probs with corruption

[djafrot]

Hey all

Looking for help with CORRUPTION. I like to expand and it kills me every time. Yeah I know... build courthouses and Forbidden Palace and the such. But when corruption is killing your rates of production, this takes forever!

Any suggestions?

[Harovan]

Since the corruption is designed to LIMIT your expansion, I'm afraid you just have to live with it. Besides the improvements you mentioned, it gets slightly better with the "We love the King day" in the cities and Republic or Democracy as government. But you can't get rid of it completely.

[Theseus]

Save your shekels. Buy improvements. Police stations. Factories.

At a certain point, stop expanding through aggression. Destroy all cities surrounding you, creating a war zone.

On large maps, the most I'll go to is 60-70 cities. After that, no point.

[DogCiv]

If you are in a non-Communist government, you will need to place a Forbidden Palace, preferably on the other end of your empire from your Palace. On huge maps which I play, I usually will place the FP at least 20 squares away from my Palace.

Unfortunately, that means the FP city is usually cranking out a measly 1 shield per turn. Well, you could wait the 200 turns for that to happen, during which time a lot of bad things can happen to that city. Or you could build a nice military and go forth and beat the snot out of your neighboring civs.

Fight enough battles, and you'll likely get a Great Leader. Use him to rush your Forbidden Palace. Voila, your remote cities, suddenly go from 1-shield jokes to producing powerhouses that can rival your core ancient cities.

In my current game, I've already generated at least 10 Great Leaders. Of course, I've fought probably 200+ battles to get there, but hey, it was worth one of the dead enemy units!

[djafrot]

yeah, Great Leaders are the way to go. You have to have an elite unit that wins without damage to get a G.L., right? I usually only get one per game, despite being at war pretty much until 1000ad.

[Arrian]

No, an elite unit doesn't have to win "without damage" in order to generate a GL. There is a roughly 1/16 chance each time an elite unit wins a battle that a GL will be created, unless you have the heroic epic, which lowers it to 1/12. It has recently been disclosed that any given elite unit may only produce 1 GL. After that unit is upgraded (and thus demoted back to veteran), it can get promoted and eventually create a new GL. Thus, as a general rule, remove elite units that have generated a GL from the front lines.

If you have trouble creating GLs, I suggest trying a militaristic civ. Militaristic civs have a bonus to the odds that a victorious unit will be promoted (regular -> veteran -> elite). The more elite units you have, the better your chances of generating a GL.

[Plug for Japan] Japan is religious/militaristic and starts the game with the wheel, which means you see horses right away. Their UU is perfectly timed for a Medieval golden age, and is a great all-around unit. [/Plug for Japan]

Obviously, I agree that the best way to get a Forbidden Palace up and running is to use a GL. If you can build it in a city with more than one shield... it's too close to your capitol.

-Arrian

[MiloMilo]

djafrot: you like to expand, and you have problems with too much corruption. I say, just use a civ that plays to your style and strengths! In this case, the Romans are an obvious choice, as are the English. The commercial trait gets attacked as weak, but that doesn't mean it's good for nothing at all. A small decrease in corruption can mean a very large increase in production in large empires. Plus, with more money you can more easily buy improvements in truly unproductive cities.

People often disparage the commercial trait, but like others it gets hard to live without when you've used it for a while.

[MiloMilo]

OT: Theseus- 60 cities?! Wow, on large maps I usually don't go over 30-35. With 60-70, what indeed is the point? You might as well just comquer the rest and start over.

(I'm assuming that on a large map there will be maybe 120-140 cities total. If I had half the map I'd get bored quick. I'd rather restrict myself to maybe 25% of the map and devote my energy to supporting my small allies against my rivals. It's not efficient or self-serving, but it means there's always something to do, and thus less late-game tedium.)

Edit: Just curious about playing styles, btw, not criticizing. I know the above is the pretty standard difference between warmongering and peacemongering. Can you guess that my favorite faction in SMAC was the peacekeepers?

[Theseus]

Yeah, I don;t also build that many, for the same reasons as you... I was just saying that was the max.

On a large map with 60% ocean, there will be 6760 land tiles, not including coast. Even if every city were spaced for 21 tiles (and mine certainly aren't) that's room for ~320 cities. So 60 is not that dominant.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to set conditions for the emergence of a killer AI civ, so that I would NEED 60 cities to compete.

[MiloMilo]

Hmmm, I guess my calculations were a bit off. What is base ocean %? 70%? I like more water on my maps, so less land, and fewer cities, and shorter turns late-game. Not to mention more naval strategy.

I'm in a game now where I have 2 rivals in the industrial age (we probably have 40 cities each). Then there are 3 smallish civs and 3 tiny ones. I've resisted expanding more because it would mean eliminating one of my small allies without hurting my rivals; this is the opposite of what I want. So since I'm not focused on expanding, my energies simply go towards hindering my rivals' expansion. I feel like the UN, sending troops around the world to help the underdog when border disputes arise.

It's getting boring lately, everyone's got infantry. But, I'd like to see if I can keep it going into the modern age, and see what happens with a tripolar system of nuclear superpowers...

[Radiation Zero]

Milo: That'll be really interesting.

Playing the UN is fun. My fondest memories from Civ 1 was Culturing the game so by the Nuclear Age, things were pretty much how they were during the Cold War.

Then I'd fire it up. Me as Russia vs. a very belegerant America, from 1930-2000AD, Fought in Germany, China; fighting other people's wars and taking big bites out of each other while we were at it..

I wish it was a bit more like Empire Earth, where we could elect to start with a certain amount of technology under our belts and also potentially limit what techs you could get along the way.

I think this would open up a lot in the game, but every attept I've made in the editor has failed.


Back to Corruption, it's one of the worst problems for me, as well. I'm still waiting for my army and workers to catch up to my recent expansion so I can slap down an FP, but I've already had a city razed due to carelessness and I'll be d@mned if those frogs torch another.

[Willem]

Originally posted by DogCiv
If you are in a non-Communist government, you will need to place a Forbidden Palace, preferably on the other end of your empire from your Palace. On huge maps which I play, I usually will place the FP at least 20 squares away from my Palace.

I had a look at the corruption in my cities once, to figure out a good location for the FP. I noticed that it becomes problematic after about 15 squares. So having the FP at least 30 squares away from your palace would be a better bet.

[alexman]

Corruption due to distance depends on map size. A city 15 squares away from the capital on a tiny map, has a lot more corruption than on a huge map.

But since the FP does not help the curruption due to distance from the capital, giving a distance for its optimal placement is not very relevant.

Ideally, the FP should be placed so that there are at least Nopt number of cities that are closer to it than to the capital. (Nopt is the optimal number of cities for that map size, as labeled in the editor). Obviously, if you are following a dense city build, you can benefit from a much closer FP location to the capital than if you are placing your cities 4-5 tiles apart.

[Willem]

Originally posted by alexman
Corruption due to distance depends on map size. A city 15 squares away from the capital on a tiny map, has a lot more corruption than on a huge map.

Right. I forgot to mention that I was playing on a huge map.

[Sava]

Just turn it off or increase the optimal amount of cities in the map editor.