I think I just discovered the reason for all the corruption discrepancies and phenomenon that troubled me for a long time. Things like why did I often observed corruption reduction in my old core when I just made a palace jump and also the recent lower corruption I see in my distance 7 ring around the FP in GOTM22 which later increases for no apparent reason.

And it looks like this can be huge exploit, which can reduce corruption tremendously. With this exploit, it is possible to make most, if not all, of my cities rank 1! This effectively negates almost all corruption due to rank.

Before you read this, you should get yourself familiar with Alex’s “Do you understand corruption”? At the minimum, you should understand the difference between corruption due to rank and corruption due to distance.

The discovery is actually very simple. The city rank as we all know really has ONLY one set, not two sets! All rank calculation in Civ3 depends on the number of cities with distance less than Fd from the palace only, regardless of whether the city is nearer to the FP or the Palace. Note that the gist of the above statement is that rank depends on the number of cities with distance less than Fd, and not the number of cities nearer to the palace for the city concern, nor the number of cities nearer to the FP.

Mathematically, the formula should be
(For the full corruption formula, please refer to Alex’s thread – Do you understand corruption?)

Distance of a city (Fd) = min(distance from Palace, distance from FP)
Rank of a city (Fn) = 1 + Number of cities with distance FROM PALACE less than Fd (i.e. ignore the source of Fd, just count the number of cities with distance less than Fd from the palace, even if the city is nearer to the FP)

If the above does not sound like something new, then you might not have understand it correctly. Here is an example to illustrate what the above really means.

Let say you have cities with these distances from the palace and FP respectively

Palace – 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 11, 11, 11, 11, 12 etc
FP – 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 etc

Let say, I am trying to determine the corruption of the distance 8 cities from the FP. Previously, I had always thought that the rank of the distance 8 cities would be 5. But my discovery says it is NOT.

The rank of the distance 8 city would actually be 9! This is because there are eight cities with distance less than 8 from the capital. They are 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7. The number of cities nearer to the FP does not matter.

Similarly, the rank of the distance 10 cites from the FP is not 12. It will be considered as rank 9 again since the same cites - 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7 – would be closer to the palace.

I am not sure if this example is good enough. If this is not clear enough, I would suggest trying the exploit below and you should be able to understand what the above means.


The Exploit
To exploit the above, basically, all you need to do is to put your palace as far away as possible without any of your own cities near it. This way, all your cities near the FP will be considered as Rank 1! Try this on a recent game you finish by abandoning all the cities near the palace and see how your corruptions near the FP reduces like magic(You may need to remove and put back the population to see the changes). So if the nearest city to the capital is distance 20. Then all cities less than 20 distance from the FP is considered to have a rank of 1. Imaging that!! Even those cities that are considerable distance from the FP now become very useful. I tested it on a recently finish game and I see my previously fully corrupted cities in the outer ring of my FP turning into low corruption power cities.

I have attached an example of this. You can check the city New Argos which is at a distance of 12 from the FP and with a rank in excess of 20 if I calculate it the old way. You can check with Alex's calculator that the corruption level is of a city with distance 12 and rank 1. Note that this sav is mod but none of the mod affects corruption, just to facilitate testing.


RCP impact – The above basically means you just need to do RCP on the palace. Cities around the FP gains the benefit automatically, provided the city distance is not more than the rings at the palace. RCP around the FP does not help at all.


Additional Comment 1 – Even a simpler approach of ICS near FP and sparse city placement at palace will help greatly in this battle against corruption since the sparse placement near the palace will help the city corruption near FP.

Additional Comment 2 – The above also resolved the question about how is the corruption calculated when it’s rank is nearer to Palace and distance is nearer to FP or the opposite.

Additional Comment 3 – This exploit would make commercial trait useless since this effectively negates almost all corruption due to rank.


I guess GOTM should ban the above exploit this since this will be overpowering. I don’t think there is any reasonable way you can ban the method in additional comment 1 though since it starts to gets into the gray area.

Tests are made on Vanilla Civ3 1.29. I suspect it should be the same for PTW. Credit must be made to Alex for having discover and fine-tune the corruption formula which serves as the basis for me to investigate this. Also, Daviddesj’s RCP is what really re-kindle my interest to make this investigation.

(All information contain herein are the result of extensive testing made by the author. Although, diligent effort has been made to ensure that the results are true, there is always a possibility that insufficient test has been made. Everyone is welcome to either confirm or show results which contradicts the information shown here)

Very clever Qitai.

Did you unwittingly benefit from this in GOTM22 with your Palace jump? Maybe without that boost you would have taken until 420ad to conquer the world (only 900 years faster than me).

How can GOTM ban this; surely it should be addressed by a patch instead.

Yeah, I definitely think this ought to be patched away. Seems to make no sense at all.

Originally posted by Offa
Very clever Qitai.

Did you unwittingly benefit from this in GOTM22 with your Palace jump? Maybe without that boost you would have taken until 420ad to conquer the world (only 900 years faster than me).

How can GOTM ban this; surely it should be addressed by a patch instead.

For a very short while, yes. If I had known this at that time, I might get 400AD victory:D

Qitai, this is a huge discovery.

I am glad that you pursued the discrepancy which you noticed and were able to deduce the cause - nice debugging! Thank you!

I have loaded a saved game in PTW 1.27, abandoned all cities anywhere near my Palace, and can confirm that the effect you've discovered still exists in PTW 1.27.

I hope that Firaxis issues a patch which fixes this bug for all versions. (I think there can be no doubt it is a bug :) )

I agree that this should be a banned exploit. I don't think it can be entirely detected. In fact, now that I've seen this effect I can't imagine spending the time to do RCP around my FP. (I already wasn't wild about working out RCP though I'd started doing it to some degree.) I think my personal compromise will be to continue using RCP to some degree around my Palace, not use RCP at all around my FP, and aside from that forget that this loophole exists while playing.

I think in the past I've benefitted from this bug in a couple of games without knowing it, when I Palace jumped. The new Palace region was initially less developed than the old core and some towns would have had less corruption for a while. Probably wasn't a big deal since I of course aggressively grew the new Palace region. (Hindsight now shows that to have been counter-productive :) )

I think that relatively minor uses of this exploit will be indistinguishable from regular play without this knowledge and can't be detected. But larger abuses will stand out, e.g.:
1) A largely OCP style build around the Palace but an ICS build around FP.
2) Palace in a relatively isolated position.

Now, I'm really bad at math, so the corruption model in Civ3 makes no sense what-so-ever to me. However, this sounds like a really powerful exploit that is not so tough to pull off in the mid to late stages of the game (as stated in "Additional Comment 1).

Good work on the Civ3 science.

:grad:I'm going to do an ethnography on the online Civ3 community this semester for my graduate-level independant study class. If you have anything you'd like to contribute, let me know in an email: ridcully47@hotmail.com

Thanks

Oh, and... [nods subtly in the direction of his signature] [pimp]

Originally posted by benstandby
this sounds like a really powerful exploit that is not so tough to pull off in the mid to late stages of the game
It is huge. In some cases it could pulled off big time fairly early in the game. E.g. an archipelago map might make it possible to do an early Palace jump to a remote island and then build a very large number of corruption free cities in the original home area.

This explains a lot a of situations in which I found it weird that my old core stayed strong after a palace move. :( Great discovery!

:cry:

This messes everything up! I am sooooo angry! Argh!!!!!!!!!!

:saiyan:

This is a huge bug. Sounds more like a beast to me. Great discovery !

Imagine what it can do to MP team play. Two players who are teamed up each build FP. Each also builds a useless but high food town and lets it just grow. When they've met each other and their FPs are done they give each other the useless towns. Then each does a Palace jump. Yikes.

I second anarres.





:(

Imagine what it can do to MP team play

Well actually the reason anarres is so mad is that he is right now building RCP cores and FP second cores in 1vs1 PBEM games. This discovery does mess up his games quite a lot... :(

In a case of SP games its been shown and proven the AIs are just very easy to beat...however when playing against another experienced deity level player, every little detail counts and RCP was widely and rapidly adopted as every little edge needs to be used in such games.
The whole strategy behind those games will need to be reviewed now in the light of this piece of news...
To know more visit the www.civ3duelzone.com
;)

Great discovery, Qitai!
:goodjob:

Hehe - this mechanic explains a lot. In two recent games (Greeks on large, Germans on small map), I used my second city (which got a handmade FP ASAP) as first RCP center.
Later, I GL-rushed a Palace elsewhere to have a second RCP core. But there was a huge difference in both games: Playing the Germans, I had actually two almost complete rings around the desired future capital built before moving the Palace- I had to claim the area before the ai could do so and the RNG denied me my GL for a while( :( ). There was no very big boost of income as I finally moved the Palace, the new capital was comparably close to my first core.

Now playing the Greeks, I noticed an incredible boost of income when moving the Pallace. I rushed it in a captured Aztec city (w/o any "direct income boost wonder" like Pyramids, Smith's etc) on the other side of the world. No other cities of mine were nearby at that time. In relation to Aggie's description, I think I accidentally "used" that rank exploit.

While a do think that this feels exploitive, I would also call it a nasty bug. I don't play competition games, but I could very well imagine situations where a far-away Palace move would be a considered strategic option (even if just used as an "insurance" against CF for a captured city w/ a bunch of really nice wonders, for example). This is really a screw-up. When would a player be allowed to move the Palace? Even forbid any Palace-move for competition games (or "political correct" SP games)?

I agree, Firaxis should fix it. :)

I have never understood why the city's distance's rank should have anything to do with corruption. It comes across as a forced attempt to counter the advantages of ICS.

But the real exploit in all of this is not so much a wide first ring around the capital, which has to be weighed against the time that is invested to make it so, but - as before - the palace jump, which appears to be even more advantageous than we already thought.

I think the concept of rank corruption is fine. It does balance against ICS quite well. Alternatively, the test of time scenario of making settler extremely expensive is another good approach to make ICS less attractive. ICS is indeed too powerful as applied in earlier versions of Civ.

And yes, palace jump is an exploit in my view, no doubt about that. But forbidden palace is too unbalancing especially against the AI I think. I highly suspect AI don't even know the value of using a GL to move the palace/FP to create a second core. In fact, it may well be more balancing to drop this whole concept of a forbidden palace.

I also like the concept of rank corruption, I think it adds nice balancing and gameplay.

The more I've thought about this bug the worse it seems to me. In one regard it is one of the worst we've seen since the game's release. Unlike most previous exploits, this one is a kind of Pandora's box. Hard to close after opening. There's seems to be no simple rule to get rid of it even on an honor system. (Except a rather drastic one, "no FP allowed.") I can tell myself I won't use this exploit but can I really do that in practice? I can certainly refrain from planning to use it. But if I do a Palace jump, can I stop myself from thinking "Is this fair? Will I be gaining production which I shouldn't? Is that influencing my decision here?" And when building new towns can I stop myself from thinking "Will that affect corruption to give me an unfair advantage? Or will I perhaps be shooting myself in the foot unfairly?"

As a comparison, when RCP became well understood I tried for a while to not think about it while playing. But I wasn't able to not think about it. Now that I understand it, it has inevitably become a factor in my play. I think this is a shame because I think RCP is a bit imbalancing and a kind of exploit. I don't think the game's designers intended that any particular geometric placement of cities should have an inherent advantage. To me it seems that the game's underlying feel is that overlap (inter-city spacing), distance from cultural center, local geography, and competition for space with rivals are the factors intended to affect city location choices.

This bug regarding FP centered corruption seems similar to RCP in that regard but worse in its impact on the fun factor. I'm doubtful I can play without it crossing my mind. I'll wonder whether I'm doing it (for gain or loss) accidentally. And as soon as I have that thought, it unavoidably becomes in a sense deliberate choice, there's no way out at that point. :(

I too think that removing FP entirely would be more balancing for the game, as well as eliminating this problem. The AI doesn't know how to use FP well.

Now that we understand this bug I'm wondering if the bug accounts for a few cases where some AIs seem to do significantly better than others - perhaps when an AI gets "lucky" with a cramped peninsula start and then builds FP in a more open direction away from the peninsula, the resulting gain gives it a noticeable boost. This would be a random factor happening more often in AI play than for a good human player who would usually be trying to maximize both regions.

Removing the FP concept from the game would also in effect make the AI more competent. The result would be to slide the higher difficulty levels a fair bit upscale. For a human to win a large pangaea with many rivals at deity, without an FP, would be considerably more difficult than it is now.

In any case, I very much hope that Firaxis issues a fix for this bug, and issues one for both Civ and PTW. I think it would be nice if they'd fix RCP at the same time, but if not, this one seems the most important thing to fix. I do hope they'll consider one more patch to Civ to address this (vs. just fixing PTW.) If it is not fixed in all versions, comparative play will be difficult. And perhaps (depending on the approach chosen for the fix) impossible.

Sir Pleb, you are making me feel guilty for posting this information :(. I was thinking if this should be revealed when I discovered this since I had the exact same thoughts that once this is known, it will affects everyone's decision, even if it is sub-conciously. And there is no clear line to distingush intentional use of this information versus playing normally. But I decided it is best be publish in the end since I do not want to hold this information to myself. Apologies to all if this information has mess things up for you.

Whoa! Good job discovering this bug, Qitai! It is for sure a bug, and I will be disappointed if they don't fix it when Conquests comes out.

Depending on how exactly Firaxis has implemented the code, at this point it might be easiest to change the FP to affect distance corruption only (plus the current 10% increase in OCN), with the Palace being the only building affecting rank. This would devalue the FP, thus helping the AI, while still keeping the challenge and planning required set up a secondary core.

Originally posted by Qitai
Sir Pleb, you are making me feel guilty for posting this information :(. I was thinking if this should be revealed when I discovered this since I had the exact same thoughts that once this is known, it will affects everyone's decision, even if it is sub-conciously. And there is no clear line to distingush intentional use of this information versus playing normally. But I decided it is best be publish in the end since I do not want to hold this information to myself. Apologies to all if this information has mess things up for you.
No, no, do not feel guilt! I think we are all impressed and glad that you've published this!

I don't know if you have this expression, "shooting the messenger"? You're the messenger and we'd be crazy to shoot you vs. applauding. It is sad that the bug exists but to disclose it is not sad, it is necessary and important I think. Perhaps some players would even keep such information private and use it for advantage. I know that you would never entertain such a thought. You acted honorably and admirably in publishing this unfortunate bug. :thumbsup:

great discovery Qitai! You definetly do not need to feel guilty for posting that: Firaxis will only fix this bug if they notice that the community is aware of it.
This discovery definetly explains some of my observations in recent games where moving the palace to a remote area with very few towns of my own extremely boosted my income...and building up a second core was almost counter-productive. :)

Well, Mr. Qitai, or, should I say "Bobby Oppenheimer"?

This is probably the biggest, juiciest, most delicious bug ever found in Civ III. Now that I understand it (Alex's help, his thread updated to reflect this thread's discovery, and I quote: "Qitai discovered that there is a bug in the rank calculations for cities closer to the Forbidden Palace than the Capital. In short, for such a city, the rank is given by the number of cities that are closer to the Capital than that city is to the Forbidden Palace."), maybe I can start playing the game like an experienced gamer.

Okay, I lied. I still don't get it. :p

But still, this is a huge thing, and congratulations on discovering this. To make an analogy, this discovery is to Civilization III what the formulation of the theory of relativity was to physics. As far as my opinion is concerned, only Alex's murderous dissection of the corruption patterns and David's development of the RCP ranks as high.

(this sort of reminds me of the tech tree- Alex's corruption begets David's RCP, which begets Alex's palace jumping exploit. The three together are more akin to Chaos Theory than anything else, I think…)

Someone please tell me, because I'm dialup and it's a damn imposition to even be surfing these boards, let alone downloading GOTMs, if I got this right:

I build rings around my Palace, then, on an iceberg deep in enemy territory near the further of the two poles, I found a city and build my palace there.

After that, I build a forbidden palace where my regular palace was, and poof- no corruption.

I know that's not what's been discussed here, but I'm asking if that would work.

Anyway, as a newb here, I must say that I'm impressed with the sheer number of graduate-level students occupying this board and sharing conjecture and hypothesis on a simple, profane video game of all things.

If this sort of dedication was focused elsewhere… well, maybe it's for the best that all you guys aren't primarily concerned with things like politics; we'd probably end up with a technocracy in a decade.

JJansen> The usual order would be build a FP first before moving the palace. Also, if you use the extreme exploit of having no cities near the palace, then you do not need any ring concept. All cities will be rank 1 if the palace is far enough from any other of your own cities.

The above do not reduce corruption completely. It only almost completely remove one part of it, which in my opinion is the bigger contributor of corruption. This is the same part which RCP tries to reduce.

The corruption has two parts - Rank and distance. In despotism, both are equally evil. But when you move to other government forms and build improvements, distance corruption reduces dramatically. But not rank. This exploit only almost negates rank corruption. Distance corruption will still have to be fought using advance government and improvement.

If this is still not clear, I would advise that you try to understand Alex's formula first. One way to do it is to download his corruption calculator and see how corruption changes with different distance and rank, as well as the effect of various governments, improvement and things that affect corruption.

Q-

(JJ will suffice. Minimum number of characters for a SN here is 3)

Well, I was broadly generalizing there. I have the feeling that I'm going to have to abandon that trait of mine, here at least…

I think I got it now:

So long as every city is closer to the FP than they are to the capital palace, corruption via distance is virtually eliminated.

So basically, after gaining magnetism and a GL, you could just move the GL, a Settler and oh, say, 10 Musketeers to Speck Island, Middle of Nowhere, Antarctic Circle, and put the palace there after planting the FP somewhere central in your territory, the result will be virtually no distance corruption for as long as you're away from your capital.

I hope I got it by now, because I already think I do.

Yeah, you're right, this is a dangerously easy bug to exploit. While I imagine that most players (ala www.gamefaqs.com, the 12-year-olds and the like) will never come across this idea, there still is a major, gaping hole in the structure of the game.

I was mulling over improvements to Civ III that I would make, had I any skill at Civedit.

One thing would be to make a new small wonder that would require, say, 20 Police Departments and the IA, call it the "Permanent Governmental Oversight Committee", and it'll combat corruption by halfing the overall total or something like that.

Of course, I also want the Telephone between Electricity and Electronics, right alongside Atomic Theory, (and the associated GW of 'Ma Bell'), but that won't happen, either.

Anyway, sorry for digressing; do I get it now?

Will the multiplayer community look down upon this like they do ICS or ROP rape? Maybe we should post this in the Multiplayer thread and see if it's ethical.







...or maybe I should shut up and just use it until someone says something :groucho:

JJ, you sound like you got the idea. I did not realize you are 12 years old. So, all those mathematically detail are probably too tough for you. Hope in time to come, you can understand all these :D

benstandby, I think you should highlight it to them. This will probably help to eventually send the message to Altari that this should be fixed.

On second thought. Do you think it will boost your income if you have TWO cores ? Moving a palace far away will increase your home core, but what do you do with the *far away* core? Does one core have more income than two cores? Maybe OCP around palace and ICS(RCP) around FP will help, but does it help much more than RCP on both palace and FP ? I don't really think so, can anyone clear this up for me.

Did a simple test with my completed GOTM22. Had normal 2 core without extensive RCP.

Income before = 384, Income after is 472.

That game is still in Middle Age with only one courthouse and aqueduct in the empire; and with the FP being more or less in a corner. Even with that, you can see a significant gain. I suspect a fully developed empire would have at least double the production with that exploit, if not more.

I am not sure how would that compare with an OCP at palace with ICS at FP. But here are some quick comparison and stats to show you how powerful this can be

On a standard map at deity level. Under democracy, a connected rank 1 city which is 50 distance away from the FP, with a courthouse and police station suffers only 20% corruption!!!!

With the same condition, if the city is rank 30 distance 50, the corruption goes to 125%.

With same condition, a rank 10 distance 10 city would suffer 30% corruption.

It will help a lot because around the FP, all the cities will have the same low corruption due to the fact that there is no city close to the Palace. You can potentially build (say) four rings around the FP with the corruption of a first ring city. That replaces and exceeds the advantage of a ring or two around the palace.

Irrespective of how many rings you build around the FP, the corruption stays the same because the corruption counts the number of cities closer to the Palace.

Originally posted by Yndy
You can potentially build (say) four rings around the FP with the corruption of a first ring city.
With the advantage that the cities in those four rings don't have to be at the exact same distance. You don't have to RCP the cities around the FP anymore, you've got complete flexibility again!

That's right. Read 'equivalent of four rings of cities'.

Great Discovery Qitai!:goodjob:

So, without palace jumping, starting with a small first core (FP eligible) you're army sets off to attack...the fartherst civ from your capital. A great leader builds the FP in their capital. So far, normal play, with no exploit. But abandoning all your original core makes all territory acquisitions "rank=1". Exploit. Question is, how bad is rank=2 or 3 or 4? How many of the original core cities can you leave in tact without lowering the FP core significantly? And in leaving them, how long would this strategy remain undetected as an exploit? This truely is a competition game's nightmare.

Originally posted by ControlFreak
Question is, how bad is rank=2 or 3 or 4? How many of the original core cities can you leave in tact without lowering the FP core significantly? And in leaving them, how long would this strategy remain undetected as an exploit? This truely is a competition game's nightmare.

That's a tough question. I can only use examples again. At democracy, standard, deity - without considering improvements - 3.72% per rank until rank 13. Thereafter 7.44% per rank.

And I would look at it this way. Each rank increases corruption in all cities in the FP region, so that is 3.72% times the number of cities you have per rank before rank 13. So, I guess you can figure out yourself how big that is. Note that this is just one example.

As for intentional non-building of cities. That is easily detected, since each city has the build year to it. So, you can't hide it. What is difficult to determine is a player using OCP at palace as a play style or intentional use to get lower corruption at the FP. I suspect everyone will now use OCP at the palace.

Personally, my cities after the palace jump tends to be more sparse (before having this knowledge) due to cities being captured from AI with little incentive to pop more cities, unless AI city placement are wasting some good tiles. But with this knowledge, I may not do that anymore.

JJ, you sound like you got the idea. I did not realize you are 12 years old. So, all those mathematically detail are probably too tough for you. Hope in time to come, you can understand all these :D I think you misinterpreted what he was saying. I very much doubt he's 12. :p


On a standard map at deity level. Under democracy, a connected rank 1 city which is 50 distance away from the FP, with a courthouse and police station suffers only 20% corruption!!!!

With the same condition, if the city is rank 30 distance 50, the corruption goes to 125%.

With same condition, a rank 10 distance 10 city would suffer 30% corruption.
Wow. Now that really puts it into perspective. Great discovery.

It's sad though how this makes such a big difference to the game by completely overhauing a lot of strategies (including a favourite of mine - RCP). It defies logic. This'll have to be fixed.

It sounds like players who build the FP next to their first city for an eventual palace jump have been benefiting from this bug all along as opposed to people like me who use the palace as the home core and build the FP as the second core.

It would give a huge jump in productivity when the palace jump is first made but would have less effect as more cities are added around the new palace. The overall productivity would probably still increase as more cities are added around the new palace but not as much as the productivity increase around a second core FP. Players using this strategy wouldn't know the reason for difference until now but intuitively they would use the strategy that yields the higest production especially in the MA when many of the best players are winning the game.

It will be real interesting to see how this affects game play. Do you take advantage of the bug or not? If not, what will you do if you already use the FP in the first core and do a palace jump to the second core? The concept of 2 core production centers has been the mainstay of the Gotm since I started (Gotm 20).

if (Forbidden Palace is complete)
RelocatePalace();

function RelocatePalace() {
t = locate(non-Mountain land tile on a crappy remote island)
if t is not settled
settle(t)
c = the city at tile t
g = wait(for a Great Leader to appear) // g is the Great Leader
ship g off to c
rush the Palace in c with g
// the AI can use exploits too!
}


;)


Dominae

I don't like the idea of a palace jump - or an FP, for that matter - because neither exists as used in the path of history which Civ3 seeks to mimic. A weakened or non-existent FP would also break up the current strategic stranglehold of immediate two-core expansion at the expense of just about everything else, and perhaps take the game back to a more balanced approach to development.

In the meantime, though, I naturally build the FP in every game, and will eventually jump my palace in a GOTM. I also take RCP into ever-increasing consideration. All of these are arguably exploits, but fall within the rules and within the "gray area." Moving the palace to a far-off location is clearly an exploit that could be easily detected, and therefore banned. But I don't see why using ICS in the first core and building the FP there in anticipation of a palace jump, and then using OCP around the relocated capital, is any more exploitative than ICS, palace jumping, or RCP. It strikes me as similar to how the best players already play.

If I read it correctly, patching it to make it work how we thought it worked would be the logical step: Ie calcualte rank based on whichever is closer: the Palace or the Forbidden Palace. :hmm:

That might be the most logical step, but it doesn't mean that it's the easiest to implement. Patches tend to fix problems the easiest way, rather than the proper way. (See Firaxis' "fix" for the mobilization bug...)

Until there is a better solution, it might work well for competitive games to remove FP from the game (voluntarily or via the editor.) I previously said that would be drastic but on reflection, is it? It would level the playing field and remove the issue from our thinking.

I think I will play GOTM23 without an FP. I've already submitted 3 games for tournament 5 so I don't need GOTM23 for that. This might give us an interesting comparison on how much difference FP makes in final score. (Without considering the bug of course - it seems a safe bet that Cracker won't tolerate visible use of it :) ) And this way I won't have to think about the bug :) I will however use RCP and every other trick I can think of...

I really can't wait to see the first HOF submission that takes this to the extreme... or the first time in MP that someone loses out on a spacerace because their capitol was all alone on the other side of the world from their empire. ;)

For the purposes of the HOF, it's a big problem as earlier games were definitely profitting by this (unwittingly) in many cases. Either it continues to be allowed, and all new games will necessarily have to exploit this to remain competitive, or the FP is removed entirely, and new games won't be able to compete with older ones. Taking the FP out altogether would drastically alter the 'difficulty' of any game, as FP placement is one of the more definite areas of advantage that the player has over the AI. The comparison of 'old' and 'new' games would be shot by the removal of the FP entirely.

I'd have to say the only fair ways to deal with it would be to allow players to make use of this new information to score as highly as possible, or to have an official HOF mod where perhaps a balance could be struck by changing the optimum number of cities or allowing more corruption reducing single city improvements. I'd much prefer not to go with the mod route.

The GOTM is in a better position to deal with this as each month the games only need to worry about how they compare against other games that month.

Looking at another possible fix (until officially addressed in a patch):

1. You are not allowed to build the Palace.
2. You are not allowed to disband your capital.

I think this addresses many of the problems brought up in this thread, without actually affecting the Forbidden Palace (which is, let's face it, a very fun Wonder to have in the game).


Dominae

Well, the problem is almost as bad if you use OCP around your palace and a very tight spacing model for the FP. Moving your palace isn't necessarily an effective way of stopping this being exploited.

Originally posted by Svar
It will be real interesting to see how this affects game play. Do you take advantage of the bug or not? If not, what will you do if you already use the FP in the first core and do a palace jump to the second core? The concept of 2 core production centers has been the mainstay of the Gotm since I started (Gotm 20).
Well, I have never done a palace jump, and don't plan on doing any. So for me the only difference will be that I won't try to build a ring around the FP.
OCP is hardly an option in my games since I play for speed so (1) I almost never get to learn Sanitation and (2) the time lost to set the empire up that way is a bigger factor than the efficiency gained. I will get to 1 tech / 4 turns anyway.
My score will be lower, but I really don't care about that.

Originally posted by Ribannah

Well, I have never done a palace jump, and don't plan on doing any. So for me the only difference will be that I won't try to build a ring around the FP.
OCP is hardly an option in my games since I play for speed so (1) I almost never get to learn Sanitation and (2) the time lost to set the empire up that way is a bigger factor than the efficiency gained. I will get to 1 tech / 4 turns anyway.
My score will be lower, but I really don't care about that.

I think that your city rank around your FP is dictated by the city placement around your palace so it doesn't matter what you do around the FP only distance really counts. In other words if you have 6 cities in a 5 ring around your palace and you next palace ring is a 9 ring all your cities around your FP from 6 to 9 would be treated as rank 8 cities. Plus all you cities around your FP at a distance of 5 or less would be ranked as 2 cities.

Originally posted by Aeson
I really can't wait to see the first HOF submission that takes this to the extreme... or the first time in MP that someone loses out on a spacerace because their capitol was all alone on the other side of the world from their empire. ;)


Aeson, are you saying you will allow this in HOF. I don't want to try this in GOTM, unless cracker allows it. But I am curious enough to want to try it at least once. I publish this the moment I discover it and have yet to actually see it in action. Would love to see a corruption free empire. Would be kind of cool to see that. And maybe just have my name in that list :D - But you may want to attached a title which says "game exploiter" :mad:

FP, ICS, RCP, OCP... :vomit: I just hate acronyms BTW ! :rolleyes: As a scientific-like student and a somewhat perfectionist player when I play, I never find myself doing such deep maths in my Civ games (otherwise I'd spend weeks on each of them, making all kinds of calculations). I don't care those bugs / exploits / tactics, I just don't think of them. I just look at the local geography, try to get my FP (which is a good new idea in Civ3) if I find a pleasant place for it, rush a palace with a leader if there really is a need for it. Period. Enough to win a game. Not to beat other players, though. :D I hope this can be disabled in whatever way in competition solo games and in multi games (my biggest fear now :eek: eeeeek !).

I have a very simple but straightforward question : do programmers continue to play their games once they are shipped and thought to be patched ? We all hear about these teams playing hundreds of hours and working on their projects, but once the game is released, we almost don't hear of anything but an uncomplete patch or a work that has started on a future project. :( Am I wrong here ? Is this for Civ3 only ? No offense there, just want to know, really. Really, really crazy that the best players have to spend their time trying to figure out by themselves all kinds of formulas and bugs / exploits / tactics. That should be the programmers' job.

Just chiming in to say a big :goodjob: to Qitai. Well done!

I hope Firaxis fixes this in the next patch.

It will be allowable in the HOF, because gradiants of this are certainly represented in the HOF already. I don't see a distinct cutoff point where it would go from acceptable to unacceptable to have the FP provide 'free' corruption reduction, and certainly don't want to have to define and then enforce such arbitrary cutoffs. (ie. up to Y cities allowed to share OCN X)

The alternatives would be an official HOF mod, or regulations on how many cities could inhabit each OCN number. I don't see either option as feasible.

Mods add their own difficulties. They change how the game is played, introduce possibilities of new exploits or bugs arising, and increase the difficulty in just getting things set for playing the game. Regulations of the required types to negate this would make playing by the rules and then verification of games nearly impossible.

Allright then, I may want to start a HOF game trying to take this to the extreme and see how well it will work. Not likely to be anytime soon though since work is picking up again.

Originally posted by kryszcztov
I have a very simple but straightforward question : do programmers continue to play their games once they are shipped and thought to be patched ? We all hear about these teams playing hundreds of hours and working on their projects, but once the game is released, we almost don't hear of anything but an uncomplete patch or a work that has started on a future project. :( Am I wrong here ? Is this for Civ3 only ? No offense there, just want to know, really. Really, really crazy that the best players have to spend their time trying to figure out by themselves all kinds of formulas and bugs / exploits / tactics. That should be the programmers' job. [/B]
No kryszcztov, after the game is shipped, they fire most of the guys who wrote the code and ussually keep one guy to write code for patches. Since they don't get any money for the patches, they can't afford to keep the programmers idle.

I'm also seriously considering using this knowledge but probably not to the extreme (Palace in Tahiti). OCP - Palace, ICS - FP seem just right.

Originally posted by Yndy
OCP - Palace, ICS - FP seem just right.
You forgot the Palace jump :
1) ICS around Palace
2) FP in 1st core
3) Jump Palace to 2nd core
4) OCP around 2nd core

ICS is especially good at the start of the game, share those good tiles and MM away!

Originally posted by Qitai

The Exploit
To exploit the above, basically, all you need to do is to put your palace as far away as possible without any of your own cities near it. This way, all your cities near the FP will be considered as Rank 1! Try this on a recent game you finish by abandoning all the cities near the palace and see how your corruptions near the FP reduces like magic(You may need to remove and put back the population to see the changes). So if the nearest city to the capital is distance 20. Then all cities less than 20 distance from the FP is considered to have a rank of 1. Imaging that!! Even those cities that are considerable distance from the FP now become very useful. I tested it on a recently finish game and I see my previously fully corrupted cities in the outer ring of my FP turning into low corruption power cities.
[/I]

I have a test map (huge) that I generated to test the power of RCP that gives me very accurate calculations on productivity of any ring city. I have taken a 2 ring configuration (inner ring distance 5 and outer ring distance 9) and am testing the concept discribed in this article.

I already have productivity numbers for the ring cities with populations at 12 and the civ in GA (460AD). There was a city placed on the other side of this huge world to build a new palace that I wanted to check to see if the FP gave the same numbers as the palace. I never made this check as I was convinced that numbers would be the same. The city (New Palace) will be my only city in that hemisphere.

I am almost ready to intiate a war near New Palace to generate the GL needed to move the palace. The only other thing I need is a tech that will allow me to prebuild the FP with a wonder. I'll get the tech before I can generate the GL and move him to New Palace so with luck I will have the test completed in the next couple of days.

When I get the test completed I will report the results here with various conditions of the FP and palace at the center of the 5/9 city rings. There are also 4 cities at distances greater than 12 from the ring center so will report the effect on those cities as well.

I just discovered this thread..and all this talk makes my head hurt. I am still not 100% sure how the exploit works..and what is/isn't using this exploit. I don't think i want to know either.

However...my last couple GOTM games, I usually use RCP around my palace (which I think I will dump in GOTM23 because I end up spending more time planning out where my cities go instead of just playing the darn game), go out and conquest until I get a GL, and build my FP somewhere in newly conquered lands. I typically don't build any new cities around the FP..I just leave it the way the computer lays it out...I may squeeze a city or two in there if they had especially bad city layouts....

my question to those who understand this well...am I at all benefiting from the exploit above? Can I continue playing in this fashion confident that I am not abusing a bug?

Originally posted by rabies

My question to those who understand this well...am I at all benefiting from the exploit above? Can I continue playing in this fashion confident that I am not abusing a bug?

Your play style probably doesn't benefit from this bug. The key here is having higher city placement density around your FP than around your palace. Placing more cities in the holes around your FP will give you city rank based on the number of cities closer to the palace than your new city is to the FP. In other words the number of cities closer to the FP is irrelevant for any city getting corruption calculations based on its distance from the FP.

Thats really clear isn't it. :crazyeye:

Gack! My brain hurts more! ;)

Originally posted by rabies
Gack! My brain hurts more! ;)
I know what you mean. Here's an example of what I think this means.

Say your closest city to your palace is 5 tiles away, that means any cities 5 tiles or less from your forbidden palace have distance rank of 1.

Say your 2nd closest city to your palace is 10 tiles away, that means any cities between 5 and 10 tiles from your forbidden palace have a distance rank of 2.

And so on. Note the bolding, that's the crucial bit.

Therefore, to minimize the rank corruption around the forbidden palace you want to have a low number of cities around your palace at a long distance, the extreme of which means no cities, or a low number at a very long distance. A less extreme case is to very sparsely populate (I.e. OCP) the area around the palace and to densely populate the area around the forbidden palace (I.e. ICS).

Rabies> If this is confusing then the rule is this.

You benefit when you have few cities near the palace and alot of cities near the FP.

You lose out when you have many cities near the palace and few cities near the FP.

The less cities you have near the palace, the more you gain. And the extreme is when you have no city near the palace with all your cities nearer to the FP. And you will get low corruption even when the city is say 30 distance from the FP, if you go to the extreme.

As explained earlier, best way to understand this is make a test. Use a recently completed domination/conquest to test.

It appears that the Civ3 designers are accounting for all the bureaucracy, red-tape and waste that goes on at the center of a large government! ;) I am impressed ... and boggled :eek:

The good thing is it balanced the Expansionist trait. They can have a settler/city far far away. Normally it's useless, but now very useful.

I'm still trying to get my head around all this, but I*think* it means that I only have to change a few things about my favorite playing style. Does this seem like a plan?

1. I like keeping my first core tight and having three tile movement between cities to allow rapid shifting of forces. I could never see the enthusiasm for OCS at that stage given the size 12 limit until late in the game. No change needed.

2. I like to build the FP in my first core. That gets it started earlier and built faster than waiting for a foreign capital to fall vacant and building there rather slowly and/or hoping for a great leader. No change needed.

3. I like to build a new Palace in a foreign capital once the FP is completed, preferably using a Great Leader. By this time GLs are more likely to arise, and I'm more likely to be in a position to take such a location.

I can continue to do this, but now I'll try to ensure that it is far enough away from my first core that all my core cities, and any local ones I've captured, are closer to the FP than to the new palace. Sounds like I need to be earlier and more aggressive with long distance/intercontinental wars. But that's true of my game as a whole, anyway. Lighthouse and/or Navigation become more important along with earlier development of the navy.

[I'd love to claim virtue in avoiding an exploit, but fact is the Great Palace Jump via an abandoned capital just seems too complicated for this bear of little brain. Also, I can seldom resist developing my capital, and I'd hate to destroy or sell off all those nice buildings and have to rebuild it from scratch.]

4. Instead of keeping the captured cities round the new Palace I should be more prepared to abandon those closest to it so that my FP-centered core has a lot of low rank cities. Up to now I've kept and developed all the captured cities, and given the AI's low density city placements even sticking to that may still not be too bad.

So maybe my "natural" playing style has actually exploited this bug inadvertently all along? If so the small changes I can make in future games would not be detectable as deliberate.

@Txurce: You suggest that the FP/Palace concept in Civ3 does not reflect historical development. I would beg to differ. Many civilizations have relocated their capitals at some point, sometimes more than once, usually retaining the ancient capital city as a cultural or religious center. The main inaccuracy in Civ3 is using the modern-day capital name for the 4000 BC capital.

by AlanH
So maybe my "natural" playing style has actually exploited this bug inadvertently all along? If so the small changes I can make in future games would not be detectable as deliberate.

That's exactly why there's this grey area about this bug. You may already have unintentionally gained an advantage in some game, most likely when there was a more or less dense built in the initial core and your palace moved to a distant stand-alone city. Then, there'd be a noticed income boost which would not make any sense in the context the rank/distance system was formerly assumed to work.

Dianthus/Qitai,
Thanks for the explanation! Thanks to you, I now know what the fuss is all about. Pretty bad. I won't even bother trying to comprehend why.

Originally posted by Grille

That's exactly why there's this grey area about this bug. You may already have unintentionally gained an advantage in some game, most likely when there was a more or less dense built in the initial core and your palace moved to a distant stand-alone city. Then, there'd be a noticed income boost which would not make any sense in the context the rank/distance system was formerly assumed to work.
I haven't played many games, but I found this approach worked for me for all the stated reasons. Qitai's discovery simply adds another great reason to use it. In practice the income boost would have been unnoticed because I would have already started to re-grow the second core around the new palace site, after the usual starvation process to minimise foreigners, and my development attention was focused there.

I never made a conscious effort to note the change of income in the old core when I built my new palace, as I expected the FP to maintain performance there. I was just grateful for the new low corruption and high productivity in the new core, and got on with business.

Here are the results of my test.

The test was conducted on a huge map with an isolated small continent where I could build ring cities out about distance 11 from the palace. The palace city has all the resources needed to play the game to the end. All other tiles on the continent are bonus grassland with cows bordered with rivers. Every city works exactly the same type of tiles with the same population so should always get the same productivity if it is the same distance from the palace. This is what always happens so all I had to do was take one of these test cases for a palace/FP switch.

The test case was a map that had two rings. One ring had 6 cities at distance 5 and another ring of 12 cities at distance 9. The test map also has two other large continents on it and on one of these I placed a new city labeled New Palace. New palace is over 50 tiles from the closest city in the outer ring. There are also 4 coast cities but even though they are up to 14.5 distance from the palace I decided not to use them in the test because many of their tiles are not bonus grassland with cows.

The first test condition will be with the ring cities having the following improvements: marketplace, courthouse, bank, and factory. I only list those improvements that will affect the production of shields and gold. The population of the first test condition will be 12 and I will present data from both the palace center and the FP center as raw data and modified data. The raw data will only include the effects of the courthouse with the entertainment slider set to 100%. The modified data will include all the effects of all the listed improvements with the tax set to 100%.

The 6 ring 5 cities show exactly the same results regardless of whether the palace or the FP is in the ring center. It is in the 9 ring cities where you see the difference.

In the raw data the shield production for a palace centered 9 ring city is 51 with a loss of 5 for an efficiency of 90.2%. When you replace the palace with the FP the shield production is still 51 but the loss is only 2 for an efficiency of 96.1%. That is an improvement of almost 6%. When you include the effects of the city improvements the palace centered city produces 74 shields with the same loss of 5 for an efficiency of 93.2%. The FP centered city produces 75 shields with the same loss of 2 for an efficiency of 97.3%. Now the improvement is only about 4%.

Also in the raw data the commerce generation for a palace centered 9 ring city is 42 gold with a loss of 6 for an efficiency of 85.7%. When you replace the palace with the FP the commerce generated is 42 gold with a loss of 3 for an efficiency of 92.9%. That is an improvement of over 7%. When you include the effects of the city improvements and the 100% tax rate the palace centered city generates 78 gold with a loss of 6 for an efficiency of 92.3%. The FP centered city generates 81 gold with a loss fo 3 for an efficiency of 96.3%. Now the improvement is only 4%.

The other test condition will be with the ring cities having a population of 20 and the following improvements: marketplace, courthouse, bank, factory, hydro plant, police station, and stock exchange.

In the raw data the shield production for a palace centered 9 ring city is 81 with a loss of 6 for an efficiency of 90.8%. When you replace the palace with the FP the shield production is still 81 but the loss is only 2 for an efficiency of 97.5%. That is an improvement of almost 7%. When you include the effects of the city improvements the palace centered city produces 156 shields with the same loss of 6 for an efficiency of 96.2%. The FP centered city produces 160 shields with the same loss of 2 for an efficiency of 98.8%. Now the improvement is less than 3%.

Also in the raw data the commerce generation for a palace centered 9 ring city is 65 gold with a loss of 6 for an efficiency of 90.8%. When you replace the palace with the FP the commerce generated is 65 gold with a loss of 3 for an efficiency of 95.4%. That is an improvement of less than 5%. When you include the effects of the city improvements and the 100% tax rate the palace centered city generates 153 gold with a loss of 6 for an efficiency of 96.1%. The FP centered city generates 158 gold with a loss fo 3 for an efficiency of 98.1%. Now the improvement is only 2%

One odd thing that surfaced in these tests was the fact that distance affects the calculation for commerce but had no effect of shield production when the FP is the centered city and there are no cities closer to the palace. In other words the shield production and losses were the same for all cities centered on the FP no matter if they were in the 5 ring or the 9 ring.

My conclusions are the effects are more significient if you play the game with little on no improvements to your cities. If you are a builder who builds most of the improvements in your core cities the effects are minimal no matter how you arrange your cities.

Svar. For the effect of the improvements on corruption, please refer to Alex's thread on corruption. His formulas clearly explain the effect of the improvement on corruption.

As for your observation, when you use the exploit, rank corruption is minimized or constant. Distance corruption can be drastically reduce with government types, improvements and WLTKD. The effects of all these in combination can make distance corruption almost neligible when the distance is short (i.e. in your test case, distance 5 and 9). So, esstentially, what you see is that the 2 corruption is probably due to rank corruption only. I cannot verify your figures since you did not specify the government type and difficulty level.

This is from the Conquests beta test channel. So they will at least be fixing it in the expansion.

<Ed-Firaxis> good news... Ring build, palace corruption exploit, and mobilization exploit fixed
<Ed-Firaxis> Yes
<Ed-Firaxis> I Suxor
<Friedrich> PM me a link to an explanation of it?
<Chieftess> There's a couple of threads on CFC, but the search has been disabled.
<Ed-Firaxis> Basicly if you have a forbidden palace, with a city closer to it then the capital it determines its rank by.....
<Ed-Firaxis> wait.....
<Ed-Firaxis> this is hard to explain
<Friedrich> LOL
<Friedrich> No need, Ed, just say "it is fixed"
<Chieftess> But, I have wondered why corruption seemed to do strange things at times
<Ed-Firaxis> it is fixed
<Ed-Firaxis> The dude that found this has way to much free time :)

Originally posted by Qitai

As for your observation, when you use the exploit, rank corruption is minimized or constant. Distance corruption can be drastically reduce with government types, improvements and WLTKD. The effects of all these in combination can make distance corruption almost neligible when the distance is short (i.e. in your test case, distance 5 and 9). So, esstentially, what you see is that the 2 corruption is probably due to rank corruption only. I cannot verify your figures since you did not specify the government type and difficulty level.

I knew I left something out. From an earlier post "I play all test city placements as Carthaginians at Monarch difficulty level and conquest as the only victory condition so I really don't have to pay any attention to the other 7 civilizations."

Also the government type was always Republic and the cities were always in WLTKD. I hope this clarifies the test better. You are welcome to the 4 save games that were used to generate this data.

Originally posted by DaveMcW
This is from the Conquests beta test channel. So they will at least be fixing it in the expansion.

<Ed-Firaxis> good news... Ring build, palace corruption exploit, and mobilization exploit fixed
<Ed-Firaxis> Yes
<Ed-Firaxis> I Suxor
<Friedrich> PM me a link to an explanation of it?
<Chieftess> There's a couple of threads on CFC, but the search has been disabled.
<Ed-Firaxis> Basicly if you have a forbidden palace, with a city closer to it then the capital it determines its rank by.....
<Ed-Firaxis> wait.....
<Ed-Firaxis> this is hard to explain
<Friedrich> LOL
<Friedrich> No need, Ed, just say "it is fixed"
<Chieftess> But, I have wondered why corruption seemed to do strange things at times
<Ed-Firaxis> it is fixed
<Ed-Firaxis> The dude that found this has way to much free time :) That's pretty amazing that they've fixed RCP! I wonder how they will cope with lots of cities all at the same distance - I can't see how they could fix it without changing from integer calculations. :confused:

I *hope* the mobilisation exploit refered to is the new one and not just the old one (i.e. a fix to mob as it is in 1.27, not just the 1.27 fix).

Originally posted by DaveMcW
<Ed-Firaxis> The dude that found this has way to much free time :)

LOL. I just spend 1 hour to find this out, although this troubled me for a long time. Though, I have to say I was damn lucky to just have tested it out in a way which makes it quite obvious to suspect the result.

I did spend quite a bit of time creating my own corruption calculator with Alex's formula though.

Anyway, glad to hear they are going to fix this. :)

Originally posted by anarres
That's pretty amazing that they've fixed RCP! I wonder how they will cope with lots of cities all at the same distance - I can't see how they could fix it without changing from integer calculations. :confused:

They would probably assign the same rank value for corruption/waste to all those equidistant cities and make it the average corruption/waste value for the range of ranks n, n+1, n+2, n+3 ......

Originally posted by anarres
That's pretty amazing that they've fixed RCP! I wonder how they will cope with lots of cities all at the same distance - I can't see how they could fix it without changing from integer calculations. :confused:I don't think he means that RCP is fixed. I don't see that possible without introducing (a lot)more variables to make pure distance be less important.

I think only the far-away palace build exploit is fixed, maybe by introducing two distance rank counters, one for palace and one for FP, as was initially supposed by alexman (?) to be the case.

Originally posted by Plux
I don't think he means that RCP is fixed. I don't see that possible without introducing (a lot)more variables to make pure distance be less important. Why?

If you have four cities all at the same distance, with four cities closer to the palace then if you just look at Fc in alexman's formula you can calculate four values of Fc with Ncity = 5, 6, 7, 8, add them together and divide by 4. Use the resulting average value as Fc in the Corruption% calculation for each of the four cities. Sure, there are rounding errors in the averaging, but so what? Civ3 is full of rounding errors.

If the sequence of Ncity values straddles the Fn*Nopt threshold then that just modifies the separate Fc values either side of the threshold before they are averaged.

DONE!

Having it get fixed in the expansion will be great...but I wonder what the result will be for the GOTM? The GOTM is all about letting people play whatever version they want...clearly, people using the expansion (when it comes out) will be at a disadvantage to those who decide to use it (even in the slightest manner) in PTW and vanilla.

Originally posted by rabies
Having it get fixed in the expansion will be great...but I wonder what the result will be for the GOTM? The GOTM is all about letting people play whatever version they want...clearly, people using the expansion (when it comes out) will be at a disadvantage to those who decide to use it (even in the slightest manner) in PTW and vanilla.
It seems to me there will be a strong incentive to move GOTM towards Conquests-only at some point in the future, otherwise it will get left behind in terms of the majority player population. Not to mention that it removes the need to police exploits using these bugs.

1.29 is already "obsolete" as far as Atari/Firaxis is concerned. PTW is likely to go the same way once Conquests is out and selling. Cracker and the team have done wonders to allow 1.29 and PTW players equal access, but there's no way they are going to be able to create a level playing field across all three platforms in the likely event that these bug fixes are not retro-fitted.

My concern would be that the Conquests upgrade could become a price of admission to GOTM at some point, and that Conquests may not even be an option for Mac players.

WARNING: The above is all purely personal speculation. It might never happen. I'm sure the GOTM team are going to take a long hard look at Conquests and test it thoroughly before they ever allow it as a competition option.

Originally posted by AlanH
Why?

If you have four cities all at the same distance, with four cities closer to the palace then if you just look at Fc in alexman's formula you can calculate four values of Fc with Ncity = 5, 6, 7, 8, add them together and divide by 4. Use the resulting average value as Fc in the Corruption% calculation for each of the four cities. Sure, there are rounding errors in the averaging, but so what? Civ3 is full of rounding errors.

If the sequence of Ncity values straddles the Fn*Nopt threshold then that just modifies the separate Fc values either side of the threshold before they are averaged.

So you're saying that cities with the same distance should get an average rank instead of all getting the highest rank?? I guess that should straighten things out better, yes :)

Cities that are the same distance should be ranked by the date they were founded.

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee
Cities that are the same distance should be ranked by the date they were founded.
There's another easy solution. Nice one, CB.

Bizarre.

I accidentally found this "exploit", although not in such detail. And I haven't even played a game to its conclusion yet. I was moving my palace all over the place, and it seemed to pay dividends. Its such an obvious thing to do. Build up your improvements, increase culture value, then move on.

Now I wonder if I shall ever bother playing again. It seems to make things too easy.

Only joking. I might just buy the latest version instead. Gonna cost me though.

This ring city thing, does anyone actually use it? It seems too much hassle to even bother. Plus what happens if you are set on the coast to start with, does it work then too? Or there are mountains where you want to set your cities?

Originally posted by Cartouche Bee
Cities that are the same distance should be ranked by the date they were founded.

Then it wouldn't take people here long to find out that founding cities in the same year using RCP would give the old advantage of RCP. ;) Maybe the order in which cities were founded if this is also registered by the game somehow.

I'm happy that I modded corruption a long time ago so that I don't have these problems.

Originally posted by ptclouds


This ring city thing, does anyone actually use it? It seems too much hassle to even bother. Plus what happens if you are set on the coast to start with, does it work then too? Or there are mountains where you want to set your cities?

Yes, sure I used it, and so did many others.
What is more, I tried RCP in almost every game since I tasted that rank fruit. Granted, I prefer pangaea/continents. But even if it's not possible to establish fully completed rings, it's a powerful corruption killer when you minimize the number of city ranks. For the "starting at the coast" reason, I sometimes used the FP as RCP center and moved my Palace later to have a second RCP core. And then, the rank exploit appears: if this newly established capital was very far away and somewhat seperated from any other city - there was this income boost because of all these (suddenly) rank one cities around your FP (look at my first post in this thread), just like Qitai discribed. Well, you don't need RCP around your FP to exploit the rank system, but I did not know that by that time and payed attention to FP distances when founding cities.
I used to guess the reason of that income boost was a srew up in the rank system due to having FP near palace: cities had discrete distances to FP, but possibly not to palace, thus resulting in a higher number of ranks. Well, I know better now.

Originally posted by Roland Johansen
I'm happy that I modded corruption a long time ago so that I don't have these problems. What changes have you made that didn't introduce new problems? :confused:

Changing the OCN changes AI behaviour, making all buildings fight corruption also has an impact on gameplay...

Originally posted by Roland Johansen


Then it wouldn't take people here long to find out that founding cities in the same year using RCP would give the old advantage of RCP. ;) Maybe the order in which cities were founded if this is also registered by the game somehow.


I think CB just meant to include this order: a "founding date" would not be determined by the year only, but also by the order they were founded (if founded in the same year) - IIRC F1 screen does that already if you sort by "cities".

Originally posted by anarres
What changes have you made that didn't introduce new problems? :confused:

Changing the OCN changes AI behaviour, making all buildings fight corruption also has an impact on gameplay...

I just increased the OCN a lot because I didn't like the concept of cityrank causing corruption (capitoldistance still causes corruption). Of course it changes gameplay a lot, but it changes it in a way I like. Everyone has his/her own preferences of course, so not everyone likes this. It's good thing that the editor exists.

AI behaviour is changed by this, you're right. Now they won't destroy the cities they capture after they have gone over their OCN-number (something they often do in the normal unmodded game). Also the AI doesn't have problems with placing the Frobidden Palace (Forbidden Palace can only be build after building half the OCN-number in cities has been build and the OCN-number is very high). As the human player is better at fighting corruption caused by city-rank, I think this increases the difficulty of the game slightly. Are there some other changes in AI-behaviour that I didn't notice. You seem to be hinting at some bad AI-behaviour. :confused:

Originally posted by Grille
I think CB just meant to include this order: a "founding date" would not be determined by the year only, but also by the order they were founded (if founded in the same year) - IIRC F1 screen does that already if you sort by "cities".

I didn't know that. One can probably notice this if one looks at the captured capitals in the F1-list if one sorts by cities. However, I never sort by cities. Then CB's method of solving the RCP-exploit is probably the one that has been used.

Roland,

Your post implied a way to negate corruption without side effects, which is not possible.

I wasn't saying that the impact on AI behaviour was necessarily bad, but I was raising the point that you can't just change the OCN (for example) and expect the AI to play the same.

Regarding "Founding date": I guess they can use database order to sort city rank by - we all know it's not trivial to sort on founding date due to the way new cities are sometimes 'slotted in' the empty database slots (hence the messed up city ordering in the F1/city screens). Database order is as close as you are goihng to get to "Founding date" order, and it's what they could use easily to change RCP.

Adding founding order would at least be a development, holding out for a perfect solution only prolongs these situations.

Anyway, if proper ordering is too complicated to implement, I'm willing to let someone hold back their 8 settlers to found cities on the same turn and exploit the loop hole that this would leave. ;) I doubt that's a winning strategy, anyway. :)

It'll definitely be interesting to see exactly how they've fixed RCP. As I understand it, currently Ncity is calculated as:

Ncity = (Number of cities closer to captial).

Thus with cities of distance 3, 5, 5, 5, 8,
Ncity would be 1, 2, 2, 2, 5.

The "proper" fix indicated by AlanH would change the formula to:

Ncity = (Number of cities closer to capital) + (Number of cities with equal distance to captial)/2, rounding up.

Now, Ncity for the above example would be 1, 3, 3, 3, 5.
Definitely a fair implementation.

Of course, another way to change the formula would be:

Ncity = (Number of cities closer or equal to captial).

Now, Ncity for the above example would be 1, 4, 4, 4, 5.
This implementation would actually punish players using RCP!

Hopefully Firaxis won't choose the latter "fix", although it would be probably be the simplest and most straightforward from their point of view.

Originally posted by Grille


I think CB just meant to include this order: a "founding date" would not be determined by the year only, but also by the order they were founded (if founded in the same year) - IIRC F1 screen does that already if you sort by "cities".
I'm not sure this is strictly the case. I suspect that the sort by cities produces the internally stored order. This will be the same as the founding sequence until cities start to be destroyed and new ones created. I think the new ones may then be slotted into the vacant spaces in the list of cities. I'm not certain, but I think I've seen signs of this when sorting by city.

There *is* a strict founding order maintained in the game data, in the replay records, as the replay has to show cities as they are founded and destroyed. But I think if I were a Civ3 programmer who was asked to "fix this [deleted] RCP bug, and do it yesterday" (ie. a typical change request :) ) I'd just use the average that I suggested, and not try to sort out which cities were build when.

Or sort by culture, if you want a city with low corruption, get its level of culture up. In real life, it might work the other way high culture cities get that way because someone pays for it, and that someone is sometimes the oligarcy who rake off something on the side to pay for little luxuries like culture.

Originally posted by AlanH

I'm not sure this is strictly the case. I suspect that the sort by cities produces the internally stored order. This will be the same as the founding sequence until cities start to be destroyed and new ones created. I think the new ones may then be slotted into the vacant spaces in the list of cities. I'm not certain, but I think I've seen signs of this when sorting by city.

There *is* a strict founding order maintained in the game data, in the replay records, as the replay has to show cities as they are founded and destroyed. But I think if I were a Civ3 programmer who was asked to "fix this [deleted] RCP bug, and do it yesterday" (ie. a typical change request :) ) I'd just use the average that I suggested, and not try to sort out which cities were build when.

You may be right about newly found cities that slot into vacant spaces because of razing.

What could also be bad about possible corruption dependencies merely defined by city founding dates (respectively order of city foundings; respectively possibly depending on a used array index in the program code that may explain that slot-in-vacant-places thing) would be a corruption calculation screw up when you capture old ai cities. So the starting time of city ownership must also be considered, as well as a clear determination for re-captured cities when using such a possible corruption calculation.

Anyway, this is pure speculation and since Dave stated that Firaxis had already done something about this issue, we can hope their solution fits to everyones taste. :)

Personally, I'm down to that point (again - just as I started playing civ3 and compared it to civ1,2) where I wonder why civ3 has this massive corruption implementation anyways. The OCN feature restricts the ai from trying to get a domination victory (at least that's my experience), and I think most players agree that domination is normally easier to achieve than a 100k/double culture victory. It's often necessary to destroy (or capture) ai culture power houses, and keeping those cities is often half the road to domination. Then the "waiting time" before 100k/double is reached may be used to win faster by capturing the (still missing) territory for a domination victory.

Ncity = (Number of cities closer to capital) + (Number of cities with equal distance to captial)/2, rounding up.
Why rounding Ncity here ? Calculations aren't finished...
I am tired of all these roundings. The game should use much more "floats" to get rid off all those stupid micromanagement.

Originally posted by Qitai
Aeson, are you saying you will allow this in HOF. I don't want to try this in GOTM, unless cracker allows it. But I am curious enough to want to try it at least once. I publish this the moment I discover it and have yet to actually see it in action. Would love to see a corruption free empire. Would be kind of cool to see that. And maybe just have my name in that list :D - But you may want to attached a title which says "game exploiter" :mad:

Just trying to make suggestion for some rules that would make this rank corruption bug impossible:

1) Using a Leader to rush Palace is not allowed.
2) Abandoning capitol city is not allowed. The only way to get rid of it is to somehow make it captured or destroyed by some other civ during war.

Thus, Palace can be only hand-built which is possibly only at a low-to-medium corruption city which cannot be that far away from the current capitol or FP. However, this would disable the sometimes useful Palace jump strategy though it can be also considered as an exploit to some extent.

Originally posted by Aeson
I really can't wait to see the first HOF submission that takes this to the extreme...
I've got one in the works :)

I'm already on my second try actually. First try I used China. At 250AD I had nearly 40 rank-1 towns and the empire was strong. But I hated the map - one of those Pangaeas which isn't. After Pyramids and Sun Tzu's both got built off continent I was out of that one. Trying a new map now with Ottomans.

Originally posted by Muchembled

Why rounding Ncity here ? Calculations aren't finished...
I am tired of all these roundings. The game should use much more "floats" to get rid off all those stupid micromanagement.

Good point. Ideally, there shouldn't be any rounding at this point. So cities with distance 3, 5, 5, 8 should have Ncity = 1, 2.5, 2.5, 4.

Anyway, all this of course, is speculation since I have no idea how they've coded this section, what variably types have been used, what kind of changes would be feasible, etc. All we can do is wait for the new patch, let the Civfanatic geniuses empirically figure out the "fixed" corruption formula and hope it meets everyone's approval!

I'm not an MP player... but I'd think that it would be hard to pull off in MP if the opponents knew of the bug. You'd have to be able to hold that far away city! When nukes start flying, especially... good luck!

The only exception would be when (as mentioned before) you allied with someone for a city swap.

MP people... do you think a far-away city would be defendable?

yeah, this is like when a business puts its headquarter to a tax-free oasis to save a lot of money!

after reading about the exploit i did immediately used it out of curiousity in the finish of a game i was playing as Romans on Monarch.
i saved the city stats with mapstat before and after the palace jump; city income/corruption before: 968g; after: 431g! city income went up 490g, science even 570g!
you can get techs in 4 turns with the slider at 60%!

Originally posted by cameramano
I'm not an MP player... but I'd think that it would be hard to pull off in MP if the opponents knew of the bug. You'd have to be able to hold that far away city! When nukes start flying, especially... good luck!

Just place your city on a one tile island. You won't be conquered until marines. Nukes are far too late to make an impact in your benefit. Even marines are too late.

i will tried using it with a different punch,
i captured the enemy core city and 2 surrounding city (prevent culture pressure),
the core city still has most of it's infrastruture intact and i will start building the palace on it after rush build a temple.
completion was quick, i disbanded some of my forces to boost speed! :eek:
i traded the 2 cities back to the enemy and assure peace.

should works like a charm. they can't culture flip my capital can they? :rolleyes:
lol, and i get a captail full of foreigners! :egypt:

this real reminds me of the game "homeworld"
where the taidani did the same to the hiigaraan :goodjob:

This negating rank corruption really work!:) Many thanks for this wonderful discovery.:) Check out my little empire here (with very little corruption). Note: The red dot on the left was the location of my first palace jump and the red dot on the bottom right is where my palace is current at:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/ms_deity_800ad.jpg

Only 360 units, Moonsinger? You are economising these days, aren't you!

Can anyone confirm this is fixed in Conquests?

Originally posted by anarres
Can anyone confirm this is fixed in Conquests?

I hope not!:) I'm just beginning to have fun with this negative rank corruption method....let me put it this way...I won't buy Conquests if this is fixed.;)

I too was just beginning to have fun with it, too. If I have time in the next day or so, I'm planning on doing basic testing on the difference.

Agreed.

Maybe C3C has an optional RCP check-box at game start...:D

I still haven't found what I consider 'solid' confirmation that the Palace exploit was fixed, and I still haven't been able to get a copy of Conquests to find out for myself yet...

i think i can confirm that this "exploit" has been fixed in conquest. i tried the method a number of times and it doesn't work. i'm pretty sure, 99%, that i did the method right. if i didn't, plz somebody e-mail me cuz corruptions are MAKING ME ANGRY!!!!

Welcome to CFC XenoOGear! :band:

Yes, this exploit as well as several others were negated in C3C. As far as what to do about corruption in Conquests, there's not much you can do except wait for the next official patch.

Corruption is hell in unpatched Conquests, and a little better in the beta patch, although there's a raging controversy in the C3C forums about the FP.

I was shocked to discover upon trading maps with China in my current game that the AI uses the Ring City Placement around their capital! (Not all civs do, who else?) This means that it was an intended part of the game and for us to compete it is vital that we understand it either.

Still not certain about the distant palace, but like the idea of a Forbidden Palace in general. I'm unwilling to use the palace jump because it is too much of a struggle not to build any wonders in my (1st) capital. And since it is important to use the first Great Leader to build an Army (and the associated small wonders that follow from it), it is often late in the game when I actually produce a 2nd GL.

Therefore, I've been going with a large (Dc=6 or 6.5, 36 squares, ~10 cities - ocean = ~3-4) inner ring for my palace, a reasonably close secondary ring (9 or 9.5 which doesn't leave a lot of room between the two, 48 squares, ~11 cites - ocean = ~4-5). By now you should have a vast understanding of the map around you. Rather than worry about another ring, new cities are placed for culture flips of neighboring-civ cities. The FP is constructed on the side most promising for growth with ICP (intensive city placement?) around it (not inside either of the two other rings, but counting cities of the outter ring). This gives little corruption for any cities less than or equal to the second ring out, since those cities are still at rank 4 or 5.

Still working on it though, so the main contribution: Chinese AI uses RCP.

Another thought. The connectivity factor... does a harbor to roads count the same as roads? Does connectivity to a FP substitute for connectivity to the actual Palace?

M@

originally posted by one_hoop:

I was shocked to discover upon trading maps with China in my current game that the AI uses the Ring City Placement around their capital! (Not all civs do, who else?) This means that it was an intended part of the game and for us to compete it is vital that we understand it either.
...
Still working on it though, so the main contribution: Chinese AI uses RCP.

I can promise you that this was just a coincidence. When you observe AI's city distances, you will often find AI cities that share a rank.[China may have used RCP when I played them...;)]
I don't think that any AI has a build-in flag to go for RCP. (And even if they did by chance, they get a RCP punishment in C3C 1.00, where it would be better to go for a spiral-like founding style.)
Nor does the AI use Palace jumping to a remote place - accidently, the Palace might have gone to a big city on a remote island if the former capital was captured by another civ. Very likely, the former AI 'core' was already crippled and consisted of only very few small towns - then again, question remains if their FP was still in function in that place.



The connectivity factor... does a harbor to roads count the same as roads?
Does connectivity to a FP substitute for connectivity to the actual Palace?

1. Doesn't matter if roads or harbors (harbors are often much more handy if you jump your Palace to a remote area and shipped your settlers to the new location before).
2. I don't think so - at least according to alexman's formula.

The AI tries to avoid overlapping city zones and will therefore often end up with an inner ring.

The way corruption works just encourages placing cities in certain patterns - and rewards it greatly.

It takes a lot of the fun out of the game for me. It is unintuitive and mathematical, and it really turns me off.

I see that there is a need for limiting ressources if you expand more and more, but the way it works it is simply subject of exploitation and bugs - these problems have been reduced and the concept of corruption was "improved" with the latest patch, but it still is the worst part of the game.

Ever placed outposts far away from home? They are corrupt to the max and mess up your inner cities, too.

Great concept.

Ceterum censeo corruptionem esse...blubb. :(

... of all this "palace jumping" and "mathematically computed city placement". When I play the game, I never ever build new palaces. I build a forbidden palace at the edge of my empire before the first big wars of the industrial age, but I could never see moving my capital purposely any time after that. One of the reasons the British empire went down was because it was geographically scattered and run from London, not from India or East Africa, the geographical focus of their power in the 19th century. Russia had a contiguous empire with a better capital placement, that's why the bulk of the Russian empire persists to this day. Sure, the capital of America moved around a few times, but America was a young republic with no culture of history of its own. Historical capitals don't move so easily. If Britain tried to move their capital from London to Cape Town, the empire would have fragmented after a bloody civil war. The French woud control most of England, the Dutch would control South Africa, the US would have grabbed Canada, and so on. I find the idea of moving a capital of a large, thriving empire unrealistically silly and completely distasteful.

- danz

... of all this "palace jumping" and "mathematically computed city placement".

I find the idea of moving a capital of a large, thriving empire unrealistically silly and completely distasteful.

- danz

The point is there is a bug in the game that helped the human player reduce corruption.

Clearly there was no historical significance as this was fixed in Conquests.

There are plenty of other historical inaccuracies in this game, but it is just a game.

Lol... I played vanilla civ3 for over three years and never noticed this bug! :crazyeye: :lol: Maybe I just don't play competitively... or mathematically... enough! :lol:

How does this work in communism?

How does this work in communism?
Vanilla and PTW Communism isn't really worth using. C3C Communism is highly worth using, but this thread's exploit doesn't work in C3C.

I meant, is this super good in commie (in PTW or Vanilla of course) or is it not as good in commie.

I meant, is this super good in commie (in PTW or Vanilla of course) or is it not as good in commie.
No, it's at it's best in Democracy, followed by Republic and then Monarchy.