Courthouses and Police Stations

Is it some kind of inevitability that on huge maps (like the one I'm playing on) your civ is destined to suffer horribly from corruption?

Facts: I'm a democracy, the form of gov't with the least corruption. I've already built the Forbidden Palace. I cleared out (razed, that is) an entire continent of Aztecs and started building all new cities there, but all these cities have maxed out (95%, I guess it is) corruption! There are tons of terrain improvements and I have my luxuries set at 30%. Still the only way to get anything done is to rush all my city improvements. Even if I rush a courthouse and a Police Station in a city it seems to do diddly-squat! Even in 1.21, when courthouses were supposedly "fixed."

What's the deal?

Gripe: It seems to me that the "state" system needs to be invented for Sid Meier. In a sense it already exists, but because you can only build two palaces (a real one and a forbidden one), you can essentially only have two states (no matter how huge your empire is). This is unrealistic. Take the example of the United States: sure, we're huge. But by splitting all that territory into 50 states, with 50 state governments and 50 state militias, state police, etc., we manage to minimize corruption. Aaanyway, at some point that should happen, but for now can anybody help?

Toodles.

Your best bet would be to trade/horde every luxury you can get. (This sometimes mean making outrageous trades like wine+dye+silk+iron for ivory, but it's worth it if you have corruption problems). That along with luxury rate(if needed), and basic temple+market place (cathedrals as they get larger) should trigger WLT*D in every city (they are connected, right?). That reduces corruption quite nicely. With that going, you can then build your courthouse, and other improvements to keep the WLT*D going.

Courthouses do work, but it's not quite enough to turn a 95% corruption city into a decent production city. Courthouses + WLT*D will.

have you tryed going communist??? if these cities are on another continent from your palace and forbidan palace, then communist might help. In the game, communist is definantly better for huge empires. Be prepared though if you do go communist, your capitol will have a little corruption.

Originally posted by commodified
Is it some kind of inevitability that on huge maps (like the one I'm playing on) your civ is destined to suffer horribly from corruption?

Facts: I'm a democracy, the form of gov't with the least corruption. I've already built the Forbidden Palace. I cleared out (razed, that is) an entire continent of Aztecs and started building all new cities there, but all these cities have maxed out (95%, I guess it is) corruption! There are tons of terrain improvements and I have my luxuries set at 30%. Still the only way to get anything done is to rush all my city improvements. Even if I rush a courthouse and a Police Station in a city it seems to do diddly-squat! Even in 1.21, when courthouses were supposedly "fixed."

What's the deal?

Gripe: It seems to me that the "state" system needs to be invented for Sid Meier. In a sense it already exists, but because you can only build two palaces (a real one and a forbidden one), you can essentially only have two states (no matter how huge your empire is). This is unrealistic. Take the example of the United States: sure, we're huge. But by splitting all that territory into 50 states, with 50 state governments and 50 state militias, state police, etc., we manage to minimize corruption. Aaanyway, at some point that should happen, but for now can anybody help?

Toodles.

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I believe this is done on purpose in order to prevent huge empires to be useful. It limits you to around, maybe, 40 decent cities on a huge map. Anything after that is only useful for borders, territory, generating one trade per person and having culture improvements rushed to generate culture. Personally, I like the corruption model in Civ3, because it's fun to me to be limited like this, so that I can't just amass a huge empire. I have to really plan where my palace and FP will go. MOst people don't like it, but I think it's because most people don't want this kind of challenge. Depending on where your FP is, I would consider moving your palace to the new continent, if possible. ALso, with your comparison to the United States, I would argue that there is plenty of corruption in the US, and that if you took the size of the US (at least, the continental states) it wouldn't really amount to much size in Civ, and a single palace and FP would easily reduce corruption well enough. Now, I wouldn't have my capitol in DC if this were the case, but that's really beside the point.

Best way to fight corruption is to limit the number of cities in your empire. A courthouse plus police station will help, but do not expect miracles. We-Love-the-King-Day on top of the two buildings helps a bit more.

The new patch, 1.21f, gooses them each a little bit by increasing the optimal city number by 25% for each. See the definitive thread to get an idea of the formula used and how much you might expect.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19922

The optimal number of cities is in the editor. I believe it is 14 cities for small maps, 16 standard, 20 large, 32 huge. Once a player has more than double this number, there is not much he/she can do to combat corruption. Stay at or under the number and there will be little corruption in the smallish empire.

Originally posted by punkbass2000

it's fun to me to be limited

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You enjoy being limited? Ok...

If your get over 2X optimal cities, courthouses and police stations won't do anything for the furthest cities, only having a FP near them will help. Truely huge empires really do better with communism. Just make sure you build courthouses and police stations in all your productive cities before you switch- even your capitol. You might want to wait on the non-productive ones until after you switch governments.

Attached is a custom game I "played" to get a feel for what corruption does with different governments and improvements. It has all corruption related improvements, so you can cycle through the governements and then delete an improvement to see how it affects production.

I think that it's done intentionally. I've played Civ III a lot and each time corruption happens. It's an unfortunant thing to happen, but it does. What I did was just kept building, things and trying my best to work through it. It slowed down my growth tremendously, but there really wasn't anything that I could do.

It would be better if limits are clearly stated, like in Call to Power II, where each goverment has a limited number of cities allowed.

And about the United States, you seem too proud of a lower corruption being that your president is suspected of having cheated in the elections.

And that our previous president is suspected of having sold nuclear weapons secrets to a government that considers us to be their number one enemy, for campaign contributions.

And lied on the stnd and got away with it.

Originally posted by Frodo Bolson

And about the United States, you seem too proud of a lower corruption being that your president is suspected of having cheated in the elections.

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And just how did Bush cheat? A big sack of pre-completed votes as is the fashion in certain parts of the world?

Or was the attempt at cheating perpetrated when Al Gore tried to use the judicial process to validate incorrectly completed ballots by people who were too age-addled to know what to do?

And no, I didn't vote for Bush. As a Limey, I doubt that they would have let me...

Gore would've let you, and if not him, then Clinton for sure.

Well.... if you take a look and compare the two administrations Bush isn't all that bad, comparitivly speaking...

I would definetely like to see a way to reduce corruption in those far off cities. Maybe have the courthouse become more effective as the population rises? It can be frustrating to have a city at 99% corruption for the entire game, no matter your civ advances or empire size.
Also, for all you ragging on the U.S. Presidents, I believe the original thought was that,
"Take the example of the United States: sure, we're huge. But by splitting all that territory into 50 states, with 50 state governments and 50 state militias, state police, etc., we manage to minimize corruption."
What has this got to do with Clinton "lying " on the stand, or the latest controversy over the voting?
If you want to hate on America, then go ahead and hate. But what other country allows such freedom of the press? What other country would count and recount every single vote to make sure that each person in our country who voiced an opinion was heard? And you call that corruption....

As a setlement progresses from frontier to modern city corruption should decrease. A garrison of soldiers, temple worshipers, scales and cash registers at a market, a populace educated and capable of understanding the laws... should reduce corruption. Each step up the ladder from anarchy should be rewarded. Firaxis has this one wrong even for the occasional SM player.

To paraphrase Churchill, Democracies are corrupt.... just not as corrupt as the other ones

I do not like the corruption either. Patch 1.21f has the solution.

I:

call up the Civ3Edit
select Scenarios
Custom Rules
OK
Rules
Edit
Difficulty Levels


select Difficulty Level and then move the Corruption Slider
from the middle (100%) left, 'x' it the menu and save on closing.

In Civ3, Load the scenario.

Originally posted by German Panzers
I think that it's done intentionally. I've played Civ III a lot and each time corruption happens. It's an unfortunant thing to happen, but it does. What I did was just kept building, things and trying my best to work through it. It slowed down my growth tremendously, but there really wasn't anything that I could do.

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I'm going to quote you on that GERMAN PANZERS.

P.S. resembling Captain of the Obvious, are we?

Originally posted by TheDS
And that our previous president is suspected of having sold nuclear weapons secrets to a government that considers us to be their number one enemy, for campaign contributions.

And lied on the stnd and got away with it.

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"Suspected"???

I don't think those Chinese bagmen and their cash in Clinton's White House was an allusion!


BTW, massive corruption was obviously a quick, late, and unwieldly "fix" for much too fast civilization development. It is inherently flawed, and non-historical. The previous reference to the fifty states, or any goverment that is NOT centralized, was accurate.

Originally posted by punkbass2000


I believe this is done on purpose in order to prevent huge empires to be useful. It limits you to around, maybe, 40 decent cities on a huge map. Anything after that is only useful for borders, territory, generating one trade per person and having culture improvements rushed to generate culture. Personally, I like the corruption model in Civ3, because it's fun to me to be limited like this, so that I can't just amass a huge empire. I have to really plan where my palace and FP will go. MOst people don't like it, but I think it's because most people don't want this kind of challenge. Depending on where your FP is, I would consider moving your palace to the new continent, if possible.

Click to expand...

I see some of you don't agree with punkbass but I have to say that I do. If it's possible to amass a huge empire without worrying about corruption, then really that's what you end up having to do. I find it to be a real pain having to manage that many cities. Much easier to manage a smaller civ, and with things laid out the way they are, it's strategically good to do.

In my last game, i tore through a few civs and captured their cities, but what i DID find was, after rushing the police stations and court houses, if I then built a road to the rest of my civ, and built an airport(or harbor) the corruption dropped significantly