Conquests Beta Patch Now Available

have you ever considered they have released this Beta version not as a pure favour to the community but mainly to get feedback about which of their changes is working and which are not? Maybe they lost understanding about the corruption forumla and do a trial and error solution finding.

I simply don't believe that one releases a patch, even if it is Beta, if there is ONE big problem and you don't make sure this is fixed. The loss of reputation is simply too high.

In the end it is the same as for the Civ3 main game, the PTW and now for CoC. It took more than half a year and several patches before the game was playable and became a good game. Seems we have forgotten about the Firaxis 'way' when expecting too much from CoC right from the start.
 
I agree with those that complain not because corruption exists, but because we don't know how it works and what can we expect from it if we follow certain strategies (build a fp or not.. build more cities... etc)

If distance corruption is reduced the better communication routes and technologies are developed, then this is ok... but rank corruption is something I find bizzarre... a city has less corruption because it was founded earlier?... (I am assuming that now, to break the RCP exploit, cities with the same distance to the palace are ranked via foundation date)...
so, how does it works... if I found 4 cities in a ring around the palace... city 1 is rank 1, city 2 rank 2.. and so on?... and what about cities on ring 2... do they start with rank 5?... now add a FP... how does it affect the ranking?...

Anyway... I suppose cities have to be ranked somehow in order to determine ther corruption level... and there is the key to this mess... how is it done?... and how sould it be done in order to find a balanced gameplay?

On other subject... It would be nice if Courthouses and Police Stations had a greater impact over time... (like if they generated Anti-Corruption points per turn)... so after X years (or turns) of having them... the rank of the city that built them is reduced by one point... that would reward players that build courthouses earlier in the game...
 
It seems like the distance aspect of corruption/waste is not being correctly computed for the new FP. It seems that it always distance from the palace that is used, not the more intuitive distance to the FP.
 
i refer to this patch as the "worst beta patch of all time".
Unless it was to test the fix. In which case it was one of the better beta patches of all time. And i do think beta is by nature a test . The real question is can they make the needed corrections. And can they add a bi plane tech era for our troubles.
 
Originally posted by Qitai
I guess we need Alex (Phd. Corruption) to do a thorough test to know what is really going on now.

:lol:
From a quick test (with standard OCN and OCN=1000), I can confirm that the new FP acts like a Palace for distance corruption, but does nothing more than a percentage increase of the OCN for corruption due to number of cities.

This seems fine by me. It helps the AI in the late game where the AI most needs help, and it makes you think about where you want your FP (It's no longer necessarily best to place the FP as far as possible from the Palace).
 
Originally posted by alexman


:lol:
From a quick test (with standard OCN and OCN=1000), I can confirm that the new FP acts like a Palace for distance corruption, but does nothing more than a percentage increase of the OCN for corruption due to number of cities.

This seems fine by me. It helps the AI in the late game where the AI most needs help, and it makes you think about where you want your FP (It's no longer necessarily best to place the FP as far as possible from the Palace).

So its best use is to extend the core area in some direction?
 
Originally posted by McBeer
it seems, that i'm the only one who has problems after installing the beta-patch

everyone of u is able to play c3c v.1.12

i can't play c3c v.1.12

but when i'm the only one, there will be no help for me

so, i have to re-install c3c and wait for the "real" patch

Need more info.
What version(s) do you use? Maybe you messed up different languages or something?

for me, this installation order worked:
-installed US Civ3 (v1.07)
-patched Civ3 to v1.29 at some point (there have been reports about problems if you spare this step before installing C3C!)
-bought German C3C expansion
-installed it, chose English language version when prompted (you must stick to the language of your Civ3 installation!)
-install 1.12, again: Engl. language selected

The setup.exe(s) normally find the installation paths on their own. If you run more than one installation, you may need to correct the path.
 
There's been rumours you must apply the 1.02 patch before the 1.12 if you've not got the US C3C. Grille's experience seems to contradict this, but I thought it deserved to be mentioned.

Alexman: That sounds like good news. Now, if the developers were willing to share such info, I'd be really happy. Not to mention which somersaults of joy I had been doing had they noted that the workings of the FP had changed rather than the Civ3/PTW system being reinstated.
 
Thanks for the test Alexman. You are the man! If that is how it works, the design sounds fine to me. It makes the FP alot less powerful, but still quite powerful if place properly. This also makes palace jump totally unattractive, which is a good thing I think.
 
Let me add something to the corruption discussion.

In my current game as the Maya (best civ) I'm at war
with my neighbours (Greeks and Babylonians).This is
my first game with the 1.12 patch.As attacker it's harder
to win,so you need siege weaponry.To me it's a positive
point to the 1.12 patch.
Back to the current game,Alexander has built the Great Wall
in Athens (game is at the beginning of the middle ages),so
that's a problem (+hoplites).Still I decided to take Athens
first,with catapults and medieval infantry.AND THEN IT HAPPENED.
I bombard Athens and a message popped up PALACE DESTROYED.
I made peace to check every Greek city.Non of them had the
Palace or the Forbidden Palace and the corruption was still
the same as with a Palace.
We all know what happens losing a palace or headquarters
in civ1,civ2 or Alpha Centauri.Almost every city is corrupted.
So I have to agree with most people in this thread,there is
something wrong the corruption implementation.

Second Athens had also built the Colossus,it was also
destroyed during the bombardment.I played a lot of
civ3 games,but this never happened to me before.
The Great Wall also destroyed.
Sounds not good!Maybe a bug?Or are the rules changed?

I destroyed Athens and the Greeks got another palace in
another city.Another frustrating point : the Greeks declared
war,but they stay in the republic with at lot of war weariness.
All their cities (towns) are size 1 or 2.Why not change to an
other government even if it's despotism to survive?
Another strange thing : sometimes I see enemy units
moving to my borders in the AIs turn and at the beginning
my turn those units are gone.Supporting problem?Disbanned
by the AI?What's the point here?

If it's possible to destroy wonders with siege weapons,guess
I delete the 1.12 patch.And I surely don't build wonders in
coastal cities.
 
I cannot believe -- cannot believe -- Firaxis took away double gold! Do those guys have rocks in their heads, or what?

It's fine and dandy that they fixed the corruption with FP and PH -- that obviously needed fixing -- but to take away double gold?

Why? What's the point?

I earned double gold by the skill of my play!

Return to me my precious . . . . We wants our double gold . . . Yes, we wants it . . . oh my precious . . . Gives us our double gold back . . . .
 
Little_Star: There's a known bug with the Great Wall getting destroyed by bombardment. If the Palace and Colossus when down before the Great Wall, I suppose their demise are related to the bug.

There's 'nother known bug which causes the Palace to be destroyed by bombardment if it's been given a defense bonus (happens in ACW all the time), but this would only be relevant if you were playing a modded game, which I take it you were not.

In any case, you're not supposed to be able to destroy Palaces or Great Wonders by bombardment. Probably, the corruption calculation is only updated when the Palace is legitimately moved or destroyed. This would actually be a good glitch, because it stops you from artificially plunging someone into a dark age of corruption by exploiting the bugs.
 
There seem to be a lot of undocumented changes with C3C... Today it happened to me that a Hittite galley attacked one of my harbor towns... It was a real attack, no bombardment, since I am currently playing the 1.12 patch
 
Originally posted by The Last Conformist
Little_Star: There's a known bug with the Great Wall getting destroyed by bombardment. If the Palace and Colossus when down before the Great Wall, I suppose their demise are related to the bug.


I suspected it had something to do with the Great Wall,
because it was last city improvement and I tried to destroy
the Greek palace again after razing Athens.After bombarding
the little town 250 times the palace was still there.
It's a little bug to me and I guess when the effect of the Great
Wall is over the problem is gone.
 
Hi Gang!

I'm glad to see the bugs that were fixed are fixed with this patch. Guess I'll wait and see what happens in the new year regarding FP, but it won't keep me from playing. On the other hand, I'm more likely to play out the conquests and maybe try a GOTM before I play an epic C3C game.

One benefit to the current way the FP thing goes is it gets rid of a lot of the benefit of the whole build the FP and do a palace jump, ah, technique. Seemed like too much of an exploit for my taste.

I'm new to the forums here, but I'd be one of those old timers, began playing with Civ 1. While it's a little hazy, (not sure how many were Civ 1 vs. Civ 2) some of the things I remember from prior Civs, which may or may not have some lessons for the current Civs:

1. As your empire grew, your people throughout the empire would start to get unhappy. Add another city, and your core city might slip into civil disorder because you were just too large.

2. Corruption and waste also grew as you added cities. Distance and number of cities both were important, as I recall, but it might have been just distance.

3. You could get a fully corrupt city, with 0 gold production.

4. New cities you founded would start with 0 content people, and eventually would get "very unhappy" people who needed more than one hapiness bonus just to get to content.

5. Courthouses cut corruption & waste by 50%. So, if you have 2 points of corruption, a courthouse would be a break-even if you have no marketplace or library.

6. Higher level governments reduced the levels of corruption and waste and allowed more cities to be in the empire before your people had unhappy effects. I believe the order was: anarcy, despotism, monarchy, republic, communism, democracy.

7. Communism allowed, if I recall, unlimited # of cities in the empire, and every city had a fixed flat rate of corruption (15%). No capital was needed, and every city was assumed to be a short distance away from the capital. It was a "decentralized" government. (Losing your capital had no effect, where with most governments it would cause near total collapse as every city was now infinitely far from the capital)

8. Democracy allowed unlimited cities also, and every city was assumed to be the capital. Corruption and waste were totally eliminated. In Civ 2 (but not, I think, Civ 1), the courthouse gave a +1 happy person bonus in democracy to make up for the fact that there was no corruption to fight. (Losing your capital had no effect).

9. WLTK day - your city functions as if you had a superior government. Despots lost the production penalty, monarch & communism got the republic & democracy commerce bonus, republic & democracy got +1 person every turn if they had any surplus food and were not up against an aqueduct-type limit.

My strategy for winning on the top levels tended to be - build cities, get everywhere possible, suffer through the corruption as long as you can bear it, hit democracy, and then start the population explosion (crank up the luxuries). Suddenly, you have a massive empire with 0 corruption and every city big enough to work every square. Then roll to victory.

So, not sure if that helped, but that's some of the differences from prior civ's.
 
Alexman and Qitai, you seem to be thinking the new FP corruption model might be ok. Please check my reasoning in the following - to me this example indicates that there is something very wrong with the new model (whether it is by design or by accident :) )

I set up a test with the following mods: standard size map, emperor level, filled the map with plains, changed plains to produce 10s and 10g, and changed plains to zero movement (to make settling easier.) I pre-created two groups of 12 cities - a NW group with the Palace near its center and a central group with FP near its center.

After startiing a game with the test setup I changed every city to have five working citizens. The two groups are clumped as shown in this minimap:

sirplebcorruptiontest1b.jpg


I noted the corruption levels at this point in the game.

Next I settled 12 more cities in the west as shown in this minimap:

sirplebcorruptiontest1a.jpg


I populated the new cities to have five working citizens each so that all cities on the map would be the same in gross production. This is to allow for the possibility of increased corruption in one city being offset by less corruption in another. Some might argue that such a model would be ok. I would argue that it is not since one would have to build and pay maintenance for improvements in more cities. But to take that possibility out of the test for now I made the new cities have five working citizens.

And then I compared the new corruption levels.

The results are as follows:
Code:
           tot.income  corruption net.income  mfg(net.shields)
24 cities     1752        434        1318          1103
36 cities     2556       1296        1260          1050

When I added those 12 cities in the west, corruption in the Palace region remained unchanged. But corruption in the FP region went up noticeably. Although those new cities contributed a tad, their contribution did not offset the loss in the FP region. (And the loss there is of course more important since that's where one would have courthouses, factories, libraries, etc. already in place, vs. the new cities.)

The amount of increase in corruption in the FP region of course depends on the number of other cities added. If I reduce the size of the 12 new cities in the west to 1, and increase the number of new cities there to 24, the result is the new "48 cities" line below:

Code:
           tot.income  corruption net.income  mfg(net.shields)
24 cities     1752        434        1318          1103
36 cities     2556       1296        1260          1050
48 cities     2338       1294        1044           859

The trend seems bad. In a game where one is going for domination I think the results could easily be a fair bit worse again. In the most severe cases (e.g. high score HOF games) the FP region can over time become totally corrupt, without an offsetting gain elsewhere (if such a thing were even possible, considering the infrastructure rebuild costs that would require.)

Do you agree that this is highly undesirable behaviour? To me it seems bad, probably unintended, and very confusing. The last part is what I like least of all - sometimes FP will work well, sometimes it will work somewhat, sometimes it will hardly work at all. Most players will have a very hard time predicting or understanding the difference between those situations. It will just look like it works sometimes and not others. (Or look like it works for some players but not others because as well as varying during the course of a game it will also depend on play style, map size and difficulty level.)

In case anyone wants to reproduce my results or play with other similar tests, here is the save file for the first position in these tests, the position with 24 cities and a bunch of settlers ready to use.

Warning! When running tests like these watch out for a confusing glitch: After doing something like settling the 12 new cities shown in the second minimap above, the game will NOT show correct values in the F1 screen. Cities in the FP region will look like nothing there has changed. You must end a turn and then check the F1 screen - at that point corruption in the FP region will have been recalculated to show the new and worse values.
 
For those who think the new corruption calcs will make Palace jumps less useful - why do you think so?

As I see it the essence of the Palace jump "exploit" (if such it is :) ) just got worse than it was previously.

To me the questionable aspect of the Palace jump is that the Forbidden Palace can be built very quickly in a highly productive city. This allows one to bypass something which may have been intended by the game's designers, that the FP must either be built slowly (trading off speed against effectiveness) or built with a leader.

With the new calculations it seems to me, so far, that two distinct approaches to the FP can pay off:

1) If one does not intend to build a large empire nor go for domination, then use the Palace jump exactly as before.

2) If one is going to build a large empire or go for domination, build the FP in a reasonably productive and not very corrupt city. (After further analysis it may even prove to be best to build it as near the Palace as possible, that doesn't seem clear yet to me.) Don't hurry the process because there won't be a need to jump the Palace. Just try to finish the job sometime not too long after reaching OCN. This lazy FP build in a reasonably productive city will get the maximum benefit available from the FP. So it will become common. And it inherently embodies what I described above as the questionable aspect of Palace jumps - there's no difficult tradeoff in build speed vs. distance, and there's no point using a leader to rush this.

In addition to that, note that the decision of where to place an FP becomes a lot less interesting than it previously was. It will no longer be a factor in deciding on initial expansion direction or who to attack first :(
 
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