Corruption Levels Are Fair

[coriander]

Great Responses

Thanks to everyone who posted a response. I've enjoyed reading them and I think some good ideas have come out of the discussion. I especially liked the idea that as a civ progresses into more modern ages, relative distances decrease with modern transportation and communication, which should reduce the distance factor. I also tend to agree with those who made the point that it's not so much about realism as it is about balancing other game factors. Everyone can think of something that seems pretty unrealistic. (Okay, reduced benefit from roads in enemy territory sure, but no benefit whatsoever? Maybe the other guys roll them up and store them away until it's their turn.) But does it hurt the game? The best corruption reducer I've found is the good old We Love the King Day, and that seems reasonable. People willing to spend their paychecks to send up a constant stream of fireworks in their ruler's honor are probably less likely to be cheating their government. Thanks again for the great discussion.

[Wyrmo]

I'm playing on a custom larger-than-huge Worldmap as Americans. I have barely covered a fourth of north america, and yet, cities just about 15-20 tiles from my capital experience over 50% corruption. WITH courthouse. And I'm playing republic. (haven't got democrazy yet)
I would like the corruption to be somewhat based on the size of the map. A larger map should have less corruption than a smaller one, since you need to build a lot more cities on a large map. Either they have to lower the overall corruption, or they have to give us access to more improvements that combats corruption. And the courthouse makes almost no difference in corruption either. Usualy it doesn't even pay off it's own support-cost.

Look how the real world is. Do you think the United States experience an average corruption of about 60-70% of its BNP?
I don't think no nation ever has.

Corruption is broken. It kills progress and removes the possibility of colonizing other continents. It also makes me rule out war, since I don't WANT to capture enemy cities that will be size 24, and still have 1 production and 1 commerce, and the rest wasted.
The game needs a "highest corruption"

[kailhun]

Corruption realistic?

Corruption and waste as they now stand make the game difficult. I think we can agree on that. Some say too difficult, some say extra challenging.

But is it realistic for a large empire to have more corruption/waste than small countries? The problem with this is first of all the time-period. The roman empire was more corrupt than the British empire (probably). If the world is smaller (because you can get around quicker) corruption drops (checks are more frequent and you get caught quicker).
But also point of view. Is the USA (large) more corrupt than the Netherlands (small)? Well yes. This is because listening to lobbyists, and being wined and dined by them, is considered corrupt by the Dutch. From a Dutch point of view the Americans have institutionalized corruption. From an American point of view lobbying isn't corruption, it's simply excersing your right to talk to the people's representative and stating your point of view.

What does this mean for the game? IMHANSHO, corruption and waste should be left as is, but improvements, governments and evolution should decrease corruption (and waste) more than is currently the case.
AN example of improvements is of course the court house. Perhaps the police station could be added to this.
Corruption/waste is also linked to government. As a country has a more modern government (ideal vs. selfish perhaps), corruption/waste decreases (but more than now).
But I also think that how developed you are should effect C/W. As you progress through the ages C/W should decrease. A well educated/developed society would accept C/W less than an uneducated/poor country.
Also being connected to the capital/forbidden palace should decrease C/W. More in case of railroads. The arm of the law is longer and civil servants get around guicker.


Just my 0.02 (Eurocent that is)

Robert

[Grumbold]

I like the current corruption model for Empires in the Ancient and Mediaevil periods. If anything, when the forbidden palace is built, they can get too large (talking standard map size here, no experience with other sizes).

Distance based corruption needs to downscale slightly as railroads, radio, computers and commercial air travel appear. I've mentioned before that when we get the full editing tools I hope to make airports expensive but provide their own smaller scale 'Forbidden Palace' effect. An interim stage would be to reduce distance corruption for all cities connected by rail but I'm not convinced that Civ has the capability. One improvement lost that CtP introduced.

[Roytheboy]

What sems most broken to me about the corruption is the brutal way in which it kicks in.

Add a city or two a long way from your caital and suddenly cities half that distance to your capital get a 90% rduction in shield production

[Venger]

Indeed, it seems corruption comes in fits and starts - the key to having a high corruption level is having a way to OVERCOME the corruption, to at least a point. As I have previously suggested, I'd make the following changes -

1. First two shields are not affected by corruption

2. Ability via improvements to remove up to 75% of corruption (between barracks, courthouse, and police station).

3. Corruption reduced with each era.

Venger

[a_bates]

Here are my two points to add to the arguement:

1) Realism is irrelevant. Losts of people have mentioned that the corruption model is unrealistic. This is irrelevant. It is quite clear that Firaxis' goal with this game was to make it fun to play not REALISTIC.

2) ICE solution - I have not seen mentioned anywhere the reason why corruption is so high. My guess is that it is an attempt at fixing the 'Infinite City Exploitation' technique that could be used in previous games of civ where a large sprawl of small cities could out produce a well developed civilization.

I am only playing my second game as yet and am just trying to adjust my play style from that used in CivII to try and combat corruption. So I can't really judge yet as to whether it actually is unworkable. However the fact that it does not adjust for size of map (is this true?) would seem to be a problem. How are you supposed to conquer large worlds. I can see us having to raise cities as we go. Surely this would make a dominance victory (is that what a victory by dominating most of the map is called?) impossible.

[Barchan]

As I've said before, I think the primary complaint is with the high rate of waste, not so much the high rate of corruption. I have to agree the rate of waste is unreasonable. It’s unfathomable that a major metropolis in perfect civil order is losing 90-95% of its local resource production to crime and graft. And why only the timber and stone and not the meat and grain as well?

It all reminds me of an old PBM game where the local population in your colonies fed themselves from the local economy. But once you made your colony a protectorate, they all demanded the government feed them and you had to provide food for the entire native population. What's more, the population was invariably much larger than the food production of your new protectorate. WTF? All of a sudden a nation of millions stops feeding themselves, falls on its collective back and demands to be fed like babies? Hogwash!

Same thing with the “incremental wastage” of an expanding empire. “Hey, I heard there’s a new town somewhere to the East. Well, we’d better get to looting this lumber right away…”

Now, whether or not the corruption rate is too high is a tougher question. Granted, the larger the empire the more difficult it will be to get every piece of gold to the central coffers. I think it may be too high now, though, especially in the more advanced ages with more advanced governments.

I can more readily accept a high loss of wealth from far-flung cities in your empire; the farther gold moves, the more likely it will be lost or stolen. But waste should be more a function of government and order, not distance from the palace. After all, the shield production is consumed locally anyway, so there’s no transport argument to account for the distance. Using waste to simulate the problems of holding on to a large, dispersed empire is the wrong way about it, IMO. Civil disorder and defection are much more appropriate mechanisms for this.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by a_bates
Here are my two points to add to the arguement:

1) Realism is irrelevant. Losts of people have mentioned that the corruption model is unrealistic. This is irrelevant. It is quite clear that Firaxis' goal with this game was to make it fun to play not REALISTIC.

2) ICE solution - I have not seen mentioned anywhere the reason why corruption is so high. My guess is that it is an attempt at fixing the 'Infinite City Exploitation' technique that could be used in previous games of civ where a large sprawl of small cities could out produce a well developed civilization.

I am only playing my second game as yet and am just trying to adjust my play style from that used in CivII to try and combat corruption. So I can't really judge yet as to whether it actually is unworkable. However the fact that it does not adjust for size of map (is this true?) would seem to be a problem. How are you supposed to conquer large worlds. I can see us having to raise cities as we go. Surely this would make a dominance victory (is that what a victory by dominating most of the map is called?) impossible.

I agree on most of what you say except the last phrase which is false. the domination victory is "easy" to achieve for a warmonger player, and Civ III is still easier to learn for a warlord where the more peaceful builders must find new ways to thrive at higher difficulty levels. The main issue about achieving domination on large-huge worlds ( frankly for playing on those maps it's more logical to follow a space race/cultural victory ), is...time and patience. Even with a fast system, huge+16 civs has a long loading time between turns ( minutesss....) around Industrial era.

[Deathray]

Well, I'm just sitting here looking at my 46 city Persian empire spanning an entire continent and wondering why my corruption is all under 30% and perfectly mangeable.

[Roytheboy]

Originally posted by Deathray
Well, I'm just sitting here looking at my 46 city Persian empire spanning an entire continent and wondering why my corruption is all under 30% and perfectly mangeable.

I'm wondering that too

What map size is it ?

Did you play around with the num city limits in the .bic with the editor ?

Have you ever had any corruption problems with the empire ?

What year is it ?

How can I make empire so corruption free ?????

[RickBlaine]

As others, I am interested in fun and gameplay, not realism (Civ is a strategy game not a sim, and the game is overwhelmingly unrealistic). While I think the corruption levels are somewhat overdone, what really bothers me is that there is virtually nothing to be done to alleviate it. At some point, cities will produce one shield no matter what you do. Build a couthouse, rush build culture buildings, connect it to your empire by rail, station oodles of units there, make all citizens deleriously happy. All you get is one shield. These, and possibly other actions, should be enough to get at least some production from any city albeit at some penalty in time/money/happiness, etc.

I think most people would not mind even the current corruption levels that much if there was a means for the player to lower it. A fun challenge would be to allow the player some means to deal with this, not just accept it and have to work around it. I know some people seem to think the current corruption level is a fun challenge. Some people like to be whipped with chains, too.

[Gonzalo Nieva]

Corruption is a political phenomenon. Until democracy, the control of corruption was made by the government itself. The distance was a factor, no doubt, but a strong emperor use politics as a corruption control, rewarding and removing governors.

A new improvement, the regional capitol, can be used for dealing with it. It's a lot easier to control a single governor than a lot of mayors. This system is viable for feudal economies to central governments. Of course the IA will have a lot of problems with the idea.

[Antonin]

What I'd like to see in discussions such as this is less use of the word "broken."

The game designers portrayed corruption the way they did because they want us to take a different approach to empire building/world conquering. It's their game; if you don't like the way different things are modeled, then say "I don't like the way this is done."

Calling something "broken" (geez...how many times have I seen that word in this forum?) when you really mean "I don't like the way this game feature is handled and I can't/won't adjust my style of play to accommodate it" is misleading and dishonest.

As a great rock band once put it - "Problem? The problem is YOU."

[The Rook]

I don't think the corruption "levels" are unfair, but I do think that the solutions for corruption are not strong enough. The courthouse sucks. The Frobidden Palace is nice, but you basically have to build it in a badly corrupt place in the first place which takes forever. The game pretty much forces you into democracy, and then you are plagued with other problems.

I say when you invent radio, corruption in your cities should be reduced by at least 25% I meant the main reason for corruption is the fact that you can't keep an eye on your governers due to distance. Perhaps there could be other solutions like planting an agent in your own city that reduces corruption.