Firaxis: Corruption Breakdown

[tomart109]

count me in the 40,000. I'm usually pushing the difficulty level to where i need all possible tools to defeat the AI. Any advantage I can get is appreciated. Thank you. (This seems to be bucking a trend, so flame me.)

and waste/corruption in the game is not only a drain on the civ, it's a drain on the player to fight it while doing everything else. I just want to stick an FP in a corrupt area, and see the improvement (and no way do i want to do the math - i'm the country's leader, not the economist!)

 

[Arizona_Steve]

I can see this thread getting pretty interesting in the next few days.

I'm probably one of the worst people that could be perusing this thread. I've been programming for near enough fourteen years, I view coding as an "art", and I am an optimization freak. And I think I'm God's gift to programming

I look forward to checking out Tavis' code.

Yeti makes some interesting points. I did note that Option 3 is really a superset of option 1. I believe the AI does build the Forbidden Palace, usually in the first ring of cities around the capital. This is an excellent strategy in the early stages, but begins to fall apart if the civ becomes large (relative to a Deity level human player). When a civ reaches a certain size, the AI strategy should lean towards jumping the Palace (via a Great Leader, not by any other "dubious" strategy) so that more of the cities can become productive.

On Palace jumping: I believe the target city for a Palace jump should be randomized, so that there is no guarentee whatsoever that adding workers to the target city will cause the Palace to jump there. The current situation is simply too exploitable. A second option would be to disallow the Capital from being abandoned, either explicitly, or by generating a settler/worker at size 2/1 with no growth in the city.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Chieftess

and the thing I liked about the FP in vanilla Civ3 and PTW was less micromanagement. Just stick your FP in a mostly corrupt area, and be happy with it.

Yes! This is exactly what I've been trying to say

Unlike most people in this forum, I'm not a hardcore player. I only started reading the forums when I realised there was something very wrong with the FP in C3C.

I play Civ3 between 1 and 3 hours per week to relax and unwind (although I've been playing it a lot more the last two weeks since I'm on holidays)... if I micromanaged everything to the n'th degree, I'd only get in a few turns per week, and it would take me six months to finish an epic game.

So, I like the old FP because it reduces the amount of micromanagement I have to do, and I can get back to the essence of the game - building a civilization.

I definately think Civ3 should reward micromanagement for those patient enough to do it (which it does), however I don't think that it should be a requirement of playing the game. With the "new" FP, average players like myself are drowning in corruption due to our inability to create a second productive core as we did before.

Looking back at Civilization 2, a lot of micromanagement was automated as the game matured via patches. The ability to automate settlers and engineers was added, and automatic city production was continually improved. The developers realized that most players don't mind micromanagement of small empires, but once they get more that 10 or 15 cities, micromanagement becomes a tedious chore. I would like to think that this realization has not been forgotten.

To me, this (accidental) FP change seems to increase the amount micromanagement of large empires, and is therefore a step backwards. Hopefully it will be fixed in the next patch and we will get something very similar to the old-style FP back.

 

[nihil8r]

do any of you people even play this game? i doubt it. a palace-like FP is the only option. anything else is a needless and retroactive change to the winning game formula and is insulting to the hundreds of thousands of actual game buyers. not the five or six of you who think that giving the AI a more viable endgame corruption tool is better than ruining the games of everyone who patches conquests.

both the version of conquests that shipped and this current "beta" patch are unplayable with the forbidden palace, yet for opposite reasons. and exactly whose idea was it to take out the forbidden palace? sid meier's personal decision? but it was his decision to put it in in the first place, wasn't it?

so is atari going to refund my $30 or am i going to have to start a class action lawsuit with 50,000 virtual co-defendents, one for every copy of Conquests that was published? i'm sure i could find a lawyer willing to take this for a slice of $1.5 million.

 

[JustBen]

Originally posted by nihil8r
so is atari going to refund my $30 or am i going to have to start a class action lawsuit with 50,000 virtual co-defendents, one for every copy of Conquests that was published?

Wow, man. No need to fly off the handle; we're all reasonable people here. Melodrama will get you nowhere -- these are programmers you're talking to.

I'm from an engineering school where we learned to "keep it simple, stupid." I'd love all these fresh, new, dewy-eyed proposals to make the game better and AI smarter and would love to see them implemented smoothly. But that probably won't happen -- not until you've added at least 0.3 to the version number where they were first introduced. I'm not trying to slight your programmers, just reminding us all how programming works.

It's painful to say it, but the Civ3/PtW way is probably correct. I personally doubt it's better, but it's almost certainly smarter.

 

[Buckets]

Conquests is an expansion. It changes many game rules. Why shouldn't it change the FP? Why did it work the way it did in civ3 vanilla in the first place? It really makes no sense as it was then, it's just something people learned to use and got used to. Why not have something new to learn?

I'm really astounded at the reaction to all this. it's like a baby who's had it's candy taken away. I guess i should have realized that most people just like to comp stomp.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Buckets
Conquests is an expansion. It changes many game rules. Why shouldn't it change the FP? Why did it work the way it did in civ3 vanilla in the first place? It really makes no sense as it was then, it's just something people learned to use and got used to. Why not have something new to learn?

I have made perfectly rational arguments why we should keep the old FP in several threads, including this one.

A large number of us see the "new" FP (which is actually an unintended side effect of a bug) as inferior due to it's reduced effectiveness. If some hardcore gamers want the new, less powerful FP, then it would be great if Firaxis provide a way to change it so it works that way in the editor. However, most casual players prefer the old FP - so it should be the default.

 

[Aggie]

Tavis, thank you for your posts! This clarifies a lot

 

[Commander Bello]

Originally posted by Buckets
Conquests is an expansion. It changes many game rules. Why shouldn't it change the FP? Why did it work the way it did in civ3 vanilla in the first place? It really makes no sense as it was then, it's just something people learned to use and got used to. Why not have something new to learn?

I'm really astounded at the reaction to all this. it's like a baby who's had it's candy taken away. I guess i should have realized that most people just like to comp stomp.

If I were in real bad mood now - which I am not - I easily could reply that there are some babies out there, who really like to have empires with more than just 10 cities. I even could add, that those people like other than the 75*75 minimaps.
But I don't. I just would advise you to go up one difficulty level. If your are already beating Sid out of his pants all the time, please help Firaxis creating the Post-Sid-level.

 

[Bamspeedy]

do any of you people even play this game?

They should be asking you that. People who want a more challenging AI have obviously played this game ALOT.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Bamspeedy

People who want a more challenging AI have obviously played this game ALOT.

However, if catering for those players lessens the gameplay experience for the other 99.99% of us, I really doubt whether it is wise to do so.

 

[col]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to mention this - but its something I've thought for a long time. The palace jump is problematic. The AI doesnt do it and it gives too much of an advantage.

So

Why not make it that when you lose your capital, you have to build your new palace by hand. It would mean you could only build in an productive area.

Ah - I see the problem - if you dont have a palace at all you cant calculate corruption.

Ok then - why not make the palace automatically become the nearest city. This would render the palace jump pretty ineffective.

Incidentally, I'd like to see the ability to build a palace removed. Prebuilds? Bah.

 

[Aggie]

Originally posted by Marlor


However, if catering for those players lessens the gameplay experience for the other 99.99% of us, I really doubt whether it is wise to do so.

Why should every thread end up into this? Let's keep that discussion into one post!

I suggest this one for it: why fix thing that aren't broken?

 

[Yeti]

Your point on pre-builds as a questionable strategy, and one I'm pretty sure the AI never uses (at least not intentionally - I've never seen them change what Wonder they're creating except when the one they were working on gets completed by another civ), is valid.

However, as was brought up in the other thread about the FP, it would be best to keep this discussion as on topic as possible. Tossing in concerns about palace jumping and pre-builds are just going to muddy the water

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Aggie

Why should every thread end up into this? Let's keep that discussion into one post!

Sorry, I'm new to the forums

However, I was referring specifically to Bamspeedy's comment, and the way he disregarded nihil8r's perfectly valid argument by stating the same old elitist "we're better than you" nonsense which seems to be all to common on these forums.

I think the problem is that there are two ways to play the game:
1) As a historical strategy game,
2) As a reverse engineering or mathematical challenge.

In order to beat the Deity level, you really have to play with the second approach to some degree. However, many of us just don't find this fun. We want to immerse ourselves in this imaginary historical world, and constantly contemplating the underlying algorithms detracts from this.

Sure, following the first approach may not be as effective, but it's certainly a lot more fun.

This is all very relevant to the matter at hand, i.e. the corruption and FP. The new-style FP seems to have the "reverse engineerers" salivating at the challenge that it provides. However, most "casual" players dislike it, because it simply makes the game less fun.

Sorry if I'm getting a bit off topic... actually, this whole FP discussion should probably move here.

 

[Bamspeedy]

and the way he disregarded nihil8r's perfectly valid argument

Implying that someone doesn't even play the game because they don't agree with you, I hardly view as a 'valid argument'.

"we're better than you"

Sorry if I made it sound like that, that was not my intention. But if a person is unchallenged by the AI, then they have played the game enough to understand the game in order to get to that point (or they are playing at too low of a level, but most of them are already playing at deity+). So, obviously they DO play the game, which nihil8r was implying they don't.

 

[Aggie]

@Marlor: I fully understand Bamspeedy's reaction. People that have contributed to this community for years and are proven "masters" of the game were ridiculed by the one unfounded sentence that Bamspeedy quoted.

My experience has always been that the old-timers welcome new blood and new insights. But that is not the same as ignoring comments that could be seen as insults.

 

[Yumbo]

Marlor:

Off topic or not, I find that I agree strongly with most of what you post here in these forums.

I like the "two ways to play the game" breakdown. It's probably a tad simplistic (I think we all play in both camps at times, at least to some extent). But I think it articualtes what I (and many others on this forum) have been trying to say for 2+ days now. It seems more constructive than the "elite player vs. casual player" breakdown (in that elite carries certain negative connotations), yet is also more accurately descriptive.

Keep coming with the insightful posts...

Edit:
That said, nihil8r's original comment, or at least the tone of it, was way off base, and BamSpeedy was justified in his response.

 

[col]

Originally posted by Yeti
However, as was brought up in the other thread about the FP, it would be best to keep this discussion as on topic as possible. Tossing in concerns about palace jumping and pre-builds are just going to muddy the water

I think palace jumping is pretty relevant to a discussion on Corruption and the FP which is why I posted it here. Palace jumping creates several corruption exploits. Removing the ability to leap the palace around would fix these in a fairly straightforward and easy to understand manner while at the same time giving the AI a boost.

 

[anarres]

I agree that removing the palace-prebuild would work "wonders".

A simple solution to this (and to remove all pre-build exploits) is:

Don't allow wonders to switch production to other wonders!

It would be so easy to implement - just 'grey out' the other small/great wonders when a small/great wonder is being built! This way would still allow you to use a uni/factory as a pre-build, but no more palace -> wonder switches! The only exception needed to this rule is to change to another wonder if the one in the build queue can no longer be build (so if someone else completes a wonder you can cascade to another one). This would make a huge difference and one that I would welcome.

Anyone else?