Is the Corruption Level to High?

[jbird]

I would have much less of a problem with corruption if I could somehow get Great leaders. I have had *very* little luck while playing the Americans to get Great leaders at all. And honestly, I only want two.

1. Forbidden Palace
2. My first Army

That's all I want. If maybe the first leader was somewhat easy to get (much easier than the current system imo), the second leader was somewhat harder to get (a bit less difficult than the current setup), and every other leader was as difficult to come by as they are now, i'd be fine with it.

However, as it is in the released version, I simply can't get a leader to either get my first army or complete the palace. I wouldn't mind it if I could have *two* clusters of good cities, and the rest were stuck with the crappy 1 shield 1 commerce model. However, a 90% (or 80%) cap in Democracy with a Courthouse and Democracy would be better imo than a 99% cap.

Jbird

[Zurai001]

What's the answer to corruption? Make your people happy and they're less likely to steal from you. We Love the Ruler Day seriously reduces the shield corruption penalty, and that's what everyone's complaining about anyway. The first thing I do when I build on another continent is to rush a harbor to give me access to my resources. This generally boosts me from 1 shield to 5 or 6, shich is perfectly manageable as far as I'm concerned. On a related note though, they do need to fix Communism in relation to corruption; the 'communal' effect just plain doesn't work.

[jbird]

I would have much less of a problem with corruption if I could somehow get Great leaders. I have had *very* little luck while playing the Americans to get Great leaders at all. And honestly, I only want two.

1. Forbidden Palace
2. My first Army

That's all I want. If maybe the first leader was somewhat easy to get (much easier than the current system imo), the second leader was somewhat harder to get (a bit less difficult than the current setup), and every other leader was as difficult to come by as they are now, i'd be fine with it.

However, as it is in the released version, I simply can't get a leader to either get my first army or complete the palace. I wouldn't mind it if I could have *two* clusters of good cities, and the rest were stuck with the crappy 1 shield 1 commerce model. However, a 90% (or 80%) cap in Democracy with a Courthouse and Democracy would be better imo than a 99% cap.

Jbird

[ProfessorPhobos]

I think corruption does need a little tweaking- it's a bit excessive, as it stands now. Probably the simplest fix is to make Police Stations deal with corruption and\or improve the Courthose slightly. I think some corruption is a great challenge and adds to the game, but I need some more tools to deal with it.

[Arrian]

Ok, to clarify:

I have built the forbidden palace in all the games I've played to date, and have gone to democracy at the earliest opportunity. I have paid special attention to happiness in order to control the effects of corruption as much as possible. I have only gotten two great leaders - and they were both in one game, in the modern era, so I actually dealt with building the forbidden palace. It is, in fact, far and away the best minor wonder.

Yet I still think the corruption is too high. Again, it is a good idea that I heartily approve of, but I personally believe it needs to be toned down a tad. What do I mean by a "tad?" I'm not sure...I still want developing a city or cities halfway across the world to be difficult and expensive, and I have no problem with captured cities filled with foreign nationals losing nearly all production/gold to a combo of corruption and resistance.

I my latest game, I was exploring the world with a caravel when I happened upon an island (5 total tiles - forested grassland, two hills and a mountain). I went and got a settler and built a city on the forest. As it took roughly 3 turns for my caravel to get to the island from the mainland, I figure it was roughly 10-15 squares away from my south coast (I had magellan's), and thus about 20-25 from my capital). This was on a "Normal" Map. I had no illusions about that city ever becoming a powerhouse. That being said, I built (or rather, bought):

Harbor (to import my luxuries)
Courthouse (duh)
Temple (happiness)
Marketplace (happiness)
Cathedral (happiness)
Bank (happiness)

I'm a Democracy and most of my cities (the one in question included) are celebrating. Result: It now produces two useable shields instead of one. The hills and mountain are mined and railroaded (although the mt. isn't being used, as the city is a size four). If I've failed to do something about the corruption, then tell me. Otherwise, I think it's a bit too much.

That's just my opinion, and frankly it's an annoyance issue rather than a "I can't win because of this so I think it should change" issue.

-Arrian

p.s. To be fair, I'm playing as the Babylonians, not the Greeks I've played as before, and have thus lost the "Commercial" special ability, but that doesn't really seem to help anyway.

[Farmer]

This make the citizens happy and you will solve the corruption problem is a myth. I have a size 12 city in central africa, two screens away from the capital in eastern europe. It has a courthouse, it is communism, and each and every one of the 12 citizens is happy, and corruption is still 20 out of the 21 commerce. It has improved the corruption on the production, but only from 99.9% corruption to 75% (6 production out of 24), which is barely an improvement, especially for a city so close to home with all the available luxuries, temple, market, JS Bachs, etc.

If 25% production is the best I can get, it's not good enough.

[jbird]

So sorry for the multiple posts, I was getting an error message, and didn't check, so I re-submitted the same thing multiple times. I'll be more careful in the future. If a moderator can/would delete the multiple posts, i'd appreciate it. Again, my apologies for the clutter.

Jbird

[Zurai001]

Originally posted by Farmer
This make the citizens happy and you will solve the corruption problem is a myth. I have a size 12 city in central africa, two screens away from the capital in eastern europe. It has a courthouse, it is communism, and each and every one of the 12 citizens is happy, and corruption is still 20 out of the 21 commerce. It has improved the corruption on the production, but only from 99.9% corruption to 75% (6 production out of 24), which is barely an improvement, especially for a city so close to home with all the available luxuries, temple, market, JS Bachs, etc.

If 25% production is the best I can get, it's not good enough.

No, it's not a myth, you even said so yourself. No one ever claimed WLTRD affects commerce corruption. However, it does signifigantly lower the production corruption; your own results bear that out. Additionally, I wouldn't expect anything a continent and a half away to produce at full effectiveness anyway. 25% is more than enough to get culture going and to process resources, and that's what colonies are for, not to be big bad major cities that are producing wonders left and right.

[Jolard]

Corruption is indead a problem, and while I see the need, I wish it was a little less drastic. When you have a large number of cities which you cannot get above 1 shield per turn no matter what you do, it becomes difficult and frustrating. There should be a way, and it should be difficult but not impossible, to at least decrease curruption to 75%. That way you still have huge corruption, but at least you are able to get 25% production after some works, or something.

Also, corruption like this makes no sense in a modern democracy, as someone else once said, Seattle is probably less corrupt than Washington DC! In the Civ universe, Boeing would not exist, as you would not be able to build all those planes in Seattle.

All that said however, I like the balancing that corruption provides. I just wish it was still really drastic 75% but not overwhelmingly stifling 98%.

[player1]

Hey, player3!

One of topic question.

Since you have username similar to mine (player1),
have you tried using name player1 & it didn't worked, or you just wanted to be player3?

P.S. I would normally not post this here, but you don't have enabled Private messaging.

Sorry, to others!

[Auslander]

Originally posted by Akaoz
It’s not that easy anymore. Courthouses don’t do much and Democracy is laden with corruption.

-Alech

Oh great...another Clinton's in the White House.

[player3]

Player1, I didn't even notice that! I used to be on the Civ2/SMAC boards (when they still existed) and back then I was player2. Someone took that name so now I'm player3

[Farmer]

No, it's not a myth, you even said so yourself.

- Zurai001

No, I said that "we love the president" days reduced corruption from an impossible 99.9% to an unbearable 75%. I do not believe that this solves the problem, hence it is a myth. Look at realistic examples from history: the corruption rate in Jamestown, US, or Melbourne, Australia, was not anything like 75% under the British empire, and they were much further than a continent and a half away from London. They certainly weren't regularly celebrating "we love the king day", let alone every day, and yet still managed to survive as a community and build everything that they needed. The corruption in Boston wasn't 99.9% prior to the Boston Tea Party, and I'm sure they weren't celebrating their love of the King either.

The implementation of corruption as a means to quell massive expansionism is not a bad idea, imo, but it needs to be tweaked if people who like to immitate the expansionist civilizations of history can enjoy the game as much as everyone else.

[Lung]

These posts are not exactly endearing me to buy CivIII the moment it becomes available here Now i know why Craptivision released CTP everywhere simultaneously!

For what possible reason, may i ask, is the corruption model from Civ2 abandoned in favour of this apparent crud of a model? Perhaps Fircrapxis forgot that we play Civilization for fun?? From what i've seen so far, it's a joke!!

[Daetrin]

Having run into the corruption problem myself and read a couple threads on it, here's my opinion.

Corruption as an idea is a valid one, and I don't think it should necessarily be toned down, but the player should be able to deal with it in some manner.

Building a courthouse should make some noticeable difference in every city where you build one. Either that, or Firaxis should tell us the equation they're using so that you can know whether or not building one will do any good before you waste the money on it.

There should be more of a noticeable difference between the government types. Democracy doesn't seem to do much about corruption despite what the Civilopedia says, and Communism is obviously broken.

There needs to be some way for more advanced civilizations to reduce corruption in far off cities. Either as a factor of the Age they are in, or through specific advances (Nationalism, Radio, etc) or through additional specific city improvements (Police Station, Newspaper Office, etc.)

High culture should probably make some kind of difference.

As for real world examples, England held onto India and Australia for quite awhile, more importantly, the United States of America hasn't really had any trouble holding onto Alaska and Hawaii has it? And look at China which was huge even back in our Ancient era, and although I'm sure there was corruption that needed to be dealt with, they still managed to get things done.

Corruption was supposed to stop ICS I believe, but it seems to have stopped all expansion beyond a well defined point. It would still be doing it's job if it forced you to stop your expansion and/or military conquests after your empire epanded a certain amount so that you could build corruption reducing improvements or wait for further advances before you could expand again.