Corruption issues

[Ex0dus]

I have played civ a long time (and civ 3 for that matter) so I know what should reduce corruption (courthouse/police station, connect roads to capital, forbidden palace, etc) but for some reason in my latest game (Regent, 204x204 map size, optimal cities set to 120, 18 civs, republic government) my corruption levels spiral out of control after i build so many cities (starts getting crazy after about city #40, and I have 67). All of these are my own cities, no conquests yet.

By crazy I mean corruption levels are well above 90% (cities that should produce 20 trade produce 1). I have connected said cities to the capital, built courthouses and etc but with minimal effect (at best it gets to about 80% corruption).

I dont remember if civ 3 complete came prepatched to the latest version of conquests or if there were any corruption related bugs i should be aware of.

I checked an old save from my previous install and I had many more cities (many conquered) and there was next to no corrpution (same govt, though this game was much later and had railroads and police stations avaliable) and yet not many of these cities had courthouses (which tells me i had few to no corruption problems in the early game either).

any ideas?

-Ex0dus

 

[Spoonwood]

Post a save.

 

[Ex0dus]

My game has added techs, units and buildings (the buildings dont use any additional graphics or techs so they should be fine and the techs and units havent come into play yet). Will the save work regardless?

-Ex0dus

 

[ThinkTank]

You should probably also post the scenario files then, but I'm not an expert on this. Did you create the mod yourself? I mean, one thing you can do in a scenario is change the corruption settings, you may want to check these.

 

[Optional]

Civ III complete came with the latest patch, 1.22. If you start up the game, you'll see this start up screen with an eastern looking swordwielder against an orange background. On that screen, you should see the number 1.22 in the bottom left corner.

The corruption is milder in the patched up version, so that shouldn't be the problem. In an unmodified game, corruption never gets higher than 90%, and the rounding is generous; you'll always get to keep at least one shield, and when you're making more than 10, you'll get to keep at least two.

I don't know which modification has led to these crazy levels of corruption in your game, but you can't correct this halfway a game; the game will always continue to behave according to the rules set at the start of the game.
Apart from the optimal number of cities setting in 'world sizes', there are also settings that affect corruption in 'difficulty settings'. I have never meddled with those, so I can't tell you exactly what they're doing.
You might not want to, but I would simply advise to return to default rules. There's not much point in uploading a save here if this is a scenario that other players don't have, bacause the game would crash when it failed to find entries for those buildings you've described.

 

[Ottoman]

Key Points:
-Place your cities exteremely well on the map, if it is necessary mathematically calculate the tiles for gold,food and shield to get the maximum profit.
-Later stage in the game, place your capital center of your empire if it is necesarry.
-Courthouse is a must city improvement for the further cities from the capital, you have to have them.
-Have tax collectors in the big cities, population around 10-12. Marketplace and Bank to maximize your income also needed.
-Trade with other civilizations, not happen to be your neighbors. Best option would be from the other continents. (this is an extra help option for the economy if you really suffer from corruption that bad)

 

[Ex0dus]

Yes it technically is set up as a scenario (as I changed quite a few rules, added units, etc). I have now turned the universal corruption down to 80% of its value for the difficulty I play and already had the optimal cities at 80 (which is odd because of the insane corruption because i only have 67). I will crank that up to about 120 though and see where i get.

The funny thing is that i built courthouses in most of the out of the way cities with next to no effect. At best it only cut corruption by maybe 10% (if anything in some cases).

Still my economy is awesome (due mostly to the sheer number of cities) and i can research any tech i want in 4 turns (the minimum number in my game) with money left over. In no real way is the corruption costing me my edge (yet). Just trying to figure out exactly how the corruption spiraled out of control even with courthouses, being connected to my capital via roads and being under the optimal city limit.

Funny thing is that my save from a previous install (with very similar rules) has no problems with corruption (though it is much further in the game and has railroads, police stations, etc). I wonder if maybe railroads had a major impact on the corruption (though i dont remember corruption problems earlier in that game, but its been awhile).

By the way, due to the landmass, most everyone gets a starting position from which they can expand pretty evenly in all directions, thus its rare for anyone to need a capital change until they take over a significant amount of foreign territory.

-Ex0dus

 

[Daeron]

Could it be distance corruption?

 

[Ex0dus]

Well my country is relatively huge, its approx 47 tiles wide by about 60 long (checking the grid coordinates in the editor and accounting for the irregularities in landmass shape). Most AI civs by comparison on average are 1/2 to 2/3 the size of this so if it is distance corruption, they must be hammered as well (i should check in game with diplomats).

Apparently I need to make a new map or seriously rebalance this one and I now realize my my empire area out does the AI far too much for the game to be (remotely) balanced. Just goes to show what "looks" almost right at first glance isnt exactly balanced when it comes to gameplay =p

Still my old map (upon looking at it) gave me an even far greater advantage. It really must have been railroads or forbidden palaces (almost perfectly placed if it were FP) that crushed the distance corruption issue.

I hardly trust the default placement by the game so i preset starting locations, though apparently i made a few far too large spaced and got one of them (there were 3-4 of the 18 where they had more space than they should have). I generally space everyone far away from each other to aviod early warfare (even between ai's) and I like everyone to be powerful for big wars down the line =p

Just goes to show sometimes, the simplest answer is also the right one (and sadly often overlooked). I feel dumb now >_>

-Ex0dus

 

[Optional]

ExOdus, on a standard map a town 14 tiles away from the capital is already completely corrupt (90%).
Courthouses don't help much, although, if you like modding, you could consider giving more buildings a corruption lowering effect. A courthouse will do nothing in a town that's corrupt to the bone.
Railroads don't help lower corruption, as far as I know. Ordinary roads, yes.
The commercial trait adds 25% to the number of optimal cities, which is something that's noticable.
A well placed Forbidden Palace helps, it lowers corruption in the whole empire, particularly in the towns surrounding the Forbidden Palace. But again: place it in an area that's already to the bone corrupt, and surrounding towns will still be hopeless (FP town itself will be fine).
Government makes a difference: Despotism is terrible. Anything else is better, and Communism gives communal corruption, which means corruption is relatively low empire wide.

Advanced players that play the standard game will always have a lot of scientists in corrupt towns. The contribution of scientists, taxmen, engineers and policemen is uncorrupted.

 

[Ex0dus]

Im not really saying corruption is ruining me, I am just trying to figure out exactly how my current game is going nutty on corruption and the old one had next to none at all (both governments being republic, rules being the same, etc). The old game save is on a 230 x 230 map so technically i should have more space, but when i shrunk the map, i also shrunk down th average area for each position appropriately (though admittedly i messed up a bit when it came ot placement for a few).

However if your 14 tiles away calculation is right (14% of the map on a 100 x 100 map) then i may need to turn down the overall corruption levels down a bit, as the way i have civs spaced out, theyll have insanely bad cities even on their non conquered borders. Personally I can handle the corruption for now (my economy is fine at the moment) but if the AI cant handle it well, then i will have to do something. I really thought courthouses were worth more than negligable assistance. Older civ games (IIRC, it has been awhile) hald the courthouse chop corruption in half i think. Rank corruption should not be an issue at all, so if this is all distance corruption, something needs serious tweaking on my rules end (though i dont want to get rid of corruption altogether as it is a part of the game).

-Ex0dus

 

[eldar]

Courthouses don't help much, although, if you like modding, you could consider giving more buildings a corruption lowering effect. A courthouse will do nothing in a town that's corrupt to the bone.

In Civ3/PtW, they do diddly squat in uber-corrupt cities (but of course there are other ways of significantly reducing corruption).

In C3C [under a non-Communist govt.], they reduce the maximum corruption/waste in a city by 10%, as do Police Stations. Therefore a city with a CH and a Police Station will be at most 70% corrupt - the corruption cap in C3C is fixed at 90% - no matter where it is. (One upshot of this is that in C3C, FP/SPHQ+CH+Police Station = 0% corruption, as the FP/SPHQ reduces corruption in its city to a maximum of 20%.)

Therefore adding more buildings with the "Reduces Corruption" flag set will help far-flung cities.

If you're keen on modding and don't mind skewing the game balance a bit, hit the "Reduces Corruption" flag on a building given out for free by a Wonder e.g. Granary, Barracks, etc. I like the idea of a Barracks reducing corruption - troops in the city keep the local governor more in line ;-)

 

[Ex0dus]

I like the idea of barracks turning down corruption. To me something has to make some amount of logical sense for it to be implemented. Alternatively I might go in and make a special barracks that only works for certain kinds of governments to do both this and produce veteran troops. Maybe make Sun Tzu's expire or something to give incentive, or even make a government dependent Great wonder produce one of this new building in every city (as not all governments really rely on military to enforce the law).

-Ex0dus

 

[Optional]

Thanks for the correction, Eldar. I was just telling lies about courthouses.

Sounds like in a captured city with the Colussus all these improvements would make a difference. Colussus = corruption cap of 80%, + courthouse + police station would make a corruption cap of 60%.

 

[Spoonwood]

With respect to Optional's comments on corruption and "14" tiles on a standard map see the saves here.

Advanced players that play the standard game will always have a lot of scientists in corrupt towns.

As the save demonstrates, no more than in core towns for me.

 

[Optional]

What I did was having a glance at a save of a succession game I'm in, where we did seem to hit corruption much earlier:

Sorry, picture is not completely clear: the last numbers (11,14,13,14,13) represent the distance in tiles, the first percentages are corruption and waste.
Roads and Forbidden Palace already built, and even in the direction of these completely corrupt towns.
I do see that corruption is much lower in your save, Spoonwood. This would of course affect the choice of going for scientists or not.

 

[Spoonwood]

Pretty sure you guys have more cities, since you have two named 021 and 022.

 

[undertoad]

I don't know which modification has led to these crazy levels of corruption in your game, but you can't correct this halfway a game; the game will always continue to behave according to the rules set at the start of the game.
Apart from the optimal number of cities setting in 'world sizes', there are also settings that affect corruption in 'difficulty settings'. I have never meddled with those, so I can't tell you exactly what they're doing.
You might not want to, but I would simply advise to return to default rules. There's not much point in uploading a save here if this is a scenario that other players don't have, bacause the game would crash when it failed to find entries for those buildings you've described.

Interesting point. I'm busy having a serious dig into the corruption model myself at the moment (see my thread here), and I'm playing with an - I thought - simple "lower corruption" mod I made. Nothing changed apart from the Corruption rules, which are many:

- Basic Optimum City Number (OCN) for each map size.
- OCN modifier for each difficulty level
- Corruption modifier for each difficulty level (slider). Not sure exactly how this works at the moment.
- Corruption type for each each govt type (Problematic, Rampant etc)
- Corruption effect of buildings/Wonders (not changed in my mod).

My starting point is alexman's formulas here. I believe these formulas were only tested in C3C (COnquests) v.1.15.

Anyway, with that detail out of the way, to address your point and Exodus's difficulty:

1. I'm guessing that a save-game must contain a reference to the mod-file (.biq) it was started with - otherwise how would it know how to continue the game/how to handle e.g. these weird units in the mod? But this would imply that it's possible to change the rules in the .biq halfway through the game, and have an effect - unless all the .SAV files from the very first take a snapshot of the .biq rules, and pass it on to each other like an inheritance. I'm still trying to understand .SAV files, but this seems unlikely given file sizes. (Excdus, I'm a bit unclear - did you post that you changed the rules halfway through the game and saw an effect in-game?).

[EDIT: ainwood here states that C3C stores all the rules etc from the scenario in the save. I believe the author of CivAssistII... Exodus, what version are using?]

Exodus, sorry if this is off your topic - to address your point:

2. The corruption model is deeply weird. If you take a quick look at alexman's equations in the link, you'll see that though distance corruption is pretty linear, rank corruption is deeply non-intuitive. This is no criticism of alexman's work, rather exactly the opposite - I've no idea (but I'm very impressed) how alexman managed to reverse-engineer such a completely crazy equation.

I'm still uncertain how changing the Corruption slider in a mod affects the calculations: alexman makes no mention of this, and it's something I'm hoping to do some work on if I can figure out how to hack .SAV files.

What I'm getting at is that the interaction between the corruption model in the game, large numbers of cities, and changed corruption rules in a mod could well result in things that for lack of a technical word I'll call "freakouts". I mean situations where a system behaves normally and linearly in almost all circumstances, but just a few combinations of inputs make it suddenly go all bizarre. You could call these "bugs", but if the actual game code works as alexman describes it then these "freakouts" are really just normal, logical behaviour of complex equations - from a pure maths point of view at least!

The only thing that seems to be certain, as eldar pointed out, is that max corruption is always 90% - or less with a Courthouse or Police Station (-10% each subtractive)/FP or SPHQ (-70% each subtractive, with a minimum result of 0%).

In my Excel worksheet I'm using as a first-version tool, which shows the intermediate calculations, I'm regularly getting corruption levels of 190% and above for distant cities (e.g. rank 103), before this "max" rule is applied. That gives an idea of how weird the calculations are.

I'd be very glad to have a look at your save-game if you post it, and include the scenario file that incorporates your rule-changes. Unfortunately I only have C3C (Conquests v.1.22), so I can't really help if you're using a previous version.

 

[eldar]

I've no idea (but I'm very impressed) how alexman managed to reverse-engineer such a completely crazy equation.

The answer is in the first post of his thread:

We also recently got some inside information (a look at some of the actual corruption code)

 

[Ex0dus]

Undertoad: These are two different games. I did not edit the rules halfway through for effect. However, this most recent game is a "child" scenario of the first. In otherwords a long time ago I went through and added a bunch of units, techs, etc, generated myself a map and saved it as a scenario. Recently I got back into the game again and found these old savegames/scenario on a disk. I then opened up the old scenario, changed the map size down to 204x204 and generated myself a new map. Nothing else new generated.

I have only owned civ 3 complete, so i did not use two different versions of the game.

As far as your lower corruption mod undertoad, i would be greatly interested in it. I'd really hate to resort to adding a bunch of "reduces corruption" effects to buildings. Not looking to remove corruption from the game altogether, but if its as crippling for the ai as it could have been for me, it is probably making for a less competitive game.

-Ex0dus