A Rank Corruption Discovery and Exploit to negate rank corruption

[Grille]

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.

 

[anarres]

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?

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

 

[Grille]

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".

 

[Roland Johansen]

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

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.

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.

 

[anarres]

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.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

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.

 

[GFandango]

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.

 

[AlanH]

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.

 

[barron of ideas]

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.

 

[Grille]

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.

 

[Muchembled]

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.

 

[akots]

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 - But you may want to attached a title which says "game exploiter"

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.

 

[SirPleb]

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.

 

[GFandango]

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!

 

[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!

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?

 

[bluebox]

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%!

 

[Aggie]

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.

 

[akinkhoo]

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!
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?
lol, and i get a captail full of foreigners!

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

 

[Moonsinger]

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

 

[AlanH]

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