Firaxis: Corruption Breakdown

[Antrine]

Yes!! and double YES

As a modder, I would like to see some attention (read resourses) given to the following areas.

1) Reloading saved games back into the editor as is for sake of further refinement, switching sides etc. This is very important!!

2) Adjustments to BARBARIAN behavior. (from another thread)
However, within what appears to be current coded framework I would like to see these changes...

A) Barbarians raise cities! It can be a stepped process like two pop point per hit, plus one improvement and take gold until the city is reduced to rubble. Make it hurt three different ways, otherwise what real threat are barbarians?

B) Have barbarians gain in battle experience so that they can become a roving 'elite' terror!

C) Same with ships, excepting that they should also repair at sea or close up next to a camp on a coast tile, since porting them does not appear viable.

D) The 'raging' setting needs an 'editor' control. To wit; setting of the frequency of raging horses (advanced barbs) and the 'number' of same. Also whether it be every 2nd or 3rd camp, certainly not always all of them everywhere at once. And not 20-40 only, this number needs be 'setable'.

BARBARIANS are critical for the culture of game play.
Let this be a priority.

3) Map generation needs 60% ocean slid down to 20% or 30% as well. Doing every big huge map by hand because there is just to much ocean is time consuming pain.

4) Access to AI routines, for to improve use of units current and modded.

Best Regards
Antrine

[Provost Harrison]

That lower proportion of ocean one is not a bad idea at all...very handy...

[Cerbykins]

The mere promise that communism will allow the biggest empire is good enough for me. I await the day it does

[Sarxis]

I don't pretend to understand any of the techno-babble, but it sounds good to me.

I'm not adverse to the way the FP is working now; just wouldn't mind if it worked a tad better.

[JesseSmith]

I've been digging into the code to try to provide a solid answer. I was incorrect regarding the block of code I posted, changing it to pClosestCity doesn't affect anything (well, it lowers corruption around the FP city by 1.

The Forbidden Palace does not provide a new cityranking Corruption ring so IT and the surrounding cities still receive significant corruption affects (though not even close to what they are without it) .

A corruption option will allow casual and fanatic fans to customize this most vital mechanic and is the solution I'm moving towards right now. A 50% reduction of shields on production switches would help but I get pretty mad when I am beaten to a Wonder!! It would be very necessary to expand on Espionage to allow cheaper and easier intelligence on what your opponents were doing during the early game!


I want to be clear that I'm not trying to change this game system but to create a positive solution for everyone that fits within our designers vision. I consider how it functions right now as acceptable (painful yes, but not broken!!). We'll continue to discuss this until a final decision has to be made for the next update (Monday for any chance to post by the 10th).

I'm going to focus my efforts on other issues that "are" bugs for now.

Thank you for you support!

Jesse


For the coders, here's the expanded section on what was posted earlier - we'll see how things go before dropping code bombs

// city ranking

if (type == CORRUPTION_COMMUNAL)
{
cityRank = leaders[getWho()].getCities() / 2;
}
else
{
cityRank = 0;
for (cLoop = 0; cLoop <= g_cities.getLastIndex(); cLoop++)
{
pLoopCity = g_cities.getAt(cLoop);
if (pLoopCity == NULL) continue;

if (pLoopCity->getWho() != getWho()) continue;
if (pLoopCity == this) continue;

iTempDist = vectorDist(pRealCapital->getX(), pRealCapital->getY(), pLoopCity->getX(), pLoopCity->getY());
if ((iTempDist < iRealCapitalDist) || ((iTempDist == iRealCapitalDist) && ((pLoopCity->getDateFounded() < getDateFounded()) || ((pLoopCity->getDateFounded() == getDateFounded()) && (pLoopCity->getID() < getID())))))
{
cityRank++;
}
}
}

if (cityRank < optimalNumberOfCities)
{
cityCorruption = ((shieldsOrTradeArrows * cityRank) + 1) / 2;
}
else
{
cityCorruption = ((shieldsOrTradeArrows * ((cityRank * 2) - optimalNumberOfCities)) + 1) / 2;
}

[Antrine]

Hi Jesse, Happy New Year!! and thanks for the update!

Just a few ideas on the Wonder building competition and Espionage. Personally, I like a more indirect atmosphere so I modded all but a handful of Wonders to Small Wonders that all civs may build. This way the competitive culture is more indirect with the feeling, ‘My empire is more muscled than yours and I can marshal these massive forces to make the point’. Cheaper and earlier espionage is great. However, what about just plain world gossip in the form of newspaper flashes somewhat like in CIV I? Information often (or even mostly) is gathered low-level all around the world to figure out what ‘the other guy is doing’. These newspaper flashes need not be every time or even always accurate but could include such topics as Wonders (small and large), founding of several new cities, landing on a new land (or continent) and even a rumor of a armada now afloat.

Anyways, I love Conquests! Appreciate all the fine work and especially appreciate the EDITOR!

Best regards,
Antrine

[WarpStorm]

What does shieldsOrTradeArrows represent?

[vee4473]

Originally posted by skywalker


Firaxis has to be the most responsive company EVER

well, second most...


it's good to see that stardock's trend may be spreading!

I would just like it better if some of the explanations about why things were done were simplified for us common folk. I understand some, not all of the techno babble.

good effort though Jesse! keep it going.

"It seems Stardock's cultural strength has made another company yearn for their way of life..."

[Harovan]

Jesse:

This piece of code...

cityRank = 0;
for (cLoop = 0; cLoop <= g_cities.getLastIndex(); cLoop++) {
	pLoopCity = g_cities.getAt(cLoop);
	if (pLoopCity == NULL) continue;
	if (pLoopCity->getWho() != getWho()) continue;
	if (pLoopCity == this) continue;
	iTempDist = vectorDist(pRealCapital->getX(), pRealCapital->getY(), pLoopCity->getX(), pLoopCity->getY());
	if ((iTempDist < iRealCapitalDist) ||
			((iTempDist == iRealCapitalDist) && ((pLoopCity->getDateFounded() < getDateFounded()) ||
			((pLoopCity->getDateFounded() == getDateFounded()) && (pLoopCity->getID() < getID()))))) {
		cityRank++;
	}
}

obviously calculates the rank with only one center, the real capital. My solution would be to execute it n times with different capitals (n being the number of capitals - Palace, FP, SPHQ, may be more in scenarios) and to take the least calculated rank. I would code it, but I don't know i what variables/classes you keep the # of capitals and their coordinates.

[Rusty Nail]

No corruption option wanted

I very much prefer a no corruption game as in civ2, and I strongly believe this should be an option. I made my own PTW mod that solved this simply by defining "palace" as a wonder with Forbidden Palace in all cities for all civs. But this no longer works. Is there another work around I may have overseen. If not, I would approeciate an option to turn off corruption completely.

[Harovan]

Re: No corruption option wanted

Originally posted by Rusty Nail
I very much prefer a no corruption game as in civ2, and I strongly believe this should be an option. I made my own PTW mod that solved this simply by defining "palace" as a wonder with Forbidden Palace in all cities for all civs. But this no longer works. Is there another work around I may have overseen. If not, I would approeciate an option to turn off corruption completely.

If you that much hate corruption, you don't need such a complicated solution. PtW upwards has a corruption slider in the editor. Just set it to 0%.

Hero!

[Azeem]

There should be a corruption slider when modifying governments in the editor. That way, there would be A LOT more diversity in different governments.

[Antrine]

The corruption slider is located on the difficulty tab. Pick your favorite difficulty, such as Emperor etc. and place the corruption slider down to 0% as indicated above by Sir Ralph. Then chose Emperor when playing any game. Also note, there are other nice option to tweak on that tab.

[Azeem]

I'm referring to the corruption options for modding governments. Rather than simply have categories to refer to levels of corruption for certain governments (such as "Communal" or "Nuisance"), they should replace it with a slider, so when you create a government, you can set its corruption to be somewhere in between what is considered "Rampant" and "Problematic" by simply using a slider to determine its percentage value. This was on the wish-list for the editor for quite some time.

[Antrine]

Great idea, Azeem, more options the better generally as I guess some people find using the Game Editor a challenge, however I am confident we can 'herd' them along.