Corruption Blues (Rant, Long)

[Gaius Marius]

16 Civs on a huge map? Fantastic idea. Until turns take 3-5 minutes each. Poor overclocked Celeron can't keep up with my grandiose ambitions.

I really don't see (on topic now) how conquering swathes of territory is viable - other than to deny it to anyone else. It seems that a productive core is the only way to get value (money, resources, production, whatever brings you closer to victory)...

However, a military approach is still effective, with the right (limited) objectives - disrupt, destroy, distract, displace your enemy by taking key cities and resources, conducting raids, pillaging, bombarding, leveling cities, blockading (rules, but most civs have too many harbors for it to work). If you really want to take someone over but don't want to leave the territory open or administer crappy cities, raze half of them and give the rest, starving and in disorder, to the crappiest civ. They'll love you and do all the rebuilding work.

[Akaoz]

Gaius Marius: Which still does not address the Domination (2/3 of total landmass) or Conquest.

-Alech

[Tauklon]

I would have no problem with the corruption as it is on the difficult settings. But to have it that troublesome at the easy levels is very discouraging. I was hoping to recommend Civ3 to folks at Christmas. But there is no way I can recommend it to a beginner or casual gamer. It looks like the game was built strictly for the hardcore Civ fan. At the chieftain level the game should be in sandbox mode so a rookie can having fun while learning the game.
Adding a corruption setting would help but its absence shows lack of foresight in attracting new Civ players.

[Akaoz]

I'm not sure the game itself is harder because of corruption. It's just not very intuitive.

Conquest and Domination victory is a lot harder than it used to be. But peaceful competition is a lot easier...

My GF is playing an enjoying the game immensely, but she plays the game much more as a diplomat and perfectionist then I do. And when she finally goes to war she loves razing the enemy to the ground...

-Alech

[Lord Maxwell]

Combating corruption made easy.

You have an empire shaped like an 8, with your capital in the intersection between the two "o" parts of the 8. Build a Forbidden City in the middle of the lower o. Close enough to combat some corruption when you have Courthouse + WLTK. When it is completed (you should get up to 40% production atleast with court + WLTK) you move your palace up to the middle of the upper "o".

Keep your empire in WLTK. (You will probably tech faster, even with the entertainment spending.) Don't let cities drop out of WLTK.

If at all possible try not to use either of your Golden Ages before you have taken the basic steps to combat corruption. Use democracy unless you fall into a war, if at war switch to a more proper government type and mobilize.

It will probably be even easier to manage once all factors are known, but it's already _not_ a problem if you know the game.

You need to be alot more careful about where you put your Forbidden City than about where you put your palace, because you can keep on moving your palace to suit your needs if you start conquering territory for real. So put your Forbidden City where you want your long term production centers to be.

Keep cities in WLTK.

Expand in circles when at all possible. Minimize distance. (Build in "Z" forms out, not straight lines.) Citites do fine with three steps between them, leaving you with a final average of 12 tiles worked per city and no unworked tile anywhere.

[Akaoz]

How does this help colonies on other continents?

Are you not reading the posts? I am talking about Domination (and to a certain degree Conquest) victories. If you have to control 2/3 of the total land mass you will have extreme problems with corruption, regardless of palace and forbidden city.

-Alech

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by Akaoz
No problem.

Anybody else have any views on this?

-Alech

If I may, I find corruption to be simply a challenge, not a bug. The trick is intelligent empire building. Start by expanding, but do it with some brains and stay near your capital. If that's out of the question, then plan ahead where your new capital will be located at. Surround your capital with cities, to create rings or layers of cities. Corruption will be minimal.

When conquering on the other hand, the only solution is the forbiden palace. You need a great leader, that's for sure - else you will be waiting most of the game to get cities up and running.

No great leader? Then make one! Go to war, send out your elite troops. Then sue for peace The same applies to the forbidden palace, as to what I wrote above about the capital.

Conquest is hard, but achievable. It's just that you're going to have a whole lot of deadweight cities if you conquer at the wrong spot. I guess you have to crush your neighboors, and not the natives at the other end of the world...

The easy way to domination though, simply EXTERMINATE and commit MASS GENOCIDE a la MoO2

[smellymummy]

Originally posted by Akaoz
How does this help colonies on other continents?...

a dose of realism....: just how many colonies actually remained under the control of one state entity for a indefinite period of time in the history of human civilization?

The concept of colonizing the new world with civ games is great fun, and in civ2 was real easy to do. At this point you'd have to save your forbidden palace for your new colonies that's all.

Anyway chances are any "new world" you will find has already been settled (by natives or colonists ) therefore it won't be a mission of colonization, rather of conquest/invasion. much like all colonial movements made in human history.

[Akaoz]

Realism does not always make for good gameplay.

And under the current corruption levels there is no incentive to mimic the real colonial conquests you speak of. There is simply no point in attacking other Civs. Unless you just want to be evil, cruel and petty.

And BTW I never said Corruption was a bug. I just feel they over did it. And so do a lot of other people. I know it is supposed to be a ‘challenge’. Not a problem for me. I can beat the game on Deity regardless. I just think it is a stupid challenge. See the difference?

AFAIK having more then your ‘optimal’ number of cities will increase corruption in all of them. The cities you need to hold on to in order to complete a domination victory will not just be useless, they will cripple you.

And razing everything on the way to a conquest victory will quickly turn the whole game into a ‘hunt the last pop 1 city’-game. Which IMHO is just booooring...

-Alech

[Mike4879]

Originally posted by Akaoz
Realism does not always make for good gameplay.

And under the current corruption levels there is no incentive to mimic the real colonial conquests you speak of. There is simply no point in attacking other Civs. Unless you just want to be evil, cruel and petty.

And BTW I never said Corruption was a bug. I just feel they over did it.

I am playing on the huge planet earth map with 16 civs. I started off as the Romans in South America. My two neighbors were the Americans to the north of the continent and the Babylonians in the south. In this game I developed a new conquering strategy, build warrior, worker, settler, in every city and repeat. This allowed me to expand and amass a massive army. I eventually expanded this strategy to incorporate all of the latest military units. So anyway, I crush the Babylonians.

The corruption problem has already started, to the point where 1/2 of my civilization is now corrupt/useless, even with all of the Babylonian citizens assimilated. I even razed most of their cities and rebuilt them.

Later in the game I conquer the Americans, I now control all of South America, making me the largest of the 15 other civilizations. I begin to disperse some of my armies, and switch from Despotism to Republic, to Democracy. I have an average army comparitive to the rest of the civs, which are half my size.

I am focusing on corruption reducing and culture enhancement, but nothing I do will reduce my corruption levels in the conquered cities... something has to give. 2/3 of my civ is 90% corruption. Yes, its realistic, but what about modern-day China. Corruption is not THAT bad with proper governing and a strong culture -in real life

I think the major issue is democracy and communism should reduce corruption in a way. Something tells me my civilization's luxury rate should somehow reduce corruption when it doesn't. Police stations should lower corruption, there should be ways for a civilization to unite the entire world at a low corruption level (albeit a difficult task).

[Grumbold]

When the tools become available I fully intend to reduce distance corruption to 75% of maximum when a city is connected by road/harbour to the capital, 50% when connected by rail/harbour and an airport will be very expensive but count as a forbidden city (which would expire at this point). Corruption on the extreme scale reported in the forums should only occur in captured cities before absorbtion takes place, and should be more a facet of government style than distance.

[Grunthex]

While I can't give you hard numbers, connecting your city in some way to the capital does decrease corruption somewhat. Just not (seemingly) when you're at that magic 99% mark. For example my last game, My continent was mine, and I found a small baby continent to the south. The first city was about 80% corruption, and the harbor dropped it to about ... 65%? Numbers are approximates, or WAGs, because it was a long time ago, but I know it had an effect.

Here's a little touch that caused me to just start laughing earlier. I have changed the rules (It's my game, I'll play MY way) so that number of cities corruption is basically gone. Changed from 16 cities to 100 cities on standard map. (Side note: AI has become more willing to keep cities late game rather than raze them)... I went to build the Forbidden Palace on my third continent, and noticed I was ineligible. It appears you can't build the palace until you have (Optimal#Cities/2). I should hit 50 soon, will post to confirm that's how it works.

[Seaman]

Even though the corruption level in Civ 3 is annoying, you have to admit it does a very good job in fighting the BAB (Bigger Always Better) problem - which has been a big issue with civ games, as far as i understand.

[Grumbold]

It's a case of striking the right balance between BAB measures, reality and playability. I can't point to any modern country where corruption is related to distance rather than the inherent instability of the governing regime. Thats why I want to tie most of the anti-distance measures into technical atvancements like good road, rail and air networks. It will prevent runaway ancient empires (if such things are even possible an more without playing huge maps with few players) but allow industrialised nations to control efficiently.

The whole thing as it stands currently reminds me of nothing so much as the CtP2 limit on #cities by government type, except it does not increase much for modern day govts. Because CtP had many more govts the progression into later era civs made a noticable difference.

[Akaoz]

Hmmm... Has anyone actually won a Domination victory?

-Alech