Was FP Corruption Bug fixed?

[notyoueither]

Let's see here, you don't like Culture therefore the game is bad in some objective sense. Do I have that right?

Oh, and it's business is it? Which rival publisher do you work for?

'Acting honorably'? So some of the CivII and SMAC die hards are po'ed that the game is not Civ2.5, and that means that the designers of 3 'dishonoured' the Civ legacy? I'm sorry jimmy, but I have to observe that you have a very well developed sense of the role of your personal tastes in the overall scheme of things.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
The computer gaming universe is full of ex-this and thats who probably wish they hadn't settled for releasing buggy half finished, poorly designed games. Firaxis is headed for the scrap heap. Mark my words.

That's an interesting prediction. I disagree that it is likely, but I will think of you should it come to pass, because it's quite startling given the nature of games in general to be released and then patched.

[Capt Dizle]

Oh, and for the record I do have copies of Civ3, PTW and C3C. Which gives me the moral right to speak my mind. Of course Mark will not agree and he will ban me. He is nothing if not consistent.

[notyoueither]

I doubt you'll get banned for civil discussion of your views, even if negative. Personal attacks, on the other hand...

[Jeem]

Does anybody know the exact change to corruption from PTW? I play the French most games and I've got to say they seem really, really weak under conquests - IMO, Commercial is a complete joke now, in fact it's like a waste of a trait.

I had corruption figured at around 5% per square distance from your capital in PTW (under a despotism). It seems higher now, and being commercial doesn't seem to make much of a difference until very late in the game.

Does building a road to cities actually decrease their corruption like it says it does? If so, it's so unnoticable to be not worth the code.

I really hope this isn't a case of serious 'overfixing' by Firaxis. The FP might have been too good before but a blanket rise to corruption doesn't help much.

I'd recommend corruption was changed in the following ways :-

Roads/Harbors/Airports should really make a difference.

Distance from capital should be less of a problem than the number of cities held (not the other way around as it is now). Harsh corruption forces players into tight city placement and that is not how many of us like to play.

Courthouses/Police Stations should have less of an impact than they currently do. The communal corruption of a Communism could be set just a little bit higher across the board.

What we seem to have is too many useless peripheral cities that are set to worker building until a nearby FP can be built. On a huge map, 75% of your cities can often end up as nothing but a drain on your economy because they are so corrupt (yet still require a garrison).

If anyone has the exact changes/figures for corruption then please tell us.

[Capt Dizle]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Let's see here, you don't like Culture therefore the game is bad in some objective sense. Do I have that right?

Civ3 is bad, objectively, subjectively, from any perspective and it is not fun. I could write up six hundred to one thousand pages of non repetitive faults that this game exhibts but you would not agree with any of it because you are a fan boy.

Just like all those people who voted in Clinton and supported him, it reached a point where he could have been caught in the act of rape and people still would not condemn him because they had too much invested in him already.

It is very hard to admit you are wrong about something.

The many people who apparently like the game is a testimony that people can really enjoy hot dogs if hot dogs is the only food choice on the menu.

As someone who has been playing games of all types since long before color was introduced to television, I can confidently tell you that Civ3 is a really, really, sucky game.

I still like the civ format and by continuing to point out that the imp is naked I hope that somehow good will win out in this universe and the civ series can be wrenched from the hands of these wretched folk and restored to the realm of: "Games are meant to be fun!"

[notyoueither]

You don't understand just how much of a joke that last post of yours is, do you? Or maybe you do and you're laughing as you type.

[Jeem]

Jimmy - Civ3 is not everyone's cup of tea. I despised it at first, and in fact up to 1.29f thought it was still a poor game. PTW made it better, and once Conquests is fully patched it'll be better still.

I bought Civ1 in 1989 and played it so much my eyes started to bleed. Civ2 was too easily broken and too easy. Civ3 is a tough game. Try to remember it was the players of Civ's 1&2 that demanded the extra challenge, and 'smarter' AI (in the form of aggressive expansion instead of leaving all the land to you).

Maybe they went to far? Who knows? The current Firaxians might not be the very best top drawer programmers that the series deserves, but at least they are trying. That's more than QSI did when they destroyed the MOO series. Give them a break man. There are plenty of software houses out there that deserve bad press far more than Firaxis do.

[vmxa1]

It is good to know that your pserspecive is the only valid one and all the others are fools. How about we accept your premise and you enjoy yourself, since nothing is to be gained from your endless rants. The same ones you gave us the last time around. They were tired then BTW.

[Cerbykins]

Firaxis Doomed?

Perhaps. But that depends on how they continue, not just what they've already come up with. Personally, I quite like culture, although it's permanently a thorn in my side

And yes, while Firaxis do seem to be making bad releases, they ALSO do listen when moaned at. There are plenty of games - online included - where suggestions are rarely taken and developer presence rarely ever felt. Yes, their poor starts annoy me, but it's tempered by the fact they tend to fix their messes afterwards.

Maybe it's enough, maybe not. Only time will tell us that

In the meantime...

I still want my commerce back, but at least the major flaws are gone now. And other than that, I pretty much got everything I could want out of Conquests
*awaits response that said expectations couldn't have been very high then... *

Edit: added topic.

[Andydog]

I've spent a bit of time trawling through the various civ sites and their forums, and are led to believe that corruption is now fixed.

For cities placed the same distance from capital (ie RCP), city rank is now based on database order. Therefore corruption around your primary core will no longer increase when the FP is built as it did pre-patch.

The difference in the corruption system between PTW and C3C now appears to be that rank corruption for cities around the FP is no longer affected - only distance corruption is reduced. Thus the FP is not as powerful as it was in PTW, but still worth building when correctly placed.

I assume that Firaxis introduced this new system to address the major game imbalance that was present in PTW - namely the power of the FP and the associated second core of hugely productive cities.

In PTW, to remain competitive against the AI’s on the higher levels, or other humans, you needed sufficient land to house a bunch of cities around both a palace and a FP. Thus you’d always have to go to war for the land and cities and hope for a GL to rush your FP. War was essential, and it got tiresome.

Furthermore, the person who built the FP first more often than not got a big advantage over the others, and if they built it really early, the advantage would be so big the game would essentially be over before it had even begun. This to me represents a major game imbalance.

Now, in C3C, the FP no longer provides a second core of hugely productive cities. It only makes sense to build it in the middle of a group of corrupt cities so that you can combine that with careful corruption management to get those cities somewhat productive - not as productive as your core cities – but still productive enough to be of use.

So it is no longer essential to build the FP, and therefore early war is no longer as essential as it was in PTW. With the introduction of SGL’s and the removal of the ability of MGL’s to rush wonders, the builder player now stands a chance. You can still warmonger if you want to (the new armies are devastating), but it’s much tougher than it was and therefore requires more thinking and strategic planning. The warmonger now needs to build up their core cities a lot more than before and be much more mindful of the tech race. A domination/conquest victory is no longer easy.

The game has changed a lot since PTW, I believe it is more balanced and allows more game styles to be played and a larger range of strategies to be adopted. This can only be a good thing imho. I really think they’ve got it right with this expansion.

[DrSpike]

Jeem: The old corruption model is well documented. Check out Alexman's corruption thread. He has also suggested how the FP works with regard to distance and OCN corruption in the new patch.

NYE: Don't feed the troll.

[jshelr]

Congrats to the folks at Firaxis, IMO.

My impression about the new FP is very favorable, in fact, extremely favorable. I think the FP change interacts with other changes to produce a new and better game, a more balanced game that makes simple warmongering much harder.

Size no longer necessarily is the best path to tech superiority and there may be a very important improvement in the tradeoff between going for an SS win and going for a domination win. (I mean that going for domination, you may find yourself screwed on the tech front and actually lose a game or two.) This is a tremendous improvement that makes the later stages of the game much more fun.

On the domination path, only your core cities will really be significant unit producers and war weariness will shove you off democracy unless you fully use your bag of war tricks to reduce the impact of WW. (Get the AI to attack, no AI units in your territory after every turn, none of your units in AI territory after every turn, etc.) It's worth emphasizing that you can no longer simply go to republic and pay little attention to WW while you slug it out without much lost efficiency versus a democracy government. You have to use democracy to both cut corruption, without the FP to bail you out easily, and also to cut the cost of maintaining units in a big industrial era army.

It looks to me like the scientific and religious traits have gone up in value. (Does anyone know whether the science civs no longer get an extra tech at the start of the modern era? If they are supposed to, I think I ran into a bug playing Greece and did not get the modern tech.)

Anyway, my suggestion would be to give this new version a very complete trial. It may be much better than the tone of some of the above comments suggest. New is not necessarily bad.

[Arrian]

Hmm, interesting. I haven't applied the patch yet, so I didn't run into the new FP rules. But I'm intrigued. I did like the "second core" you got from the old (PTW & prior) FP, but this could be cool too. I'll have to set up the patch and try it out...

-Arrian

[Bonaparte]

Originally posted by jimmytrick
I still like the civ format and by continuing to point out that the imp is naked I hope that somehow good will win out in this universe and the civ series can be wrenched from the hands of these wretched folk and restored to the realm of: "Games are meant to be fun!"

Yo dude PLEASE take your medication...like you said it's only a game so relax will ya!!!