Corruption from number of cities

[DrSpike]

For those who have a predilection for large empires:

What are your experiences with corruption from number of cities? The times I've been over the threshold for the map size it didn't seem to make much difference.

Anyone looked into this properly?

[dunk]

You mean you don't have cities that are impossible to increase beyond one shield and one gold?

[DrSpike]

That is corruption from the distance factor. I said corruption from number of cities.

[Aeson]

From my experience (1.07f testing), the optimum number of cities (maybe it was 150% of that number, it's been a while) is a wall. Anything past that and the cities are totally corrupt. The productive cities stay centered around your Palace and Forbidden Palace. If you build an interior city once past the optimum number, an exterior city becomes totally corrupt. Not sure if this has been changed in either of the patches, the optimum number of cities was raised in 1.16f I think.

[DrSpike]

What are the limits now then? It may be that haven't experienced anything because I thought the limit was lower. Plus if it works as you say then you may not notice if the city you build in the exterior would have had bad corruption from the distance factor anyway.

[rpodos]

And what is the effect, if any, of the FP? Or is that only for distance?

I also think the number got changed in 1.16 or 1.17.

R

[Aeson]

The FP only affects corruption by distance.

The optimum number of cities varies by map size, the 1.17f values:

Tiny - 12
Small - 14
Standard - 16
Large - 24
Huge - 32

[Aeson]

Just ran a little test. Tiny/Regent/French (Commercial). I edited the terrain to give 25 commerce, to better show the corruption percent.

I built 6 cities along a diagonal, every other space. Then I started filling in cities around Paris, checking the furthest cities corruption levels after each city I built. The corruption is calculated at the end of turn, so I built 1 city per turn. By the 10th city overall, the outermost cities corruption started to increase. At 9 it was 33/50, at 10 - 38/50, 11 - 42/50, 12 - 44/50, 13 - 47/50. 47/50 must be the "absolute" corruption level, because I couldn't get it to go any higher by building more cities.

The "optimum" number of cities should actually be called the "maximum productive" number of cities.

[nbarclay]

In my current game in 1.16f, if I've counted correctly, I have 59 cities on (I think) a standard map. I'm not sure any of the cities are so totally corrupt that even a courthouse and police station couldn't bring them up to at least two shields; the only candidates I've noticed are recent conquests I haven't had time to develop yet. I'm running a Democracy right now, and my palace and forbidden palace are pretty well positioned for a large empire.

One thing to keep in mind is that government type has a huge impact on corruption levels. Democracy is characterized in the Civ 3 manual as having low corruption, so it can very possibly handle a lot more cities relative to the base "optimal number" than lesser forms of government can.

Nathan

[Aeson]

I forgot about Government modifiers. Do they affect number of cities or just distance? I'll run the same test in some of the other governments later.

[Aeson]

Ok, did the same tests in the other governments. Previous results were all in Despotism. I didn't test the effects of Courthouses and Police Stations on the corruption barrier. From in game experience I would guess another city or two could be made somewhat productive by their addition.

Monarchy

13 - 40/50
14 - 43/50
15 and up - 46/50

Republic

13 - 41/54
14 - 43/54
15 - 48/54
16 and up 51/54

Democracy

13 - 36/54
14 - 38/54
15 - 42/54
16 - 47/54
17 and up 51/54

Suprisingly Communism did much better on the Tiny map in overall commerce, at least up to 25 cities (got bored). Of course that is mostly because the Republic and Democratic trade bonuses were basically nullified by the 25 commerce from each tile. The extra 2 commerce per tile makes a big difference with normal terrain settings.

[Willem]

Originally posted by DrSpike
What are the limits now then? It may be that haven't experienced anything because I thought the limit was lower. Plus if it works as you say then you may not notice if the city you build in the exterior would have had bad corruption from the distance factor anyway.

Go into the editor and look in the World Sizes area, it will tell you there. There's different numbers for each map size. Off hand I think for a huge map it's 32. I don't play anything else so I can't be sure of the rest.

[chiefpaco]

So, under Communism, does the corruption affects all your cities equally? I always wondered how it worked. What is the value/return in gaining many cities for a Communist government?

Nice study. It's easy to see here why the corruption often looks similar from govt to govt (static corruption # past optimum city limit).

[DrSpike]

Nice job again Aeson. A bit more work and you could be the Xin of civ3!

The limits are as I thought. I find it really interesting that corruption starts to go up around the 10th city in despotism, and then levels out after 12. Perhaps the optimal numbers apply to later govts, and 12 is the threshold for despotism. This is how unhappiness from number of cities worked in civ2 for instance. But still, it doesn't imply that you can build up to 12 and get no corruption from number of cities.

Also it's good to know that your core cities aren't affected by corruption from number of cities. I envisaged extra corruption being spread amongst the cities in your empire when you breached the limit, which it seems isn't the case.

[alexman]

Dr Spike: In the editor, under difficulty levels, there is a setting called "Percentage of optimal cities". For chieftain this is at 100 and it decreases to 70 for deity. I am assuming that this, multiplied by the optimum number of cities for the map, is what determines when number-of-cities corruption will start.

From Aeson's experiment, I'm guessing he was playing at Monarch, where the percentage is 85%, because corruption started at 10 cities (12 * 0.85 = 10.2)