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Too little difference between governments. Easily implemented solution suggested to F
I agree with FrantzX – I also think there is too little difference between governments when it comes to corruption and waste. And there is no way of changing this in the editor:
There are only the following ways of reducing corruption and waste in the editor:
1) Increasing the number of improvements and wonders that reduce corruption
2) Set the level of corruption for all governments to minimal
3) Increasing optimal number of cities (in the World size and Difficulty level menus)
4) Reducing the difficulty level via the corruption modifier (in the Difficulty level menu)
I don’t think solution no. 1 is very good at reducing corruption, whatever the reason for wanting to do this. It would simply make gameplay illogical if say cathedrals or the Pyramids reduce corruption. No. 2 is not very good either; it to a certain degree makes it pointless to switch government and it certainly is contrary to the problem that is the subject here. Solutions nos. 3 and 4 are much better at reducing corruption in general.
The Problem:
If corruption is lowered by using solutions 3 and 4, so that a democracy with courthouses and police stations make it viable to have the optimal number of cities of your choice, whatever that number may be, that all are able to produce things at a decent rate, this however means that a despotism will actually do quite well doing the same thing – and this I do not like.
In the beginning of the game, despotism should be a limit on your ability to expand by way of corruption. (This makes sense too I think). Only with monarchy or the republic the ability to reign over a large empire should be possible. Still there should be limits to the size of those empires. With democracy and communism there should even fewer restriction as far as the size of the empire is concerned and even cities very far away from the capital should be able to produce things at a decent rate. Communism should however in any case suffer greater corruption compared to democracy.
Solution:
The only way this can be achieved would be by linking the number of optimal cities not only to the difficulty level (chieftain etc,) but also to the types of governments. The difficulty level (corruption modifier) should also be linked not only to the difficulty level (chieftain etc,) but also to the types of governments.
One – I think quite simple – way of doing this would be for Firaxis to replace the current possible “corruption and waste” adjustments on the “governments” page with a new frame containing 1) a choice between communal or capital centered corruption, 2) the possibility of setting the percentage of optimal number of cities, and 3) a corruption modifier (slider).
My suggestion is a bit different than Frantzx’s in that I don’t think it is necessary to have sliders for both corruption and waste – one will do, I think.
If one is playing on a huge map on regent level the optimal number of cities is 90 % of 32, i.e. 29 cities. However one might like this only to be the optimal setting if the government type is democracy or communism – one could in that case set despotism to only allow 30 % of the optimal number of cities for that level on that map, which would be 30 % of 29, i.e. 9 cities. Monarchy could be set so that this type of government would allow 18 cities and the republic 26 cities. One could also reduce the percentage of corruption for certain governments to, say 30 % for democracy, 50 % for republic and communism, 70 % for monarchy of the percentage set on the “difficulty level” page. I for one would really like to be able to play with these settings to make a more fun game.
I've just been thinking of ways you can expand the editor to do wonderful things in scenarios, even if they are unrealistic for the main game. I'm not asking these be included in the main game, just some ideas to make the editor far more expanisive:
"Atomic Cannon"- What about a trigger that makes a bombard unit launch nuclear shells, with the same damage as a ICBM or Tac Nuke? While something you would never use in the main game, it make for a intresting player-made scenario set in the future.
Expand the max. range for bombard and air units. Also, would it be possible to give a minimum range for bombard? That would be really helpful. 8 spaces for max range is just far too small.
Manhattan Project/Wonder as a unit prequisite: I was thinking about the MP wonder and came up with an intresting idea. Instead of hardcoding only one option(every civ builds nukes) what if you could make a wonder and use a trigger to toggle what buildings/units you can make with it. This way, things like the Apollo Program and Manhattan Project can be changed to build other superunits/structures or the player can have the option to add a whole different wonder. Let this be a great and small wonder option please.
I'm sure other people can think of other interesting toggles. Lets try to make the editor as open-ended as possible, so we can come up with all sorts of insane ideas!
Once again, these are not ideas to improve the main campaign, just toggles I'd like to see in the editor to make interesting sci-fi/non-historical scenarios.
Nuke Blast Area: I think for most purposes, blasts should be in the 9-tile standard format. But a slider/box to change the area to 2, 3 or even something more extreme would be really cool. Superweapon scenarios would be hillarious to make, if a little hard to balance.
Global Warming Modifier: This would be sooooo cool. Just a simple slider that adjusts how quickly/slowly tiles change from pollution. Man, this would be helpful.
I second culture, country, and/or government specific buildings/wonders. Making scenarios that the civs are truly a different experience to play would add tremendous depth to a game.
Just some more ideas to get this thread moving. I'm sure I'll think of more while playing tonight.
Shm,
Your idea that corruption can be a limit to growth has already been proven false. When building a new city means the city will be so corrupt as to be completely useless, people do it anyways. Why not? No big loss to you, and you deny some other civ from grabbing that spot.
The only way there can ever be effective limits to growth by gvmt type or anything else, is if adding a new city not only has penalties in that city, but in your older cities as well. For instance, you go over a city max for that gvmt type, and all your cities have one extra unhappy person in them, or all cities have extra corruption in them. If that happened, people would pay great attention to those limits, I'm sure!
I would love to see this as at least an option in the editor.
[QUOTE] Originally posted by Harlan
Shm,
Your idea that corruption can be a limit to growth has already been proven false. When building a new city means the city will be so corrupt as to be completely useless, people do it anyways.
Harlan
My point was actually not to limit the ability to expand, as you say people do it anyway. However, I think the game is more fun, if you don´t have to manage a lot of useless cities - so I would actually use the suggested changes in the editor to lower corruption, so those cities were not a pain to manage, but part of the fun of the game. However if I do that as it is now, the fun of progressing through governments is lost, because there is too little difference.
One thing I would like to see is the ability to create a starting animation for scenarios, much like the bic files used when in era advancements. These would resemble the effect that the story animations in AoK included before campaigns.
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