Firaxis says there will be no rioting in Civ4. I WILL NOT BUY IT IF THIS IS TRUE.

[stormbind]

I think the effects should stay, but be more gradual.

For example, instead of production stopping completely ... productivity should be linked to citizen-attitude.

Corruption should also be tweaked and linked to wealth. Strong local economy/low unemployment = low corruption, and visa-versa. This means building roads and linking it to your capitol/ports would decrease corruption, but leaving it in the middle of nowhere would be bad.

 

[microbe]

The annoyance of fixing rioting is punishment for bad play. I say leave it in.

Bad play what?

It's not a matter of good/bad play. It's a matter of checking cities every turn. Even that is not enough for the reason of war weariness.

The current rioting is stupid. We need to be prompted BEFORE the riot and able to fix it without losing a turn.

 

[keiselhorn]

I wonder what's gonna happen with riots, corruption and pollution... they are so basic since Civ1... like, I hope it's really a good change, and that we still have on Civ4 the awesome challenge of keeping your citizens happy if you intend to outstand the test of time.

 

[DenDen]

What i think they should do with pollution is, you CAN eliminate pollution but you have to heavely invest in enviormental programs and infrastructures, so you can choose to fight pollution or not.

For Corruption and Waste i think you should be able to get rid of it in all government types again though each government type will require more or less investment into fighting corruption and waste based on how advanced they are,the more distant your city is from the capital the more heavely you will have to invest into police and security services.

As for rioting, i think it should be there of course if you dont make the people happy they will riot and oust you.

They should also emphasize rebellions. So if you have a big country and on the far reaches of your empire if you do not have a strong presence there people would start rebelling based on the populations ethnic majority and the influence of other nations in the region. (they will form their own country, or if the rebellion is instigated by another nation, they will automatically join that country)

Governments should also have a stability factor in ragards to rebellions based on your cultural strength..

of course all of this stuff comes at an expense.. this is where it becomes challenging.

 

[CyberChrist]

A 'police/law' slider allowing you to spend income to combat corruption/waste directly might not be a bad idea really.

An 'ecology' slider might also work for pollution - allocate cash to clean up pollution before it make it's mark on the landscape.

 

[Gogf]

Bad play what?

It's not a matter of good/bad play. It's a matter of checking cities every turn. Even that is not enough for the reason of war weariness.

The current rioting is stupid. We need to be prompted BEFORE the riot and able to fix it without losing a turn.

As I said.

 

[Gogf]

The annoyance of fixing rioting is punishment for bad play. I say leave it in.

1. First off, games shouldn't punish you for bad play , you should just not do as well as if you played well.
2. No, it's actually punishment for not checking your cities every turn, one of the biggest wastes of time in the game.
3. As I (and countless others) have said before, the game should promt you the turn before a city riots, rather than the turn after. We already have a one-turn grace period on the first turn that unhappy citizens outnumber happy, why not just cut back on the wasted time?

 

[Punkymonkey]

It also says there will be no maintenance? Thats just stupid if they take that out. I thought that the gold per turn for units was a great idea and if you can build improvements without worrying about maintenance it would be way too easy. There needs to be a balance for expansion

 

[TedJackson]

I'm in favour of keeping the concepts but would like to see the implementation improved.

Pollution - concept OK, the real aggravation is in having to re-aasign a citizen to the affected tile after clean up is over. I can't think of a simple fix for this one.

Rioting - concept OK, when considered as a catastrophe (war weariness), less so as a part of general city growth. Implementation flawed by lack of prior notification. Fix the notification and all will be well.

Corruption - concept OK, is only there as a braking mechanism to prevent runaway empires. Improve the AI and we'll no longer need it.

 

[The Last Conformist]

As Arathorn said, it's all about what's to replace them. If they simply disappear, with nothing to replace them, I'm not gonna buy CivIV.

Pollution: Current model needs to be changed. I don't have any concrete suggestions how, tho, except the old one of having factories produce unhappiness.

Rioting: Easy solution: Have the actual outbreak of disorder postponed one turn, but with the popup as now. Presto - you get a message, and if you immediately go to the city and fix stuff, it won't get into disorder. A more radical idea would be killing off riots (and WLTKD) totally, and instead have unhappy labourers have a penalty to their production, and happy ones a bonus. That way, you'd get a kind of continuous variation in city happiness states, instead of the current model with just three discrete states.

Corruption: Call me weird, but I like the current implementation. I was happy that the corruption-free gov'ts of CivII were removed. Beyond minor tweaks, I don't see why corruption should change.

Maintenance: This one I don't understand at all? How is maintenance unfun? It's intuitive, sensible, and doesn't require micromanagement. Don't fix wha aint broken!

 

[YNCS]

Corruption: Call me weird, but I like the current implementation. I was happy that the corruption-free gov'ts of CivII were removed. Beyond minor tweaks, I don't see why corruption should change.

Corruption based on distance from the capital is unrealistic. Is San Francisco a more corrupt city than Washington? Is Edinburgh a more corrupt city than London? I like the implementation of corruption under Communism, where there's a certain level but it's spread evenly throughout the civilization.

If I were tweaking corruption, I'd make corruption spread evenly. The level of corruption would change depending on government and city size. Corruption could be modified by building court houses, police stations, etc, and by the C3C police specialists.

Maintenance: This one I don't understand at all? How is maintenance unfun? It's intuitive, sensible, and doesn't require micromanagement. Don't fix wha aint broken!

I agree

 

[The Last Conformist]

Corruption based on distance from the capital is unrealistic. Is San Francisco a more corrupt city than Washington? Is Edinburgh a more corrupt city than London? I like the implementation of corruption under Communism, where there's a certain level but it's spread evenly throughout the civilization.

That's fine for the modern day, but during most of history, the resources of outlaying territories have been harder to use for the central government.

The San Fransisco effect would be better combated by making modern gov'ts Communal, than making all, and messing up the pre-modern parts of the game. (Please make it possible to have different gov'ts with different levels of Communal corruption!)

 

[brianshapiro]

My suggestion for corruption :
have corruption negated by cultural influence, so if a city has high culture, surrounding cities have their corruption reduced.

A problem with current civil disorder model:
When you end a war or something else causing unhappiness you have to hunt through cities to look for ones you added entertainers to, in order to remove them

 

[The President]

It depends on what audience it's intended to be fun for.

Civ has always been a mix of military and building play. There are better games out there for pure military types. Building a great civ requires a more general strategy that takes into account the domestic side, trade, and diplomacy as well as pure force of arms.

Corruption, waste, pollution, maintenance, and so forth have all been ways to force players to pay attention to their domestic side, and kept the game from being a purely military play. It's been a check on world conquest: you have to have a decent build strategy to be good at the game no matter what you do.

It also makes the game more realistic. The fact is every empire so far hasn't lasted forever; corruption, civil war, pollution, etc., have brought many down.

If anything the game could be made both more realistic and more interesting by upping the consequences of bad domestic play. Too little attention to domestic happiness could lead not just to riots but civil war and breakoff provinces or at least guerillas roaming about in ones undefended core areas; too little attention to the environment could lead to the slow crippling of farmland and industrial production; diplomatic lawlessness such as a practice of repeatedly breaking treaties could lead to internal lawlessness and increased corruption; etc.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Corruption based on distance from the capital is unrealistic. Is San Francisco a more corrupt city than Washington? Is Edinburgh a more corrupt city than London? I like the implementation of corruption under Communism, where there's a certain level but it's spread evenly throughout the civilization.

If I were tweaking corruption, I'd make corruption spread evenly. The level of corruption would change depending on government and city size. Corruption could be modified by building court houses, police stations, etc, and by the C3C police specialists.

The only reason corruption exists at all is to limit the power of large empires. If you have communal corruption for everything then that kind of defeats the purpose of having corruption at all, no?

 

[Sims2789]

I'll still buy it if rioting is taken out. What I meant is that I won't buy it if the feature of keeping your citzens happy is taken out altogether. Also, it would be cool if part of the nation could break off and start a civil war... Maybe this could happen if the citizens get extremely unhappy. Or maybe the government could get overthrown and you could go into Anarchy. Or better yet, either one could happen when the citizens get very unhappy(I'm talking about a level of discontent parralel to +66% of your cities rioting in Civ3).

 

[Tholish]

I like the unfun stuff, and think it should be an option in Civ4, but I'll buy Civ4 anyway.
Giving us the power to do things makes the cult core come back without alienating those who are being targeted as a new audience. I'll buy Civ 4, but if its lame I wont buy Civ 5, unless I hear really good things. But I have read some good things about Civ4 beyond the slides, here on fanatics. What concerns me is this continuous 3d what you see is what you get thing. No side screens, no advisors, is that what that means? How do you do that? With a microscope?

 

[The Last Conformist]

The only reason corruption exists at all is to limit the power of large empires. If you have communal corruption for everything then that kind of defeats the purpose of having corruption at all, no?

Not if the communal corruption gets worse with increasing city count.

(If one wanted to, one could also make communal corruption get worse with increasing average city-to-capital distance.)

 

[YNCS]

The only reason corruption exists at all is to limit the power of large empires. If you have communal corruption for everything then that kind of defeats the purpose of having corruption at all, no?

There are other means of limiting an empire's power. Historically, the best means is by other empires having their own power. Sooner or later, an empire is going to run across another empire which will keep it in place. The Roman Empire's eastern expansion was halted by the Pathians. The Napoleonic Empire was defeated by a coalition of the British, Prussian and Russian empires.

I would agree with The Last Conformist that corruption is and has been a fact of life. I just don't like how Civ3 implements it.

 

[CyberChrist]

Not if the communal corruption gets worse with increasing city count.

(If one wanted to, one could also make communal corruption get worse with increasing average city-to-capital distance.)

Maybe I mistunderstand what you are saying, but the corruption of each city is already affected by the total number of cities in a civilization under Communism. Of course, it might be hard to spot a difference when increasing the amount of cities since the effect is evenly distributed.

For more in depth details on corruption check out Alexman's excellent article Do you think you understand corruption?.