After Patch Waste and Corruption

[scottbe]

I just finished downloading the Patch and wanted to see if everyone else is getting the same waste/corruption ratios as I am now.
A city 9 hexes from the captial, (11 total cities), same continent, Democratic government, Courhouse built, Diety level - Waste is 40%, Corruption is 30%. Is everyone getting that same ratio?

[Xentropy]

Map size directly effects waste/corruption, also, which you didn't mention. As does difficulty level, which you did mention.

A tiny map on deity, 11 squares is a long way away. A huge map on chieftan, not so much.

Also, the only significant change the patch made to corruption was to make police stations decrease corruption. So until communism, you're stuck with the same old corruption values.

[David Murray]

A slightly off-topic point here (sorry), but reading the previous post reminded me of something I noticed when I first played Civ 2. Why does it take the invention of communism before police stations become available? I'm afraid the concept of civilian policing predates Karl Marx by a long, long way.

[The Templar]

Use the editor to flag banks as reducing corruption. Makes sense, as monetary reactions are now carefully recorded. Also, this adds a corruption reducing building to the middle ages.

[Nagel]

You can flag reduce corruption on several buildings if you don't like the level it is now. But i still think there should be a way to change corruption without these buildings. It's completely unrealistic at the level it is now.

And communism being "flat" is just a piece of crap. Modern western democracies had FAR LESS corruption ALL OVER than Soviet communism ever had. Communism is overated. The only thing it can do in reality, is change your country into a military society. Give Communism in civ lots of unit support and increase corruption dramatically. - Vice versa for Democracy.

[xane]

I'm not sure what is meant by "civilian policing", but certainly the concept of police stations and communism came very close to each other in history, although I fail to see how they are linked otherwise.

London's Metropolitain Police c.1829
Communist Manifesto c.1848

[sophist]

Originally posted by xane
I'm not sure what is meant by "civilian policing", but certainly the concept of police stations and communism came very close to each other in history, although I fail to see how they are linked otherwise.

London's Metropolitain Police c.1829
Communist Manifesto c.1848

Well, it's not like there weren't any sort of law enforcement systems in place beforehand. They just weren't necessarily so organized.

[CB2034]

As far as the corruption levels, i rushed built police stations all over a savegame map i had and the corruption was worse. And not worse by just a little, i was getting 40percent corruption all over my empire even cities right next to my capital and forbidden palace. And 1000 turns for a palace in a city producing 15 shields.
come on now. At least airsuperiority works.

[Skanky Burns]

Communism (post patch) has a flat-rate corruption level of 40%...
So your cities right next to palaces will have 40% corruption, but so too will pathetic outposts on the other side of the world, which would normally produce only 1 shield.

If you want to benefit from less corruption, change to a peace-time government such as Democracy.

Ironic isnt it, that the building you get with Communism is useless in that form of government...

[Nagel]

I liked the civ2 non-corruption in democracies. Maybe it could have a little, but democracy shouldn't have much. It's just plain stupid. Modern western democracies have very little corruption compared. Cities far from the capital isn't useless in the real world. It's just plain annoying in the game.

Don't get me wrong, this is a GREAT game. I love it. But there are a couple of things I don't like. Corruption and not being able to turn of the pollution. Of course, environmentalism is politically correct and all, but it's not like the world turns to a great plain or desert every time Moscow cleans out its pipes.

Please FIRAXIS tune it DOWN or at least make an option for the player to turn it off.

[rid102]

Hmmm... a lot of things (e.g. pollution/corruption) can (theoretically) be turned on/off or set quite easily so it seems strange that you can't have a "customise difficulty level" section on the start screen where you can set all these things.

[habadacus]

I've also flagged the bank AND the barracks as reducing corruption, made the military acadamy act like the forbiden temple increased to #of optimal cities, increased to %of optimal cities for my current difficulty level (to 200%). I STILL have cities not all that far from the capitol with Courthouses, Police Stations (plus banks and barracks as I mentioned), that are connected to the capitol via Road, Rail, Air, and Sea that are still producing 1 shield/1gold under a democracy thats been at peace for a while. This is absolute B.S. and has ruined any desire for me to continue playing this game (which I started out loving, until I started actully getting the upper hand on the AI and winning a few more cities). This better be fixed soon, or It's going back to CompUSA. What the point of playing anymore? Any city I build, annex, or conquer is just gonna be a useless POS.

[chequita guevara]

"Communism" brings police stations not directly but indirectly. Unruley, organized workers "need" police to keep them in order. In the United States, and in much of the industrialized world, the growth of the police goes hand in hand with the workers' movements. The English police system was set up after the Luddites movement, the Peterloo Massacre, and the Chartist Movement (not completely sure about the last one). In the US, the Pinkertons, Brinks, Wells Fargo, etc. were primarily used for cracking workers' heads in should they even think about organizing.

[Redstar]

said this before but i want to say it again.

on warlord..largest (non-editor) map..as a commie.........

I lost 1300/turn post-patch vs pre-patch.

(i have some where between 126-200 cities --i gave up trying to count them all)

Flat tax is a killer. It only makes sense it would be because your major producers are by the palace/forbidden and tax free.

So you lose almost 1/2 their value..but gain the production of
all those small outlying cities. Over time those would grow. But until then, you are getting hit hard with the flat tax.

[Barshy]

I think civ3 is supposed to be the "ideal" version of communism and not the type that we have seen in history.

[chequita guevara]

Us commies perfer to see Democracy as the idealized version of communism.

Communism is based on the Western view of what Stalinism was, not it's reality. In reality the army and national guards were used far less to keep public order than in capitalist countries. Heck, at the end they couldn't even get the army to put down Yeltsin. They made much more extensive use of the police, however.

Communsim should have allow one military unit for police functions.

Police stations should also keep one unhappy person content, double or triple it under Communism.

They should have something like nerve stapling for Communism as well, well heck, for every modern government. Overuse of it, however, should cause a government to fall.

Corruption should start out at nil under Communism, but get progressively worse until the society just can't function.

Oh, and the first country to go Communism should get DoWed or trade embargoed by every other country. However, to offest this disadvantage, when the first country goes Communist, every other country should get massive unhappiness for ten years.

[jbrians]

Originally posted by Nagel
I liked the civ2 non-corruption in democracies. Maybe it could have a little, but democracy shouldn't have much. It's just plain stupid. Modern western democracies have very little corruption compared. Cities far from the capital isn't useless in the real world. It's just plain annoying in the game.

Don't get me wrong, this is a GREAT game. I love it. But there are a couple of things I don't like. Corruption and not being able to turn of the pollution. Of course, environmentalism is politically correct and all, but it's not like the world turns to a great plain or desert every time Moscow cleans out its pipes.

Please FIRAXIS tune it DOWN or at least make an option for the player to turn it off.

Yeah, modern day US certainly doesn't have any corruption. Our government is completely effecient and unsusceptible to waste.
-Brian

[Fromage]

Perhaps you didn't know, but Modern USA isn't the only democracy in the world. Poland and Russia are both democracies nowadays and both are pretty corrupted. BTW. Large companies give support in elections to senators/president and they usually do favors to the companies. Isn't that some kind of corruption?

Strange that corruption has never been any serious problem in my games even on emperor level. Perhaps I am playing a different game than you?

[habadacus]

Yeah OK, sure NO corruption is a little too generous towards Democracys, but it doesn't take San Francisco 120 years to build a Library just because it's 3000 miles from the captiol, or because there's X number of other cities in the United States. That just plain rots and ruins the thrill of growing an empire completely and can't be explained in any other way than Firaxis tried so hard to "innovate" in this game that they decided forceing you to turtle and click next turn until you either build a spaceship, or get an arbitrary number of "culture points" before one of the AIs does would be fun. In my opinion, it's not fun, and it's not good game design, especially for a Civ game.

[chequita guevara]

But it might take 120 years to build a decent library system.

Anyways, the US isn't a democracy. None exist in the real world on a macro scale. The US is a republic.

Plus cheese-boy was being sarcastic.

[habadacus]

I found that if you edit the default rules (double click civ3mod.bic in install directory) and set the optimal city % to 600%-800% you can take care of this problem and still be able to build the forbiden palace when you're supposed to. Outlying cities still experience corruption, but that can be reduced with the couthouse/police station. It's worked for me so far.

[AHO]

You shouldn't HAVE to edit a game's basic program just to make it TOLERABLE.

[zapperio]

Just because *you* think it isn't tolerable doesn't mean it isn't. Hence, the editor. Personally, I thought corruption was a fun challange, pre. patch and so do the designers, incidentially.

Zap

[Moraelin]

Personally, what I did when modding it was to make the optimal number of cities be always 1/40 of the number of squares on the map.

Lemme explain. A tiny map has 3600 squares total area. A small map, 6400: almost double. A normal map has 10,000: almost triple.

What this means: at the same density, a normal map can accomodate three times the number of cities that a tiny map can. When going for conquest, THAT is the number of cities you can expect to end up with.

Yet if you look in the editor, the post-patch optimal city counts are: 12 for tiny, 14 for small, 16 for normal and so on. Pre-patch it was worse.

What I'm saying: when going for conquest, the larger the map, the quicker you'd run into the "1 shield, 1 coin" kind of corruption. Which seems to me overkill, since it's not that intuitive and natural to expect that larger maps equal more difficulty. (On top of having more cities to micro-manage.)

And indeed, on deity you'd run into that problem even quicker. There's a percentage modifier based on difficulty. More difficulty, less cities are optimal before corruption strikes.

So with my formula, the numbers I ended up with are: 9 optimal for Tiny, 16 for Small, 25 for Normal and so on. I think it's more fair, since you're likely to end up with the same kind of corruption at the same percentage of map space occupied, regardless of the map size.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Modern western democracies have very little corruption compared.

Reply: 900 dollars for a hammer. 1600 dollars for a toilet seat.

[Drefsab]

BOTTOM LINE: The game just isn't that much fun with this much corruption...

I am very disappointed in Firaxis' lack of attention to this issue in the patch.

[AHO]

I agree, Dref.

[habadacus]

I also agree. It's worth noting that this corruption stems from the game seting an arbitrary limit to your # of effectively controllable cities. Corruption due to distance for the capitol CAN be mitigated by courthouse/police station inprovements. Corruption due to city count CANNOT (at least it seems that way from my testing). And yet when you go to the city advisor screen, it's up there telling you to BUILD MORE CITIES. Kinda stupid and useless if you ask me. If this limit to effectively controlable cities is such a major part of the challenges your civ must face, the advisor should tell you as you approach the optimal number, instead of telling you to build cities that will only ever produce 1shield/1gold. And the default rules # of optimal cities should be scaled properly to the map size as Moraelin pointed out for those purists who don't want to have to hack the rules. I would prefer not to have to myself, and find with all my cities under the optimal # the game gets a little too easy. It would be a nice compromise if the corruption hit for going over that limit didn't kick in so suddenly, without warning, and be so extreme. Are you listening Firaxis?

PS You can only build the Forbiden Palace when your civ has half of the # of optimal cities. So if you change the # of optimal cities, and not the pecentage, you can't build the Forbidden palace until way later in the game than you normally could. This may not bother you, and I wish I had waited until I built it myself, but thought I'd point that out.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Moraelin

Lemme explain. A tiny map has 3600 squares total area. A small map, 6400: almost double. A normal map has 10,000: almost triple.

You are forgetting that the default number of civs on a standard map is double that of a tiny map (4 vs 8). Dividing the land equally among the starting civs means that the "optimal # cities" on the standard map should be 1.5 times higher than the tiny map, not 3 times.

However, the inequity of the corruption on tiny maps (which has always been worse) was pointed out to Firaxis the day after the release and they have specifically addressed it with the patch.

For better or worse, the corruption levels are now set where they want them to be.

[scottbe]

I dont have any problems with the Waste and Corruption as long as the AI opponents are operating with roughly the same conditions. Before the patch however all my governments had identically the same W/C ratios as I had in Depotism. Changing to Republic or Democracy didn't change them an iota. I've now downloaded the patch and I'd like someone who has also done so to tell me if they are getting the same W/C ratios as I am now under Democracy. Standard map, a city 9 hexes from the captial, (11 total cities), same continent, Courhouse built, Diety level. I get 40% waste and 30% corruption, is this the same for the rest of you I want to know.