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

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Whoha
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.

blackdog2112 stated that 'Going by both percentage and in total terms corruption is *worse* under the higher forms of representative governments than the supposable "rampant" levels of Despotism.' This isn't correct - going by percentage and based on income from cities, corruption is lower under Republic or Democracy than under Despotism.

I agree with blackdog that, judging from his test game, the difference in corruption between Republic and Democracy is too low and doesn't make Democracy really worthwile. OTOH, I'd like to know more details of his test game, especially the number of cities (was it more than the critical treshold of 32 for a huge map?) and the average city distance to the Palace resp. Forbidden Palace.

[DrSpike]

Commie comes off badly, but the advantage of communism is higher production in big empires. Perhaps another table.........

Care does need to be taken though. As someone mentioned the relationship between the govts (for both corruption and waste) will change depending on the number of cities you have. Also lockstep's point was a good one, leaving the common factor in all calculation biases the percentage of corruption obtained.

[blackdog2112]

Stryfe - I don't need the scientific method to prove pigs can't fly.

Hoonak - Well said...you display an excetionally high level of cognizance. If I did not know any better, I'd swear you had ESP.

lockstep - a key point. I wasn't sure if the tribute I received from the other civs (472, I don't think I had any tax collectors) was suceptible to corruption. It appears not to be the case (which is strange because in real life THIS is the income that gets siphoned off via corruption; France and Italy are prime examples that it is rampant even under representative governments). Your modified numbers unfortunetly do not make me alter my original hypothesis. Despotism and monarchy are virtually the same as is the Republic/democracy pair with Communism being by far the worse. Lowering the corruption by 2% instead of raising it by 2% also does not justify the distiction the game calls "rampant" to "minimal".

Whoha - damn, I just repeated what you said. I must say this forum has an unusually high number of people that actually read and attempt to understand another's point of view.

Lockstep, through your figures, yes you could grammatically interpret my statement as such. However, in your next paragraph you acknowledged the spirit of what I said. 8 turns of anarchy for an 1115 income instead of 1108? No thanks.

Dr. Spike - My empire was rather large. By production I don't know if you mean pure shields or general income and shields. From my experience, it appears that the waste/corruption levels are more or less proportionate in a given city, thus I think its a fair assumption that Communism will have the least amount of shields as it does income.

One thing about the size of empires. The "score screen" calculates your score through 4 criteria: Happy peoples, content peoples, territory, and future tech. No expansion because of concern for the size of your empire means no territory (a large determinate) and the AI will have more peoples.

One other thing. How big your empire is seems beyond the point. I simply want some differentiation between Monarchy and Despotism with regards to corruption whether my empire be small medium or large. Similarly, I wish the game would at least tempt me into pursuing democracy (ala civ2...corruption under republic could get pretty bad for sprawling empires). 1/2 my workers stand there with their shovels up their ass because the automated polution command will only allow 2 to a square at a time (another irritating aspect) so the 50% worker rate is not even worth 1 turn of anarchy, let alone 6,7, or 8.

I really think there is a "zero" missing in some coefficient in the corruption script.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by blackdog2112

Dr. Spike - My empire was rather large. By production I don't know if you mean pure shields or general income and shields. From my experience, it appears that the waste/corruption levels are more or less proportionate in a given city, thus I think its a fair assumption that Communism will have the least amount of shields as it does income.

This kinda misses the point. Even if there are less shields overall (the proportionality argument seems a little tenuous - more scientific method is certainly needed here ) productivity is spread in communism. I agree with a lot of the things you've said, but income is not the only factor in choosing govts. For a domination game I'd always switch to commie after my empire reached a certain size.

[Sovereign]

Blackdog, I'm curious what version did you play on? The original out-of-box version, or V 1.16?

I had like 100 cities in one game and I had size 20 cities with robotic plants and factories, as well as nuclear plants churning out like 150+ shields in hill + mine + rail terrain. Guess what? the cities only produced 1 blue shield for production and the other 149+ were red corrupted shields. Later, I downloaded the patch and experience 1/2 - 3/4 as much corruption as before. (But I want to have like 10-20% corruption, NOT 99% or 75% or 50%)

Thats such crap, because in Civ 2, you could control Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia under Democracy with like 120 cities and have almost no corruption. So I figured "to hell with it" and decided to random generate maps in the editor and click all the buildings, great wonders, and small wonders to "reduce corruption" and presto! I have Civ 2 style corruption. I don't care that I cheated to get rid of that corruption, but they should make it more realistic.

Here's a good idea...

Huge maps = optimum cities = 100

Large maps = 75

Medium = 50

Small = 35

Tiny = 20

That way, people can actually enjoy military conquest and put the conquered AI cities to some use rather than razing them all the time.

What do you think?

[Kull]

One other reason for those who like the "whip" to switch from Despotism to Communism: Science rate increases actually have an impact.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by blackdog2112
Stryfe - I don't need the scientific method to prove pigs can't fly.

Actually, that is exactly why you know that pigs can't fly. A few hundred years ago, it may not have been seen such an impossible thing.

[hoonak]

blackdog2112's originally theorized that there is an advantage to jumping directly from despotism to republic and staying there. He further postualted that there is almost no difference in corruption levels between despotism and monarchy and likewise there is almost no difference in corruption between republic and democracy.

My original post agreed with him and took several others to task for thier responses to his post. I have since played a game with the express purpose of comparing corruption levels of the various government types. My data is very similar to his. My raw data is attached as a text file. I played as France on Marla's and chose the Indians, Chinese, Zulus, Aztecs, Iroquois and Americans as my opponents to allow myself plenty of time to expand (since this was a test game, a large number of cities and high population were preferable to early conflict).

I believe that researching Monarchy, Democracy and Communism is a waste of time and resources in Civ3. All of the Governments in Civ3 are technological dead ends, so there is no long-term benefit to researching any "extra" governments. In addition, none of these governments offers any city improvement, unit or benefit that is so important that no civ can exist without it.

Everything a civ produces is lost during anarchy. This makes changing governements a very expensive proposition. The time it takes to recover the losses depends on the type of government you have and the type you are changing to.

If you are changing to democracy it takes:

• about four turns to make up the losses if you were a Monarchy; or
• about three turns to make up the losses if you were Communist; or
• about forty turns to make up the losses if you were a Republic.

That's correct. 40 turns. Just to make good the losses. If you don't believe me, run the numbers for yourself. By the way, that is the PER TURN COST. In other words, if your revolution takes 5 turns, it will take 200 turns to make up the loses. The only way to ameliorate this is to expand dramatically after changing from republic to democracy. This is easier said than done because the computer players have been putting cities down all over the place. There will probably not be any room for you to expand into without going to war.

Don't waste your time with the revolution, just pick a government and stick with it.

[blackdog2112]

Sovereign - I play with the patch.

Not sure why anarchy is markedly long in this game as compared to the others (1-4 versions civ 1and 2; here it can last up to 8), but Hoonok hits the point, your not only wasting turns producing and researching nothing but you are allowing your computer opponents to pass you.

I think the overall design for this game is very good, although there are some rather curious aspects like the no difference in corruption that are just mind boggling. Makes me think there was a sort of deadline.

It's a shame, I would have been more than happy to wait an extra 6 months to work out these irritants.

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by hoonak

If you are changing to democracy it takes:

• about four turns to make up the losses if you were a Monarchy; or
• about three turns to make up the losses if you were Communist; or
• about forty turns to make up the losses if you were a Republic.

Don't waste your time with the revolution, just pick a government and stick with it.

Hoonak - excellent post. Your research solidifies my own observations. I have made a regular strategy of jumping directly from Despotism to Republic and sticking with it; this validates my tactic.

I sometimes flip to Democracy late in the game if I already have a comfortable lead, and (honestly) I want to give the AI civs time to catch up just a bit. Of course, with late-game tedium, I've had games run for about two days (I only play for an hour or so a day during the week) with my empire in total anarchy.

[HulluKarhu]

jumping directly from Despotism to Republic and sticking with it!

Long interesting post lots of calculations and work to prove what I though was pretty obvious...
ie: in the game and in real world of politics..any dramatic change in government style (revolution) causes such a big break or even step back on the country's/civilisation develpoment that it takes many years to actual return to the point where the country was before the "revolutiion"...it is rare to actualy catch up with the rest of the world which avoids revolutions..
Think of history when did a revolution actualy result in that country becoming a Great world power??..daah?
Russia.."great!?"
France..."world power!?"
USA yehhh..but....."jumping directly from Despotism to Republic and sticking with it; .....this validates the idea!"


Sorry tongue now removed from cheek..What the hell do Finns know about it anyway...
:

[lockstep]

After some tests, I'm fairly sure that corruption figures in the city screen are 'raw' ones while the figures for science and taxes include multipliers from science and tax buildings. Therefore, by compiling these figures corruption is underrated. The following stats stem from a game with korn's blitz mod (v1.06 beta6), but should (in principle) also be valid for the original Civ3 v1.16f.

Played a test game with the default setting (regent, standard map, 8 civs). Cultural victory, about 1000 points. Some hard facts regarding my empire: Pop 220, about 13% of the map's land mass (had a small continent for myself), 14 cities (all level 3), average city distance to palace/FP 4.5 tiles (i.e. close to nil), 3 science and 3 tax buildings in every city (i.e multipliers of 2.5 for science and taxes without additional wonder effects), courthouse in every city. This resulted in the following income/corruption figures for the different governments (Confederation not included):

Government ------------- Desp -- Mon -- Comm -- Rep / Fasc -- Dem
A: Total Income ---------- 948 -- 1045 --- 1002 --- 1604 --- 1614
B: Income From Cities ----- 898 --- 995 ---- 952 --- 1554 --- 1564
C: 'Raw' Commerce* ---- 345 --- 368 ---- 368 ---- 605 ---- 605
Corruption ---------------- 54 ----- 47 ----- 68 ----- 71 ----- 66
Corruption / A ------------- 5.7% -- 4.5% -- 6.8% -- 4.4% -- 4.1%
Corruption / B ------------- 6.0% -- 4.7% -- 7.1% -- 4.6% -- 4.2%
Corruption / C --------- 15.7% - 12.8% - 18.5% - 11.7% - 10.9%

* commerce from city tiles/worked tiles, no science/tax multipliers included

Some comments/conclusions:

• IMO corruption / C ('raw' commerce) is the correct corruption rate. Don't believe your domestic advisor, just do some counting in every city screen. (BTW, SMAC's city screen showed science and tax figures both before and after applying multipliers due to buildings/wonders.)
• The 'correct' rate was about 2.5 times higher in my test game; as my cities had science/tax multipliers of 2.5, this is as it should be.
• With the correct figures in mind, courthouses etc. generally become far more worthwile.

('Fasc' stands for a Fascist government that is included in the mod and, like the Republic, features a trade bonus and nuisance corruption.)

Note that the original Civ3 doesn't include the stock exchange as a third tax building, furthermore its third science building (the research lab) isn't available before the modern age. Therefore the 'correct' corruption rate should typically be about 2 times higher than the one calculated with the domestic advisor's figures.

Having said all that, blackdog is right IMO that 'there is an advantage to jumping directly from despotism to republic and staying there'. As it is now, even the difference between 'minimal' and 'problematic' corruption is rather small; therefore an intermediate corruption level is pointless at the moment. I hope that Firaxis deals with this in the next patch; until then, one can at least change Republic from 'nuisance' to 'problematic' corruption to balance governments somewhat.