Advanced corruption questions

1) Having read over the corruption guides, and understanding that the order in which one founds cities is very important, have I understood it correctly that any new city you found can never drive up the corruption costs of any previous cities? That is, the 'rank corruption' of my core cities won't raise even if I found lots of new cities?

2) Rank corruption with regard to conquest/city sacking/city abandoning: How does rank corruption work if you 'remove' a city? If I capture a city from the Zulus only to see it has no infrastructure and won't be worth keeping, will I then have permanently driven up my rank corruption cost for subsequent cities I found even if I burn this Zulu city down? Do cities I peacefully abandon follow the same rules?

Thanks!

Often it happens that a new founded city has a lower rank than older cities. Than the rank of cities with higher rank is increased by 1. Abandoning a city or losing it to the enemy will undo things. So if you lose a city in any way, than the rank of cities with higher rank will be reduced by one, so rank corruption will be reduced, too.

Therefore it is a viable strategy to abandon many cities on purpose. During Despotism high distance corruption encourages to settle tight. During the medival age cities cannot exceed size 12, this encourages to settle relativly tight, too. Once courthouses and police stations become available distance corruption is of little concern and hospitals encourage to use as little cities as possible. That will significantly reduce rank corruption and it will also reduce the relative costs of buildings like factories and unis. If you can cover the same amount of used tiles with one third less cities, than the amount of buildings can be cut by one third, thus saving lots of shields and one third of the maintance costs. Also rank corruption is reduced by slightly more than one third(the capital is free). Civ rather ecourages to use metropolises, but short considerations favour tight settlement plans. Finding the proper balance is part of the fun.

PS: Everything i said refers to C3C 1.22, older versions may have used different corruption.

Edit1: rank corruption is reduced by slight more than and not slightly less than one third.

Strategist83 said:

1) Having read over the corruption guides, and understanding that the order in which one founds cities is very important

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In C3C, your cities are ranked based firstly on the distance from your Palace, and secondly by founding-date at any given distance. So founding-order of cities really only matters from the point of view of minimising the Rank(s) of the 'best' town(s) among those cities at an equal distance from the Palace. At DG to Sid, this might be significant (because at these levels, every shield/trade counts), but it's less important at Emp and below.

, have I understood it correctly that any new city you found can never drive up the corruption costs of any previous cities? That is, the 'rank corruption' of my core cities won't raise even if I found lots of new cities?

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Broadly yes, although it technically depends on whether or not you've already reached the 'Nopt' (OCN adjusted for Map-Size, Difficulty and presence/absence of FP), and the location(s) of the newly-founded town(s) relative to the core-towns, because of the way cities are ranked.

If a city's Rank < Nopt, that city will be core (i.e. <90% corrupt before improvements) -- although you may not be able to see that clearly until it's grown enough to bring in more than ~3-4 shields/trade per turn, and/or you're using a less-corrupt gov-type. If a city's Rank > Nopt, the city will be a '1-shield town' (90% corrupt, before building the FP or SPHQ, Courthouse and/or PoliceStn). Since food production does not get corrupted, many players turn 1-shield towns into fully-irrigated 'farms', with few if any city-improvements.

So if you found (or capture) a city:

1. Closer to your Palace than your current outermost core-city, all core-cities further out than the new city will have their Ranks increased by +1, and
   • If you hadn't yet reached Nopt --> the outermost core-city will remain core (although its rank-corruption will increase slightly)
   • If you've already reached (or exceeded) Nopt --> the outermost core-city will become 90% corrupt
2. At the same or greater distance from your Palace than your outermost core-city, existing core-city Ranks will be unaffected
   • If you hadn't yet reached Nopt --> the newest city will get the highest Rank, but will still be core
   • If you've already reached (or exceeded) Nopt --> the new city will be 90% corrupt

2) Rank corruption with regard to conquest/city sacking/city abandoning: How does rank corruption work if you 'remove' a city?

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As Justanick explained, Ranks are recalculated every time a new city is acquired or lost, based on what's currently on the map, not on what was on the map at some point in the past.

(NB the corruption model did indeed change significantly from Vanilla to Conquests -- for the better, IMHO. Shame about the bugs that were (re)introduced, though...!).

If I capture a city from the Zulus only to see it has no infrastructure and won't be worth keeping, will I then have permanently driven up my rank corruption cost for subsequent cities I found even if I burn this Zulu city down?

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No. How a captured city affects your core depends on its distance from your Palace, as described above. Arguably, if a captured city fits in reasonably well with your current city placement, it may be 'worth' keeping/ improving, regardless of how many improvements it's already built (or not)...

Do cities I peacefully abandon follow the same rules?

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Yes. But speaking personally, I consider abandoning (captured) cities to be wasteful. If I really want to remove a city, I'd rather (rush-) build Settlers/ Workers (out of mine) or Slaves (out of captures).

Remember, it costs two (or three) times as much food to grow a new citizen in a Pop7+ (or Pop13+) town as it does in a Pop6 town; and for every 2 Slaves you build, you can join 1 native Worker (back) to a Pop7+ core city, growing it faster and saving you &#8805;1GPT (if you're over your unit-limit). The new citizen in that core city can then earn you 1-3 GPT (or the equivalent in Specialist gold/ beakers/ shields), which means you will end up better off by an extra 2-5 GPT per Worker-join.

tjs282 said:

...and secondly by founding-date at any given distance

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Chances are that it is not founding date itself, but the id of the city. Usualy that makes no difference, but if cities are razed or abondened those lower ids might be reused.

tjs282 said:

If a city's Rank < Nopt, that city will be core (i.e. <90% corrupt before improvements) -- although you may not be able to see that clearly until it's grown enough to bring in more than ~3-4 shields/trade per turn, and/or you're using a less-corrupt gov-type. If a city's Rank > Nopt, the city will be a '1-shield town' (90% corrupt, before building the FP or SPHQ, Courthouse and/or PoliceStn).

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There is no hard seperation between core and noncore as you suggest. At rank = Nopt rank corruption is presicely 50%. It is also the point where the corruption increment per rank doubles. If Rank is slightly above current Nopt, than increasing Nopt by building a couthouse or a policestation will have great effect and reduce corruption by a total of about 30 percentage points.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=76619

justanick said:

Chances are that it is not founding date itself, but the id of the city. Usualy that makes no difference, but if cities are razed or abondened those lower ids might be reused.

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According to Alexman's article (which yes, I did also read a long time ago, although I admit I skimmed over the formulae without studying them in great detail at the time, since I didn't have Conquests...), if cities are ranked primarily by distance (then founding date, then ID), capturing a distant enemy capital should not have it slotted in at a higher rank than say, any of your established 2nd-ring cities. Or are you saying that this could indeed occur?

There is no hard seperation between core and noncore as you suggest. At rank = Nopt rank corruption is presicely 50%. It is also the point where the corruption increment per rank doubles.

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Well that sounds like a pretty 'hard' separation to me, i.e. if you plotted corruption by rank on a graph, Rank = Nopt would be a pretty clear 'break-point' where uncorrupted production/ trade would start dropping twice as fast (assuming no corruption-reducing improvements built).

OK, so corruption/ waste won't immediately hit 90% as I suggested, but it will get there pretty quickly once City-rank &#8805; Nopt. And since rank-corruption is the greater part of the equation (as far as I can tell, at least once you're using Republic/Democracy), in a >50% corrupt town, you're not going to get >1SPT until that town is producing at least 5 SPT before corruption, i.e. Pop3-5, depending on terrain, improvements, and whether you're relying on +ve FPT or Worker-joins for growth -- so without artificial growth stimuli (e.g. maximal irrigation, and/or dumping Workers into it), it could effectively remain a 1-shield 'non-core' town for multiple turns after founding/ capture.

If Rank is slightly above current Nopt, than increasing Nopt by building a couthouse or a policestation will have great effect and reduce corruption by a total of about 30 percentage points.

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...if you don't mind waiting 20-30T for the town to grow/ build a CH by itself (at 1-3 uncorrupted SPT, if you're lucky), engaging in large-scale forestry (ch)ops, MM-ing excess citizens to CivEngs (if you have RepParts already), and/or spending hours shuffling newly-built-but-obsolete units from your core, just to dump a quarter of their shield-cost into your build(s). And all for the sake of getting (maybe) 1 extra SPT out of that town per 2 SPT/ Pop-points gained, while getting it up to Pop12 -- by which time you might be able to get an uncorrupted 15-20 SPT out of it, if you've also fully railed and mined it, built a Factory+PowerPlant, etc...

"Micromanagement to the max" might be your idea of fun, but it's not really mine (says the guy who spent about 4 hours last night playing and logging about 10 turns of Middle-Age Aztec warfare)...

Usually anti corruption buildings save about 10 percentage points, so getting 30 percentage points is rather relevant. Channeling shields into courthouses etc. is a rather good investment. As corruption there is only at about 60% they could be built by regular means fast, but as about 9 shields per turn before multipliers would be uncorrupted waiting might not be the best way to go.

What is considered core, semi core or periphery can change a lot depending you what anti corruption buildings a city has. If those buildings are scattered on the map, than one may have core cities outside the core or non core cities inside the core.

A city with rank 20 may have 85% corruption and the city with rank 21 may have only 40% because of the better buildings. Cities are not born as core cities but are made core cities by proper anti corruption buildings.

tjs282 said:

Or are you saying that this could indeed occur?

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No. Given that distance comes first it is of no practical relevance. One could try to abandon the captured city and found a new one at same distance as another city just to check if founding date or id are more important. From a gameplay point of view this is total nonsense. I am just saying that i have never seen evidence that either founding date or id are more important. And ids have usually the same order as founding date.