Do you think you understand corruption (pre-C3C)?

[Plume]

Hi everyone. excellent work alexman. How did come up with this formula? Must have been a lot of work. Anyway, I checked it in my current game and it consistently gives me more corruption than there actually is. Here's an example:

I'm republic, marla's huge map (size 254x204, I took 254 for my calculations), optimal number of ciites =32, the difficulty factor (deity) is 0.69 so my final Nopt=22. I have a forbidden Palace in the middle of the United States and my capital is far in Europe. Let's look at the 8'th farthest city (from the forb palace). The city is connected and its actual distance is 6 tiles south-east and 3 tiles south-west. This gives a distance of sqrt(6^2+3^2)=6.71 (right?). I've sold everything in the city (and the city is not in WLTKD). So, your formula says the corruption should be
0.85( 3.6*6.71*(2/3)/254 + 8/(22*2) )= 20.8%

So, out of 28 shields and 54 commerce from terrain, I should lose 6 shields and 11 commerce. However, I only lose 5 shields and 9 commerce.

Now if I leave a courthouse in the city. The fomula gives 18.1% of corruption. So, I should be losing 5 shields and 10 commerce. However, I'm only losing 4 shields and 7 commerce (in other words, the formula is off by 3 commerce).

So, I did the same calculation for 17 cities and in almost every case, the formula is off, but never by much. So the formula works well but (if my calculations correspond to what you had in mind) is not perfect (yes I know you said that). So I thought eh, why not try to improve it. Here's where it gets interesting.

Basically, your formula says that for a fixed map, fixed government, for cities with no improvement, cities not in WLTKD, connected to the network and having a rank less than Nopt, you should get
A*distance+B*rank
corruption, where A=0.85*3.6*(2/3)/254 and B=0.85/44 (in my case). What I tried was to input my 17 sets of data and try to find constants A and B which would work better. To my great surprise, no pair of constants work! In other words, if I take any numbers A, B between 0 and 3, take A*dist+B*rank as the corruption formula and calculate the difference between the predicted corruptions and the actual ones, there is always a difference (over all the cities, with waste and corruption, I get a total over 19).

I'm not sure if I'm clear (or helpful) but it seems like there is another term in the formula (time maybe?). I have no idea. Anyway, I'll definitely work on this a lot more after my exam... Sorry for not giving an answer and criticizing like this. Overall, the formula works quite well, it's off in about half the cases and even when it is off, it's usually by one or two (shields or commerce) so that's very good. I just wish we had the perfect formula.

 

[Justus II]

I'm not sure, but is it possible that because you are playing on a non-standard size map (not a true square) that the map size factor would be different? Just a thought, might account for a slight difference.

 

[BohW_RedSlayer]

Ohhhh, nice postings....
But for me (well I am rather new here) this is a little bit too "technical"....
So perhaps can someone tell me the clues I should make out of this postings.....
Since Civ1 I am a expansonistic expansonist, so I have really lots of problems with corruption/waste.....
And when does it make sense to build courthouse/police station????

THX
RedSlayer

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by chiefpaco
Over in other boards, I see you mention that factories' improvement is subject to corruption. I have tested this & have cases to show otherwise. i.e. their behaviour is similar to marketplaces & banks: multiplying the productive shields, not the total.

Another note, thanks to Grey Fox for noticing this first, a city with production over 20 (i.e. 21 and above) gets a 2nd shield no matter what. I'm not sure if that's a product accounted for by your formula, but it is behaviour we've witnessed.

As an example for my 2 statements, a distant city with 20 shields total, has 19 wasted & 1 productive. If I optimize my workers and get another shield, I get 19 wasted and 2 productive. If I then add a factory, I get 19 wasted and 3 productive.

But this actually means that the factory is subject to corruption. Look at it this way: You produce 20 shields with 90% corruption, leaving 2 productive shields. If you build a factory, you get 3 productive shields, which is still 90% of the 30 you would produce with zero corruption. If the factory had not been subject to corruption, then you would've got a productive shield bonus of 10 shields after building the factory (50% of the non-corrupted production).

 

[royk4]

Hi folks,
Found the corruption analysis to be quite interesting and
informative. Unfortunately, as it stands, corruption as
it currently works in Civ 3 is one of the things that
I really don't like about the game as the implementation
doesn't make much sense. If Firaxis really wanted to
model corruption then I think they should have looked
at what causes it in the real world and try a variant.

My thinking is corruption is often caused by the inability of
people to get services from the government. In this
regard, you can model corruption like pollution but the
main source of corruption is a large population w/ inadequate
civic improvements. The thing that is interesting about
this is that it allows for the possibility of a city despite
being near the capital to be highly corrupt if you built
nothing but a temple and church. A large population
has demands for entertainment (colusseum), education
(library/university), financial services (bank/marketplace),
jobs (manufacturing plant/factories), and law enforcement
(police station/courthouse). What you could do is have each
of these improvements also have an impact on lowering
corruption/waste just like the mass transit and recycling
plants lower pollution. U could also couple their effectiveness
to government type - ie, despotism could have a penalty that
subtracts from their ability to control waste/corruption whereas
democracy allows 100% of their ability. In this fashion, you
have to build more civic improvements for that city to remain
viable as it continues to grow. A small town may be ok w/
a library but a major metropolis needs a university.

What do you guys think?

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by royk4


My thinking is corruption is often caused by the inability of
people to get services from the government

That's an interesting approach. I am living in Bangkok, Thailand, and I find that the US government services here are much superior to the ones in the USA. Why? Well, it could be that there are more goverment employees here, in ratio to the US citizens that need help, than there are proportionally in the USA. Or maybe the government employees inside the USA don't give a ****. Maybe both. It's certainly not as simple as it is modeled in CIV3.

 

[chiefpaco]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne

But this actually means that the factory is subject to corruption. Look at it this way: You produce 20 shields with 90% corruption, leaving 2 productive shields. If you build a factory, you get 3 productive shields, which is still 90% of the 30 you would produce with zero corruption. If the factory had not been subject to corruption, then you would've got a productive shield bonus of 10 shields after building the factory (50% of the non-corrupted production).

Funny how the math works out there. However, factories modify "productive" (the blue ones) shields only.

Factories increase production by 50%. So, in this case, 2 shields *150% (1.5) = 3.

Case II:
I have a city with 12 wasted shields & 58 "productive" shields. It has a factory & hydro plant. Waste % as a whole is 12/(12+58) = 17.1%

If I sell the factory (& thereby eliminating the hydro effect), I still get 12 wasted shields but now just 29 productive ones. Waste % as a whole is 12/(12+29) = 29.3%

By this example, the fact that 12 wasted shields remained shows that factories affect productive (blue) shields only. It also illustrates alexman's other resolution, that waste % will decrease by adding improvements that multiply your productive output.

 

[IDSmoker]

I've been playing Civ3 for awhile, but corruption in my current game has me considering using the editor for the first time ever.

My current game is: Regent, Huge, Pangea, 16 civs, and I'm playing as China. I'm currently a Monarchy in the early Middle Ages (my Great Library is about to stop producing).

I've taken out a few other civs and my empire has already grown well over the 32 city optimal limit. This has caused max corruption in cities that would still be productive based on their distance. I realize that there are several things I could do with these 'excess' cities, but there a still a couple of other civs I would like to eventually conquer! <grin>

In short, I seem to have run into the corruption limit imposed by the 'optimal # of cities' before I got anywhere near the corruption limit caused by distance. I proved this (to myself) when I saw a formerly productive city become useless after I took a few cities.

My questions are:
1) What are the pros/cons to using the editor to increase the 'optimal # of cities'?
2) Besides corruption, what else is impacted by this number?
3) What is the 'safe' upper limit for this number? (and Why?)
4) Anything a first-time user of editor needs to know?

Thanks for any help with this and especially thanks to the original author of this thread. I've found the information in this thread extremely helpful.

 

[BillChin]

Originally posted by BohW_RedSlayer
Ohhhh, nice postings....
But for me (well I am rather new here) this is a little bit too "technical"....
So perhaps can someone tell me the clues I should make out of this postings.....
Since Civ1 I am a expansonistic expansonist, so I have really lots of problems with corruption/waste.....
And when does it make sense to build courthouse/police station????

THX
RedSlayer

My interpretation is that you must limit the number of cities to deal with corruption. Playing on smaller maps helps as the optimal number of cities increases little as map size increases. Once you have double the "optimal" number of cities for a map size, nothing helps cities on the outer rim. Change your style of play and plan on a lot of Spaceship victories and you'll experience less corruption. An alternative is to use the editor to change the optimal number.

It is useful to build courthouses in cities that are relatively far from the capital, but still one of the closer cities to the capital or Forbidden Palace. If there are many cities that are closer (the optimal number in the editor), the courthouse and police station do not help. The courthouse and police station reduce the distance factor in the formula, but not the number of cities factor. If a player has a few cities, with some far from the capital, the courthouse and police station help a great deal.

There is a new patch due this Friday (4/19) so maybe Firaxis tweaks the formula a bit or adds some more ways to deal with the problem. I certainly hope so, because the current formula creates a problem with no solution after an empire exceeds double the optimal number of cities.

For the follow up that got posted while I was writing this, I think many players have set the optimal number to 999 without any ill effects. Distance is still a factor, but number of cities ceases to be one. One downside is that it makes ICS strategies favored by Aeson, overwhelmingly powerful. (ICS = Infinite City Sleaze, packing in as many cities as possible in the smallest possible area)

 

[Barrius]

I have heard that staying in We Love The King Day for multiple turns will also help corruption. For example, if you keep your city in WLTKD for 50 straight turns will corruption be less on the 50th turn than it was on the first? Has anyone tested this?

 

[warpstorm]

Of course, all of this will have to be redone on Friday with 1.21f on the streets and its changes.

 

[Sebastian]

Plume, try using (254+204) / 2 as your factor instead of of 254. I don't know if this will work but using 229 should predict less corruption.

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by Sebastian
Plume, try using (254+204) / 2 as your factor instead of of 254. I don't know if this will work but using 229 should predict less corruption.

Sebastian, very impressive intuition. I didn't mention it in the initial post, but that's in fact what I used for the corruption calculation program. I found that for a 100x50 map it was very accurate.

 

[TheDS]

Originally posted by IDSmoker
My questions are:
1) What are the pros/cons to using the editor to increase the 'optimal # of cities'?
2) Besides corruption, what else is impacted by this number?
3) What is the 'safe' upper limit for this number? (and Why?)
4) Anything a first-time user of editor needs to know?

1. The pros are that the absurd corruption goes away! You can then build or have more cities than you otherwise would, and you don't have to pull your hair out wondering why it's imnpossible to get anything done.

The cons are that the number of cities you must have before beign allowed to build the Forbidden Palace is hard-coded to be half the optimal-cities value, so if you think you're swift by setting it to 999, you're going to have to build 500 cities before you can get that small wonder. On the other hand, if you leave the value low, then build it when you can, and raise the value later, other civs might not have the opportunity to build it.

An additional note: Other civs don't go above the limit, in my experience. If you raise the limit, they will start expanding too. This means they will fill up their territory and come looking for yours. If you have a low limit, then it degenerates into an agonizingly slow race for space.

4. Don't screw it up!

Actually, just don't overdo it; don't go changing everything there is to change. Make a change, then see what it does. A lot of the values you'll find in there were carefully balanced. If you feel the modern units are woefully underpowered, simply multiplying them by some factor is not the answer. Keep in mind how you would feel if you were on the receiving end of a much more powerful enemy. No, I don't expect knights to withstand a cavalry charge all that often, but it does happen occasionally.


Alexman:

WOW! You're the man!

The rest of you mokes:

(I hope moke is not a really foul word, like "fanny" is...)

I can't believe you would suggest that the current "optimal number of cities" is anything but a massive boondoggle! What am I supposed to do with all those idiots that attack me? Let them, for fear of absorbing them? Sorry, but CONQUEST IS AN OPTION! if it wasn't, then we should call the game something else; something unflattering.

Maybe some wacko thought it was ok to raze every enemy city you come across, but I DON'T! I take the things, I get stronger for it (eventually), and I keep the schmucks from just plopping another city down, negating all I worked for. Why bother playing if you can't save the enemy's people from themselves? Why should my enlightened leadership be forced into certain avenues because some body else wanted me to slaughter billions of innocent digital citizens, instead of just installing my governor and leading them to greatness?

I like turn-based games because I get a chance to see what I'm doing. But that doesn't mean I like to spend 50000000 turns researching enough techs to get me to space! I can appreciate the minimum required research time (and I upped it a little to 6 turns) and the maximum allowed research time (I left that alone), but that doesn't mean I want hundreds of turns consisting of <enter> <enter> <enter> <enter> all in a row. I'm playing a game so I can do something.

If you want to reduce my micromanagement workload, which I would definitely appreciate, the solution isn't a better auto-governor. I don't really trust the things. (Of course, MOO3 will force you to use them, so they'd better be good!) The solution is to reduce the amount of crap I have to build.

I just worked my way through a SMACX binge, and each time I finished the game, I still had stuff to build in even my oldest cities. The build queue is helpful, and maybe some day I'll try the auto-governors again (they're supposed to be really good inthe new patch, right?), but I think there's just too much crap to build.

Let's treat structures more like units. When you get a new unit, it obsoletes an older one (often). So as you are able to build newer structures that do the same thing, they should obsolete older structures. I shouldn't have to build a marketplace, then a bank, then a stock market, then a.... anyway, you get the gist of it.

Now before you whine and say "But banks cost too much to be a first option!", the answer is simple(ish): make the cost flexible. Small cities will pay less for that stock market than a large one. The stock market will still cost more then the market place, but it won't be 10 times as much. It'll be a gentler progression, like units are, except bigger cities will have to spend a little more industry to build them (even though they will generally be building them faster because of their higher production values).

And that ties directly into doing away with the "ideal number of cities" fallacy. (How, I have no idea, but I had to cover that sidetrack SOMEHOW!)

So anyway, we do away with this ridiculous limit, because it makes no sense. No need for a geologist, and certainly no need to put a limit of the number of them either!

 

[Cryolithic]

I have to admit, if it wasn't for the email I had gotten about 1.21, I may never have played Civ3 again. I am the person who plays Civ3 to rule the world with an iron fist. I'm there to conquer everybody else, on the biggest map possible. Corruption made this near impossible, and it made it so tedious as to be boring. I guess I'll have to see how much of a difference this all makes.

</Cryolithic>

 

[BillChin]

From the chat transcript posted on Apolyton by Spiffor
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47932

(theGreyFox) Question: How much does, and how does Courthouses and Police stations affect corruption? Different between Waste and Corruption?
(Soren_Johnson_Firaxis) greyfox: it is the same effect for both waste and corruption... they basically cut the difference in half and add 1/4 of the optimal # of cities (which would be 4 on a normal map)

(theGreyFox) Question: Each of the buildings add 1/4 to the Optimum number?
(Soren_Johnson_Firaxis) greyfox: yes.. the FP and being Commercial has a similar effect (not sure about their values)

(theGreyFox) Firaxis: Oh, I thought you meant that Courthouses & Policestations Added 1/4 of the optimum... silly me...
(Soren_Johnson_Firaxis) greyfox: no that is what I meant (i think)... if a city has no courthouse or police station, the optimum cities value is 16. If it has both, the optimum value becomes 24.

(Aeson) For only that city right Soren?
(Soren_Johnson_Firaxis) aeson: right

(panag6) but courthouses also affect nearby city's , right ?
(Soren_Johnson_Firaxis) panag: courthouses only effect the city they are in
(panag6) and policestations ?
(Soren_Johnson_Firaxis) same

 

[chrisk01_uk]

So courts and police have a second effect. If all your cities that lie between NOpt and 1.5NOpt have courts and police, then that can reduce corruption by moving them from the harsher formula to the nicer one.

If you get courts and police in all the cities that lie between 1.5NOpt and 2.25NOpt then these can also have corruption less than 95% because for them

0.5 < [2NCit/3NOpt - 0.5] < 1

This means that with effort a Large (NOpt=24) map can sustain perhaps 50 broadly productive cities... YEAAY!!

One query. Can you clairfy what determines how the system determines a city's NCit? Is it simply distance from the capital, or what?

 

[Arathorn]

Any chance of this getting reworked for 1.21f? I find the results very interesting and hope to implement them into my gameplay. But I'm curious as to the effects of the new patch on these issues.

Arathorn

 

[alexman]

Most parts of the formula still work under 1.21f. It seems that they didn't change anything except the effect of police stations, courthouses, and WLTK on corruption due to number of cities.

For each one of those things, add one fourth of Nopt to the optimal number of cities for that city. As always, WLTK affects shield waste only.

In the Apolyton chat, Soren mentioned that the FP had a similar effect on the optinal number of cities, but I didn't see it. It looks like its effect is identical to 1.17f: a second palace with a new set of cities with low Nopt. Note that if a city is close to both the palace and the FP, there is no extra benefit. You just take the smallest Nopt of the two.

A couple more notes:

1) To clarify, marketplaces, factories, libraries, et cetera, do not affect the number of red shields or commerce, but their bonus is applied to the uncorrupted part of the city's production or commerce. This means that these buildings ARE actually affected by corruption. It just looks as though they are not because the number of red shields (or commerce) remains the same, but the number of blue shields is reduced instead.

2) I found a bug that will annoy mod-makers. If you make a custom map, the game uses the optimal number of cities for a standard-sized map, no matter what the size of your actual map. For example, a tiny user-created map will have optimal number of cites = 16 instead of 12 (if you don't change anything else in the editor). I'm pretty sure this didn't happen before 1.21f

 

[Old Fox]

I'm not sure if I followed this thread entirely...

I agree with the fellow earlier who implied that setting an optimum number of cities for corruption severely limits playing style. It kind of forces a non-conquest situation on a huge map board.

I like to play on the huge maps, but am not entirely conquest oriented. On these huge maps, wars take a lot of time to resolve. I find the corruption and war weariness aspects of the game on these large maps to be SO tedious as to send me into to non-playing periods where I am SO disgusted with the game, that I want nothing to do with it. Trying to find a solution to this insanity is what eventually led me to this site and this thread.

While I followed Alex's calculations for the most part, I have a couple of questions (good work by the way alex):

Calculation for various map sizes. Can we clarify what that number is please? I think that I read in the 1.21f notes that the huge map is reduced to 160 by 160.

For huge is the Fd # for mapsize = (160 x 160) 25600?
Is the standard map size Fd = (100x100) 10000?

For number of cities, how do you arrive at Nopt? One fellow stated 32 cities, but I couldn't follow the logic to the number there for my own calculations.