Repairing corruption

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Kristjan


I did for instance and many others did it as well.

Not me. Civ2 deity was always difficult, but of course I never used exploits like ICS. Too cheesy.

Could you please avoid flaming like that in the future? Please?

Chill out. That comment was not for you, but for someone who said "u complain for months on how civ2 is too easy, and how civ3 will be no different. the game is out no more than 3 days, u alrady deem a feature too hard, and make it more like civ2. "

That is not true. Civ2 has unhappyness caused by civ size.

As far as I could tell, corruption was caused by distance from the capital. If there was also a size limit, I was unaware of a specific problem with unhappiness. Everyone was unhappy on deity level!

[wotan321]

it must be possible

I went back and looked at some of the gameplay screenshots that have been released over the last few weeks, and it appears that civs are sprawled out across the map in many of those games. Corruption must be a pain, but not a ceiling to expansion. I have heard that boosting your culture really helps cut down on the chaining influence of culture.

Its true that the strength of corruption really prevents ICS, and that is something the civ community BEGGED for as one of the top changes they wanted. So here it is.

Fewer cities with more developed infrastructure is gonna cut WAY back on micromanagement, which is good. Its also going to require the player to put some effort into deplomacy. And if you want to roll over the map..... well it doesn't appear that is going to happen too often, whereas in Civ2 it almost always happened... it had to if you wanted to win.

[Kristjan]

Re: it must be possible

I went back and looked at some of the gameplay screenshots that have been released over the last few weeks, and it appears that civs are sprawled out across the map in many of those games. Corruption must be a pain, but not a ceiling to expansion. I have heard that boosting your culture really helps cut down on the chaining influence of culture.

Someone from Firaxis said that computer dows not cheat on prince level. So how does the computer manage corruption? There has to be a way.

I will start finding it this evening...

[gremalkin]

It seems to me that changing the design specs of the game after three days is being a bit of a lightweight isn't it? You could try and beat the game on it's standard settings..

Whatever...

From what I have read (and I don't have the game yet) - Military victories are way more difficult.. perhaps the civ2 method of expanding by war has been disabled to a certain extent.. Many threads have mentioned the importance of razing cities rather than trying to assimilate them.. Perhaps this is a way forward?

Why don't you try some different strategies? After all it is a "strategy" game....

[Ray K]

Originally posted by gremalkin
It seems to me that changing the design specs of the game after three days is being a bit of a lightweight isn't it? You could try and beat the game on it's standard settings..

Whatever...

Lightweight? Whatever.

It's already been demonstrated that corruption is worse on the smaller maps and easier on the large maps.

To balance the map sizes, the Tiny map limit for "Optimal # cities" should be raised from 8 to 12, and the Huge map limit should be lowered from 32 to 26.

From what I have read (and I don't have the game yet) - Military victories are way more difficult.. perhaps the civ2 method of expanding by war has been disabled to a certain extent.. Many threads have mentioned the importance of razing cities rather than trying to assimilate them.. Perhaps this is a way forward?

Perhaps you don't realize that I'm getting corruption from expanding, not conquering. After just 8-10 cities on a Tiny map, corruption is around 90% -- in a republic with a commercial civ.

Why don't you try some different strategies? After all it is a "strategy" game....

why don't you try playing the game? When you've successfully dealt with corruption on a Tiny map, then come back with your smug attitude.

[albiedamned]

By naming this thread "Repairing Corruption", you imply that it is broken. I understand everything you are saying about how difficult it is to expand, especially in the early game and especially on a tiny map. However I really think you should make an effort to look into some other strategies before you declare corruption to be "broken". There are plenty of others here, myself included, that are learning new techniques and strategies and are having success.

I am not a warmonger and conquering the world is not usually the victory path I choose to pursue. However I think it should still be very possible to conquer the world in Civ3. You won't be able to use captured enemy cities as a base of production. You could either raze the cities you capture or keep them and hope to improve their corruption problems later, but either way you're going to have to bring in fresh troops from your home cities to continue the war. This is not impossible, especially on a tiny map since travel time from your home area should be less. This is also very realistic from a historical sense - invading armies can't immediately make use of a conquered city to build new military equipment. They have to bring it with them from their home base.

[Stuie]

IT WOULD come as no surprise to learn the US government spent a staggering amount of money on the military during the Cold War. But $436 for a hammer and $640 for a toilet seat? These details were revealed in a recently uncovered audit report from 1983. Other expenditure includes $748 for a pair of pliers, $7,600 for a coffee pot and $76,000,000 to replace the army's electric batteries-which were rechargable.

The US Navy also ordered $8,800,000 worth of army uniforms it did not need. The airforce spent $1,118.26 on plastic caps to put on the bottom of table legs to stop them rocking during flights.

Looks like the numbers should be increased for modern Democracies.

[Crankses]

Thankyou Ray! I plan on putting this change in as soon as possible. Corruption is extremely out of balance in my opinion especially since the AI doesn't *seem* to suffer from it as badly.

[yavoon]

I dont know ray, u obviously think highly of ur skills, yet are unwilling to undertake a challenge. seems to me like your just another whiner. if after 3 days u can't solve a problem u simply revert it back to the way it was so u don't need to solve it anymore.

and the obvious complaing that this brings back ICS in its full glory. asnow u can have as many cities as u wnt, and since only distance matters, u best smack em really close together.

but I think it goes deeper than that, ur just not a problem solver. ur a complainer.

[Jack_www]

Corruption, Why I think you guys having so much of a problem with it.

The reason why you people have so much of a problem with corruption is that courthouses are not going to do it like in Civ2. You must keep your people happy. I am playing as the Greeks and not have that much of a problem with corruption. The things I have done is I made sure that I got access to a lot of luxuries, second I make sure I build at least a temple in all my cities, so I have a strong culture(captured two A.I. cities already with just culture). I also made sure that all my cities are connected to my capital so that they can have access to the luxuries. I have not had to build courthouse in the cities the far most regions of my empire( I have 15, still expanding).

In short you need to keep your people happy and have a strong culture to keep corruption down. I think you guys who have this problem is that all you do is build settlers to expand, ignoring temples and other things that make your people happy. You think that the Civ2 way of dealing with corruption is going to work, but I am sorry to say that is not the case anymore in Civ3. Thus corruption in your cities grows. In order to keep corruption at bay you need to keep your people happy!!!!! The corruption problem is not a bug or game blancing problem, is you habits form Civ2 that you borught to Civ3, which are bad habits in Civ3!!!!!!!!!!!

[Ray K]

Originally posted by albiedamned
By naming this thread "Repairing Corruption", you imply that it is broken. I understand everything you are saying about how difficult it is to expand, especially in the early game and especially on a tiny map. However I really think you should make an effort to look into some other strategies before you declare corruption to be "broken". There are plenty of others here, myself included, that are learning new techniques and strategies and are having success.

albie,
Actually, it is "broken" in the sense that cprruption levels are not balanced across the map sizes. Another poster did the math regarding land tiles and # of civs and came up with "Optimal # cities" totals that *are* balanced across the map sizes. It turns out that the Small and Tiny maps have it worse, and the Large and Huge maps have it easier. So there was an unbalanced field for players on different map sizes. I have been playing Tiny maps (probably the only person on this forum), so I have been getting the corruption really bad.

Here are the originally "Optimal Cities" limits for the map sizes (Tiny/Small/STandard/Large/Huge):

8/12/16/24/32

Assuming that the "Standard" map is the optimal setting, here are the balanced numbers for "Optimal Cities":

12/14/16/21/26

You can see that there is a big difference for the Tiny map. Going from 8 to 12 is a 50% improvement. That is the setting I will be playing on. I wonder how many players on Large and Huge maps will be lowering their settings to make corruption as difficult as on the Standard map?

I am not a warmonger and conquering the world is not usually the victory path I choose to pursue. However I think it should still be very possible to conquer the world in Civ3. You won't be able to use captured enemy cities as a base of production. You could either raze the cities you capture or keep them and hope to improve their corruption problems later, but either way you're going to have to bring in fresh troops from your home cities to continue the war. This is not impossible, especially on a tiny map since travel time from your home area should be less. This is also very realistic from a historical sense - invading armies can't immediately make use of a conquered city to build new military equipment. They have to bring it with them from their home base.

The thing is that I usually am crippled by corruption on a Tiny map before I can even consider warmongering. It's the early expansion phase that is stifled, and that precludes any chance for capturing cities.

Typically, I like to establish my borders early and just build from there.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by yavoon
I dont know ray, u obviously think highly of ur skills, yet are unwilling to undertake a challenge. seems to me like your just another whiner. if after 3 days u can't solve a problem u simply revert it back to the way it was so u don't need to solve it anymore.

and the obvious complaing that this brings back ICS in its full glory. asnow u can have as many cities as u wnt, and since only distance matters, u best smack em really close together.

but I think it goes deeper than that, ur just not a problem solver. ur a complainer.

Sorry, yahoo, but maybe I can just recognize a design flaw faster than you. It turns out that on Tiny maps, the max cities limit for corruption levels is set too low. Maybe you want to beat your head into a wall until Firaxis finally acknowledges that the problem is there, but not me. I am glad that they put controls in the game so that pro-active gamers can fix the problem.

Secondly, I am not such a loser that I resort to cheesy strategies like ICS to beat a computer game. Read about it, never tried it once. There is a difference between playing a game in the way that it was designed and playing it in any way that is allowed just to win.

[Iloveculture]

Stupid Noobish question

What is ICS?

[albiedamned]

It appears there may be some truth to both sides of this argument. Soren has now posted on the Forbidden Palace - Catch 22 thread that the corruption city limits may have been off for small and tiny maps. He didn't say for sure yet, but the mere fact that he said he is looking into it lends credence to what you are saying, Ray K.

At the same time, those playing on normal maps (like me) are still experiencing levels of corruption that are nothing like in Civ2. But we are exploring new strategies and techniques to deal with it.

So Ray K, even after you modify the corruption city limits, you will probably still have to look into new strategies for dealing with the corruption. As has been mentioned over and over, just building a courthouse won't do it anymore!

[lockstep]

Originally posted by albiedamned
It appears there may be some truth to both sides of this argument. Soren has now posted on the Forbidden Palace - Catch 22 thread that the corruption city limits may have been off for small and tiny maps. He didn't say for sure yet, but the mere fact that he said he is looking into it lends credence to what you are saying, Ray K.

As the 'other poster' Ray K referred to, I have to say that the issue of additional corruption hardship on tiny maps is not just a matter of 'credence', but strongly backed by rather simple calculations regarding map sizes, numbers of civs and the 'optimal cities' setting.