Fix for corruption?

[[LordLMP]]

I am currently playing huge map on Regent... still haven't experience any huge corruption problems like you people say. Sure i do get some, but doesn't effect my play.... Of course, my main production cities is the ones close to the capital of course :P Also, temples are the second thing i build in cities and i always have luxeries about... my empire is usually huge...usually able to outgrow the AI without suffering in infrastructure.... of course, my Offensive capabilities does thought, sometimes my economy too :P

-LMP

[Ironikinit]

I don't know what to say to people who feel that the new corruption rule is stupid other than this may not be your game. It's obvious that the rule is intended to keep people from having huge empires, and this is a big switch from Civ 1 and 2. I can understand it taking some getting used to, but I really don't understand how people won't get the point: Keep your civ to a managable size.

The new corruption rule is one of the major complaints people have that I've read. It's funny because one of the other major complaints is end game tedium. Keeping your civ to a reasonable size helps with end game tedium because you have fewer workers to shuffle and fewer cities to manage.

If you really hate corruption, people have posted "fixes". It's not a bug, though. It's the way the game was intended to be played. I suppose that might change with further patches, if enough people complain, but it really seems silly to complain about it given that people complain about having to manage their civs.

[Libertarian]

World domination and conquest are valid victory options and therefore ought to be viable.

[Quokka]

Firstly, exactly what Libertarian said. Two of the possible victory conditions require huge empires.
Secondly, I like the idea put forward by Vercingettyrex of Law. Have an expanding Law border, one that increases slower than the cultural border but does expand. Like the Wild West, culturally American immediately but not under full judicial control for quite a while.

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Vercingettyrex
I really like the culture thing. I was wondering shouldn't there be a law thing which works in a similar way. ie Certain buildings generate Law. These extend the frontiers of efficiency over time. Its a slow process. Citys far from the capital are at the frontier. Its lawless. They build courthouses, police stations. As a result corruption becomes less overtime.

Culture still determines the political borders of the state. But law determines the internal borders of the state.

Nice idea. Reminds me a bit about the idea of ordinances which were quite popular when we were discussing ideas for Civ 3 pre-release.

[eyes]

law idea

I like the idea too. Allow us to see the area lof law like the area of culture. Make the palace and forbidden palace add large amounts and courthouses and police stations add small amounts.

However it would need to be slightly changed as you couldn't just have a default area around each city like with culture (otherwise no cities would be outside the law area making it pointless) Make the palace and then the forbidden palace each create a small area when they are made. Then each city inside the area that has a courthouse or police station adds points like with temples and culture. When enough points are reached the law area expands and then any cities that are newly encompased also add to the points.

Eventually the palace and forbidden palace law area will merge and all cities inside the combined area add to the points total of the law area.

This would be excellent if it was implemented but I can't really see it happening.

[Ironikinit]

Victory by domination is viable as the rules stand.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
Victory by domination is viable as the rules stand.

Absolutely!

The Vercingettyrex effect, whereby there is an additional factor along with culture, determining a city boundary is a cool idea. Not really a patch, though, but a substantial new game element. Maybe CivIV.

Law is subsumed by culture, which is

It is not that much harder to place cities in CivIII than in CivII. I usually place my cities so there is no available square in the city's eventual working radius(20 squares plus the city itself), just like CivII. If anything, it is just a little tighter for two reasons: because you can't go over 12 population until later in the game, and to stop neighboring civs from settling in what you consider your native lands. Indeed, cities can overlap up to 8 squares and not be disadvantaged until the Modern Age. I usually try to fit them just right, especially around the capital where I do not overlap more than one. Here is a typical position:

http://www.crowncity.net/civ3/Expansion.htm

[Zachriel]

Law is subsumed by culture, which is "the integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior."

[Grrr]

I agree totally with what has been said, that if domination and military victory are available solutions, then they should be plausible. Furthermore I agree with what was stated earlier that corruption should affect happiness and not monies and production. As for what was stated that empires never really grow that large, take a look at the former USSR, China, or even Europe, which as far as I'm concerned, is ONE empire.
The former empire of Great Britain would be unrecreatable in Civ3, as colonies like New Zealand and Australia did much of the production for England especially during WWI, but in Civ3, places like Northern Ireland would suffer no corruption at all, as the distance from the capitol is minute, these problems however exist because of different religion, which from a Civ3 point of view could be narrowed to Nationality.
I think corruption should be high in ancient times, and go down to about 1% in modern times, not VICE-VERSA!I think that corruption distance modifiers should be built in to governments, with a number of turns to capitol function, thus railways and steamships should get rid of all distance to capitol corruption, leaving only local corruption. Of course, under despotism, anything above 10 turns from Capitol should be 50% corrupt, 20 turns away - 90%. In modern times, under say democracy, anything above 20 turns away should be 20% corrupt, however connected harbours/airports/railways count as zero turns. For instance, if England has a colony in New Zealand, then it should be zero to say Australia, where there was an original port, and then say 10 turns to New Zealand. Each government should have it's own settings for each stage, ie Despotism 10+ 50%, 20+ 90%, max 95%. Democracy 10+ 5%, 20+ 20%.
This would promote infrastructural creation, and be easier to implement and use then a LAW BORDERS system.

[nationalist]

I just wanted to add my voice along with others who think that corruption was completely botched in Civ 3. It is completely frustrating to have a city lose 35 out of 36 shields and 99 out of 100 commerce to corruption, even if you are in a democracy. This super corruption is insane! Why does it exsist? No city in a modern Democracy ever has this total corruption! Is Seattle completely crippled by the fact that it is 3,000 miles from Washington? No! That level of corruption wouldn't even exsist in an ancient despotism; the emperor would send his army to demand the money from the corrupt citry! The worst aspect of this super corruption is the fact that courthouses have NO effect on it. These cities are simply wastes. Any new benefits that a city would bring to an empire are completely lost. This corruption is not limited to a city that was won by conquest. A city created by your own settlers , if sufficiently far enough away from your capital (the distance is not that great), will be completely useless. Are we to believe that the newly created city was settled by nothing but criminals and exists in a modern democracy that has absolutely no power to prevent this corruption from occuring? It just isn't realistic or fair. I don't see any benefit from using democracy in Civ 3, because an empire of even moderate size has a number of cities that are rendered totally useless. This takes away from the fun of expansion. Don't give me any of this "it is because we are supposed to have small (reasonably sized ) empires" crap. Most of the fun of Civilization comes from the growth of your empire. When this basic element is removed from the game, and a large number of your cities are forever useless, then what is the point to even play the game?

Maybe Democracy shouldn't be 100% corruption free (as it was in Civ 2), but the corruption should be treatable through the creation of courthouses and police stations. The idea of law might be a good way to implement frontier corruption. There should NEVER be the untreatable, super corrupt 1 shield 1 commerce cities under ANY government! The fun of creating a large empire is completely sucked away from these unrealistic cities and Civ 3 becomes pointless to play ( why try to increase your empire when there is absolutely no benefit from doing so and when it is actually a liability to the empire?). They don't reflect reality ( Look at Canada and Australia in the British Empire for Christ's sake! They were thousands of miles away from London and still very productive) and should be removed completely! Until this glaring problem is fixed ( along with a revamp of the ill-conceived combat system [bring back firepower!!]) I'm going to remove Civ 3 from my computer, enjoy life, and wait for a BALANCED and FUN Civilization game to come along.

[Akka]

Corruption is supposed to be, as far as I understand the concept civ-like, the quantity of money/production that is due to the government (taxes and orders) but that local representatives keep for themselves. The farther from the capitol, the more is robbed, because the farther you are from authority, the less likely it's supposed to come for you and the weaker it appears (just look at the pupils in the last rank of the classroom ). The more cities there is, the more corruption too, because when you're lost in the mass, it's easier to not be targeted.

Now, considering this, it means that in the most ancient ages, corruption should be considerable, just because there is much less ways of control over your governors. But as your empire grow and evolve, the government become more and more efficient (just imagine how easier it's to track down the cash flow once you discovered writing). In the later stages, when travel is much faster and then the relative distance shrink, the feeling of being far from the authority diminish too, leading to again less corruption.

Game-wise, here is how the corruption could work :

1) A HIGHER roof of corruption. Quite high. Very primitive government after all, with taxes collected directly by taxmen, who are able to hide a lot.

2) Several tech will reduce the overall corruption level (writing, economics, code of laws, currency, etc etc...). They shows how easier it's to track the taxes, the evolutions in mentalities and in culture, etc...

3) It's no more the DISTANCE to the palace that count, but the TIME necessary to travel ; basically, the number of movement points that are required to go from a city to the palace (adjustements should be made to adapt to the unlimited railroad movement). This means that a city 10 square away from the capitol but linked with railroad would suffer less corruption than a city 5 square away, but isolated in the mountains with just a narrow road.

4) Airports and harbor would reduce greatly this distance factor : harbor reduce the number of sea squares that are counted to calculate the distance to the capitol, and airports cut by a large amount the distance to the capitol and/or set a low ceiling for this distance.

The government would then act like a multiplier of the corruption level (ie : x3 for despotism, x0,5 for democracy, or any number appropriate).

Here are my suggestions

[TinCow]

Originally posted by Grrr
I agree totally with what has been said, that if domination and military victory are available solutions, then they should be plausible.

Domination victories certainly ARE plausible. Two of the four games I've played to completion have been won by domination on a standard size map. Corruption is NOT a problem if you handle it properly. Make sure you're ALWAYS (except wartime) in Republic or Democracy, rush-build courthouses and police stations in all cities that don't have them, move your capital if you need to, keep the majority of your cities in WLTKD, and most importantly...

SAVE A LEADER TO BUILD YOUR FORBIDDEN PALACE. Save the FP for a newly conquered continent, not for the second half of your starting continent. A palace and a forbidden palace on opposite sides of the world do wonders for reducing corruption in a large empire.

If this is a board full of experts, I don't understand why so many people are crap at playing the game. You guys need to get out of Civ2 strategy mode and learn to play Civ3. Corruption is fine, maybe reduce the effects slightly, but don't make any major changes to it.

[Venger]

TinMoo -

The problem you'll have is what if you are needing to conquer three, or 4 continents? I turned off domination because I find the concept the equivalent of training wheels for conquerors. That said, corruption is SO out of whack (or at least was when I was playing the game) that in order to have your other cities produce ANYTHING of value, you have to build the FP either at the other end of your continent or the next continent over. Which means the other continents are going to be hardly useful.

Remember, I had something like 150 cities or somesuch when I finally got bored out of my mind and quit, and even with the FP and doubled city count in the editor, and reduced corruption for barracks and police stations, it STILL was a game breaker.

Corruption is simply out of control, it needs to be modified. Not made easy mind you, but modified so that it CAN be dealt with effectively.

Venger

[JZ Temple]

I don't find the corruption aspect of the game all that bad, but it certainly forced a change of mind-set from the earlier versions.

There is a different way to look at it. I'm sure Firaxis did some research among players of SMAC, Civ2 and CTP to find their likes and dislikes, and no doubt some people commented on the tediousness of looking after dozens and dozens of cities. So, aside from the AI Governers we first saw in SMAC, someone probably suggested that there be a penalty to discourage players from building so many cities that they got bored with the tedium of managing them all. The Corruption factor certainly makes me more cautious about building cities in every nook and cranny and instead building up the existing ones.

If a dedicated player wants to make a change using the editor to lower corruption that should be made available, but for the more casual player I think the default corruption factor is a good design decision.