A study of corruption

[sophist]

Something I've done to combat corruption (and it's worked reasonably well) is to cap distant cities at 12 pop. That way you can more or less guarantee that they stay in "We Love the [Ruler] Day" mode indefinitely. If they grow, they can gain an unhappy person. So put a courthouse, a temple, a marketplace, and a cathedral into that city as soon as possible. More luxuries and happiness wonders (Sistine Chapel esp.) are great. In this way, you can generally get waste down to "only" 50% or so (in one of my cities, 18/38 shields wasted, but all commerce was still wasted). After selling all my happiness improvements (killing We Love the * Day), I was wasting 27/35 (dunno where the 38 -> 35 drop came from. connected to Industrious? workers were on same tiles). Then I sold my courthouse and was wasting 30/32 (again a drop in the total). If I just sold the courthouse while keeping WLTKD, the waste was 24/32 as though I'd lost WLTKD. This city was about as far from the FP and capital as any in my empire (only 2 shields with no anti-corruption measures in place). So there you go. When acquiring a city far from capital and FP, cap its population at 12. I'm not sure if you can sell a hospital; should try building workers/settlers to drop down to 12 and then selling it. Then build courthouse/temple/marketplace/cathedral/colosseum. Use entertainers if necessary to get into WLTKD. Don't bother with any libraries or banks or anything that produces something out of commerce unless you need the culture; it'll all get wasted. At this point you should be able to reclaim just over half of your shields. If you build a factory, you should be able to do ok with that city. It'll never be perfect, but it will be something.

[sophist]

Same test city as above. Removing the railroads in the immediately surrounding squares seems to have had no effect on corruption. Production is 14/27 (13 wasted). Railroads had upped my production, hence the discrepancy. Interestingly, before chopping the last rail link, production was 16/29, with the same 13 wasted). After chopping the last road, production was 12/25. By tweaking tiles, I upped it to 16/32. This may lend credence to the connection-> capital reduces waste, but it's a small effect if it's truly there. You'd need to link your cities anyway, so it's a moot point.

Originally posted by ICMB
I agree that a road network helps, because that gets the luxury resources to your corrupt cities, which makes them happier, which means less corruption.

I should have noted that I often use 30-40% to luxuries, which keeps people happier and keeps the corruption down.

- ICMB