Corruption/Waste/Riots/Pollution, something we need to discuss

[Drachasor]

Soren has said that these are "unfun" elements in the Civ series and that he is getting rid of them. It is very unclear wether he is replacing them with different systems, or simply getting rid of the concepts all together.

I personally think a number of these concepts need to be reworked, but definitely not eliminated.

Perhaps unhappiness should cause varying levels of waste and corruption, and pollution would cause unhappiness.

Anyhow, let's vote and discuss how best to change the current system. Remember, you can vote for multiple items.

-Drachasor

[Lawrence of Arabia]

change it all from linear models to exponential models, and everything will be fine.

[Enigma_Nova]

Hence making them more complex,
and even less 'fun' to their ignorant, paying playerbase.
Not going to happen.

[Darkstar]

Well, they are in there to slow down ICS. And getting rid of them means that you will be able to ICS with less drag. Grab all that land as fast as you can!

Corruption leaving is just what the majority has been asking for. It gets in the way, and keeps that newly caught enemy capital from ever producing anything, without rush buying everything.

Riots going away mean happiness goes away, doesn't it? So no more worrying over how many heads are in what states. Just crunch those numbers, make those units, CRUSH THE ENEMY!

[Drachasor]

Well, my personal idea is to trim things down by combining things together with each other and with other game concepts.

Make unhappiness the determinating factor regarding waste and corruption. Afterall, if everyone is happy, then there won't be as much motivation for either.

Pollution then wouldn't damage tiles (though it might cause global warming or some sort of pollution event, like acid rain if cities in the world do it enough). Rather, it would cause unhappiness in the city (from smog and the like).

Enough unhappiness should cause rioting in some form, but I think this is essentially handled by the mechanism I proposed above. People won't really noticeably riot until you get some really angry people, which shouldn't happen normally.

As for how much corruption and waste they should cause, I am not sure. Of course, happy faces should be people that are extra productive, so it is the net unhappiness that causes problems. Hmm, perhaps if everyone is unhappy you have 50% corruption and waste, so each unhappy face is an equal percentage of that 50%. So if you have a city of 10, then each net unhappy face would be 5% corruption and waste. This should probably affect food gathering as well.

Rioting shouldn't happen until you start getting some angry faces in there. I think at 50% angry faces you should have rioting, and that is the point at which you have 100% corruption and waste too. If you ever get to 100% angry faces then the city should flat-out leave your country, and perhaps take neighboring cities with a lot of angry faces with them.

Anyhow, other sources of unhappiness should be lessened a bit, I think. Either that or more ways to get happiness should exist. Places that improve the quality of life such as hospitals, police stations, wonders, etc. should all give some level of happiness.

Anyhow, a system like this removes most of the really annoying sources of corruption and waste, such as distance from the capital (like D.C. is a model of efficiency in the U.S.) and number of cities, to an extent. Instead it replaces it with a more realistic system that is more closely knit with something we already are familiar with.

-Drachasor

[Drachasor]

[SIZE=1]Corruption leaving is just what the majority has been asking for. It gets in the way, and keeps that newly caught enemy capital from ever producing anything, without rush buying everything.

Riots going away mean happiness goes away, doesn't it? So no more worrying over how many heads are in what states. Just crunch those numbers, make those units, CRUSH THE ENEMY!

Well, there was no comment on happiness going away. As for a newly captured city producing something...you have to be kidding right? You just took those poor guys over, they aren't going to be in a condition to produce anything on their own. I am sure there will be a conversion and assimilation time for captured cities (which could correspond to increased unhappiness in my model).

-Drachasor

[TheStinger]

corruption per se doesn't neccessarily reduce economic output just look at Italy in the post ww2 situation, so corruption could only cause unhappiness if it was endemic andnot just that caused by over bureucracy and the need to pay bribes to get permits.

Waste should be the killer but not in the production sense it could be that your tanks aren't as good or don't last as long.

[Ennet]

Well there must be some kind of producitiviness reducing means. Corruption is a great instrument of balancing,without it, the diffrencies between large and small countries will grow wider and your most producive city may be a colony on a remote island far away from everything else, or the newly conquered enemy capital as someone pointed out..

[Enigma_Nova]

Corruption, as pointed, is the way to prevent a skyrocketing population in the early game.
Not that the game would suck without it,
just that it would play very differently.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

pollution should increase waste

[Lawrence of Arabia]

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=117137

heres my pollution model - ill bet a variance of it could work for the other 'unfun' elements.

[Drachasor]

Well, my model does cause pollution to reduce production, because the citizens are less happy, hence they don't work as well.

Also, a smaller nation that focused its resources on improving its cities would have more productive cities compared to another nation that expanded more rapidly. This is because each net happy citizen increased worker efficiency. Smaller nations that made their citizens happier would then have larger, more efficient cities.

Of course, if you don't have the tech to produce the improvements needed to make larger cities of people happy, then you'd have large, less efficient cities.

If lots of cities increases the number of unhappy people in the civilization, then the nation overall would experience less production. This simulates beaurecratic and other innefficiency fairly well, and should work roughly how things do now.

Lastly, Martial Law should keep cities from revolting, but they shouldn't make unhappy citizens content, so you still take the efficiency hit. Rather, they make angry citizens unhappy.

-Drachasor

[Zeiter]

Okay, so I think this is how it could work, to summarize:

There would be 2 happiness levels for citizens:
happy
unhappy

(let's keep this simple for the masses!)

Starting out, all citizens would be happy.

One way citizens could become unhappy is through a large beauracracy. A large beauracracy has trouble meeting the needs of all of its citizens, especially citizens in the remote parts of the empire. Thus, after a certain # of cities, your newly founded cities get one of their citizens' happiness bumped down a notch to being unhappy. (sort of like the b-drones in SMAC. I believe this was one of the main deterrents to ICS-ing). Then there's a second beaureau limit, which would be the second multiple of the first (if the 1st limit was 10, the second would be 20, the third 30, and so on. The beaureau multiplier could be adjusted). After you cross the 2nd beaureau limit, 2 citizens become unhappy from each newly-founded city (if the city is only size 1, only 1 citizen gets unhappy. But once it grows to size 2, the second citizen will also be unhappy.)

And likewise, after the 3rd beaureau limit, it continues, until it hardly pays to found more cities until you can build up what you have and manage your unhappy citizens.

Furthermore, a polluted tile turns 1 happy citizen to an unhappy one FOR EVERY BASE WHOSE RADIUS THE POLLUTED TILE IS IN. This means that 1 polluted tile could create unhappiness in 3 or 4 cities if those cities are packed together and their base radii all incorporate that polluted tile. This would significantly reduce ICS and close base placement.

There could also be other things that create unhappiness: war weariness, etc.

The % of waste/corruption in your cities would be the % of citizens that are unhappy divided by 2.

So let's say you have a city of 10 citizens: 4 (40%)unhappy citizens and 6 (60%) happy citizens. Your total output of nutrients, shields, and gold for that city each turn would be cut by 20%.

If a city has over 50% of its citizens unhappy, then the city experiences minor strikes and protests, and all gold production shuts down for those turns until enough citizens can be made happy again. If a city has over 70% of its citizens unhappy, intense riots result, and all gold AND SHIELD production shuts down. If a city has 100% of its city unhappy, it revolts.

So, how is one to keep new cities from just immediately revolting if their first citizens are unhappy?

Answer: The player must invest 2 (maybe?) gold/turn to make 1 unhappy citizen a happy one. Also, certain improvements, tech, wonders, etc. could also help with it. But if a player plans on ICS-ing in the early game past the beaureau limits, that player better get ready to fork over some gold to help get those new cities on their feet.

Also, remember how all of this was handled in SMAC: The easier difficulty levels left out most of the complicate "unfun" stuff like retooling penalties, b-drones, etc. I don't see why the same could be done with Civ4. That way the casual gamer could play, oblivious to all of these rules because they wouldn't exist on the lower difficulty levels, but we the hardcore ones wouldn't get scammed in the complexity and depth of gameplay department.

[Robert]

Most of all I hate waste, it makes cities useless.
Corruption is fine with me.
The pollution model stinks as well, for sure since it's impossible to completely fight it in the end game.
Rioting is a cool concept. It might be worked out more though. But civ without rioting would be really unfun.

[Zeiter]

Yes, the idea behind waste is to make endlessly ICS-ing and founding hordes of bases useless (or even detrimental). Ideally, it should force you to strike a good balance between expansion and building up your cities.

In a way, pollution should be semi-unmanagable, so that there will be an incentive to just avoid it in the first place. Yes, that may mean handicapping your production, but part of the fun is adapting your gameplay to these kind of restrictions. Pollution could vary in degree depending on what difficulty level you are playing on.

I've been thinking, and here are some slight modifications I've come up with:

Turning an unhappy citizen to a happy one should cost more like 5 gpt. It should be a real hassle, forcing you to adjust your playing to please those pesky citizens. At least, that's how it should be on the harder levels. Maybe on the easy levels it could be like 1 gpt.

Rioting bases (+70% unhappiness) should also be able to riot if there isn't a military unit stationed within. Any units stationed within should also receive 30% damage each turn (from insurgents and such). When a base revolts from 100% unhappiness, the military forces supported and stationed in the base should revolt too.

Also, the unhappiness from beaureaucracy limits should be distributed randomly between your cities, like in SMAC. This way new cities past the beaureau limits don't automatically become unruly right from the get-go.

Like I said, I know there are a lot of people who don't like these pesky sort of "unfun" restrictions, but ultimately they do improve the gameplay, so I think omitting these restrictions (or lessening them) on the easier levels, and then jacking them up on the harder levels is the way to go.