Cure For Corruption!

You're right, Jim, ideally we could just change the corruption forumula, and hopefully Fraxis will address this in their first patch, but unfortunately they didn't make corruption available as an editable rule in this release. So we're left with flagging additional buildings -- the most significant problem with this method is that it doesn't enhance the differences between government forms or eras, as a corrected formula presumably would. You can have all the anti-corruption improvements in your cities regardless of your government.

There is a time-delay factor built into this method, though, in that it takes some time to get all your cities outfitted with these improvements, and many of them are not available until you've discovered technologies down the road (e.g. bank, research lab). Hopefully, this will roughly mirror your civilization's modernization, and, in any event, the corruption levels will still change with the Civ3 formula, so governments and eras continue to make a difference.

As for the people who get their panties in a wad over this modification, please just take it somewhere else. If you'd even bothered to read my original post (or think about the subject for a moment) you'd realize that this doesn't make the game any easier, nor was it intended to. If it makes the game more like Civ2, well that's a compliment. But as far as I'm concerned, this is the people's Civ, intentionally left wide open for modification, and it can be whatever version we want it to be. Deal.

Armor
 
I haven't made any of the adjustments yet, including pushing out "we love the king days" - atm, half my cities on a hug map are losing at *least* 70% of there shields and $ - 30% are losing about 50% and the rest are okay. (I'm at 30 cities now playing on a middle level, whatever it's called - Prince?)

I was getting rather pissed at the whole thing, it's extremely discouraging to see 70% corruption in a bloody democracy, With a courthouse in every single city (it became the first thing I built and then a temple).
 
It doesn't unbalance the game, since all civs get the same benefits, and all build these buildings anyway.
Those changed waste/corruption rules apply to A.I. too so I don`t really get your cheating point.
If you'd even bothered to read my original post (or think about the subject for a moment) you'd realize that this doesn't make the game any easier, nor was it intended to.
I know you didn't have the intention to make the game easier, but one can't say that the changes apply to the AI without play testing. The AI is known for it's fast pace on expansion and for the fact they leave infrastructure behind due to that expansion. Therefore, you are probably getting some advantage even if unintended.

However, i think the editor was made with the purpose of changing the rules, so if you're having a better experience playing with your mod good for you. :goodjob:
 
Yes, perhaps true, and i guess if corruption only effects the larger empires and you happen to be the largest that might be a gain..

however if one wants a good conquer the world experience then i guess the rule change is good.

And especially for multiplayer... it's fun conquering the world against a couple of your friends :)
 
There is one more thing to consider. At some point we will learn how to win. I suppose there will be some kind of “Hall of Fame” or tournaments. I wonder how we are going to keep everybody “on the same page”?
It won’t be fair for someone scoring high having rules modified, will it?
 
Armor, your post did us all a service. If someone doesn't like your idea, they don't have to use it, which after all, is the idea behind having a good editor. For my part, I didn't use your patch, but instead took your idea and did my own custom corruption tweaking. I thank you for the idea, which makes it a MUCH better game.
 
armor,I went into my civ3 dir. should I click on the icon that starts the game now ? If so I get to "Properties" by right clicking but don't see where you see "find target" could you help me out ? thanks
 
No, the right-clicking was just to get you to your Civ3 directory from the desktop. Once you're there, just replace the civ3mod.bic file (backing the old one up, as instructed).

By the way, this mod seems to have recently lost a star in its rating. It seems the powers that be do not approve. Luckily, there aren't many left to remove!

Armor
 
Originally posted by jim1013

One idea though, and this would be more difficult, and hopefully there will be an official patch to change this (or provide an option or editing ability to change it) is to change the corruption forumla.

perhaps there is something like "number of cities until BS corruption starts = 15" or something of the like.. adding a zero would fix the problem :) or perhaps changing the other part of the distance corruption factor.

not sure if thats possibile to do the above thru the editor, but maybe someone knows how?

Actually in the editor, in the world sizes section (!), you can change "optimal number of cities (corruption)" for each world size. This is the number of cities after which corruption is absoultely rampant independent of distance from capital, just as jim suggested. I was playing on a huge map on chieftain, with a very large empire, before some of the new cities I conquered had just 1 shield production left, and 1 gold commerce (completely useless - 90% corruption), but when I increased the optimal number of cities for huge map from 32 to 70, those cities had their corruption decreased to about 50-60%, which is manageble. :) With WLTKD, the corruption drops even further, so you can actually get something finished in those cities without rush-building. However, now I am far past 70 city mark (I have about 150 cities :cool: ), so I have 90% corruption in many of conquered cities which do not have WLTKD.
 
I agree that the game should be played as the authors intended if you're after a victory. Yes, the game can be played succesfully (haven't tried the two highest levels yet) with default Corruption. Actually, I installed the patch and tried out the new default corruption, slight improvement; so the game designers also reasoned corruption was to much of a drag on the default game. So who knows, maybe in the near future Firaxis will reduce Corruption even more and make that the default game and thus not insult the purist's pride.

However, the MAJOR reason I purchased Civ3 is because of Civ2's ability to create scenarios and modify the game any which way I want, damn the scores, damn the rating, it's entertainment I'm after. Heck, sometimes I lose even with modifiers to my advantage (mmmhh, shouldn't say that in public :lol: ).

CIV 2 had many flavors that are still lacking in CIV 3 :mad: . There are times when I want to play in a modern age with tanks against tanks on a specific scenario, and maybe have an earthquake shake things up at a random time. I don't want to start the game with a settler and work my civ up. I want to play specific event scenarios like the ones we where able to create in Civ2. Sometimes I feel I want to take over the world with a super swordsman, and sometimes I want to be able to create so many units my military advisor starts complaining. Most of the times I want to create scenarios and play against friends and CIV3 is not even multiplayer yet :mad: :mad: . Just play against the treacherous French or the contemptuous Americans - After a few default games with them - I played a NO-Corruption game against them let them build up their cities then raized their cities again and again just because they had caused me so much trouble before (yes, it was good therapy and I recommend it, I also got lucky and had a very large Island for myself at the start).

When your cities produce one shield (rest being consumed by corruption) it takes forever to build an army of a decent size. Yes, you could learn to deal with corruption and there are excellent threads in this forum to learn how to deal with it, but like I said, in this particular time and place, I want to play without corruption. It is fun to be able to create so many units that each turn lasts forever, and you see your armies advance on a civilization, or see armies massed against yours, take your pick. there's nothing as annoying as having your cities been taken over by culture from another civ even after you took ages to build every conceivable improvement including Forbidden Palace (happened to me Indians took over - and I was thinking I was going to take over their neighboring cities - actually I did, but like ten turns after they took this priceless city of population eight and this one never converted back). Yes, it's part of the game, but sometimes I want to play a different game and CIV let's me do that despite the fact that Purist's don't like that.

CIV3 tells you when you're starting a game with modified rules. This stays with you for the rest of the game. Maybe Firaxis should add the same message to the scores table (won with modified rules).

At any rate, I like the fact that some people take the time to do statistics on these modifiers. In this way we can create a small subculture and decide on what OUR default Non-Corruption game should look like (before I read this thread I had increased to 24 cities, added reduce corruption to all city improvents - not to Wonders since I rarely build them on border cities), and watched large numbers of units move in the game board. Eventually, I hope, we will reach a consensus on this thread and have a final Mod game that satisfies even the purist's :goodjob:
 
I think Firaxis NEVER intended corruption to be as bad as it was in the default game... if they did, they would not have "fixed" it in the patch.

This particular mod should really be discarded, since any NEW game started with the new patch by Firaxis (v1.16), will have CONSIDERABLY LESS corruption than before, so it is clear, that this patch attempted to meet what should have been done in the first place.

Before, a city far from home may have had the potential of a 20-shield production, but due to the ABSOLUTELY ROTTEN and BROKEN corruption model of the release game, would have allowed only 1 shield out of 20.

Now, with the patch and a new game started, that same city can expect to pump out roughly 10 shields without any corruption reducing structures.

Surely this mod was needed for the original version, but is now, THANKFULLY, no longer needed.

Thanks to the author of this patch, but like the ABM treaty of 1972, it was for a differant time, and is now no longer needed!
 
There are many things wrong with the original Civ3 release, but corruption is easily the most crippling in terms of game playability, as well as being unrealistic. Your patch does give the game something of the flavour of Civ2 whilst retaining some of the good parts of Civ3. I reckon I'll be playing this quite often until Firaxis sort out a comprehensive patch for the game.

Thanks Armor!
 
I have been playing unmodified while i read the forums and get a good ahandle on making and useing mods.


playing the game Unmoidified, My viking, (change the name and all that using their built in way) civ finnally found a continent that didn't have 3 other civs that out produced me and moved in and taken up my space.

anyway, Corruption is rampent in all my cities even with courthouses in each one, Im paying i think 54 a turn in just corruption. I went for an ecomomy based civ, building commece generating buildings and wonders. I finnally got a golden age and majorly kicked production in. Then my 20 years was up and my whole civ came crashing down. I was right in the middle of a war and started getting my but kicked due to low productions.


Im gonna try this techniue you have and see how much more realistic it may be.


dang i just read this and realize i really didn't say anything worth while.
 
Civ 3 handles corruption much like pollution. There's too much of both! It's OK for them to exist, but they are overdone. What I've been doing for corruption is:

Banks and Airports reduce Corruption. The optimal number of cities is also quite a bit higher so corruption doesn't ramp up if your civ gets big. I don't have a good reason why Airports reduce corruption. Maybe the remote cities aren't so isolated and the locals can't get away with so much ?!

I set Universities to reduce Pollution. Factories and Manufacturing Plants produce less pollution, and the workers clean it up faster.

Both Pollution and Corruption still exist in the game, but they don't become major players if you are reasonably careful with your development.

Walt aka Datarush
 
I started a new game at the warlord leval unmodified and went for a huge empire, this i what i found in terms of curroption.


The larger your empire the more curruption you have but:

it affects you less. Heres why

When i had i think 40 some cities last count, currpotion was costing me 512 a turn, but i was generating a pehnominal amount of revenue. I started out with each city producing one settler and then started with happyness items then another settler, by the time i got to 1100 AD i had a huge empire that commece revenue totally off set curroption costs.
Having an enormous amount of workers building mines and other commerce producint building built first helped a lot also.

This all happedn at the same time as a major conflict with france, took me several hundred years to finnally take them out of the game.


i tried this same tactic this last weekend on the cheiften levl and have totally dominalted the game every civ is in awe of me and again i took france out of the game. (not sure why each time they are the closet civ to me)


Just my few cents worth.
 
Originally posted by Geirrodr
I started a new game at the warlord leval unmodified and went for a huge empire, this i what i found in terms of curroption.

The larger your empire the more curruption you have but:
it affects you less. ...

you compare apples with oranges. Corruption depends from
1) amount of cities you have and their distance to the next palace, means, on a standard map there is less corruption than on a huge map.
2) research level you have. when reaching industrial and modern times the corruption gets an additonal boost.

The game in designed fot standard map, but if you play on a huge map and not finish by dominance or cultural victory very early, but play longer, then soon you'll have around 300 and more cities with 14-16 civs on the map. And then the distance factor beats all down. With original rules you then get (i.e.) 2 of 30 available shields in a city, what means you have to build all by hurry as otherwise you need for a simple marketplace 100 years or such.

As a huge map is 180x180, with that it isn't possible to conquer the world as you can't finance that. At last you either win by UNO or space racing or the game will get endless.

One way surely is, to give lot of buildings the anti corruption flag, but for me it makes no sense to give the (i.e.) bank or church such, as such isn't realistic. Both in fact sources for corruption are.

A combination of more forbiddenpastes as regional paöasts and the flag to some buildings it will balance it more.
Check my mod 2.0, downloadable here http://civ3-stuff.cjb.net/
 
The reason everyones' corruption is skyrocketing with large amounts of cities is directly related to a flag in the game rules.

Under world size, there is an option to set the optimal number of cities, and the default is extremely low compared to my expanding style of play, like 32 cities for a huge map (160x160). What this means is that after you have 32 cities in possession, adding more to your civilization causes catastrophic corruption.

So naturally, when you play a game where someone has modified the size of the map or the length of the game, you should probably load the rules for the scenario and see if they edited the optimal city value as well.

Unfortunately, I can't find a FAQ for the editor so I could be assuming to much in a sec., but i think that corruption starts out horrible and as you come closer to the optimal amount it gets better (explaining why some think it decreases in time, all other things constant), yet other people say it is catastophic (because the capture and build 60 cities easy).



Feel free to disagree, because you ARE entitled to your own opinion... even if it is dead wrong. Which it is.
 
i like it!! and i need more and more cities....:) so, i hate that flag rules....i just hope in civ4 they will introduce something like provicial government instead of that darn FP to get rid off every unwanted corruptions!!! :) it will possibly a GOOD playing experience for everyone :D
 
Is there some unwritten rule about this thread being revived once every year? :undecide: Anyway, this modpack has to do with vanilla Civ3 1.07. If you use it, it may have some of the bugginess and lack of features (since the rules were edited) in 1.07. Much was changed with corruption since then.
 
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