with every turn.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by padillah
And last, is it me or are you noticing a "corruption cap" of -8? Is that just because none of my cities produce enough to have more than -8 or is this a real cap? San Francisco definitely has enough shields to warrent more than -8 loss, and Chicago is certainly far enough away to fault more than -8. Of course this is 80% loss so maybe it's just that way.

There is no cap to corruption that I can see. I've had a city with production over 30 shields with only 1 good shield.

Tiny map, Democracy, not at war, courthouse, no unhappiness, about 1/3rd of the map away from the Forbidden Palace, Regent level, 30+ cities

After that game, I manually corrected the corruption bug myself, pending the patch.

[vmxa1]

I have found the corruption to be over the top. The concept is fine, but 23 out 24 shields to corruption? I doubt that even the worse city/civ has managed to steal at that rate. Any thing over 50-60% is a farce.
Most post chastise me for suggesting pollution was over done, but I agree it is not reasonable until you have Hydro (or Hoover), recycle, mass tran, solar, the whole 9 yards. Even then I still get some and I was not even building factories. It can be handle, but should not be 3 or 4 per turn. In real life we have pollution, but it is not appearent to us most of the time. I do not count litter in this as pollution.

[Blaupanzer]

Real societies use police and court officials to cut down on crime and black market activities. The fact that courthouses have NO effect at some distance from capitol and some number of cities, even in Democracy, makes no sense at all in terms of reality. Actual corruption has a lot to do with city size, as bigger cities have more of it. It does seem the programming is designed to punish big, sprawling empires. More tools with more effectiveness makes more sense for the player than moving capitols. Does anyone really believe that Vladivostok has more corruption than Moscow, or that LA has more corruption than New York? Or that moving the capitol to St Louis would cut down on corruption in Chicago? The Forbidden Palace idea is purest fantasy, it works, but it feels like nonsense.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I have found the corruption to be over the top. The concept is fine, but 23 out 24 shields to corruption? I doubt that even the worse city/civ has managed to steal at that rate. Any thing over 50-60% is a farce.
Most post chastise me for suggesting pollution was over done, but I agree it is not reasonable until you have Hydro (or Hoover), recycle, mass tran, solar, the whole 9 yards. Even then I still get some and I was not even building factories. It can be handle, but should not be 3 or 4 per turn. In real life we have pollution, but it is not appearent to us most of the time. I do not count litter in this as pollution.

Yes, pollution is also overdone. I think pollution levels trigger global warming, which comes way too early.

I was in the early modern era, with Hoover's, and getting global warming every other turn! I was still a long way from Mass Transit and Recycling Centers, so there was little I could do about it.

[ICMB]

Hmm.

While I have had cities with pretty significant corruption problems, I've almost always found it to be manageable via rush-production, a new palace, and the forbidden palace.

That is, when I build a city that has maximum corruption (all-but-one shield/gold lost), I do the following:

. Focus on food production to get population up.
. Rush-buy defender, temple, courthouse, harbor, aquaduct (usually in that order, for whichever I need)

Usually that gets a few more production points, enough to make do. I generally build the Forbidden Palace near my original Palace, and then move my Palace to a medium-distance to the other side of my empire. In my current game, I actually did two hops to move my Palace to where I wanted it. Each move took about 30 turns or so, but I focused my workers on improving each city to its maximum population and production as I moved to speed it along.

In the current game, I have land area shaped roughly like South America. My Forbidden Palace is in the upper center of the fatter half of the continent, and my palace is in the lower third, to get best coverage over my empire.

I can't wait to check out some of these games after the corruption "fix". They'll be much more productive!

Also, I haven't had much of a problem managing pollution. Now, that may be because I favor having a huge number of workers. By the stage in the game where I get pollution, I have my infrastructure built up sufficiently to put my workers on Automate and let them clean up the pollution before it becomes a problem.

I get occasional global warming, but I suspect that is my neighbors not cleaning things up very well, as I rarely have pollution that sits for more than a turn.

- ICMB

[TreeWolf]

Am I right about this? The 19 out of 20 shields lost to corruption stuff is because the Optimal city number has been reached for that size map? In this case courthouses have no affect.

Unless you Up the # of cities for that map size? Courthouses seem to work then?

[ICMB]

Originally posted by TreeWolf
Am I right about this? The 19 out of 20 shields lost to corruption stuff is because the Optimal city number has been reached for that size map? In this case courthouses have no affect.

Unless you Up the # of cities for that map size? Courthouses seem to work then?

I'm not sure about that. It's possible, but I thought I had seen that a courthouse always gave me at least a second shield.

That being said, I have *never* had a city that was unusable due to corruption in the long-term. Besides the gain from additional land and the corresponding likelihood of resources, I see little reason to limit your expansion unless the support cost becomes overly high. (ie, a tiny city halfway around the world from you that you can't get workers/troops to as needed)

I can also say that I always go over the "city limit" in my games. If the AI sprawls, it is usually beneficial to sprawl yourself, and it leads to a big gain in productivity late in the game when corruption is less of a problem.

- ICMB

[ullteppe]

I think ROAD connection to capitol(?) helps a bit (marked difference, tested). By the time I built the road, all the other cities were connected to each other so not sure whether it was the capitol, but still...

Just a thought

[ICMB]

I agree that a road network helps, because that gets the luxury resources to your corrupt cities, which makes them happier, which means less corruption.

I should have noted that I often use 30-40% to luxuries, which keeps people happier and keeps the corruption down.

- ICMB

[Arrian]

Ray K -

In my experience, population pollution is much worse than factory pollution. So what I do is hold off on sanitation until I have ecology (mass transit/solar plants). A size 12 w/a factory pollutes hardly at all, but produces plenty. A size 20 w/a factory and no mass transit produces a bit more, but pollutes A LOT more. You'll spend all of your time cleaning it up and watching grassland -> plains -> desert. Specialist citizens are worthless, so there is little point to a city above pop20 anyway.

-Arrian

[Skanky Burns]

In a recent game (the Tournament game, actually) i had taken over most of the continent, rush-built the Forbidden Palace, and any city that produced more than 1 shield per turn had built a courthouse and moved onto other stuff. That left only 1 shield per turn cities building court-houses.

I had 67 cities, 24 of which were 1 shield cities. I rushed all the courthouses (with cash, not pop, so income would be about the same).

Before rushing, i had a total income of 3876, and corruption loss was 1327, or 34.236% of my total income.
After rushing, i had a total income of 3987, and a corruption loss of 1307, or 32.782% of my total income.

While not a massive decrease, the courthouses in the far-flung cities of my empire did actually decrease corruption. By 1.5%

[sophist]

Something I've done to combat corruption (and it's worked reasonably well) is to cap distant cities at 12 pop. That way you can more or less guarantee that they stay in "We Love the [Ruler] Day" mode indefinitely. If they grow, they can gain an unhappy person. So put a courthouse, a temple, a marketplace, and a cathedral into that city as soon as possible. More luxuries and happiness wonders (Sistine Chapel esp.) are great. In this way, you can generally get waste down to "only" 50% or so (in one of my cities, 18/38 shields wasted, but all commerce was still wasted). After selling all my happiness improvements (killing We Love the * Day), I was wasting 27/35 (dunno where the 38 -> 35 drop came from. connected to Industrious? workers were on same tiles). Then I sold my courthouse and was wasting 30/32 (again a drop in the total). If I just sold the courthouse while keeping WLTKD, the waste was 24/32 as though I'd lost WLTKD. This city was about as far from the FP and capital as any in my empire (only 2 shields with no anti-corruption measures in place). So there you go. When acquiring a city far from capital and FP, cap its population at 12. I'm not sure if you can sell a hospital; should try building workers/settlers to drop down to 12 and then selling it. Then build courthouse/temple/marketplace/cathedral/colosseum. Use entertainers if necessary to get into WLTKD. Don't bother with any libraries or banks or anything that produces something out of commerce unless you need the culture; it'll all get wasted. At this point you should be able to reclaim just over half of your shields. If you build a factory, you should be able to do ok with that city. It'll never be perfect, but it will be something.

[sophist]

Same test city as above. Removing the railroads in the immediately surrounding squares seems to have had no effect on corruption. Production is 14/27 (13 wasted). Railroads had upped my production, hence the discrepancy. Interestingly, before chopping the last rail link, production was 16/29, with the same 13 wasted). After chopping the last road, production was 12/25. By tweaking tiles, I upped it to 16/32. This may lend credence to the connection-> capital reduces waste, but it's a small effect if it's truly there. You'd need to link your cities anyway, so it's a moot point.

Originally posted by ICMB
I agree that a road network helps, because that gets the luxury resources to your corrupt cities, which makes them happier, which means less corruption.

I should have noted that I often use 30-40% to luxuries, which keeps people happier and keeps the corruption down.

- ICMB