Civ3: Do you modify corruption?

[Kingpin]

After having played a dozen games or so, I canned corruption. It's not a good game feature to have something like this where you have very little control over it during the course of a game.

Not to mention having to capture the same city three times because of culture flips and losing 30+ units that were stationed in that city each time...

 

[damunzy]

@JollyRoger:
Funny post, especially about the Zouave wonder...is a great wonder or a small one?

@Those who think it is cheating to modify corruption:
I wouldn't go as far as saying it is cheating since the AI receives the same benefits you do but it is definately playing differently than the designers intended. I believe they have lowered corruption in two seperate patches. Makes me think that it may still be too high....but of course the is my oh-so humble opinion.

Added: And now the ratio is more towards what I thought it would be with 58.33% saying they leave it at standard corruption levels.

 

[royfurr]

At the risk of getting totally fried, I think, IMHO, that most people simply comply with the "standard" rules because they either
1) Want to play GOTM, tournament, or have a HOF entry,
and that if corruption in the standard rules was different, they would play that way. Voting for the standard is NOT, I think, necessarily a vote FOR corruption or the way it is done in the game, or a vote that they LIKE it this way.
2) They are confomists and don't feel comfortable changing the rules- that is "cheating". (Now, folks, put down your flamethrowers, it is not necessarily bad to be a conformist. If everyone was a non-comformist ... well, they would all be conforming, wouldn't they??)

Perhaps another poll entry could be: I play standard rules but really wish the corruption there was X % less, where X was 20%, or 30%, or 60%, etc. (Guess that would have to be a couple of entries, eh?)

Personally, I would prefer corruption to be less, say that a totally corrupt city had about 3- 5 shields per turn, maybe up to 8 or so. Not enough to really build military units, but enough so that they could at least decently build some culture/commercial stuff. THis would, perhaps, increase the strength of the non-warmonger approach more then it would help them. (Bill Chen's idea of shield producing specalists could be the easiest way to achieve this without extensive re-working of the game. GREAT idea, Bill!!) The slider approach is good because its easy and allows everyone to adjust it to how they like it. For me, corruption is absolutuly hands down the most frustrating, fun killing aspect of the game.

Finally, I think that corruption should decrease a bit as the world gets "smaller", ie with the development of RR and modern communication stuff (Radio is the obvious tech, also perhaps after enough Airports have been built (now that we can build them, in PTW, that is, also perhaps add "TV" or "News Syndicate"?)

Enough, sorry I rambled. Down with coruption!

 

[Shabbaman]

LOL

 

[IDSmoker]

The 'standard' settings can't be used for some circumstances.

Has anyone gotten a domination win on a Huge/Pangea map with the 'standard' settings? If so, what was the overall level of corruption/waste in your empire (Wasted Sheilds/Productive Shields)? If you have a save, I'll be glad to run it through MapStat for you and provide the percentages.

Since I prefer playing Huge/Pangea maps I've had to tweak the corruption settings quite a bit.

For my current conquest game (disabled the Domination win), I have set the slider to 75%, if I remember correctly, and (more importantly) upped the "Optimum Number of Cities" to 110.

With 141 cities in my empire (and still a few civs left to go, I hate razing/abandoning productive cities), my overall waste is 11% and corruption is 15%, which seems a little low, but since recently captured cities have over 1000% waste/corruption, I'll probably continue to use these settings for my future games. Although I may lower the optCities value for non-Domination/Conquest type games.

I assume (from other posts I've read), that the 'Standard' settings work well with 'Standard' games... I simply prefer to play non-standard games.

The bottom line is that you can either adapt the way you play to the game, or you can adapt the game to the way you play. And isn't it great that Civ3 gives everyone the ability to make that choice?

 

[royfurr]

Originally posted by IDSmoker

...
The bottom line is that you can either adapt the way you play to the game, or you can adapt the game to the way you play. And isn't it great that Civ3 gives everyone the ability to make that choice?

One of the absolutley Great Things about this game. More possible adjustments in the editor! Power the to people! (err, fans!) DOWN WITH CORRUPTION!

BTW its almost the middle of June ...where IS that patch with the UPDATED SUPPED-UP editor, anyway?

I am sure I am not the only person on this forum jonesing for that thing!

 

[MuddyOne]

IDSmoker, Huge/Pangea domination win.2280 wasted/1789 productive

royfurr,
3) They don't want to make the game easier. A lot of FPS games have key sequences to go into "god" mode and other modes. I personally don't find any enjoyment from not having to worry about ammo- or being shot- or whatever effect the mode had. I find enjoyment from dealing with the difficulties- not removing them. Others have complete bliss running around shooting without a care in the world. I don't know why they enjoy it. They are probably equally at a loss why I enjoy it my way.

 

[Pygzilla]

I keep standard corruption. Not because I feel like it's cheating but because every other time iv'e messed with the standard settings to various games they seem unbalnced one way otr the other.

Maybe I'm just unbalanced.

 

[Zouave]

It occurs to me that "standard corruption" - which is massive and very unrealistic with Democracy - is the reason Firaxis pretty much killed the idea of exploration and settlement beyond the Ancient period, something which was so much fun with Civ 2.

If we settle later unexplored areas (if there WERE any) in the game, the towns would be next to useless for production owing to corruption. Of course early exploration and Settler Diarrhea early in the game is made necessary (artificially so) by the crazy land-grab required due to absurdly low resource appearance rates esp. for iron and coal.

 

[royfurr]

Originally posted by MuddyOne
IDSmoker, Huge/Pangea domination win.2280 wasted/1789 productive

royfurr,
3) They don't want to make the game easier. A lot of FPS games have key sequences to go into "god" mode and other modes. I personally don't find any enjoyment from not having to worry about ammo- or being shot- or whatever effect the mode had. I find enjoyment from dealing with the difficulties- not removing them. Others have complete bliss running around shooting without a care in the world. I don't know why they enjoy it. They are probably equally at a loss why I enjoy it my way.

I am sure there are some, perhaps many, that would fit in this catagory. Me, although I am not interested in making the game easy, I am interested in enjoying the game as I play, and I simply often find myself saying "Dam_! I hate this frelling corruption! What a pain in the as_!" It's irritating. I am sure I would have no fun if the game was a simple shoot'em up and was a excericise in destroying the other civs ... if its inevtible, it is not worth the time to play. Gotta have a chance to lose, or it becomes inevitible (spelling- sorry). At the same time I find the game challenging enough on Regent and up (yup, I'm no Master, thats for sure!) that reducing corruption a bit (notice I wanted it such that max corrupt ciities produced 3-5 shields or so, typically, with maybe 8 tops in big time shield generating locations- not a zero corruption situtation) would not turn it into an inevitible win for me.

What I meant by my post was that I don't think that the poll results showing, what, only 30 or 40 % ?? of people, wanted less corruption then standard, really meant that most people (60% + ??) liked the standard corruption rules.

I meant no offense to those like, say eyrie, that really like the high corruption. All power to the editor!! This way we can ALL be happy. I am really looking forward to trying 1.21 with the slider ... but first, I am deep in a game I want to finish without going to the newer patch.

Civ on!