Forbidden Palace - catch 22

[Pyrodrew]

Culture Power

It seems culture is extremely potent in this game & perhaps the 1 area the AI is lacking. I haven't read of anyone losing cities to an AI because of culture, but I've read plenty of people gaining multiple cities from the enemies by culture. Culture also helps with the happiness (and thus production) of your citizens from what I've read. It almost seems culture power is too powerful... especially given the quantity of cities to be gained & since it is not seen as war-like. Comments?

[Pyrodrew]

Corrupt Corruption

Tnylr:For those that aren't having a problem with corruption, just wait until reach the maximum number of cities that your goverment can support (by map size.) For Democracy on a Standard map, that number is <30. If this is a feature, then the game is designed so that you can only get production and science out of 1/4 of the world. Anything else you own is just population. Bug/Feature aside this is a big blow on my desire to rule the entire world- which is how I like playing the game.

I agree. It sounds like the only way to expand is slowly outward from the center of your empire. So if you start in England & find Australia or South America empty you might as well forget building cities there since the distance/size corruption will prevent any successful cities there to exist under your rule. This gives your enemies a huge advantage when they find it (and if you build corrupt cities there the AI would be able to quickly conquer/assimilate them).

[mogul]

I haven't seen the "corruption bug" -- but then again, I have been playing with a civilization that has the "Commerical" attribute. It seems perfectly reasonable to expect that my civilization would be better able to handle commerce-oriented issues like corruption and waste better than an expanionist, militaristic civilization. Just because yours can't doesn't make this a bug. It just means that your civilization has a weakness which will either cause you to change your strategy, or you need to choose a different civilization.

However, for those people who feel that they need to have the best attributes in everything in order for them to enjoy the game, I think there is a way around this problem. I believe you can create a custom civilization in the editor, and include whatever attibutes you'd like. So I'd build one that has all of the attributes you'd like and include the "Commercial" one too. This should reduce your corruption problem greatly. I haven't tried the editor yet -- too busy playing! -- so I can't confirm this. But good luck with the game.

[albiedamned]

Pyrodrew - I would love to see someone from Firaxis list all the factors which affect corruption. But I strongly suspect that culture is one of those factors.

Tnylr - I think one factor may be having continuous territory. If there are territory gaps between your cities because your borders have not expanded, I suspect this may have a significant detrimental effect on corruption. I saw in your post that you are building railroads, yet your cities are only ~100 culture. So your borders haven't expanded too much and you may have some territory gaps between your cities. In my game, I made sure to build temples and libraries early. My inner core of cities are all well above 1,000 cp now, with my capital around 4,000.

By the way, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial. I haven't played as anyone else yet, so I don't know how much of an impact that is having on my corruption.

[kolpo]

Here a post from Soren in another thread about corruption

to stop some illusions: like the illusion that culture influences corruption or that happynes(except love king day) influences corruption)

The way corruption works is one of the biggest changes from Civ2, so I am not surprised that people are having difficulties adjusting. Under this new system, you _cannot_ control ever city in the world and expect them to still function. Thus, it takes a slightly different approach than Civ2 (or Civ1 or SMAC) required. Simply put, more cities is not always better.

There are two factors affecting corruption levels: distance from capitol (like Civ2) and number of cities (unlike Civ2).

You can fight the distance factor by:

- moving your capitol to a more optimal location
- building a Courthouse in the city
- building a Forbidden Palace near your corrupt cities
- switching to a less-corrupt government type
- being connected to your capitol via road/harbor/airport
- putting your city in "We Love the King Day" (works for shields only...)

You can fight the number of cities factor by:

- lowering the difficulty level
- building a Courthouse in the city
- building a Forbidden Palace in any city
- playing a civilization with the Commercial bonus
- switching to a less-corrupt government type
- putting your city in "We Love the King Day" (works for shields only...)

and finally...

- emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones

and also...

- think about razing cities when you capture them (although be careful... you might create an enemy for the rest of the game...)

Hope that helps.

[Pyrodrew]

Corruption Confusion

albiedamned - I would love to see someone from Firaxis list all the factors which affect corruption. But I strongly suspect that culture is one of those factors.

Dan or Soren from Frixasis just did. I forget which thread (maybe the "neutral observations" one?). He mentioned distance & # of cities impact corruption & then listed the items which reduce these things (which most people said had VERY little influence)... but didn't list culture (which most posts I've read say has a VERY strong influence).


Edited to add: Kolpo just posted it. Regardless, it still seems to make any chance of sailing long distances to colonize futile. Such as the English who start in England wanting to colonize SouthAmerica or Australia... simply because of distance.

[John-SJ]

Maybe This Will Help

In outlying cities where corruption is a problem and you have only one shield for production, grow the city as fast as possible, then, when the population is 2 or 3 rush a temple and take the population hit. IOW, use workers to improve city growth and then trade citizens for completed building projects. I have not tried this, I just thought of it while reading this thread. I will try it tonight though.

Has anyone already tried this? Is it worth it?

John-SJ

[albiedamned]

Excellent info from Soren. I think the most important thing he said was "emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones".

In retrospect, I think there were two main reasons why I was able to handle the corruption in my game. First, I stopped my initial expansion after 5 or 6 cities and focused on infrastructure. At the time I had no great insight that this was the smart thing to do, but it turns out that it may have been. The reason I stopped was because I was starting to experience some pretty bad corruption, and because I ran into neighbors on both sides!

Second, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption.

I agree that expanding to another continent will be very difficult. You will have to build the Forbidden Palace on that continent to have any chance, and you will probably need to bring a Great Leader over to rush the FP since it will take you forever to build it otherwise. That is certainly easier said than done, but once you do that I think you should be able to expand on the second continent at least a little.

Expanding to a third continent would be virtually impossible since you can only build one FP. It would be nice if you could build one FP per continent

[Dimorier Maximus]

Originally posted by cort
cheiftein?!

no its not like in civ2. actually what a courthouse does is not clearly written anywhere..

well they have done a good job of explaining why an unhappy citizen is so -- you click on him and he says something like "%100 overpopulation"

i wonder why they didnot provide a similar thing for corruption..

Check the civilopedia, improvements: a courthouse reduces corruption and waste in the city that builds it, and it makes the city more resistant to propaganda.

[Ray K]

Re: Maybe This Will Help

Originally posted by John-SJ
In outlying cities where corruption is a problem and you have only one shield for production, grow the city as fast as possible, then, when the population is 2 or 3 rush a temple and take the population hit. IOW, use workers to improve city growth and then trade citizens for completed building projects. I have not tried this, I just thought of it while reading this thread. I will try it tonight though.

Has anyone already tried this? Is it worth it?

John-SJ

Now THAT is an intriguing idea. I will try it tonight. This will only work for the small improvements though. I mean, you can't kept taking population hits and having a size 2 city with temple, courthouse, barracks, granary, etc.

[Dinner]

Re: catch 22

Originally posted by Ray K
Well, unless I am missing something obvious, this problem is bad enough to qualify as a legitimate bug.
I'd really like to know how the playtesters and game reviewers didn't notice this problem.

The answer is simple; an inadequate amount of playtesting was done. I hope this issue will be fixed by an upcoming patch and that the game can be balanced to allow a military victory as well. Right now Fraxis has been so anti-military that controlling a colonial empire is virtually impossible.

[albiedamned]

Re: Re: Maybe This Will Help

Originally posted by Ray K
Now THAT is an intriguing idea. I will try it tonight. This will only work for the small improvements though. I mean, you can't kept taking population hits and having a size 2 city with temple, courthouse, barracks, granary, etc.

I actually did this in my game once or twice. I think right after I conquered a city which had massive corruption, a rush built a temple using forced labor. I felt bad though - I had just created an UberKrux "deathcamp". But it does work, and there didn't seem to be any lasting penalty other than the dead citizens!

Originally posted by Oerdin
The answer is simple; an inadequate amount of playtesting was done. I hope this issue will be fixed by an upcoming patch and that the game can be balanced to allow a military victory as well. Right now Fraxis has been so anti-military that controlling a colonial empire is virtually impossible.

It is not a bug, and therefore should not be patched. Firaxis has geared Civ3 towards being a true Empire building game, not just a world conquest game. The military is certainly one part of your empire, but by no means is it as important as it was in Civ2.

Thing back through history - has anyone ever conquered the world? Even those that conquered large parts of it were always eventually brought down by barbarians, corruption etc. In the modern world, no one controls the whole world or even a whole continent (ok, except Australia). Yet there are still certain civs (like America) that are superpowers and dominate the world, despite controlling only a small portion of the landmass. I believe the same thing can happen in Civ3 if you play well.

[Pyrodrew]

albiedamned - Second, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption.

I find it odd that the people who played commercial civs(who have a anti-corruption bonus) don't see any corruption problem, but those who do not play a commercial civ often have this excessive corruption problem. Would those who played commercial civs try playing a non-commercial civ next time? It sounds like the Commercial Bonus is HUGE for the Civs who have them.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew


I find it odd that the people who played commercial civs(who have a anti-corruption bonus) don't see any corruption problem, but those who do not play a commercial civ often have this excessive corruption problem. Would those who played commercial civs try playing a non-commercial civ next time? It sounds like the Commercial Bonus is HUGE for the Civs who have them.

Well, I'm playing the Greeks when I see all of this corruption, so I don't think being 'commercial' is that big of an advantage. I didn't even realize that the Greeks were a 'commercial' civ until I saw albie's post.

I think that the 'max cities' limit for Tiny maps might be too low. I'm going to see if it can be raised with the editor.

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Excellent info from Soren. I think the most important thing he said was "emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones".

In retrospect, I think there were two main reasons why I was able to handle the corruption in my game. First, I stopped my initial expansion after 5 or 6 cities and focused on infrastructure. At the time I had no great insight that this was the smart thing to do, but it turns out that it may have been. The reason I stopped was because I was starting to experience some pretty bad corruption, and because I ran into neighbors on both sides!

Second, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption.

I agree that expanding to another continent will be very difficult. You will have to build the Forbidden Palace on that continent to have any chance, and you will probably need to bring a Great Leader over to rush the FP since it will take you forever to build it otherwise. That is certainly easier said than done, but once you do that I think you should be able to expand on the second continent at least a little.

Expanding to a third continent would be virtually impossible since you can only build one FP. It would be nice if you could build one FP per continent

btw, I wouldn't say that the point of the high corruption is "fewer cities are better." It is simply the negative side of having a huge number of cities. Certainly, there are positive things about having that many cities!

In Civ2, more cities was always better, so it failed to qualify as an "interesting decision" (one of Sid's requirements for good gameplay...) In Civ3, we believe that having more cities is better under certain circumstances and having less cities is better under certain circumstances.