Conquests Beta Patch Now Available

[alja]

why not making 1st city no corruption and all the others 100% corruption by default? Could save the time & effort to found new cities.

I don't see the point in all of this. I can live with the fact that more cities and bigger nations are slightly punished to balance the game and give us a challenge. But there is absolutly no point in making bigger nations less efficient to give small, loosing nations the same power.

If there is no sense in expanding and capturing enemy cities what is the point of the game then? Sorry, if this is the modell that is intended I have hardly have any motivation to play CoC again.

A clear statement of Firaxis about what is intended would really help and for sure be appreciated by the community. As there is no such statement I conclude Firaxis doesn't have a clue what they intend as they fear they have to implement exactly this in the end.

 

[Qitai]

Good research Sir Pleb. You results do not have any conflict with my understanding of how the corruption model works in this new model. I have to agree, though, that it might be confusing to most players.

One of the consequence of the new model is that it is no longer a good idea have have FP being far away from the palace. This is due to overwhelming high RANK corruption in high ranking cities which FP does not reduce in this new model (except for OCN). Your test exactly illustrates this point. By increasing the number of cities, you increase the rank of the cities near the FP and hence increasing the overall corruption while decreasing the overall net gain.

I cannot say if the new model is better or worse. It is different!!! It takes time to get use to it and develop new tactics. It prevents us from using almost all of the currently known methods (exploit or no exploit) of overcoming corruption. This can be viewed as good or bad depending on which way you look at it. Thus, I reserve my comment on whether this is a good or bad change. I can only say it is different!!

As for the palace jump, my estimate is that there will not be a significant gain using the palace jump (If not a loss). Now, since a palace jump does takes alot of planning, calculation and the loss of a potentially great city, the effort of using it no longer justify the pain of going through it. And hence it is no longer worthwhile.

 

[Torisen]

Regarding palace jump, I meant that the strategy of building the FP in your initial core area and jumping the palace to a second location will not be as strong, since you'll turn your core into a non-productive area given the new lack of performance of the FP.

I'm playing a vanilla C3 game right now where I'm off conquering Japan (as far around the map from my palace & FP as it is possible to get). I thought that 95% was the corruption & waste cap, is it 90%? I happen to have almost my whole force in the former capital of Japan and I have 2/11 productive shields and 2/18 productive commerce.

Has anyone run any tests with military units to see, under any version of C3, if large quantities of military inside a city reduce corruption and/or waste? I would never have noticed it if I hadn't seen the post from Tavis about local military reducing corruption.

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

Originally posted by Torisen
Has anyone run any tests with military units to see, under any version of C3, if large quantities of military inside a city reduce corruption and/or waste? I would never have noticed it if I hadn't seen the post from Tavis about local military reducing corruption.

I believe he was referring to using military police as a way to achieve WLTKD. This reduces waste but not corruption.

 

[Torisen]

Ah, never mind, I moved all the military out and had no increase in corruption or waste. Oh well, it was a nice thought.

 

[anarres]

If the changes are as Alexman and others describe (FP acts as new palace with regard to distance corruption and not city rank) I think this will improve the game.

Forget the fact you have to relearn strategies and think about how the AI deals with the FP. They invariably build it close to home to help their (single) core become more productive. This will make the game harder for humans as we can't now create a second fully productive core - the FP has to be an 'extension' of the existing core.

I had another scary thought....

Maybe this is how the FP was meant to work all along!!!!

Think about it - the rank calculations were always bugged, from the very first version of Civ3, PTW and then Conquests. Maybe the FP was intended to only affect distance corruption, but the code was never right. A crazy thought, but you have to admit - it's certainly a possibility.

Ultimately I think this may actually be a good change (if it was intended to work like this) - it will make it much harder to walk over the AI with a second seperate, productive core (which the AI never gets).

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by Qitai
One of the consequence of the new model is that it is no longer a good idea have have FP being far away from the palace.

Yes, and that seems odd to me. There is nothing in the Civilopedia to indicate this. It doesn't seem like something inherent or obvious in the concept of "Forbidden Palace". It will reduce gameplay complexity. It seems unintuitive and will probably come as a surprise to most players, if/when they even reach the point of realizing it.

Equally confusing is how to even describe such a Forbidden Palace and where it is best to build one. Will we find that the extreme of building it in the Palace is best? That would be rather boring in gameplay. Or that building it at some radius from the Palace based on the OCN multiplier and the player's city density is best? Or that it varies depending on how circular the shape of the Palace region is? Cases like those will be near impossible to explain to most players with clarity.

If Firaxis' new purpose was to reduce FP functionality (and thus increase corruption a bit overall), and/or to reduce the value of Palace jump, and/or to require the FP to be near the Palace, why not just do all of that simply and directly? E.g. a very simple change to the FP, both in its description and implementation, which says "increases the effectiveness of the Palace in reducing corruption." Then internally they could implement the existence of an FP to cause OCN to increase. And to do nothing else at all. That would have a nice safe predictable result along the lines described, without all the confusion. I doubt they missed such an easy way to accomplish similar ends if those ends are what they were after

 

[The Last Conformist]

That the total productivity of your empire should fall with increasing numbers of cities sounds very wrong to me - it's not like there weren't enough reasons to genocide rather than conquer foreign nations anyway! It seems like deciding what's the optimal civ size for a given difficulty level, gov't, presence of FP/SPHQ and map size will be a major point in competitive play. I've got nothing against having to relearn strategies, per se, but the incentives this seems to be creating seem simply wrong to me.

Anarres: Your "crazy thought" seems only all to possible. And it appears to offer an explanation of what "acts like a 2nd Palace" means; it simply means being a second point from which "distance" can be measured, when advantageous.

 

[anarres]

Well, as much as I won't be able to build my second core 50 tiles from my Palace anymore I still think this change could improve the game.

Not telling us what the FP change was seems a little shortsighted on Firaxis' part, but meh, **** happens.

Now we know I will test it out in my games and use a close FP build. To be honest I found it unbalancing to get a leader and buld my FP in a neighbouring civ's land, using their cities as a base for my second core. I have a zillion examples of why this is unbalancing in favour of the human, but if anyone here can show me an example of the AI using a leader to rush an FP more than 25 tiles from home I will take it all back.

FWIW I will probably campaign to keep the FP like this (unless it turns out the FP isn't what we now think it is).

Sir Pleb, you seem insenced(sp?) at the change in FP role - can you tell me why gameplay will be worse because of this? Can you counter my argument that this will remove a hugely unbalancing effect of rushing a far away FP? I can understand you being annoyed at this bein an unannounced change in role (and hence strategy), but apart from that, what's the actual problem with the changes?

 

[The Last Conformist]

On re-reading a few posts, it seems total productivity will only fall if the new cities are closer to your Palace than is the FP/SPHQ? If that's right, I may very well end up agreeing the new system is an improvement, since conquering far away lands won't be punished with extra corruption at home.

What I still fail to understand is why the developers seems so hesitant to share basic game-mechanical info, like exactly how the FP is supposed to work. It can hardly be be to prevent number-crunchers from 'exploiting' the info, since past experience should tell them that it will be retroengineered if they don't share it, with the same end result. So why not earn some cheap gratitude and customer happiness by simply telling us?

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by SirPleb

Equally confusing is how to even describe such a Forbidden Palace and where it is best to build one. Will we find that the extreme of building it in the Palace is best? That would be rather boring in gameplay. Or that building it at some radius from the Palace based on the OCN multiplier and the player's city density is best? Or that it varies depending on how circular the shape of the Palace region is? Cases like those will be near impossible to explain to most players with clarity.

Most good players understand the difference between distance and number of cities corruption. They will have no problem with the new FP implementation: It acts as a Palace for distance corruption, and increases the OCN by 10% (20% for Communism).

On the other hand, newer or casual players will likely not care about getting maximum benefit from their FP. In their case, placing it somewhere within their Palace core should be sufficient. This is what the AI already does.

As to the optimal location for the FP, we can safely say that it's not in your capital (because that would waste the distance corruption reduction) and it's not in a region with 100% OCN corruption (because the distance corruption reduction would make no difference). It's obviously somewhere in between, probably in a region with a high distance corruption and low OCN corruption (like a former neighboring AI empire, with a loose city spacing). I like the fact that the best location for the FP is not completely obvious in all conditions, as it was before.

Even though I often go for domination, I also personally like the fact that continuous war no longer provides a continuous benefit to your economy, and I assume that many builders will feel the same way.

But as Qitai says, it's certainly different. Whether or not the new FP is better for the game, we'll have to see.

 

[Grille]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist

What I still fail to understand is why the developers seems so hesitant to share basic game-mechanical info, like exactly how the FP is supposed to work. It can hardly be be to prevent number-crunchers from 'exploiting' the info, since past experience should tell them that it will be retroengineered if they don't share it, with the same end result. So why not earn some cheap gratitude and customer happiness by simply telling us?

You took these words right out of my mouth.

 

[SirPleb]

Originally posted by anarres
Sir Pleb, you seem insenced(sp?) at the change in FP role - can you tell me why gameplay will be worse because of this? Can you counter my argument that this will remove a hugely unbalancing effect of rushing a far away FP? I can understand you being annoyed at this bein an unannounced change in role (and hence strategy), but apart from that, what's the actual problem with the changes?

What disturbs me is that the change to the FP might be deliberate, and that we find ourselves debating whether the effect of such a change is a good thing or not.

There are just two possibilities: The new FP behaviour is a bug or it is deliberate.

If it is a bug, there's little point in us debating its merits. If that is the case it is a disturbing and dismaying bug because it has appeared in a patch which had as one of its primary purposes the elimination of a bug in the same area. Not good.

If it is not a bug, my main concern is not whether it is a good thing. It is that I doubt anyone knows whether it is a good thing. We're finding the subject debatable here. And it is clear to me that regarding gameplay and balance issues, the developers at Firaxis are no better at predicting the effect of game-altering changes than the best players here. The only way to fully assess consequences of a change like this, and to rebalance the game to match if necessary, is extensive play testing. They cannot have done such play testing since this new behaviour comes along with a fix to previous bugs which would obscure results of previous playtesting of this change (if any.) So, a major change which may be game altering, and which may require rebalancing elsewhere, is being made at the same time as a patch which is urgently needed to address playability issues? If that is the case, I strongly object. I want a fix for issues which seriously interfere with playability of epic games in the initial release. I emphatically do not want anyone trying out new ideas which may or may not be good things, which may or may not introduce other bugs we haven't seen yet, and which definitely require play testing, at a time when I don't yet have what I feel is a playable version. Changes of that type should only be made at major release points when extensive play testing is part of the cyle. Not when fixes for pending bugs are the urgent priority.

My guess is that this change, if kept (as a bug or as an intended feature), will make gameplay less interesting. But that is a debatable point and I don't want to undermine the importance of what I've said above, so I won't make my case for that in this post. To me it doesn't matter so much whether this ends up being good or bad as that it isn't obvious which it will be, that it seems inevitable that at least some further tweaking will be required to get it right, and that this is the worst of times to make a change with those characteristics. That I happen to personally think it is also a bad move is a lesser issue.

[Edit] An attempt to clarify my resulting bottom line: I had no desire to beta test Conquests. I have limited interest in playing Conquests with the particular bugs it was released with. And I have as much desire to beta test a patch which introduces new changes as I had in beta testing originally, i.e. none.[/Edit]

 

[ProPain]

Originally posted by alexman


As to the optimal location for the FP, we can safely say that it's not in your capital (because that would waste the distance corruption reduction) and it's not in a region with 100% OCN corruption (because the distance corruption reduction would make no difference). It's obviously somewhere in between, probably in a region with a high distance corruption and low OCN corruption (like a former neighboring AI empire, with a loose city spacing). I like the fact that the best location for the FP is not completely obvious in all conditions, as it was before.

[/B]

Tested this, conquered neighbouring Aztec empire, build FP and have 5 corrupted shields out of 6 in FP city!! Also it seemed that the uncorrupted 'ring' around my capital increased. Need further testing, but I think buiding FP in your capital city isnt a bad idea at all.
If building FP in capital proves the way to go that would really hurt gameplay imho because that would leave only one viable strategy: 'Build FP ASAP in capital'

Also I hope Firaxis would enlighten us and tell us exactly what they meant to do with the FP. I rather see the old FP return but if not so I rather know so I can adapt my strategy....Or revert to PTW....

 

[JazzToucan]

Look... look... look...

While I wouldn't consider myself a casual player, I certainly wouldn't consider myself an experienced player that knows or even cares about RCP or any number of the tips and tricks listed on this board.

I couldn't tell you anything about algorithims or whoziwhatsit or green eggs and ham...

The developers should break this stuff down in laymen's terms and keep it at that.

I am under the impression that the FP is suppose to reduce corruption to a significant extent in any city you build it in, even if it's on another continent from your palace. Then, cities surrounding and nearer to the FP would have reduced corruption proportional to their distance with empire size being taken into account.

That's it. I -- and every other customer -- shouldn't have to be an expert player to guesstimate and theorize what the FP does and how a player should position it.

I would hope the people at Firaxis are testing this product over the holidays and at the start of next week they will let us know what exactly the FP does and whether or not it's working properly.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Originally posted by JazzToucan

The developers should break this stuff down in laymen's terms and keep it at that.

Don't listen to him! This whole discussion proves, if anything, that providing an explanation in "laymen's terms" isn't enough. If the developers simply told us how the FP is supposed to work, we could a) tell if it actually does work that way (ie, if there's still abug), b) discuss whether the change is preferable to the old (Vanilla/PTW) system, and what new strategies it gives rise to.

 

[dreiche2]

i think the bottom line for the last two posts (and some above) could be:

the developers should tell us *exactly* how the FP thing works, but, whatever it is, in the end it (and its implication for game strategy) should be at least understandable in laymens terms, right?

 

[The Last Conformist]

Of course. In a perfect world, they'd also supply the reasoning behind implementing the system.

 

[Marlor]

I'm a newbie to the forums, but I have been following this thread with a lot of interest.

I bought Civ3 more than a year ago. I played it for a few months, but in the end I ditched it, and went back to Civ2 and Alpha Centauri because of the rampant corruption that sucked all the fun out of the game. No matter what I did, I would still have near 100% corruption at the edges of my empire once it grew to a fair size (e.g. covering 40% of the land mass, with a fair amount of space between cities). This is playing at Warlord difficulty level, I can't imagine how bad things would be at the hardest difficulty.

I did everything I could to combat this: making sure cities are linked with roads, building courthouses, the forbidden palace, etc. But in the end, I stopped playing, because I decided that spending all my time fighting corruption wasn't much fun. Like most people, I play games a few hours per week to relax after work, and I don't want to sit with a calculator, and optimize my city placement in order to have a playable game.

When Conquests was released, I read a few reviews, which said that there were "new ways to fight corruption" in the expansion. So, I went out and bought it straight away. I really want to like Civ3 - I have spent countless hours on its predecessors, so if this new expansion allowed me to lessen the burden of corruption, then maybe I could come to enjoy this game as much as Civilization, Civ2 and Alpha Centauri.

Unfortunately, corruption seemed to be even worse once the expansion was installed, so I eagerly awaited a patch. Now it seems that the patch is making things even worse again.

The situation that SirPleb mentioned, where you can have declining production as your empire expands is atrocious. The Civ series has always been based on the concept of the 4 X's (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate). This situation removes the incentive of the second X.

As for the people who say that "maybe these changes to the FP are for the best", well the manual says that the FP "acts as a second capital", and the online help agrees. Anything less than this just increases the burden of corruption, which makes the game less enjoyable for the majority of people.

Maybe I have unrealistic expectations, because I wanted Civ3 to basically be a "historic version of Alpha Centauri", or "Civ2 with borders", but I keep coming back to a line in the manual:

One of Democracy's greatest advantages is its ability to squelch corruption and waste. Both are minimal in your cities.

Having cities with 90% corruption at the edges of my empire doesn't seem to be minimal to me. 50% would be acceptable, but the current situation is just over the top... and now with the patch seeming to lessen the performance of one of the great tools to fight corruption (the Forbidden Palace), I am not happy at all.

Basically, I bought Conquests with the expectation that it would make it easier to fight corruption - but at the moment it seems to be the opposite.

 

[akots]

Originally posted by SirPleb
And I have as much desire to beta test a patch which introduces new changes as I had in beta testing originally, i.e. none.[/Edit]

I think this is just a matter of taste. For example, I got original Civ3 2.5 years ago and played a month or so. It was a huge fun. There were indeed very many bugs. So, I decided not to play until there is a decent patch which turned out to be 1.29v. With PTW, it was different because it is Civ3 original just with added features but without major changes in the rules. It looks like though, Conquests have different rules which might be patched soon. But usually it takes a while. Probably, a year or so. The point is that you don't want to be involved with beta-testing. Well, neither do I. So, if you want, just play for fun. Because even if you get some good score and HOF entry, it will be then deleted. Because you used some exploit that will be then banned. Use PTW for HOF. And certainly for GOTM, at least in parallel. There is no way to keep the same scoring system in this case.

I personally enjoyed the game as it is without any patches. It is just good fun and pleasure to try to beat Sid level. Have not made it yet. BTW, this might be impossible without some exploit. And scenarios are fun also.

Easy question to developers. Why they make a secret out of the corruption equation? If players would know it, they can figure a way... And it is a relatively simple math anyhow with 4 variables and 6 or 7 tabulated parameters.