After Patch Waste and Corruption

[chequita guevara]

Us commies perfer to see Democracy as the idealized version of communism.

Communism is based on the Western view of what Stalinism was, not it's reality. In reality the army and national guards were used far less to keep public order than in capitalist countries. Heck, at the end they couldn't even get the army to put down Yeltsin. They made much more extensive use of the police, however.

Communsim should have allow one military unit for police functions.

Police stations should also keep one unhappy person content, double or triple it under Communism.

They should have something like nerve stapling for Communism as well, well heck, for every modern government. Overuse of it, however, should cause a government to fall.

Corruption should start out at nil under Communism, but get progressively worse until the society just can't function.

Oh, and the first country to go Communism should get DoWed or trade embargoed by every other country. However, to offest this disadvantage, when the first country goes Communist, every other country should get massive unhappiness for ten years.

[jbrians]

Originally posted by Nagel
I liked the civ2 non-corruption in democracies. Maybe it could have a little, but democracy shouldn't have much. It's just plain stupid. Modern western democracies have very little corruption compared. Cities far from the capital isn't useless in the real world. It's just plain annoying in the game.

Don't get me wrong, this is a GREAT game. I love it. But there are a couple of things I don't like. Corruption and not being able to turn of the pollution. Of course, environmentalism is politically correct and all, but it's not like the world turns to a great plain or desert every time Moscow cleans out its pipes.

Please FIRAXIS tune it DOWN or at least make an option for the player to turn it off.

Yeah, modern day US certainly doesn't have any corruption. Our government is completely effecient and unsusceptible to waste.
-Brian

[Fromage]

Perhaps you didn't know, but Modern USA isn't the only democracy in the world. Poland and Russia are both democracies nowadays and both are pretty corrupted. BTW. Large companies give support in elections to senators/president and they usually do favors to the companies. Isn't that some kind of corruption?

Strange that corruption has never been any serious problem in my games even on emperor level. Perhaps I am playing a different game than you?

[habadacus]

Yeah OK, sure NO corruption is a little too generous towards Democracys, but it doesn't take San Francisco 120 years to build a Library just because it's 3000 miles from the captiol, or because there's X number of other cities in the United States. That just plain rots and ruins the thrill of growing an empire completely and can't be explained in any other way than Firaxis tried so hard to "innovate" in this game that they decided forceing you to turtle and click next turn until you either build a spaceship, or get an arbitrary number of "culture points" before one of the AIs does would be fun. In my opinion, it's not fun, and it's not good game design, especially for a Civ game.

[chequita guevara]

But it might take 120 years to build a decent library system.

Anyways, the US isn't a democracy. None exist in the real world on a macro scale. The US is a republic.

Plus cheese-boy was being sarcastic.

[habadacus]

I found that if you edit the default rules (double click civ3mod.bic in install directory) and set the optimal city % to 600%-800% you can take care of this problem and still be able to build the forbiden palace when you're supposed to. Outlying cities still experience corruption, but that can be reduced with the couthouse/police station. It's worked for me so far.

[AHO]

You shouldn't HAVE to edit a game's basic program just to make it TOLERABLE.

[zapperio]

Just because *you* think it isn't tolerable doesn't mean it isn't. Hence, the editor. Personally, I thought corruption was a fun challange, pre. patch and so do the designers, incidentially.

Zap

[Moraelin]

Personally, what I did when modding it was to make the optimal number of cities be always 1/40 of the number of squares on the map.

Lemme explain. A tiny map has 3600 squares total area. A small map, 6400: almost double. A normal map has 10,000: almost triple.

What this means: at the same density, a normal map can accomodate three times the number of cities that a tiny map can. When going for conquest, THAT is the number of cities you can expect to end up with.

Yet if you look in the editor, the post-patch optimal city counts are: 12 for tiny, 14 for small, 16 for normal and so on. Pre-patch it was worse.

What I'm saying: when going for conquest, the larger the map, the quicker you'd run into the "1 shield, 1 coin" kind of corruption. Which seems to me overkill, since it's not that intuitive and natural to expect that larger maps equal more difficulty. (On top of having more cities to micro-manage.)

And indeed, on deity you'd run into that problem even quicker. There's a percentage modifier based on difficulty. More difficulty, less cities are optimal before corruption strikes.

So with my formula, the numbers I ended up with are: 9 optimal for Tiny, 16 for Small, 25 for Normal and so on. I think it's more fair, since you're likely to end up with the same kind of corruption at the same percentage of map space occupied, regardless of the map size.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Modern western democracies have very little corruption compared.

Reply: 900 dollars for a hammer. 1600 dollars for a toilet seat.

[Drefsab]

BOTTOM LINE: The game just isn't that much fun with this much corruption...

I am very disappointed in Firaxis' lack of attention to this issue in the patch.

[AHO]

I agree, Dref.

[habadacus]

I also agree. It's worth noting that this corruption stems from the game seting an arbitrary limit to your # of effectively controllable cities. Corruption due to distance for the capitol CAN be mitigated by courthouse/police station inprovements. Corruption due to city count CANNOT (at least it seems that way from my testing). And yet when you go to the city advisor screen, it's up there telling you to BUILD MORE CITIES. Kinda stupid and useless if you ask me. If this limit to effectively controlable cities is such a major part of the challenges your civ must face, the advisor should tell you as you approach the optimal number, instead of telling you to build cities that will only ever produce 1shield/1gold. And the default rules # of optimal cities should be scaled properly to the map size as Moraelin pointed out for those purists who don't want to have to hack the rules. I would prefer not to have to myself, and find with all my cities under the optimal # the game gets a little too easy. It would be a nice compromise if the corruption hit for going over that limit didn't kick in so suddenly, without warning, and be so extreme. Are you listening Firaxis?

PS You can only build the Forbiden Palace when your civ has half of the # of optimal cities. So if you change the # of optimal cities, and not the pecentage, you can't build the Forbidden palace until way later in the game than you normally could. This may not bother you, and I wish I had waited until I built it myself, but thought I'd point that out.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Moraelin

Lemme explain. A tiny map has 3600 squares total area. A small map, 6400: almost double. A normal map has 10,000: almost triple.

You are forgetting that the default number of civs on a standard map is double that of a tiny map (4 vs 8). Dividing the land equally among the starting civs means that the "optimal # cities" on the standard map should be 1.5 times higher than the tiny map, not 3 times.

However, the inequity of the corruption on tiny maps (which has always been worse) was pointed out to Firaxis the day after the release and they have specifically addressed it with the patch.

For better or worse, the corruption levels are now set where they want them to be.

[scottbe]

I dont have any problems with the Waste and Corruption as long as the AI opponents are operating with roughly the same conditions. Before the patch however all my governments had identically the same W/C ratios as I had in Depotism. Changing to Republic or Democracy didn't change them an iota. I've now downloaded the patch and I'd like someone who has also done so to tell me if they are getting the same W/C ratios as I am now under Democracy. Standard map, a city 9 hexes from the captial, (11 total cities), same continent, Courhouse built, Diety level. I get 40% waste and 30% corruption, is this the same for the rest of you I want to know.