YET ANOTHER corruption thought

[SuiteSisterMary]

How about this?

1: Throw a new variable into the corruption calculation: territory size. Lets say that, oh, every 24 squares WITHIN YOUR BORDERS can support a city. More than 1:24 ratio of cities to land squares, more corruption. But not less for less. This allows conquest to be useful, but doesn't allow for ICS or city-packing.

2: Allow, in industrial or modern times, for lack of a better term, provincial/state capitals. 'mini' palaces that you can build, one per X amount of cities, that will reduce (but not eliminate; don't want a perfect solution!) the 'distance from capital' modifier for cities around it. The downside being, of course, that loss of your capital pretty much renders any cities near it, but far from your main capital, useless. Which is fairly accurate; military objectives these days tend to be 'destroy enemy forces, then take capital, and mop up the rest at leisure.' This also helps, lots, with expanding onto other continents.

3: This might even be in. Cities connected only by harbour should get a distance bonus; this too helps with expanding.

4: Any city connected by airport to the capital should get a bonus to the distance modifier; air travel is, after all, the great equalizer. Doing things like this also makes precision bombing more fun. :-)

Thoughts?

[Frugal_Gourmet]

Hmm.. I've played 5 games so far...

on Warlord/Prince and I have not yet had a single problem with a lot of corruption.

You guys must be playing on huge maps or harder levels or something.

[Arrian]

I like the provincial capital idea, but it's kinda already in there in a more limited form - the Forbidden Palace. I have experienced crazy corruption (Warlord/Greeks/Normal map) and managed to control it by:

- Going democratic
- Building the F.P.
- Obtaining just about all of the luxury resources (my continent ROCKED) via settlement or conquest. My trade advisor screen was FULL of luxuries
- Building marketplaces/banks because they increase the effect of luxuries (along w/temples/cathedrals/etc., of course)
- Using 10%-20% luxury spending to keep cities celebrating.
- Building courthouses, of course

And finally, most importantly, I stayed on one continent.

I would prefer corruption control based on how advanced your society is. The police station idea is ok, since that requires a fairly advanced tech. I also like the idea of tying corruption rates to the "Ages" as well as gov't types, or perhaps to specific techs, like Nationalism, Radio, Satelites, etc.

Oh, and the idea about using a certain number of territory squares per city to help govern corruption as a counter to ICS is interesting. This would not stop expansion, but would encourage one to build nice, big cities and develop them, which is the opposite of ICS.

-Arrian

[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%.

[yin26]

I'm trying a few tricks in my current Monarch-level game. I'll report back if it works well.

[El hidalgo]

I've been thinking about the provincial capital thing. My idea is to modify the Forbidden Palace so it becomes an improvement rather than a small wonder (to be renamed "provincial capital"). Now, for the sake of balance you will want to make it expensive enough to maintain and cost enough shields to build that it won't be worthwhile to build one in every city, but with some tinkering around I'm sure one could come up with attributes and values that would make it work.

[Comrade Tribune]

I think the intention of corruption/waste is quite simple: Over and above a certain level, new cities only give you additional luxuries, strategic ressources, airbases, perhaps culture, but no additional industry/money/science. This is good, because it is a deterrent against overly aggressive expansion. Only question is: Does the AI understand that, too? Because it seems somewhat over-expansionist.

[SuiteSisterMary]

I think that the current corruption model is fine; but anything can use improvement.

In my current savegame, which I might just post as an example, there's a little island, oh, 14 to 20 squares at a guess, with one of the three world deposits of iron and one of the three of saltpeter. So I wanted to build a city there to defend the two, and maintain my sweet monopoly on Iron (which the Iroquios PAY THROUGH THE NOSE for!)

BUT...even on democracy, my city there is 1 shield. I've jacked my tax rates; making two-three hundred gold per turn lets my buy everything I want, but it's still annoying.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by SuiteSisterMary
BUT...even on democracy, my city there is 1 shield. I've jacked my tax rates; making two-three hundred gold per turn lets my buy everything I want, but it's still annoying.

I think this is not a bug; it´s a feature. Think British Empire. Why did they want India? Probably not for Industry/Research. They could do that better at home. I guess the Indians had some important Resources.