Hi All,
I had originally intended this as a reply, rather than opening yet another corruption thread, but it turned out to be too bloody long to fit in with the rest of the replies. So, here's another thread. Comment, eviscerate, or ignore as you please.
(TBD = To Be Defined)
This reply started as there's still considerable debate over whether corruption should be adjusted in the patch, or whether it's fine as is.
Well, we know there is at least one problem with corruption, since corruption under Communism does not work as documented. Communism is supposed to provide a uniform, flat rate of corruption for all cities. This flat rate can rise as the total number of cities rises, but "the distance from your capital has no effect."
However, what we've seen so far under communism is a low rate of corruption in the capital (but higher than democracy) with the corruption still increasing the further one goes with the capital. It's as if Communism were getting a "double penalty", suffering both the Communism and Despotism corruption formulas. Hopefully that, at least, will be fixed in the next or some future patch.
If Communism is being impacted by two formulas, one wonders if the other government types are too. If it is the same bug, perhaps after corruption under Communism is fixed, corruption for other government types will also be reduced, and may return to what they were under Civ 1 (although Democracy will also suffer some TBD level of corruption.)
Of course, all of our conjectures on corruption so far have been guesswork.
We simply have no information on what the intended impact of corruption for a far-flung empire was, since we were given no designer's notes, nor any information on that subject on the web. (At least none that I have seen.) All we have is a terse note in the manual and pedia that corruption in a democracy is supposed to be "minimal", and another terse note on the web that corruption will not be higher in the patch.
But, let's for a moment assume that corruption is working as intended, that cities beyond a certain distance from the capital(s) are indeed supposed to return but one shield and one trade, no matter what you do.
Is this more challenging?
Certainly, for world conquest. However, spaceship builders may have an easier time of it. Once they carve out a defensible and productive homeland, conquering them will be harder, especially for AI's. (And yes, I often build the spaceship, too.)
Is it more fun?
Well, opinions certainly differ on that. One non-fun side effect is that the only cost-effective way to provide a minimal set of facilities in far-away cities is "lumberjacking", for which no auto function was provided. Clicking four workers every turn for each distant city is not my idea of fun. However, there's no alternative. You'd get a culture flip if you waited a few centuries to build a temple (and perhaps library/market/harbor/barracks, depending on the situation) in the conventional way. One of the goals of Civ 3 was to reduce micromanagment, but the time saved in not fiddling with caravans has been taken by lumberjacking. There's also the more general dissatisfaction when one is unable to reap any rewards from his labors in enhancing a city.
Another game play impact would be for scenario designers. Since corruption is scaled to the map, a map of a smaller area would still have crippling corruption towards the fringes. If you wanted to make a William Wallace scenario, Edinburgh would be fine, but Aberdeen would be bloody useless. (ok, there's a nice straight line for any Edinburgh readers. ;-)
Is it more realistic?
Well, no. It would be impossible to model, even roughly, many of the great empires of history with the current corruption system. Persia, Rome, Spain and Britain and others managed to gain vast "trade" and "shields" from their empires in addition to "resources". (If empire building was so unprofitable, was was it so popular for the past 6000 years?)
The most effective tool, the Imperial Palace, is subject to a "Catch-22" of being impossible to build where you need it the most, thanks to the one-shield effect.
Even with the I.P, it would be impossible to model many empires. Consider Britain, 1939-45. One palace just wouldn't cut it. The entire empire contributed both "trade" and "shields":
Canada contributed several divisions for the European theater, plus a large number of escort craft that helped win the Battle of the Atlantic.
Australia and New Zealand contributed several excellent divisions that fought all over the world, plus at least three heavy cruisers and smaller ships.
There were several "King's African Rifle" divisions that fought in North Africa and elsewhere.
And finally, India. Besides contributing several units to the European theater, the VAST majority of empire ground troops in the Burma theater were Indian, something like 14 divisions by 1945 vs ONE British division. Frankly, the British could not have maintained their worldwide empire into the 20th century without the manpower and resources of India. When India went independent, they had to start letting the rest of the empire go, too.
However, one goal of Civ 3 was valid, to make conquest and retention of conquests more difficult. Two excellent concepts have been added: Conquered citizens retaining their nationality, and resistors.
Resistors are already a perfect representation of a hostile populace; they make trouble for the occupier, but since they refuse to work the land, they contribute less than the most corrupt regular citizen.
However, they could do a LOT more with resistors. Resistors could be a much more flexible tool than a heavy-handed corruption formula.
* First of all, resistors could be nearly impossible to subdue if their home civ is still alive and at war with the conqueror. (Kill one resistance cell, and another takes its place.) Perhaps you might subdue one (or zero) resistors per turn, but no more than that. When the war is over, they could then be subdued under the current formula by the city garrison as they lose hope.
* Each turn, each resistor would have a chance to do ONE of several things:
- Knock one hit point off of a garrison unit. This hit should be done AFTER any hit points are healed by a barracks. If there are 4-5 resistors in a big city, this will make an occupier sweat if he leaves a garrison of a single unit. If the garrison is wiped out, then the city reverts. (I like this form of reversion a lot better than the current culture flips.) With this model, an occupier's first improvement would more likely be a barracks rather than a temple, so that units would not sustain damage two turns in a row.
- Steal 1-2 gold from the treasury, to reflect raids on supply columns and such. (Several cities with resistors would add up.)
- Knock 2-3 shields off of any work in progress on that city. (This would only work if corruption was adjusted so you had more than one shield.)
- A smaller chance of converting one non-resistor into a resistor.
- A smaller chance of killing a Happy citizen. (Collaborating swine!)
- A very small chance of destroying an existing city improvement. (Better make this a very small chance if rushing improvements remains forbidden when resistors are present, or else nothing would get done.)
The "Propoganda" spy action could be enhanced to give a chance of inciting more resistors in an enemy.
As for occupied cities in peacetime...
Perhaps assimilation should be even more difficult. If a city has 9 Indian and One British citizen, then there would be a 9/10 chance that the next citizen will be Indian. There could also be some TBD factors that could cause resistors to begin to breed in a city that had been quiet before. (Once again, I like the idea of gradually increasing resistors better than instananeous culture flips.) If the city gets too many resistors, maybe an occupier would be tempted to trade it, or even grant it independence, and a conquered civilization would be re-born...
OTOH, maybe all this would just have to wait for Civ 4.
Cheers,
Stilicho
I had originally intended this as a reply, rather than opening yet another corruption thread, but it turned out to be too bloody long to fit in with the rest of the replies. So, here's another thread. Comment, eviscerate, or ignore as you please.
(TBD = To Be Defined)
This reply started as there's still considerable debate over whether corruption should be adjusted in the patch, or whether it's fine as is.
Well, we know there is at least one problem with corruption, since corruption under Communism does not work as documented. Communism is supposed to provide a uniform, flat rate of corruption for all cities. This flat rate can rise as the total number of cities rises, but "the distance from your capital has no effect."
However, what we've seen so far under communism is a low rate of corruption in the capital (but higher than democracy) with the corruption still increasing the further one goes with the capital. It's as if Communism were getting a "double penalty", suffering both the Communism and Despotism corruption formulas. Hopefully that, at least, will be fixed in the next or some future patch.
If Communism is being impacted by two formulas, one wonders if the other government types are too. If it is the same bug, perhaps after corruption under Communism is fixed, corruption for other government types will also be reduced, and may return to what they were under Civ 1 (although Democracy will also suffer some TBD level of corruption.)
Of course, all of our conjectures on corruption so far have been guesswork.
We simply have no information on what the intended impact of corruption for a far-flung empire was, since we were given no designer's notes, nor any information on that subject on the web. (At least none that I have seen.) All we have is a terse note in the manual and pedia that corruption in a democracy is supposed to be "minimal", and another terse note on the web that corruption will not be higher in the patch.
But, let's for a moment assume that corruption is working as intended, that cities beyond a certain distance from the capital(s) are indeed supposed to return but one shield and one trade, no matter what you do.
Is this more challenging?
Certainly, for world conquest. However, spaceship builders may have an easier time of it. Once they carve out a defensible and productive homeland, conquering them will be harder, especially for AI's. (And yes, I often build the spaceship, too.)
Is it more fun?
Well, opinions certainly differ on that. One non-fun side effect is that the only cost-effective way to provide a minimal set of facilities in far-away cities is "lumberjacking", for which no auto function was provided. Clicking four workers every turn for each distant city is not my idea of fun. However, there's no alternative. You'd get a culture flip if you waited a few centuries to build a temple (and perhaps library/market/harbor/barracks, depending on the situation) in the conventional way. One of the goals of Civ 3 was to reduce micromanagment, but the time saved in not fiddling with caravans has been taken by lumberjacking. There's also the more general dissatisfaction when one is unable to reap any rewards from his labors in enhancing a city.
Another game play impact would be for scenario designers. Since corruption is scaled to the map, a map of a smaller area would still have crippling corruption towards the fringes. If you wanted to make a William Wallace scenario, Edinburgh would be fine, but Aberdeen would be bloody useless. (ok, there's a nice straight line for any Edinburgh readers. ;-)
Is it more realistic?
Well, no. It would be impossible to model, even roughly, many of the great empires of history with the current corruption system. Persia, Rome, Spain and Britain and others managed to gain vast "trade" and "shields" from their empires in addition to "resources". (If empire building was so unprofitable, was was it so popular for the past 6000 years?)
The most effective tool, the Imperial Palace, is subject to a "Catch-22" of being impossible to build where you need it the most, thanks to the one-shield effect.
Even with the I.P, it would be impossible to model many empires. Consider Britain, 1939-45. One palace just wouldn't cut it. The entire empire contributed both "trade" and "shields":
Canada contributed several divisions for the European theater, plus a large number of escort craft that helped win the Battle of the Atlantic.
Australia and New Zealand contributed several excellent divisions that fought all over the world, plus at least three heavy cruisers and smaller ships.
There were several "King's African Rifle" divisions that fought in North Africa and elsewhere.
And finally, India. Besides contributing several units to the European theater, the VAST majority of empire ground troops in the Burma theater were Indian, something like 14 divisions by 1945 vs ONE British division. Frankly, the British could not have maintained their worldwide empire into the 20th century without the manpower and resources of India. When India went independent, they had to start letting the rest of the empire go, too.
However, one goal of Civ 3 was valid, to make conquest and retention of conquests more difficult. Two excellent concepts have been added: Conquered citizens retaining their nationality, and resistors.
Resistors are already a perfect representation of a hostile populace; they make trouble for the occupier, but since they refuse to work the land, they contribute less than the most corrupt regular citizen.
However, they could do a LOT more with resistors. Resistors could be a much more flexible tool than a heavy-handed corruption formula.
* First of all, resistors could be nearly impossible to subdue if their home civ is still alive and at war with the conqueror. (Kill one resistance cell, and another takes its place.) Perhaps you might subdue one (or zero) resistors per turn, but no more than that. When the war is over, they could then be subdued under the current formula by the city garrison as they lose hope.
* Each turn, each resistor would have a chance to do ONE of several things:
- Knock one hit point off of a garrison unit. This hit should be done AFTER any hit points are healed by a barracks. If there are 4-5 resistors in a big city, this will make an occupier sweat if he leaves a garrison of a single unit. If the garrison is wiped out, then the city reverts. (I like this form of reversion a lot better than the current culture flips.) With this model, an occupier's first improvement would more likely be a barracks rather than a temple, so that units would not sustain damage two turns in a row.
- Steal 1-2 gold from the treasury, to reflect raids on supply columns and such. (Several cities with resistors would add up.)
- Knock 2-3 shields off of any work in progress on that city. (This would only work if corruption was adjusted so you had more than one shield.)
- A smaller chance of converting one non-resistor into a resistor.
- A smaller chance of killing a Happy citizen. (Collaborating swine!)
- A very small chance of destroying an existing city improvement. (Better make this a very small chance if rushing improvements remains forbidden when resistors are present, or else nothing would get done.)
The "Propoganda" spy action could be enhanced to give a chance of inciting more resistors in an enemy.
As for occupied cities in peacetime...
Perhaps assimilation should be even more difficult. If a city has 9 Indian and One British citizen, then there would be a 9/10 chance that the next citizen will be Indian. There could also be some TBD factors that could cause resistors to begin to breed in a city that had been quiet before. (Once again, I like the idea of gradually increasing resistors better than instananeous culture flips.) If the city gets too many resistors, maybe an occupier would be tempted to trade it, or even grant it independence, and a conquered civilization would be re-born...
OTOH, maybe all this would just have to wait for Civ 4.
Cheers,
Stilicho
