A city far from your capital loses all but one shield to corruption. So don't worry about tiles that produce shields -- settle for the one that to can't lose. Pack cities as tightly as you can, on a grid 2 or 3 squares apart. A spacing of 3 lets every city control 9 tiles of territory, while a spacing of 2 (4 tiles per city) maximizes production. Don't build improvements that cost maintenance.
With luck, you will get a great leader. Then plop down the Forbidden Palace in the middle of this urban sprawl and disband most of the cities by producing settlers and workers until they are depopulated. You end up with a second center of low-corruption cities, spaced 4 or 5 tiles apart, that can grow to size 20.
I have seen little evidence that having lots of cities hurts overall corruption very much.
Another possibility (I haven't tried this) is to rush-build temples and libraries in a network of tightly-packed cities and use them to increase your culture score. As I understand it, a temple in a city that can only work 4 tiles contributes as much to culture as one in your capital. Of course, with this approach you don't disband the cities. This would be the thing to do if you already have the forbidden palace somewhere else and are building a third population center that is doomed to permanent corruption.
I assume (though I haven't tried it) that if you sell a city that is totally surrounded by your cities with temples, it will revert to you pretty quickly. Then you can sell it again. The AI is a sucker for these tactics.
The settlers that you need for this strategy come from your size 6 or 12 cities that cannot grow yet.
Who said ICS is dead in Civ3?
With luck, you will get a great leader. Then plop down the Forbidden Palace in the middle of this urban sprawl and disband most of the cities by producing settlers and workers until they are depopulated. You end up with a second center of low-corruption cities, spaced 4 or 5 tiles apart, that can grow to size 20.
I have seen little evidence that having lots of cities hurts overall corruption very much.
Another possibility (I haven't tried this) is to rush-build temples and libraries in a network of tightly-packed cities and use them to increase your culture score. As I understand it, a temple in a city that can only work 4 tiles contributes as much to culture as one in your capital. Of course, with this approach you don't disband the cities. This would be the thing to do if you already have the forbidden palace somewhere else and are building a third population center that is doomed to permanent corruption.
I assume (though I haven't tried it) that if you sell a city that is totally surrounded by your cities with temples, it will revert to you pretty quickly. Then you can sell it again. The AI is a sucker for these tactics.
The settlers that you need for this strategy come from your size 6 or 12 cities that cannot grow yet.
Who said ICS is dead in Civ3?
. It doesn't seem that bad if it is something you are forced to accept and deal with.
