C3C Corruption: Whoa!!!

[alexman]

I just got my copy of Conquests, and finished some tests to see if anything related to corruption has changed. Did it ever!

• The police specialist reduces corruption by 1 shield and 1 commerce, before multiplication from city improvements. This can be worth as much as 3 commerce and 3 shields if you have the right city improvements in your city.
• FP rank bug is fixed. Cities closer to the FP than to the Palace no longer use the Palace's set of cities to determine OCN corruption.
• There is now a penalty instead of a bonus for RCP. They 'fixed' RCP by giving equidistant cities the worst rank, instead of the best, as was the case in PTW. So now you get penalized for building two or more cities the same distance from the Palace or FP. Note that distances are still rounded down, so a city at distance 4 is considered the same distance as a city at 4.5, and they would get penalized for their RCP positioning.
• The FP increases the rank of all your cities. More specifically, when you build a FP far from your capital, all cities near your capital have their corruption increased because their rank is increased to 2(r-1), where r is their old rank without the FP. So building a FP may or may not increase your overall corruption, because you get a whole new ring of cities where the rank starts from 1, but the rank within each ring goes up by increments of 2 instead of increments of 1. Building a FP (and SPHQ) in Communism always increases your corruption.

Let us pray for a patch now...

[Edit: 2r-1 to 2(r-1)]

[Arrian]

Oh my. That isn't good at all.

There are two things that definitely need to go:

#1 is obviously your last point.

#2 is the RCP "fix." The problem here is that I get the feeling they did what they did because other fixes (such as ranking based on founding order) are more difficult/time consuming.

-Arrian

[UnOrthOdOx]

That explains a few things...

Interesting. Just don't build a FP, huh?

[Harovan]

Ah, the corruption report from the #1 authority, the corruption nazi himself.

As much as I (passionate corruption hater) appreciate, that the overall corruption was toned down and with policemen there's another way to fight it, I'm pretty much speechless about the RCP penalty. If that's the fix, it's definitely the wrong one. Mind you it will not only hit the RCP fans hard, but even the OCP fans, since that's basically a variation of RCP with distance five. The FP thing also looks pretty foul... me don't like.

Looks as if I will stick with PtW till that's fixed. Thanks for the good work, alex.

[Arrian]

Blah, I echo SR's comments. As someone who likes 4/4.5 spacing, I often have 3 or 4 cities at that distance... meaning they're all going to be rank 3 or 4. That sucks. I assume the AI is often getting shafted too, so I guess it's even at least.

But the FP thing is just blatantly wrong.

-Arrian

[Stuie]

Guess I'll change that FP build in the game I'm playing....

Nice work as always, alexman!

[Dis]

I'm not familiar with some of these acronyms.

RCP?

[Arrian]

Ring City Placement. It was a method of exploiting the way corruption was calculated pre-Conquests. Someone else can provide a more complete explanation, I'm sure. Breakaway Games set out to fix that and have ended up doing providing a cure that is worse than the disease.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Arrian
The problem here is that I get the feeling they did what they did because other fixes (such as ranking based on founding order) are more difficult/time consuming.

No.

In terms of programming time, it doesn't matter at all, since the information (distance from P/FP) has to be gathered nevertheless, it's only slightly differently interpreted. The cities carry information about the foundation turn anyway (as shown in the city screen) and if that's not enough, it would be easy doing to add a build counter; even a global one, thats the charm of a TBS, nothing can be done exactly at the same time.

In terms of runtime... the rank of a city needs to be recalculated how often? Every time when a city is built, abandoned, captured or razed. That's not that often, like on every unit movement, and wouldn't slow down the game at all.

[Arrian]

all cities near your capital have their corruption increased because their rank is increased to 2r-1, where r is their old rank without the FP.

Ok, so let me see if I understand this right:

If I have cities built around my palace at: 3, 4, 4.5, 5...

And then I build the FP elsewhere...

They become: 5, 7, 8, 9 ??

Meanwhile, the FP "core" works properly?

What about when you build the FP close to your palace?

I'm confused.

-Arrian

[Harovan]

Arrian: r is not the distance, it's the rank. Your nearest city (r=1) remains at rank 1, the second (r=2) gets rank 3, the third (r=3) gets rank 5 and so on. The cities closer to the FP get rank 2, 4, 6, ...

[alexman]

Did I say 2r-1? Sorry, I meant 2(r-1).

So cities at 3, 4, 4.5, 5 get assigned ranks 1, 3, 3, 4
Build your FP far away.
Ranks become 0 (yes, the same as the capital), 4, 4, 6.
The FP core works the same way.

When you build your FP close to your palace, things are worse in general (because of overlap), but the corruption of some of your cities might decrease because of distance corruption.

Sorry if that was confusing...

[asleepathewheel]

uhhhhh.

hmmm





I don't like these changes. I build in rings naturally for defense, not corruption benefits, I shouldn't be punished for that.


is FP useless now? Is that what that means?

sigh

[Arrian]

Originally posted by alexman
Did I say 2r-1? Sorry, I meant 2(r-1).

So cities at 3, 4, 4.5, 5 get assigned ranks 1, 3, 3, 4
Build your FP far away.
Ranks become 0 (yes, the same as the capital), 4, 4, 6.
The FP core works the same way.

When you build your FP close to your palace, things are worse in general (because of overlap), but the corruption of some of your cities might decrease because of distance corruption.

Sorry if that was confusing...

Oh, right, gotcha.

Second, thanks SR, I was confusing myself... this whole thing was a bit of a shock and I put virtual pen to paper before I'd thought things through (trusting that you guys would set me straight ).

-Arrian

[WarpStorm]

I think they should get rid of the concept of ranks totally. They don't correspond to anything natural.