The problem with corruption: defined

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by art_vandelai
In the real world, cops don't prevent legitimate dissent and unhappiness among the population - they prevent crime (=c correuption) and maintain law and order in the civilaization).

That's hysterical.

Never heard of the Red Squads, huh? The police riots in Seattle, Philly, LA, and Genoa just passed you by? Police assassinations of Black Panthers in their beds, Bull Conner unleashing the dogs on Black children marching for freedom, the Chicago police Memorial Day Riot in1937, the Haymarket Police Riot . . .

[Harlan]

I think this thread doesn't completely define the problem with corruption.

Start with the intention of the producers. I believe they wanted to limit the number of cities a player could make, esp. to get rid of the ICS stategy. This was their solution - the idea being, far off cities would have so much corruption that you'd keep to a small, tight empire for most of the game.

Unfortunately, in practice this turned out to be a complete failure (and where was the playtesting???). First reason why is the behavior of the AI. The AI builds new cities like a maniac, putting them in any and every available space. So the human player has to follow suit or get left behind.

Second problem is that there is no penalty for making or conquering a bunch of completely corrupt cities, so people naturally do it in order to win. The smart strategy is also very frustrating to play.

Even if corruption were lessened, and there were more effective ways to mitigate it, that still wouldn't be good, because the problem it was meant to solve, unchecked growth, would actually be even worse.

What's needed is a complete rethink, a totally different way to limit your civ's expansion until later in the game. One of two things are needed (or both), together with a mellower version of the corruption effect.

First, have empire size penalties that effect your entire civ, not just one outlying city. If your ENTIRE civ got too corrupt if you built more than X number of cities, that would make you think twice about continued expansion (provided the AI is smart enough to recognize limits as well). Better than corruption would be unhappiness penalties. This was actually one thing CTP got right.

The second would simply be a hard limit: beyond a certain number of cities, you couldn't found any new cities (or build new Settlers, to prevent the stockpiling of them). You could conquer them though, but these conquests would suffer culture, unhappiness, corruption and other problems, limiting the amount of feasible conquest till the end of the game. This also makes much more sense as a limit to ICS, since one current strategy is to tightly pack lots of cities right around your capital.

Ideally, both of these limits would change with different governments, and also with new technologies (esp. those related to communications as pointed out above), so your empire could grow larger over time without too much cost. By the end of the game, all limits would be removed enough so that a complete world conquest would be reasonably doable. Throughout the game, there would tend to be waves of expansion followed by periods where civs would improve the quality of existing cities.

These changes could solve all kinds of problems with the game. For instance, large parts of the world would still be unoccupied later in the game, making the Explorer unit actually useful. The barbarian threat would last much longer, instead of abruptly ending so soon. It would also completely change the costs and benefits of razing cities - you'd be much more likely to keep them. Or you could go on wars of pillaging and destruction if you'd reached your growth limit and you still wanted to fight. Building colonies would make sense. Colonies would actually be useful and frequently used, since there would be costs to plopping a city there instead. The AI would know when to stop producing Settlers that have nowhere to settle, and naturally make much more intelligent choices, instead of only "expand till you drop". I could go on and on with all the positive effects this would have.

In short by making these changes, the sun would come out, poverty and evil would be eliminated worldwide, and Firaxis would win the Nobel Prize for Computer Gaming. Seriously, it would help the game tremendously, and return the game to what it seems the original intention was.

If Firaxis doesn't want to make these changes, they should at least provide the editing flexibility so others could make the fixes the game really needs.

[Mannamagnus]

Great ideas Harlan! I hope some Firaxian reads them.

[AHO]

You're absolutely on the money regarding the designed limits to expansionism, and I think it's one of the great ironies of this game. In the "ask the civ team" section of the Civ3 website, Firaxis addresses this and states plainly that the desired strategy for this game is to create a smaller, more compact, efficient empire rather than a monestrously sprawling one. This is fine and I would enjoy playing such a game; however, this strategy has not been programmed into the AI!

[AHO]

You know, Harlan, I'm sitting here thinking about your excellent observation and suggestion and, it occurs to me that while the Civ game concept has evolved into this game we call Civ3, the AI's strategy has not evolved with it. It seems that I'm trying to play Civ3 while the AI is still playing Civ2.

[Ralf]

Originally posted by AHO
My problem with corruption as a challenge in this game is that there is no viable solution.

The corruption-levels has been tuned down to more reasonable levels, after the patch. If they lower the overal corruption even further in upcoming patches, the whole thing becomes pointless.

As for the courthouse being pointless, I dont agree. In a medium-sized 6-8 pop-city, under monarchy, far away from your capitol-city, they immediately provides you with 3-4 extra shields per turn, that otherwise would be wasted. Also, remember that the benefits of the courthouse is 3-folded:

1/ Less change of city-defection & successful foreign propaganda
2/ Less shields wasted.
3/ Less trade wasted.

The combined benefits makes courthouses just about worthwhile. Perhaps they should add a fourth benefit as well?

I assume that you always build the very useful "forbidden city" mini-wonder. If you think that wonder is too expensive, just open the CivMod editor and tune down the shield-costs from 300 shields to, lets say 200 shields - or even lower, if you prefer that.

[Harlan]

AHO,
Its interesting that you say the Civ3 website specifically talks about having a contained empire. Everything points in that direction, except how the game actually plays out! But if the AI changed its behavior, that wouldn't be enough. The current system still behooves the player to play a certain strategy that is less fun then if the game had the right checks and balances on growth. People will generally play the style that is the most effective, even if it is less fun - note the use of the mindless "lumberjacking" technique by many, for instance.

[Marko Polo]

My solution to corruption problem for now

I agree with Harlan and Aho that the Firaxian intention of promoting a tight compact empires by adding "max cities per world size" with it's corruption effect is badly broken. Especially because the AI is so aggressive doing ICS (Infinite City Strategy) itself.

Remember, in Civ2 the AI was very bad at expansion and human ICS was very powerful. Now it's vice versa with AI ICS:ing and that flawed "max cities" constraint of prohibiting the human doing the same. So Harlan had an excellent point of this being a serious design flaw. Further, I strongly concur his ideas to counter this problem.

I like building large empires as many others do. It's nice to look at the map and plan where to build those specialized cites: SSC (super science city), high production wonder building city, a worker building cities, luxury/recourse securing cities, militarily strategical defense/outpost cities, "culture bomb" cities hoping to get nearby AI cities defect to my side and so on.

Now, this awful corruption is taking all the fun of playing a game like this. Building anything with only one shield is really pain in the ass. The means now available to counter this (the former IFE:ing, pop rushing etc.) are surely not fun nor realistic. I wonder who would disagree me with this?

So what do I do? I simply edit "civ3mod.bic" file, section "world size" and optimal city # per world size. I multiply by ten each of those figures. The result? I get Civ2 like corruption where corruption is still an issue in those far away territories where half of my production/commerce is lost. The good thing however is that building courthouse/police station will effectively counter the corruption problem even in those far-away outpost cities.

Given that this tweak benefit the AI civs as well doesn't give me a guilty conscience of "cheating". Sincerely, I have just found the means to counter this quite widely agreed design flaw of corruption based on "max cities" concept. In fact, this flaw is so serious that it has caused some players stop playing Civ3 altogether. Very bad indeed, because Civ3 IS a good game and I still believe that Firaxis is doing hard work to fix it to be even better!

In conclusion, with this tweak I make the game more enjoyable for me. And yes, building my large empire is actually fun now! If they just implemented the stacked movement, the game would be good enough for me. Being realistic, we can never have all the features we want..

[cavebear]

I think it is very revealing that, in so many of these threads, the solution to a problem is not a strategy but a software "tweak". It shows how seriously the game is flawed in design and testing.

Why on Earth should we all have to create personal versions of the game through adjusting the editor? In a very short time, none of us will be able to discuss game strategies because everyone will be playing a slightly different game! Player A has reduced corruption rates, Player B has altered shield requirements for building Wonders, Player C has changed unit strengths, etc...

Is it a deliberate ploy to prevent players from comparing notes and developing actual gameplay strategies? Or is it just lack of attention to detail?

There is an immense difference between testing software to see if it operates properly and testing software to see if it is worth using. I'm afraid we have a clear case of the former here.

I've returned to playing Civ2 (though I will keep trying civ3 ocassionally and watching for improvment patches). Hey, I *want* the game to work right! There is a lot of promise to it, just poor actuality.