I had forgotten...

[darski]

...how awful this game is with the unbridled corruption in place. Now I know why I put in that less corruption mod.

It really is a waste of time and energy as it is written to play.

When I get my new game, I am going to play my SG and then fix the corruption again.

I just want to build and defend my little empire; I don't need more hassle than life has already given me.

 

[vmxa]

The corruption is not a problem. It was put there on purpose. The intent was to hurt empires that got too big.

 

[darski]

I beg to differ. If 5 cities is too large then the game - as I said - is just plain dumb.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I generally end up with a core of 8-10 excellent cities, and that's all I really need to build a huge military. Captured cities usually become specialist farms and moderately corrupt towns get courthouses to help with corruption reduction. You just change your style of play and you'll get used to it.

 

[Quintillus]

There's a reason I have a Soviet flag - because Communism works so well in Civ3. Provided you remember to build Courthouses in your core before switching to Communism, it's amazingly effective at reducing corruption. You'll certainly have greater productivity than with any other government, and once you develop your outer cities your commerce may well be better than under a Republic or Democracy as well. You won't have quite as high of a shield count in your most productive cities, so wonders will be a bit harder to get, but production-wise Communism is definitely still worth it.

Not that I always go Commie - it does take significant investment to make it worth it. Republic goes pretty far, especially if you hurry a few courthouses. I'm guessing you're playing a Tiny map for 5 cities to be an issue?

 

[darski]

It seems to me that there have been changes to the corruption model after Vanilla. That might explain the mess I got. Seriously, my 5th city was getting 1 shield out of 10.. why even bother at that point?

 

[Tone]

Seriously, my 5th city was getting 1 shield out of 10.. why even bother at that point?

How far away from the capital was this one?

 

[Pyrrhos]

I beg to differ. If 5 cities is too large then the game - as I said - is just plain dumb.

Suffering from "cognitive bias", are we?

PS. Nice sig. Someone should tell him that he has to get in line behind some 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 sentient being in the universe who refuse to belive until the Almighty have given them personal and preferential treatment. This take some doing without tipping off the remaining 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 that She/He/It really exists, thus nullifing Free Will and innocense.

 

[timerover51]

It seems to me that there have been changes to the corruption model after Vanilla. That might explain the mess I got. Seriously, my 5th city was getting 1 shield out of 10.. why even bother at that point?

You have a couple of different ways to deal with corruption, Darski. One is to go to the difficulty levels section of the game editor, and move the corruption slider all the way to the left to the Zero setting. The problem with that is that also frees the AI from corruption. Personally, I would rather see the AI have corruption problems. You can also adjust the percentage of optimal cities upward, meaning that you can build more cities before having major problems.

My approach is to edit the corruption setting of my preferred government, Monarchy, to minimal, and then set a large number of the city improvement buildings to reduce corruption: military buildings, educational buildings (university, library, etc.), and religious buildings (temple, cathedral), along with the courthouse. This results in cities quite distant from my core having corruption rates of around 50% or less. Cities close to the capital are essentially corruption-free. This also means that the AI still has problems, unless it also selects Monarchy, which I have not noticed happening, and builds large numbers of city improvements, which means that it is not building military units that turn.

I would agree with you that the corruption problem is my biggest irritation with the game. I would much prefer to see it apply only to the most extreme cases, such as anarchy and depotism, and assume a constant level for the rest of the governments through an increase in unit costs of say 5 to 10 shields or maybe a 10% increase in cost per unit. That would make corruption a larger factor in small cities than large cities with lots of production.

 

[Theov]

I've had 2 games in a row now where my capital is at the edge of a continent. And therefore also at the egde of my empire.
So I experience ALOT more corruption than I normally would have.
I had to build the SP a lot sooner then I wanted to and maybe at another place that I otherwise would have wanted to.
But then again, I found out that commie has an extra 'palace' (the SPHQ) so I became good at playing Commie.
So somehow, the corruption did me good / well.

 

[Aabraxan]

It seems to me that there have been changes to the corruption model after Vanilla. That might explain the mess I got. Seriously, my 5th city was getting 1 shield out of 10.. why even bother at that point?

I seem to recall reading that the corruption model was changed from Vanilla to C3C, so I think you're right. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly how they changed it.

I generally end up with a core of 8-10 excellent cities, and that's all I really need to build a huge military. Captured cities usually become specialist farms and moderately corrupt towns get courthouses to help with corruption reduction. You just change your style of play and you'll get used to it.

This sounds like a lot of my games. I usually have a core of 8-10 cities, a semi-core with some moderate corruption, and dozens of specialist farms. Those farms are the solution that I use to the corruption problem. Every one of those farms provides unit support of 1, one uncorrupted gold and one uncorrupted shield, in addition to whatever the specialists produce.

 

[Kumquat]

Corruption is hardly a problem unless you go and conquer a huge empire but it does start to add up on me in the modern era (My military is always insanely large in the modern
era). I find that communism is very underrated If you micro it right you can get corruption down to like 10% of what a huge republic has and it pays for my massive army.

 

[darski]

How far away from the capital was this one?

I can't exactly recall but I do remember that I had to develop along a line rather than rings to start. it was a Tiny map in hopes of playing a quick game.. and most of the AI were all close at the start. This was Regent but they were still getting settlers out faster than I did in the beginning.

The difficulty with this corruption model is that your outer cities are useless to even defend themselves. It was going to take 368 turns to build the FP in the only city that made sense in Vanilla. It took 60 turns to build a rider there which meant that a courthouse was out of the question in cities that were being patrolled by the Babs.

I cleaned out my saves file... I do this all the time when I finish or leave a game so I can't check on this stuff. I also didn't take any pictures after the founding of Beijing.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

In PTW, the corruption model was such that cities the same distance from the capitol would have the same corruption, thus you could make your first ring of cities have pretty low corruption. Also, the FP created a 2nd very corruption zone.

In conquests, there is a tie breaker for cities the same distance, so the ring of cities method doesn't work. the FP also reduces only part of corruption.

this is offset by considerably more powerful specialists.

and if you don't like corruption, just turn it off.

 

[Tone]

It was going to take 368 turns to build the FP in the only city that made sense in Vanilla.

The FP in C3C does not act like a second core so just build it anywhere. I know that some others disagree with me on that but the most important factor for the C3C FP is to increase your OCN and thus gain a corruption busting effect across the whole empire. Waiting to build it in a slightly more advantageous position means that all your cities have a greater degree of curruption for longer than is neccessary.

 

[MAS]

This was Regent but they were still getting settlers out faster than I did in the beginning.

I think this has more to do with your Civ3 skills needing polish than with the corruption model.

The difficulty with this corruption model is that your outer cities are useless to even defend themselves.

I think this sentence explains the whole issue: You are thinking for each city on its own!

Stop thinking about individual cities, think about what your empire needs. Each city adds to your empire, its just that a corrupt city is threated differently. Its not efficient to build improvements in corrupt cities, so you don't! Thats it! The city still adds to your empire. The corruption is a non-issue.

If anything the corruption model is a blessing: non-corrupt cities require much more management. Specialist farms can just be set up and forgotten.

 

[Othniel]

If anything the corruption model is a blessing: non-corrupt cities require much more management. Specialist farms can just be set up and forgotten.

Well...once specialist farms are fully set up.

While they are growing to their traditionally optimal size of 5 or 6, they do require a bit of microing. Once they reach their optimal size and city growth is stopped, they can be forgotten unless you want to switch back and forth between different types of specialists.

@darski
I generally like the corruption model. I like that it adds some extra challenge in that I need to plan for how to minimize it. But I'm an semi-OCD wierdo about challenges, so I understand why lots of people find managing corruption to be a tedious exercise.

If you do decide to not mod out the corruption, permit me to offer some suggestions for managing corruption in Conquests. Expanding on what Tone and MAS said...

1. Start a build (or prebuild) for the Forbidden Palace very early in the game, say by 1000BC. Build the FP anywhere, optimal placement is not required in C3C. Just to get it done quickly, though, it's usually best to build in one of your first few cities.

2. Use tighter city placement, such as CxxC or CxxxC, to reduce some distance corruption. This is not too significant of a reducer, though.

3. Build courthouses in select cities. My personal guideline is to consider building a court in cities with 20-60% corruption (use CivAssist2 to figure out a city's corruption %) Some people won't build any courts, I personally like them. Just remember that building courts in highly corrupt cities will not pay back and you might even lose money because of the maintenance cost.

4. Get to a better government like Republic asap or use a Commercial civ

 

[darski]

I think this has more to do with your Civ3 skills needing polish than with the corruption model.

No it has more to do with the Start than with my skills.



I think this sentence explains the whole issue: You are thinking for each city on its own!

Stop thinking about individual cities, think about what your empire needs. Each city adds to your empire, its just that a corrupt city is threated differently. Its not efficient to build improvements in corrupt cities, so you don't! Thats it! The city still adds to your empire. The corruption is a non-issue.

If anything the corruption model is a blessing: non-corrupt cities require much more management. Specialist farms can just be set up and forgotten.

I beg to differ. if you can't build units to fortify a city you won't have those cities for very long.

Or are you actually telling me that you leave your border cities undefended when there are unfriendlies running all around your borders. I am sooooooo not buying that one.

I have already had 3 wars and those cities were the ones where the battles were fought.

And for the other post...

I am playing

VANILLA

so it doesn't matter what C3C did with the corruption model.

 

[Othniel]

I am playing VANILLA so it doesn't matter what C3C did with the corruption model.

Sorry, I thought you said somewhere that you've started playing C3C. My bad.

 

[Tone]

Sorry, I thought you said somewhere that you've started playing C3C. My bad.

Ditto. I guess the disk is still in the post.