Announcement

**Slax** · January 28, 2002, 17:54

I would guess that you have more cities than the critical threshold, and because of that, the government type has very little effect.
Which is stupid, in my opinion.

**Ironikinit** · January 28, 2002, 18:22

Surely you can see that not only did corruption go down but your income increased. Corruption took a smaller piece of a bigger pie.

**Jaybe** · January 28, 2002, 21:47

Was that chart done in all five governments with the same number of cities at the same population points?? If you just happened to cross a number of cities threshold, it could give you bogus impressions.....

It may be that actual government changes are not immediately affected, i.e., it might be better to wait for a turn (or even 2??) AFTER the government has changed over (that's what religious civs are for, after all).

**FrantzX** · January 28, 2002, 22:03

Look at it this way:

Code:

[i]Pure Numbers[/i]
Government    Despot   Monarch   Commie   Repub   Democ 
Base          1069     1113      1044     1579    1587 
To Science    319      356       250      622     641 
To Corruption 217      210       260      355     340 
What's Left   533      547       534      602     606

Code:

[i]Set Despo's values to 100%[/i]
Government    Despot   Monarch   Commie   Repub   Democ 
Base          100%     104%      98%      148%    148% 
To Science    100%     112%      78%      195%    201% 
To Corruption 100%     97%       120%     164%    157% 
What's Left   100%     103%      100%     113%    114%

**Encomium** · January 28, 2002, 22:44

Originally posted by Slax
I would guess that you have more cities than the critical threshold, and because of that, the government type has very little effect.
Which is stupid, in my opinion.

Oh, man, no. Not another problem with Civ III!

Your darn right it's stupid - so much about Civ III is stupid.

**FrantzX** · January 28, 2002, 22:49

If you had looked at my charts, you would see the big difference the governments make!

**Capt Dizle** · January 28, 2002, 22:57

The whole goal of the Civ3 design team was to eliminate all methods by which the human player could gain an advantage over the AI.

Therefore it is clearly in keeping with that goal to eliminate the use of government as a strategic factor. And, they did. Eliminate it I mean.

BTW, for those of you wondering why the game is not fun, Soren determined that humans having fun playing is not acceptable. Since the AI cannot experience emotions (having fun) then this is a clear game inbalance. Hence fun got hacked.

Civ3, the best single player strategy experience ever!

My A$$!

**Stryfe** · January 29, 2002, 01:34

I take it that the term "scientific method" has never been heard around these parts. So far the vast majority of "issues" that people have conjured up in their brains are not the sort of issues that would last if they bothered to do actual testing of their hypotheses; what appears one way in a singular case can hardly be considered as a universal. But within these forums, this "methodology" is in fact the rule. Why not try ruling a gigantic empire, and then see how corruption affects your civilization?

And no, it isn't "stupid" that small civs experience little difference between government types; there is very little to govern. Frankly, I'm not surprised that Communism is a terrible source of corruption for a small civ, since there is a high overhead for that level of bureacracy. But even if the level of corruption IS higher--it would still be useful, and I'd still go straight to Communism away from Despotism, because of the simple fact that possessing multiple cities that are productive is better than having a productive center and useless periphery.

If more people played the game instead of trying to find supposed means by which the player was "cheated" (and the accusations that many of these people make beg for as much suspension of disbelief as any far right/far left conspiracy theory does) then they might be able to have fun.

**Kilroy_Alpha** · January 29, 2002, 02:38

Originally posted by FrantzX
If you had looked at my charts, you would see the big difference the governments make!

I see that communism makes a very big difference, but in the wrong direction. I see that Monarchy makes little difference, confirming blackdogs argument. And I see that there is very little difference between republic and democracy.

So if your intention was to prove blackdog right, good job.

Anyway if he used this on a civ that controlled nearly all of N. America on a huge map, there's little question that he went over the civ size limit. While I think the limit is a good idea in principle, you can't convince me that a communist government managing a gigantic piece of land is going to experience dismal scientific progress when compared to a loosely connected government of warloads governing the same piece of land. The Mongols did some crazy things with saddles I believe, but they never produced a MIG, at least not that I know of (ok that's an unfair example, but my point stands, right?). These numbers indicate a problem with the way governments are represented in the game, regardless of city number limit (in short, communism should ALWAYS be better that despotism, and differences between other governments should be more marked, as well).

I'd like to see some data on smaller civs that haven't crossed over the city number limit. My experience with the game tells me that the differences will be more marked, but probably still not enough.

**hoonak** · January 29, 2002, 07:26

This will be a fairly long post.

From post #1:

How did this get by the beta testing?!?!?!

There is no evidence that this game was beta tested.

From post #3:

Surely you can see that not only did corruption go down but your income increased. Corruption took a smaller piece of a bigger pie.

This was never at issue. blackdog2112 is comparing corruption levels among the government types. After comparing the five government types he has reached the following conclusion:

...stay despotism until the republic is ready and then switch over for the rest of the game...

After playing the game and reviewing his numbers, I agree with him and think his thesis is dead-on. It is one of the more cogent posts on the entire site.

From post #4:

Was that chart done in all five governments with the same number of cities at the same population points??

Yes

...If you just happened to cross a number of cities threshold, it could give you bogus impressions.....

Having a "corruption threshold" based on the number of cities is what's bogus, not the impression it leaves.

If there needs to be a "corruption threshold" for the number of cities within an empire, shouldn't there also be a "corruption threshold" within each city? Seriously. If corruption becomes debilitating once I reach a certain level on a planetary scale, it should also become debilitating within each city as the city approaches the population limit or has run out of surplus food.

It is preposterous to assume that once a civ reaches a certain point corruption becomes a positive-feedback loop (aka "a vicious circle") that cannot be controlled for newer cities, but it can be contained with relative ease in older cities.

From post #7:

If you had looked at my charts, you would see the big difference the governments make!

Remember the enitre thesis of this post is:

...stay despotism until the republic is ready and then switch over for the rest of the game...

Please look at your own chart. The difference between despotism and monarchy is so small as to be meaningless. The difference between republic and democracy is almost non-existent. To be blunt, In Civ3 there is no point to researching either monarchy or democracy.

From post #8: I have no problem with this post. I prefer to use @ss, but to each thier own.

From post #9:

what appears one way in a singular case can hardly be considered as a universal

I can easily justify taking a single example as a universal example in this instance because my computer works the same way every time I use it. My computer will handle the corruption calculations the same way every time I play the game unless I actively change the equation. If your computer does not do this reliably, you should consider replacing it.

If more people played the game instead of trying to find supposed means by which the player was "cheated" (and the accusations that many of these people make beg for as much suspension of disbelief as any far right/far left conspiracy theory does) ...

Bite me! At NO TIME did blackdog allege he was cheated! Blackdog put forth a thesis about the various government types based on his own personal results. Nothing more and nothing less. the only person to even mention being cheated is you.

...they might be able to have fun.

Unless of course, they define "fun" when playing the Civ series as building a HUGE empire, managing production, building things and fostering a sense of accomplishment. These things have been taken away by design decisions that can only be described as arrogant. It takes huge, well-developed gonads to put an unrealistic mechanism in the game that essentially compels players to play a certain way. to charge fifty bucks for it means those gonads are made of solid brass.

and finally, post #10:

but my point stands, right?

yes, but you did not need to offer that lame anectdote as proof of a theory about governments? What are you smokin'? We have no way of knowing what the mongols would have accomplished if they had become a country under some other form of government, but we do know that they eventually waned and now are just a pale imitation of thier glorious past. Your choice of the mongols is a good one because it shows the need for a greater difference between despotism and monarchy, but that is getting off topic.

Thanks blackdog. Good post and good theory.

**Ironikinit** · January 29, 2002, 07:36

It's not a bad idea to go straight for republic from despotism, I do it all the time. However, there are situations when communism, for instance, is handy. Say if I have a big undeveloped area that I've recently captured and my home area is already built up. All I'll be building in my home area is military units, and it's good to have partial production in the new area to put in some culture.

Further, republic may have similar numbers to democracy, but democracy has a worker bonus and the cities are immune to propaganda. Also, a democracy taking cities from a republic will have fewer resisters. Same with a communist civ taking cities from a monarchy or despotism.

So it's a nice thesis (oh, and let's not forget that the democracy had a higher net income than the republic), but one size doesn't fit all.

"Cogent post", huh. What have YOU been smoking? Term papers?

**lockstep** · January 29, 2002, 19:03

Re: NO difference in corruption between Des/Mon and Rep/Dem !!!

Originally posted by blackdog2112

Income ----------- Despot Monarch - Commie Repub - Democ
Total --------------- 1069 -- 1113 --- 1044 - 1579 -- 1587
From Cities --------- 597 --- 641 ----- 572 -- 1107 ---1115
To Science --------- 319 -- 356 ------ 250 -- 622 ---- 641
To Corruption ------ 217 --- 210 ----- 260 -- 355 ---- 340
Percent Lost ------- 20% -- 19% ----- 25% - 22% --- 21%

Two objections. First, income from taxmen, interest and other civs doesn't seem to be subject to corruption as it isn't calculated in the city screen (and as it is always 472 in your example). Therefore, income from cities is probably a better basis to calculate corruption rates. To modify your example:

----------------------- Despot - Monarch - Commie - Repub - Democ
Income From Cities ------ 597 ---- 641 ---- 572 ---- 1107 ----1115
To Corruption ------------ 217 ---- 210 ---- 260 ---- 355 ---- 340
Percent Lost ------------- 36% --- 33% --- 45% --- 32% --- 30%

So 'higher' forms of representative governments do have lower corruption rates after all.

Second, the domestic advisor's income/corruption figures are rather misleading. The first evidence is the small difference in 'income from cities' between Republic and Democracy in your example. After all, with both governments featuring a trade bonus, why should there be any difference between them before corruption? After running some tests, I can only guess that the corruption figures are 'raw' ones, while the figures for science and taxes already incorporate multipliers due to science and tax buildings. Therefore, if corruption goes down somewhat in a city with libraries and marketplaces, income before corruption goes up. In other words, differences in corruption are bigger than they seem at first.

(Another test to verify this assumption: In a city with a library but without a marketplace, income goes up if you raise your civ's science rate at the cost of the tax rate.)

**Whoha** · January 29, 2002, 23:05

lockstep you just proved his point for him, he contends that there is no difference between despotism and monarchy, and similarly that there is no difference between republic and democracy. He never at any point stated that despotism was superior to republic.

[rant]
However, he did state that it seems like a waste of time to waste between 2 and EIGHT turns of anarchy(hmm at this point in the game what 80 years to switch from one representative govt to another?) to get 8 gold a turn or .5 additional worker speed, since when you need more workers isnt really that hard to build them, as your cities will have built everything and be stuck at 12 till the industrial era which you can not rush to. Immunity to propaganda is not all that good a trait as espionage is hideously expensive, and i assume that since they say that the comp is on the level then it also has hideously high action costs.

Finally you lose the ability to wage war(the single most important action in the game due to resources,ai acting erratically, keeping up in the tech game without paying through the nose,etc), since with "high" war weariness your civ falls into anarchy QUICKLY if you are defending yourself and attempt to take back cities(ai seems to know where those undefended and under defended cities are, and in one instance ive seen a horsemen charge in and kill a defending musketman... and hold the city all by himself without it flipping back...) and have all 8 luxuries and police stations out the yin yang and have universal suffrage(when your ai opponent has none of these and yet somehow staves off his citizens so they dont burn down everything and screw his govt for 80 years)even before you get the chance to punish the ai so it doesnt immediatly resume the war.
/[rant]

edit: Woohoo caught a spelling error before grammar crusade!

**Ironikinit** · January 30, 2002, 06:16

Let's not forget that this whole discussion AFAIK (I'm not going back to re-read it) has overlooked waste.

Announcement

NO difference in corruption between Des/Mon and Rep/Dem !!!

NO difference in corruption between Des/Mon and Rep/Dem !!!

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment