Corruption: Why I miss it

[Barchan]

Originally posted by Trip
But Barchan, you're missing the point of corruption and waste. Yes, your points make perfect sense, I'm sure most of us will agree. However, corruption and waste were included to tone down on using warfare to expand, and just plain to expand period. Reducing waste would still make it possible for larger empires to be much more powerful than a smaller one. It's designed so that at a certain point, a new city can do NOTHING because the corruption and waste is so high that it's not worth having. That's the point. And changing things would render the system useless.

I still say the problem is massive empires that grow without limits. And I still say the solution is not 'corruption' and 'waste'. It needs to be more historical: the farther away a city/province was from the capital, the more rebellious and independent it became. Rebellions and revolts become more common, requiring a larger military, which is more expensive. Eventually the costs of maintaining a large empire outstrip the benefits of having one. That's how it should be.

I hope it didn't sound as though I was suggesting that waste would be eliminated if decoupled from corruption, because that wasn't my intent at all. Surely, there would still be waste in cities, and the rate of waste would increase based on the size of the empire and the distance from the capital. However, the rate of increase would have been (had I designed it...) smaller than the rate for corruption. Additionally, wastage would have been capped at a more palatable maximum, say 75%, rather than all the way down to one shield.

You've made a good point about the relative power of empires in relation to their size, but it's also simply a fact that, all other things being equal, a larger empire is more powerful than a smaller one. The key is "all other things being equal", though. If a smaller empire can maintain a steady technological and economic edge, it may be able to keep relative parity with a large, less advanced empire.

I agree that empire sprawl is a problem, but I’m not sure that increasing waste rates is necessarily the key to combating it. Keep in mind, it takes gold to maintain an army, so even if you could build one thanks to increased production rates, you might not be able to support it if corruption is siphoning away nearly all of your provincial treasure.

Anyway, the point’s kind of moot since the game’s pretty well defined at this point and such a drastic change would be tough to implement. Still, though, it would have been interesting to see....

[player1]

What about INCREASING corrution, while DECREASING waste?

[Willem]

Originally posted by Barchan

Anyway, the point’s kind of moot since the game’s pretty well defined at this point and such a drastic change would be tough to implement. Still, though, it would have been interesting to see....

Finally someone else who realizes that! The way a lot of people around here carry on about "This needs to be done, and that needs to be changed.", you'd think the game was just in the development stage. Unfortunately, it's to late for any major changes at this point, just a few tweaks here and there is about all we can expect from here on.

Though there's always Civ IV.