Firaxis: Corruption Breakdown

[Arathorn]

Tavis...some suggestions from an interested party.

Before putting up code for "review" (and that's what it's going to be), make it clear what the intended GOAL of the code is, and make it clear that the discussion in the thread should be ONLY about whether the code matches that goal. Let all us programming geeks get into the code and whether the code matches the GOAL in that thread. Other threads on the goal would of course be on-going, but it would be nice to try to limit the scope of the code discussion thread to whether the code matches the goal, without arguing about the legitimacy of the goal.

With that in mind, I think the GOAL should be decided on soon (and, frankly, I've not played enough with 1.12b to even have a whole lot to say on that matter) and announced and then not changed.

I would be remiss, however, without including a HUGE thank-you for listening, interacting, and being present. It really means a lot to this customer, at least.

With more unsolicited advice,
Arathorn

 

[CMcQueeny]

As far as the whole palace jump/move/prebuild issue is concerned, here is an idea:

The palace construction option could be changed from a standard improvement to a process (Analogous to government change.) that takes place over a period of time. When you initiate the palace relocation process, the new building would be constructed first, then the government would relocate. During the latter period, both palaces would have reduceing/increasing effectiveness (Imagine an x-shaped line graph.) for the duration of the relocation. Razing the existing capital during this process would slow down relocation and increase empire-wide corruption.

In this way, it would become vastly more realistic and less susceptable to exploitation. (Think about it: the relocation of the Roman capital effectively crippled the eastern empire, and there was turmoil and disorder during the process.) Instead of a casual, easy process as it is now, it would only be feasable to relocate the capital when it was neccesary.

 

[Commander Bello]

Now, guys, you really all make me laugh!

As I think the proposals of Yeti and Warpstorm (posting # 92 and 94 in this thread), would really close most of loop-, worm- and other holes.
And out of a sudden, there are 10 good reasons why pre-building should still be allowed. Or pre-building with switching. Or pre-building with jumping, but not with switching. Or switching with pre-jumping, but not building. Or, or, or....

The simple truth is, everyone of us has made his own strategy how he likes to play the game. So, everyone has his favorites.
That is good, that is normal, and there is no reason to forbid the one way, or to allow only the other.

So, my suggestion is: either make switching, jumping, pre-building impossible (in the sense of magically keeping already spent shields), or just leave it the way it is.

Let us being concentrated on the issues, for which we really can expect a fix by patch - and that seems to be the corruption issue, as far as I see it in the moment.
And please, let us all be a little bit more careful with the term "exploit". Meanwhile I feel guilty already on posting my spearmen on a hill, since AI doesn't do this often enough... So I seem to be in high danger to use an unfair "exploit", which gives me an advantage over less experienced players (although, until now, no human player showed up in my games).

 

[Nexushyper]

Thanks for the Info Tavis and glad to see this issue being fixed.


My questions is, which was brought up earlier in this thread but not asked;

With the FP being fixed will there be any new code (functions etc) for the AI to better place the FP in thier empires?


Another question:
Will size of the map change teh amount of corruption (besides changing this in the editor using teh corruption slider)? What I mean is, will huge maps have a different scale of corruption? I ask because a lot of people in other threads have noticed that with huge maps and large empires there seems to be a penalty corruptionwise for having such a large empire. (This is not planned I take it.) Just wondering if this is considered or should we just mod huge maps to have less corruption on the editor slider??

 

[PorthosdPirate]

Originally posted by Yumbo
Because prebuilding is an exploit, a cheat. Basically, you are receiving a huge advantage over the AI (and, in MP games, over players who play the game with a modicum of integrity) by using prebuilding.

I would imagine, and I could be wrong, but I would imagine that the reason the Palace as a construction project was put into the game was NOT so that the human player could use it as a means for beating the AI to crucial wonders.

Now, Firaxis has had two years to close this loophole. Since it would be easy to close, and since they have clearly chosen not to do so, they either feel it is unimportant or that it falls within margins of fair play.

Personally, I disagree. In 2+ years, I have never used the palace prebuild. But since it doesn't look like it is going to be patched, and since I primarily play single player, and never pre-build, I guess it ultimately doesn't effect me much anyway.

First it is not a cheat. A cheat is running a program (some people now call them trainers) to give you 10,000 gold at the beginning of the game. THAT is a cheat.

Second an exploit is bombarding your rival’s iron supply a world away. THAT is an exploit.

Pre-building is legit and how people use it is part of their game. If I lose a wonder building race to the AI I get a little ticked! Especially if I am 10 turns or less from it! If I can shift those shields over to a palace until I can build another wonder I'm fine with it and if your not that’s fine too. Did anyone ever think that this was put in so people would not complain “ I SPENT 56 TURNS BUILDING THAT WONDER AND THE AI BEAT ME TO IT AND I LOST ALL THAT TIME AND ALL THOSE SHIELDS!!!” Geez I wonder (no pun intended) what was easier to live with.

As for having an advantage over the AI or as you put it "players who play the game with a modicum of integrity" is a crock! Because my game play is different than yours and I found some advantages to get wonders faster than you the game code needs to be changed? Raise the AI difficulty level , put the pre-build into the AI, or play with different players in MP games. Next people are going to say you cant raise your science research because some are using that to get techs faster than me!!!! People this is a GAME and a very fine one at that!

Now, who is next on the soapbox..... I'm going to install the patch and see for myself if the FP is fixed or not.

Everyone have a happy new year!

 

[superslug]

I guess I'll take the soapbox for a moment:

I've been reading all these threads and posts about corruption and exploits and bugs and micromanagers and casual players and developers with a grain of salt. You see, for me, none of this really matters.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty hard core about the game. I've got more than one entry in the site HOF, and I abused the corruption exploits as much and as well as anyone else. It's the game, however, that matters to me most, not the details.

You can do this, you can't do that, this should cost that much, etc, etc. Whatever.

What I'm trying to say is this:
I've logged thousands of hours on I, II and III. Consider further patch changes, and I've grown accustomed to Civilization changing quite a bit. Tweak and adjust and introduce whatever you will, for no matter what year in the game I get them, or what cost they may entail, so long as I can sit at my computer and launch ICBMs at Mongol cities, then the rest is icing on the cake.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Buckets

But, that is irrelevant because fun always trumps strategy. And if most people have less fun, then the change is bad. I guess. I really don't see how it's more fun with the old FP, but hey, i'm entitled to an opinion, no?

Basically, I find the old FP more fun because it allows you to expand your empire more easily without introducing too much micromanagement. I find micromanagement of large empires to be one of the things that is tedious in the game.

In my experience, the only way to properly deal with corruption in a large empire is through some degree of micromanagement. I'd be happy to be corrected here, but I keep getting a feeling I am "babysitting" the corrupt cities. With the old FP, I could just build it in a certain area, and mostly forget about micromanaging those cities, because the corruption would suddenly drop.

Recently, I have been playing with corruption turned down in the editor, but even then there is still the necessity to reduce corruption in many cities, and the old FP basically doubles the number that I don't have to worry about too much.

Essentially, I like the old FP because I can dump it down in an area, and not worry about corruption in the surrounding cities anymore.

 

[Qitai]

It seems that I experience the opposite about micromanagement with the old Vs the new FP. Having a fully corrupted city for me actually means ZERO micromanagement, since all I do to them is set them on governer and leave it alone. I don't even need to bother with micromanaging workers for this cities, since it would not have any actual impact. Cities which are productive, however, actually means I will do the actual micromanagement so as not to waste 78 shields due to not getting the correct divisor of unit cost. Not that this matters to this topic at all. But I just want to refute the point about a weak FP means more micromanagement. To me, it is less.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by Speaker

Who do you think you are? Have you beaten Deity? If not, how do you know what it takes? Take a look in the Succession Game forum and you'll see TONS of Emperor or Deity games that easily succeed without using exploits or pushing the programming.

Whoa there, I didn't mean to offend anyone.

I'll admit that I was making an assumption there. I can see how it would be easy to beat Deity just by having lots of experience with what works and what doesn't. However, looking through the various forums trying to work out how to improve my game, I saw a lot of posts about RCP, moving capitals, working out OCN, distance corruption, etc.

In fact, there seems to be an opinion in some threads that unless you understand OCN, distance corruption, and all these other concepts that you're not a "real" player. So surely you can understand how I came to the conclusion that I did.

Originally posted by Qitai

It seems that I experience the opposite about micromanagement with the old Vs the new FP. Having a fully corrupted city for me actually means ZERO micromanagement, since all I do to them is set them on governer and leave it alone.

I can't stand having any fully corrupted cities, it seems a little pointless to me (in fact it really annoys me), so I try to get at least some production in every city. Maybe that's where I'm going wrong, but I really can't see the point of having cities which are fully corrupt, especially when they are on the frontline of a war.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Why should total corruptedness be more important in frontline cities? I mean, their impact on the fighting is going to be for healing, defense bonuses and claiming terrain as your own, not their productive capacity, unless you're fighting inside your own core, which I hope isn't a regular occurence.

 

[Yumbo]

First it is not a cheat. A cheat is running a program (some people now call them trainers) to give you 10,000 gold at the beginning of the game. THAT is a cheat.

That is one definition of a cheat; one KIND of cheat. And I agree that palace pre-building is borderline, but it is a cheat. It goes against the spirit of the game. Not as much as some other cheats (palace jumping), but it is a cheat nonetheless. The AI is not programmed to do it; it was not considered a viable strategy when the game was released.

As for losing the shields if you get beaten to the wonder, well, hey, that's the risk you take. Or at least it should be.

I think you are right in that people would argue vocally if this were changed. But it doesn't make it right...

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
Why should total corruptedness be more important in frontline cities? I mean, their impact on the fighting is going to be for healing, defense bonuses and claiming terrain as your own, not their productive capacity, unless you're fighting inside your own core, which I hope isn't a regular occurence.

Well, let's say I have a beachhead on an enemy continent (2 or 3 cities captured). In Civ2 and Alpha Centauri, I would use this for helping produce units for the war, or at least to produce defensive units.

In Civ3, this is impossible, because of the corruption. In order to even build barracks or a harbour in there, I have to "rush" the construction because there is near 100% corruption.

So, I do what I can to get them productive, and then, if I get a great leader, build an FP there to make this new core of cities productive. This especially helps as I expand by capturing surrounding cities, because the FP reduces their corruption.

The way I play, this is a regular occurrence, and at the moment, the "new" FP means that I have basically zero productivity on this second continent. I think it's a bit silly to have zero productivity there, I may as well just raze the cities.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I may be favouring bigger maps or something, but even back in my CivII and SMAC days, the actual production of such beachhead cities was never of any meaningful consequence. Indeed, when I wanted something built in them, I rushed it.

The difference comes when the place is conquered; in CivII and SMAC I could get decent production out of it, which in CivIII is only possible once, with the FP, and that assuming I've not built it on my home continent. But by the time that's of any concern we're not talking about frontline cities anymore.

 

[Marlor]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
I may be favouring bigger maps or something, but even back in my CivII and SMAC days, the actual production of such beachhead cities was never of any meaningful consequence. Indeed, when I wanted something built in them, I rushed it.

The difference comes when the place is conquered; in CivII and SMAC I could get decent production out of it, which in CivIII is only possible once, with the FP, and that assuming I've not built it on my home continent. But by the time that's of any concern we're not talking about frontline cities anymore.

Well, I prefer "slow steady expansion", so the production of these beachheads is of importance (to me anyway).

The other issue is that this second continent may be populated by two or more civs. In fact, this is often the case. Once one of the civs is conquered, it is very nice to be able to build troops for defence (or an attack against the others) within the newly captured territory. In fact, I save the FP for doing precisely this. I certainly prefer this to the slow, dull process of shipping units over a couple at a time.

So, this is a matter of the cities being "frontline" during the beachhead phase, as well as them being "frontline" during the conquest of the second (and possibly third) civs.

I see the FP as a provincial capital, and it allows me to create a second "province", which then becomes my primary focus during the conquest of the second continent.

Maybe this creation of a "second province" isn't the most optimum gameplay style, but it's how I've played since the original Civilization. In fact, it's strange trying to articulate what has been simply an intuitive way of playing for a long time.

 

[PorthosdPirate]

Originally posted by Yumbo
That is one definition of a cheat; one KIND of cheat. And I agree that palace pre-building is borderline, but it is a cheat. It goes against the spirit of the game. Not as much as some other cheats (palace jumping), but it is a cheat nonetheless. The AI is not programmed to do it; it was not considered a viable strategy when the game was released.

As for losing the shields if you get beaten to the wonder, well, hey, that's the risk you take. Or at least it should be.

I think you are right in that people would argue vocally if this were changed. But it doesn't make it right...

What you are describing is an exploit not a cheat. Just because the AI is not programmed to do something does not make it a cheat, exploit or a non-viable strategy. The AI is not programmed to use flanking, pincer or scorched earth tactics. Nor is it programmed to starve the population of captured cities.

But I think we have degressed WAY off topic. This thread was for the Tavis to explain the Corruption Breakdown and us to discuss. Pre-building, palace jumping, cheats, exploits belong on another thread.

 

[Yeti]

Originally posted by Nexushyper
Another question:
Will size of the map change teh amount of corruption (besides changing this in the editor using teh corruption slider)? What I mean is, will huge maps have a different scale of corruption? I ask because a lot of people in other threads have noticed that with huge maps and large empires there seems to be a penalty corruptionwise for having such a large empire. (This is not planned I take it.) Just wondering if this is considered or should we just mod huge maps to have less corruption on the editor slider??

Yep - OCN (optimal city number) is based on map size. So on larger maps you can have more cities before corruption becomes a major issue. However there's also a lot more room to make cities, and in fact the map size increases by a larger percentage than the OCN increases as you go up in map size.

 

[Harrier]

As this topic is discussing corruption issues. I understand mainly about the FP, but I would like to add a reminder about Courthouses etc.

I have previously played vanilla civ3 - not PtW.

But a big problem with corruption that I can remember is that once you get above the OCL by a few cities. Courthouses and their equivelent improvement had no effect what so ever. That is building the courhouse in a far flung city did not reduce corruption at all.

This also needs to be changed. It may have been in PtW but I have not played that version.

Example a city giving only 1 shield out of 10 - should with a courthouse give at least 3 shields out of 10. Then with the next corruption reducing improvement another 2 shields, - total 5 out of 10.

To summarize every corruption reducing improvement should reduce the base corruption by a minimum of 20% .

Modders can then add more than the existing number of improvements, if they want to - to reduce corruption even further.

So I hope Firaxis/Atari remember the problem with the corruption algorithems is not just the FP - but also the courthouses etc.

 

[PorthosdPirate]

Ok did a little personal test with the FP issue. I loaded a game I was playing two weeks ago. I had democracy for the government; FP city had a courthouse, as did surrounding cities. With 1.00 C3C the FP city had zero corruption and the corruption in nearby cities were low. The highest city(6 commerce and 3 shields) near the FP was also equal distance from the capital and the FP. All others were 1 shield and 3 to 5 commerce corruption. Over all corruption was -275 on my income.

I installed the patch, played five turns and took and compared notes with the non-patch turns. First my FP had corruption in it after 1 turn passed with the patch. Without the patch it had none. Nearby cities saw corruption increase (shield and commerce doubled or tripled. Mind you we are talking going from 1 to 2 or 3 here) except the city that was equally distanced from the capital and the FP. It saw a 50% reduction in corruption. Over all corruption was reduced by 50 gold.

Since I have not had the necessary information to be in the FP corruption debate which is the closest example to the stated goal that Firaxis is trying to fix? The first example or the second? I've moved onto a new system in the past 6 weeks and formatted the old one so I do not have any PTW or CIV games to compare to. I do not tend to do RCP, I just pick a spot and drop a settler so with the one exception that was actually filling a gap I do not have evenly matched cities. Also, some of the cities are captured cities so they are defiantly zigzagged around my FP. I do have the save if someone needs to look at it and tell me what is going on or "this is how it is supposed to be"

Thanks in Advance… Just trying to get an understanding of the issue and proposed fix.

 

[Mercade]

Without entering the rest of the corruption debate, I would like to suggest / request that when building a courthouse, police station or any other building with the flag "reduces corruption" switched on, it has a minimal effectiveness of one shield (and one gold) not lost to corruption.

What's the point of building a courthouse and police station in a 10-shield city and still have 9 shields lost to corruption? As such I don't mind if it's capped, though, for instance to at most 50% of the shields back through this method (i.e. must have 4 shields in order to save that 2nd shield) or something.

 

[Marlor]

I'd just like to say that I definately agree with Harrier and Mercade's suggestions about increasing the effectiveness of corruption-reducing improvements (especially in high-corruption cities).

As I understand it, it is possible to have 150% base corruption (i.e. before improvements are taken into account), is this correct? If so, maybe capping it at 100% could be an option.