Corruption really needs to be toned down

[Valant2]

In the civilopedia it states that corruption is minimal under democracy.

Currently I am playing on a Tiny map in Chieftan difficulty. I am at peace (all other civs destroyed). My people are quite happy (less than 5% unhappy civ wide). I am under democracy for some time now. At least half of my cities have courthouses. I am currently in the Industrial Age. I am playing the Persian civilization who are Commercial which increases commerce and supposed to lower corruption. The following numbers were recorded by my City Advisor over the span of 60 turns.

Income: 1251
Corruption: 745
Corruption at 59.55%

Income: 1329
Corruption: 797
Corruption at 59.97%

Income: 1432
Corruption: 885
Corruption at 61.80%

I do not consider an overall income/production loss of 60% due to corruption minimal! I have noticed that corruption increases the farther you get from the capital even in Democracy now. I know this is not Civ2 but I miss zero corruption Democracy had in it. The outlying cities are OVER 90% loss due to corruption (even though they are fully developed land wise and have a pop of 12.

Is it not right to have a population 12 chieftan difficulty democratic non-war-wary at peace city that has its whole area built up (i.e. mines, railroads, irrigation, etc) to only produce 1 usable production unit and 1 usuable commerce unit per turn while loosing over 90% more due to corruption. This same town only produces 1 science unit (from the 1 commerce unit) per turn and it takes 60 turns to build a freaking temple!

Why in Republic and Democratic governments does corruption increase based on how far the city is from the capitol since in both governments are based on self governing from within each city rather than being imposed upon by a religous/militant dictator (i.e. depotism and monarchy).

If we take the US for example, which is a combination of a Republic and Democracy. The distance from the capitol does not effect ammount of corruption. The people in Alaska and Hawaii are not filled with organized crime and people rioting in the streets. If anything corruption increases when you get close to the capitol (damn politicians, heh). If you comit a crime the local police take care of you and your jailed locally unless you comit a crime against the government itself....but federal crimes occur much less often then non-federal crimes. So long story short...in the US the distance from the capitol does not effect the % capture or punishment rate from the local police....but corruption does exist. I am not trying to push realism aspect in the game with the above info.

 

[neotemujin]

I completely agree... corruption is way out of hand! I was thinking maybe along the lines of 25% average when they said 'significant'! At least in SMAC you could do many things to reduce inneficiancy! But there isn;t social engineering in civ3

 

[DarkSchneider]

I agree, I think they need to recalculate the way corruption works. Distance is too much of a factor in the calculation. Are they implying that the reason Californians are so decadent is because they're too far away from Washington Certainly many things should be a factor, but over 50% in a democracy is too much. Also, I think the technological age of a civilization should affect how much distance plays into corruption. For example, with computers, telephones and instant communication it's a lot easier to mangage an international empire. Then again, no real civilization has ever reached the size of the ones in our game, so maybe it really would be a problem. Regardless, I think no matter how far away there should never be a situation where corruption (or waste) is at 100%, that's just wrong.

Just my 2 cents

 

[Il Mafioso]

valant2,

Courthouses aren't as effective as they were in Civ2.

To decrease corruption in the modern era you want to research "Sofware Development"

Once you have that you can build the Major Wonder "The Civ3 Patch"



Seriously now,

I agree with you 100%

Corruption is beyond ridiculous. I'm seeing similar results to yours and I'm a democracy as well... heck I'm playing Chieftain to spend quality time in the Civilopedia to learn what changed, all my cities (ALL OF THEM) are saying they love me, yet the greedy bastards are stealing my mula, and instead of producing they're wasting their time....


....playing Civ?

Anyway... it's worse than you make it out to be.

I spent about an hour in the Editor trying to see if there were rules that could be changed to decrease corruption and guess what.... there are 6 levels of corruption (from best to worst):

minimal (best)
Nuisance
Problematic
Rampant
Catastrophic
Communal (worst)

minimal is only set for Democracy. So the HUGE corruption we're seeing is the MINIMAL amount we can edit in.

Despotism, where we start the game and the corruption in far cities is essentially 100% is only RAMPANT!!!!!!!!!!

Anarchy (am I glad I chose a religious civ that doesn't go into anarchy when switching govmt) uses Catastrophic.

And guess what government type uses "Communal?" .... Communism.

As if Communism wasn't a bad enough option in Civ2!

(Now if I remember Communism had no corruption in Civ2, so maybe the editor help file is wrong and Communal is NOT the worst but that's what the help file says).

Bottom line, I'm afraid that without a patch, we're screwed.

Alessandro

P.S. I guess this was implemented to eliminate ICS strategy. I wish someone from Firaxis would just go ahead and tell us what they were planning for when they designed the game... how many cities max did they expect us to have? 4-5? Over what area?

...and I think it's pretty much built into the system that we can FORGET about extending our empire across an ocean.

...although this is relatively realistic. I can't name a single empire that managed to successfully rule overseas dominions for a length of time.

(US rebelled against England, Spanish colonies did NOT obey Spain, they obeyed the governors planted there, who in essence were minikings themselves)

Rome prolly came the closest, but even though they ruled across the mediterraneum, I'm sure the situation was even worse than the spanish colonies.

 

[Dearmad]

I disagree- corruptions seems perfectly balanced to me- as a game concept it seems to play into the system just right. I'm not playing King level yet- but if this it at king level consider that it may be a difficulty factor for you to fight with. At Prince it plays JUST RIGHT for me.

 

[Portent]

Has anyone started with a civ that has 'lower corruption' as one of its attributes?

 

[Valant2]

I forgot to add...I am playing at CHIEFTAN level and my empire is experiencing an overall corruption rate of over 60%.

 

[betheballdanny]

Wow. I haven't been able to spread my cities out very far yet. I guess I should have been more upset when my governor decided to build the forbidden palace in a city right next to my capitol.

 

[amadeus]

"Communal" isn't the worst.

"Corruption and waste are a problem under Communism, but less than that experienced by a Monarchy. State control of the economy does standardize the loss of commerce and shields -- so that distance from your capital has no effect. Corruption and waste also increase as with the number of cities in your civilization." -- that's from the Civ3 manual, concering communist corruption.

I'm guessing, by that, the corruption belongs between "Nuisance" and "Problematic"...

 

[LoneWolf5050]

There is a setting to do with world sizes, that affects corruption and the optimal number of cities.

I mentioned it before in this thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7490

Check it out for the details. Basically, to avoid corruption on a large/huge map, your empire should cover a smaller percentage of land area than on a standard map. Could be a design bug. We'll see if Firaxis changes those settings. Or we could have more to learn about how to play the game.

--LW

 

[torero]

i just tried to play a game at prince level and was slaughtered by them damn french. i had too little room to expand

 

[bulletsponge]

Originally posted by Valant2


Income: 1251
Corruption: 745
Corruption at 59.55%

Income: 1329
Corruption: 797
Corruption at 59.97%

Income: 1432
Corruption: 885
Corruption at 61.80%

GOOD LORD!....ive never experienced anything like this!!...Im wondering if were are playign same game????...In my opinion, courthouses work just fine, based on seeing a city right before, then right after a courthouse is completed...then keeping an eye on my overall income/expense and how much im losing on corruption, almost never got over 20%....

 

[bulletsponge]

I just got an idea, based on something i read in another forum...What difficulty levels are yall playing on...those of you having outrageous corruption?...

 

[bulletsponge]

Now since Ive read thru these post again, it looks like everyone playing on Chieften is having the corruption problem, yet, me and Dearmad, not playign on cheiften, arent...try playing up on warlord and see if that does anything, if so, maybe Chieften is glitched?...

 

[Valant2]

The only thing I can think of that is causing my horrendous corruption rates in my Commercial Civ on a Tiny map on Chieftan level is that I have about 43 cities. My cities are not bunched up and are all spread out with no city overlap on their "big X" support range.

After checking the "optimal city" rates on the link to the other forum.....8 citys being optimal (optimal meaning corruption sets in after exceeding the optimal rate) on a Tiny map is kinda low considering I was able to plant 43 cities without overlap on a Tiny map that was randomly generated (i.e. not made by me to max land mass).

 

[Squirrel]

What's the problem? Your opponents have corruption too, don't they? So, the playing field is fair, isn't it?

I am too far away from US to have played the game yet, but it seems to me that people actually reach the modern era, build aircraft and spaceships and sometimes even win. Am I right? If corruption were so rampant that it made it impossible to reach the modern era, I could understand your complaints.

If corruption were lower, you would earn more trade. Then again research would go faster, so you may build a spaceship in year 1100ad, and that isn't much fun or what? In other words, a high corruption level may be there to balance the game.

 

[bulletsponge]

LOL...yeah...that would do it...having an excessively large empire will just add add and add more to corruption...

 

[Ranulf]

Originally posted by Il Mafioso
valant2,

P.S. I guess this was implemented to eliminate ICS strategy. I wish someone from Firaxis would just go ahead and tell us what they were planning for when they designed the game... how many cities max did they expect us to have? 4-5? Over what area?

...and I think it's pretty much built into the system that we can FORGET about extending our empire across an ocean.

...although this is relatively realistic. I can't name a single empire that managed to successfully rule overseas dominions for a length of time.

(US rebelled against England, Spanish colonies did NOT obey Spain, they obeyed the governors planted there, who in essence were minikings themselves)

While true that all of those empires had problems with corruption, they were all empires in times where communication was not instantaneous and people could not travel half-way across the world in a day Thus it was easy for local rulers to skim off the top

In my current chieftan dif. game, I control North America and South America but the cities down near the tip of S.A. are basically at 90% corrupt. While I don't expect civ3 to be totally realistic this is just insane

 

[Andiri]

"I can't name a single empire that managed to successfully rule overseas dominions for a length of time"

Hawaii, in the US. The corruption bug occurs even in democracies. Heck, you don't even need ocean -- even shallows is enough. Vancouver Island and the Florida Keys ought to be ungovernable.

How about Hong Kong under the British Empire? Somehow I doubt that corruption was so rampant that the Brits never got any taxes out of Hong Kong. Indeed, there were many reasons that the Europeans gave up their overseas colonies, but not being able to make any money off of them wasn't high on the list.

 

[kokaku]

Here's my situation...
Regent game, farflung city with 6 population and lots of terrain bonuses (this place should be a huge producer).
The city has a courthouse (supposed to cut corruption right?), the gov't is Republic AND YET all but 1 production is lost to corruption, all commerce is lost to corruption.
So, my civ actually makes more money being a Monarchy than switching to Republic for its supposed corruption cut and commerce bonus.

btw, here's a cute trick to get around the production problems this causes...
Make workers and have them plant and cut down forests repeatedly on the same square. 10 shields/10 turns (in addition to the 10 shields produced by the city). More if you have xtra workers to cut the time.