large & huge maps why?? impossible due to waste&coruption

[Rosacrux]

What are you talking about???

I really don't know what you people are talking about. I play only home-made large maps (about 70-75% land mass - I don't like too much water... it's too ...wet ) and random XL maps and I rarely use more than 8 civs (above that number the AI turns take AGES, so I stick to 8 when L-XL) so I end up with a vast amount of cities, between 60 and 120 (depending on the map).

Well, with only two tweaks in the editor, I am able to enjoy quite a corruption-less empire: The city limit goes up to 56-72 (again, depending on the map size) and Police station get an adittional flag "reduce corruption".

That's it.

Even with this tweaking, the very far away cities produce didly, so what I am doing is rushbuilding every single improvement there is!

Are you people telling me you are deep into the modern times, have 60-100 cities available and don't have the cash to rushbuild everything??? In my current game I am making 3500 gold per turn (at average) and I barely - while rushbuilding every single improvement - am spending 70% of that sum.

So, gimme a break. If you don't mind some extra micromanagement, corruption is not an issue. If you do some tweaking to the optimal number of cities, that is. It's not hacking, silly. It's tweaking

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Olaf, what does corruption have to due with bordom? The core cities will do all of the prod and research and the corrupt cities are used to provide access to roads and deny them to the AI (and add to score). I just put in the min stuff and they just sit ther adding 1 gold each turn. If I have SUN wonder they get the barracks, if I have wonder for free Granary, fine, then maybe a temple.

It is so boring to rush buy everything, as it needs much more micro management. In peaceful times, I normally build units in my central cities, move them to the outposts and disband them there to get some shields faster. To optimise the score, a temple per city is not enough. You need hospitals, catedrals, marketplaces, mass transits etc to get as many happy citizens ans possible and reduce pollution. These improvements are expensive to rush buy and if you have 20-30 outpost cities, its hard to keep up even with 1000's of gold per turn. You also have to rebuild the terrain to get rid of the useless shields that are creating nothing but pollution and irrogate the land instead. An automated worker is not smart enough to understand this population optimisation, so you have to do everything manually (or is he, I haven't even tried).

[vmxa1]

What works for others is of interset, but if the editor is used it is of no value. It is apples to oranges. What we are saying is there is only one reason to bother with building up late cities, if you want to drive up your score as Olaf mentioned. I do not want to keep pounding (managing) more and more cities when the game is already in control. That is why I raze most of them unless I want the access to the roads. I usually do not stride to up my score. I would abandon once I am in the lead, but I want to see it finished.

[bogatir]

Even with the patch, I think there’s still a core problem with the game mechanic of corruption. Here’s an example:

In a recent game, my Romans ended up on a smallish continent all alone. So I peacefully develop a small, but efficient empire until my guys learn how to sail the Big Water. I find the Chinese nearby, also on a continent all alone. I build up my military, sail over and wipe them out. It doubles the number of cities I have.

Here’s the problem. ONE THOUSAND YEARS LATER, none of those cities can yet produce more than one shield. That’s just plain dopey. Those aren’t conquered Chinese cities anymore. The Chinese are an archeological dig. Those are Roman cities.

Over a period of time, the corruption of conquered cities should decline until it’s the same level as a city I build at the same distance. Doesn’t happen. It doesn't goof things up too badly, but it’s definitely an irksome oversight.

Cheers

[Aeson]

Actually corruption isn't affected by who built the city. In captured cities, it is still determined by total number of cities, distance from the palace, happiness level, and whether courthouses and police stations are present. You can test this by disbanding one of the "chinese" cities, and building a city in its place with your own settler. The new city should have the exact same corruption as the old one.

[bogatir]

True. Until I add an improvement like an airport. Then, I'll gain another three or four shields production from "my" city, but nothing additional from the "conquered" city.

I understand the design goal of the corruption mechanic. It's just that the percentages still seem way out of whack, especially when you move into the late industrial and modern ages. You can build a distant city that generates, say, 35 shields, and still only realize 1 shield for production purposes. The attenuation of the percentages seems very steep.

[Ironikinit]

The main benefit of bigger maps is high score. Small maps are just as challenging IMO.

[bogatir]

I guess I probably need to play through this thing about a bazillion times before I try to expound on how game mechanics work. Upon further experimentation, it’s starting to look like the corruption effects on ‘conquered’ cities is influenced to a great degree by the nationality composition of the population.

In a game just completed, I had a number of distant, ‘conquered’ cities that were indeed able to generate useful amounts of shields and gold. Not huge, but more than one of each. The trick was that when I conquered the cities, they were only at size 1 or 2. When they grew to size 6 or 7, of course, all of those additional citizens said stuff like ‘Happy Roman Worker’ (I was playing the Romans) instead of ‘Happy Russian Worker’. Conquered cities nearby that still had a higher percentage of Russians produced for crap, but the ones with only 1 or 2 Russians and a bunch of Romans would lose maybe only 60 percent of their output to corruption.

Do other folks see this pattern as well?

The experiment continues…

[Ironikinit]

Check the distance to your capital or forbidden palace. That should explain the differences. Other corruption reducers are the two buildings (court and cop shop) and WLTKD.

[bogatir]

Yep. I know about those. I’m just looking at the corruption vs population differences between ‘conquered’ and ‘native’ cities, where all other factors are basically equal. The cities with a higher ‘conquered’ population always seem to maintain higher rates of corruption.

[Thrawn05]

When I play on a large or huge map, I wait until my borders are well defined and there is really no more land left unclaimed by culture before I decide where to place my forbid palace. Because even though you can always change the location of the regualr palace, the forbid palace is locked in its location, so I want to place both in a good location depending on my "shape".

[nationalist]

The Corruption in this game is implemented horrendously! I can understand why a recently conquered city would be corrupt and unproductive, but why would a city founded by your own citizens be completely useless simply because it is a long way from the capital? It doesn't make sense, especially under Democracy. Why wouldn't a democracy be able to keep control over a its own citzens just because the city is far away? Honolulu is a long way from D.C., but it isn't crippled by corruption. My biggest complaint is that after a certain point all of your cities become super corrupt, meaning that they only produce 1 shield and 1 commerce and can't be relieved by building courthoses or other improvements. This takes the fun out of expansion, because any new city becomes a resource sucking liability. In my opinion, cities founded by your own civilization should never be super corrupt under any government except Despotism, and even then it should only affect cities that are very far away. My solution to this is to tie most of corruption's effects to the nationality of the city. The lower the percentage of your citizens reside in the city, the more corrupt a city is likely to be. If a city is composed of less than 20% of your own citizens, and is populated by a nationality that you are at war with, then a city should be super-corrupt. During peace times, a city that is populated by a large percentage of other nationalities should be a little more corrupt, and this corruption would lessen after time due to assimilation. Distance should affect corruption in the ancient governments, but not as much as it does now. Communism should have mild disance related corruption, but Democracy should not lose production in cities populated by its own nationality, no matter how far away the city is from the capital. Super corruption is ridiculous and takes alot of the fun away from the game for me, especially because there is nothing that you can do about it short of change the game rules! I think that the game should be playable as is, without changing the rules. What do others think?

[Jaybe]

Large & Huge Maps are not impossible, but getting substantial output from outlying cities may be. Expecting output from them is what is unreasonable. As already stated, they are good for a minimal increase in overall culture and for expanded borders, both good for cultural and domination victory conditions, and denying real estate to your opponents.

If you like long games* you can still play with larger maps as long as you don't demand all your cities be productive.

* Yes, I like long games. My most recent game, on a large map, lasted 6 weeks averaging 2-3 hours per day.