Corruption and Waste

[Zamboni]

Good day,

Thought to write again using a different subject line to help those rookies like me.

Anyways, My corruption is taking a toll on my nation and I have read the rules regarding the building of courthouses, police station and alike but I do not think I can move fast enough to reduce this massive drain.

Are there any "tricks" that will help to lessen the load? I have approx. 25 cities and was thinking of reducing that amount and concentrating on a tighter network. Also I am on the verge of Democracy, would that be best.

I am playing the Vikings and they prefer a Mpnarchy but I am currntly running a Republic.

Again any finer points would be great to know.

[Zamboni]

Additionally note to Corruption

I fogot to mention, that in the cities which I recently conquered I have changed the Governor instruction so that the only thing that they are focued in is growth and production - Good or bad strategy???

[Spiffor]

Zamboni:

Many things you mentioned do not affect corruption. The things that affect corruption are (in no particular order):
- number of cities and size of the map
- distance from the palace or forbidden palace
- government type (democracy is best, but communism can be the best shot on really huge empires)
- commercial trait of the Civ
- connection to the trade network
- courthouses and police stations.
- whether the city is on the same continent/island as the capital or forbidden palace

Additionally, if you play Conquests, you can build a small wonder "secret police", to reduce corruption significantly under communism.

---

Unless you want to conquer the world, you should stick with a rather medium industrial base, that is not crippled by the high corruption due to a huge empire.
Or you may want to expand you empire as much as possible, and switch to communism as soon as you get it (rush-build what you need before switching).

Under communism, corruption is "communal", meaning every city will get the same base corruption, regardless of the distance from the Capital / FP. The existence of the FP (and secret police) lowers the base corruption everywhere under communism. And courthouses / police stations lowers the base corruption in the city where it is built.
Communism is great, corruption wise, for huge empires, or empires on several continents.

[Aqualung71]

Firstly, which version of Civ3 are you playing? If you're playing C3C (Conquests), it's vital you download the latest patch, 1.20, which has only just been released....or at least the 1.15 beta patch which has been extensively used by the community and is pretty good and very stable. If you're playing an unpatched version of Conquests, corruption simply does not work properly and you will get very frustrated.

If you really want to understand how corruption works and get a good handle of which factors affect it the most and which are not so important, I highly recommend you read Alexman's corruption thread in the Conquests forum - "Everything about corruption: C3C edition" . Comprehensive, succinct and accurate. There is absolutely no better way to understand corruption. Period.

If you are playing an earlier version of Civ3, corruption calculations are quite different and again, Alexman has prepared a similar anaylsis in the Strategy thread entitled "Everything you wanted to know about corruption".

[Aqualung71]

On Governor usage, I think most experienced players usually switch off the Governor, generally only using it in newly conquered cities for "manage citizens happiness" during the resistance phase. This is because every time resistors are quelled, without the Governor switched on the game automatically resets all your entertainers to labourers working tiles which often throws the city back into disorder for a turn, causing lost production and substantially increasing the likelihood of flipping.

[Theseus]

More importantly:

If you are on the verge of Demo, than you have an AWESOME advantage in Berserks. Foget about corruption/waste for the moment, and go a-berserking!!

Don't worry if the fringes of your empire are useless for production... especially in C3C, where you can still use specialists.

Later, yes, you will want to do everything possible to reduce the drain, but for now, take advantage of the military Pillar.

[MrWhereItsAt]

Remember in the Industrial Era you get the use of Civil Engineers, which give you a raw uncorrupted two shields (I think it's two). So in the most corrupt cities max your food so you can support at least a few CEs for shield generation.

[Krill]

Do not forget that CEs only work on buildings. You have to use policemen to get the shields back if you want to build units quicker

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Theseus
More importantly:

If you are on the verge of Demo, than you have an AWESOME advantage in Berserks. Foget about corruption/waste for the moment, and go a-berserking!!

Ah, this could only come from Theseus!

Only Theseus could manage to squeeze Berserks into a question about corruption.

[kolpo]

The easiest way to fix corruption is changing to communism and building the secret police, communism has then very little corruption and even just conquered cities have then a reasonable amount of corruption. I have never had a communistic empire where corruption was a big problem

[Harovan]

@ Theseus

[Plotinus]

Re: Corruption and Waste

Originally posted by Zamboni
I am playing the Vikings and they prefer a Mpnarchy but I am currntly running a Republic.

Remember that this makes no difference. The "preferred government" of each civilisation refers to how they treat you when they are controlled by the computer. That is, if the Vikings prefer a monarchy, that means that when you engage in diplomacy with them they will be a bit nicer to you if you are a monarchy. It makes no difference whatsoever if you are playing them. You can be in whatever government you like with all the usual bonuses or penalties.

[Mad Bomber]

Kolpo:

You lose more commerce by losing the commercial bonus that Republic and Democracy provide.

Zamboni:

What is the % of your economy that is corrupt? And you should build Couthouses as well as a well sited FP. Posing a save could help as posters could give you some more detailed advice.