Corruption has certainly been put in the game for balance, but I assume you guys know this.
I don't have Civ4, but I believe there you pay maintanance for cities. It seems Firaxis really wanted to do something against those big, sprawling empires that you'll see all over the place in Civ3.
Absolutely, I understand the intention to dampen down the runaway effects of huge empires. Something isn't quite right, though. Looks like me and Firaxis don't see eye to eye on this: because managing a big, sprawling empire is exactly what I love about Civ. Sure, I have to
earn that empire, and look after it, and accept that having a such a big empire carries a price - but having outlying parts of the empire simply not worth managing seems boring to me.
I'm not quite sure what "isn't right": that's why I'm taking a deep look into how corruption works. Maybe my findings (which, once I've got the basic game mechanics firmly understood, will be concentrating on the effect of modding the corruption parameters) will allow me to make a mod that definitely leaves corruption in (I'm not looking for a CivII/CivI experience here - I like CivIII, warts and all!), but makes it more manageable - something you can seriously reduce by devoting effort/shields/money/attention and management to it.
My thoughts are a bit vague at this stage, but I think it's waste as opposed to corruption that makes the game frustrating for me. Waste is a good idea in itself - with wasteage happening, you can't rampage through an enemy's cities at a faster and faster rate, using each captured city to immediately pump out more units, quickly and right on the front line. In that scenario, common in CivI/CivII, it was pretty easy to ignore corruption in conquered cities, with a big enough treasury. But in CivIII, your invasion army has to be self-sustaining and come from the core (resistance also contributes to this) - I like this.
But waste to the extent that it occurs in CivIII goes too far IMHO. It makes conquered cities beyond a certain point irredeemably useless, except as:
- culture-border generators. Devices to tone down that annoying AI habit of sending out Settlers to build cities in tiny gaps.
- places for units to get defensive bonuses
- specialist farms
As production centres, they're just a waste of time,
even in the long term. And for me, managing and improving production is a tie with making war as the top attraction of playing Civ. Yep, I'm a schizoid warmonger/builder!
I'm fine with the short-term effects of waste. But I'd like to be able to do something about it long-term. OK, I can't get that newly-conquered city to build its own defensive Infantry garrison - it would take 50 turns, so I have to provide my own. That's a fair game mechanic. So how about building a Temple/Marketplace to at least work towards WLTKD, or a Courthouse? This is about paying attention to corruption and trying to do something about it. But, beyond a certain city rank, any of these sensible measures - which involve sacrificing the city's production for a long-term gain - has an absolutely marginal effect. There is simply nothing you can do to reduce corruption/waste below 70-80%.
So maybe some careful tweaking of corruption-reducing buildings in a mod (or adding new ones, increasing their cost) is the way forward. I don't quite understand the equations well enough at this stage.
</rant>!
Ex0dus, I've attached my mod. It's probably a bit clumsy. Open it up in the editor, take a look at these bits under Rules:
a) Difficulty Levels tab; Percentage of Optimal Cities (increased), Corruption slider (decreased).
b) World Sizes tab; Optimum Number of Cities (increased).
and you'll see what I've done.
