Official Corruption Solutions Thread

[Bamspeedy]

For those looking for a cheat to completely ELIMINATE corruption from the game (for you, not the AI)..... Use the civ3edit and make one of the Great wonders place a palace in all your cities. Make sure it is a wonder you know you'll be able to build before anyone else. Of course this gives you a very unfair advantage, but it works if you really want that HUGE empire, like you could in Civ2.

Too bad you couldn't do this on a small wonder so all civs would have a chance.

 

[EvilTyranny]

There seems to be alot of comments in this threat lately on those who don't like the excessive corruption are whiners. Perhaps, I don't know them all personally but my gripe with it is that it's no realistic. There was a link made to chess and how knights going over pawns isn't realistic, but then who expects a game based upon completely equal armies facing eachother accross a checkered board with completely identicle traits to be a representation of reality?

The reason I've loved the Civilisation series so much is because it allows me to try and act out a reality as a ruler of a nation, not because I want to act out being the ruler of some nation in a alternate dimensional universe where our laws and realities mean nothing. I am really enjoying the new CivIII but the corruption and occupational problems make the game less fun, sure people talk about playing one strategy: If you have a small peaceful democratic nation built around two cities (one with your Forbidden Palace and one with your Capital) then you'll do good. Not always true, due to cultural effects of larger opponents and such but a good strategy.

What's my problem with that? Of course CivIII is a strategy game but I like strategy games not for repeating the exact same strategy under identicle conditions each time I play, the current corruption and occupational problems make doing anything but the above strategy a poor idea. I myself have a tendancy to prefer not to be a Democracy, perhaps it's because I like the reality aspect and being forced to imagine myself as a peaceful leader with little power who's forced to do what the populace wants is annoying. I like being something where I can see myself as a real ruler, a Communist or Fascist regime (with the Fascist Patch) but they have no real advantages over other governments as their advantages are negated.

When I play the game I find myself a Communist (or Fascist) governmet in a world of Democracies, and my little espionage benefit means little because I can't use propaganda because for some reason people who live in Democracies are immune to it somehow (explain that to me somehow). The free units thing is no big deal because the Democracies make so much more that it doesn't matter.

My point is that the game is designed so that there is one optimal choice: A democratic nation with peaceful tendancies that holds a small Empire. I don't like there being one optimal choice, I would prefer multiple choices all with their own advantages and disadvantages that even out (somehow) in the end.

One extra thing on occupation, on the game I'm playing now I've put a new strategy I developed on the last game I played (as Germany) to good use. As all of you must know, conquering enemy nations is very difficult, if not impossible to do against large nations. You start a war and no matter how big your occupational army is in that city (one instance I had was 42 modern and fully healed units in a small city) it will switch back to the enemy and you lose all your units in that city (something that has to be fixed, I mean really, 42 modern units, all at least veterans with a fixed supply line, being overrun by a small group of rebels). What I do is that as soon as I occupy a city I garrisson it with strong units and begin to starve the population, I do so until the population is one (a process made much easier if your Fascist or Communist) then allow it to grow. The result is that I end up with cities made almost entirely, or entirely, of loyal citizens and the cities seem to rarely rebel and overthrow my Governer while they're starving.

 

[SimonRobinson]

And of course, starving a city without having any adverse consequences to yourself is very realistic isn't it... <g>
(I always wondered in civ II why there wasn't some diplomatic
penalty or something for starving your citizens).

Anyway I do fully agree that Civ III seems to narrow your
possible strategies down a lot more compared to Civ II, and
that is very sad. Other examples of this include governments
- all the governments in Civ II had their uses, but that doesn't
seem to be the case in Civ III (has anyone found any good reason
for going to monarchy yet?). And the new division of the
technology tree prevents you from specialising in one
type of technology - eg. naval techs.

But on to the issue of corruption. I can see what Firaxis were
trying to do, and I do agree with the idea of trying to stop
one civ trying to become too powerful - civ II games with 50 or
100 cities in them in my experience just got plain boring coz
of all the city management. But the way corruption has
been implemented just strikes me as frustrating and badly
thought out. A Forbidden Palace that's all but impossible to build
in the city where you actually need it? And if the aim is to
keep our civs small then why on Earth does the scoring system
still primarily reward population size? And the fact that the
supposedly comprehensive manual we get with Civ III doesn't even mention the issue and gives apparently misleading remarks about the effectiveness of courthouses and government types in reducing corruption makes me feel I've had the wool pulled over my eyes by Firaxis in a way that I don't like. A challenge is one thing. Misleading customers about some aspect of the game is something quite different. Before I discovered the forums here and discovered corruption was indeed a problem, I actually abandoned several games because I thought I must be doing something wrong.

Anyway, rant over. Two specific points:
1. Has anyone managed to do an investigate city diplomatic mission to find out whether the AI civs are as affected by corruption as we are?
2. There seems to be a lot of disagreement about whether you can use things like forests to rush-build palaces and forbidden palaces. Is it possible some of the disagreement is because the rules might be different for different difficulty levels? Perhaps we ought to all be more careful to specify what level we are playing on, and whether our suggestions are things we've actually tried or just ideas that sounded good (which I emphasize are probably still worth presenting if noone else has thought of them).

FWIW, I play on Monarch level, and have found that disbanding units adds nothing to shields for forbidden palace. And there's no workaround by swapping build orders. If your current building has shields from disbanded units then the forbidden palace is greyed out on the menu so you can't swap to it. Not tested forests yet.

Simon

 

[jisc]

"The Americans" (capital Washington, leader Lincoln) are rather absurdly included in the game from 4000 BC although in reality no such tribe existed until 1776 AD. Notice that the game provides no mechanism for the USA to come into existence in 1776 (or at any other time).

To be more realistic, No leaders like Lincoln or Queen Elizabeth or the others from 4000 BC up to 20th century, so these leaders must be GODS, and to be more specific, especially in a democracy, no leaders have ever reign for more than 20 years. So i thnk there is no use on barking on the "realistic" thing.

 

[EvilTyranny]

"To be more realistic, No leaders like Lincoln or Queen Elizabeth or the others from 4000 BC up to 20th century, so these leaders must be GODS, and to be more specific, especially in a democracy, no leaders have ever reign for more than 20 years. So i thnk there is no use on barking on the "realistic" thing."

The leaders lifespans give the game more of a fun-factor. Playing the game for a few turns before dying would detract from the fun, just a little. There has to be a balance between fun and realism, and as long as the realism doesn't interfere with the fun of the game I don't see why such an idea should be shot down. In fact I think such realism would inhance the game, not detract from it.

 

[Ironikinit]

I know I'm off topic with this, but I'll make some on topic comments later.

I've noticed complaints about the Americans being included. Fact is, very few civilizations have been around since 4000 BCE, not even the Greeks and Romans, so there's no point in singling out the Yanks, unless one simply wishes to parade their bigotry.

Further, in one thread I noticed someone claiming that since Civ 3 is made in the states by yanks, they naturally stacked the deck in favor of the American civ. IMO, the American civ isn't an especially good one, given that I don't care for the expanionist ability. I would've addressed that in the proper thread, but it was locked. Perhaps a legitimate complaint would be that the later wonders are too often from the U.S., but that's to be expected, given the situation during the 20th c. Sorry to go off topic, but I just wanted to say the above.

On topic:

I haven't played Civ 3 prior to the current patch. Other than democracy not eradicating corruption as expected, I haven't had a big corruption problem. Perhaps this discussion is out of date. By "big" I mean "so annoying that it detracted from the game for me". My suspicion is that if there is that big of a problem, your empire is too large. Contrawise, if you're in danger of being smoked in a cultural race, perhaps you didn't take enough opponents.

I didn't play the game prior to the patch, and it has worked well enough. Too well, really, I've spent too much time playing.

 

[Peteus]

Originally posted by SimonRobinson
And of course, starving a city without having any adverse consequences to yourself is very realistic isn't it... <g>
(I always wondered in civ II why there wasn't some diplomatic
penalty or something for starving your citizens).

Anyway I do fully agree that Civ III seems to narrow your
possible strategies down a lot more compared to Civ II, and
that is very sad. Other examples of this include governments
- all the governments in Civ II had their uses, but that doesn't
seem to be the case in Civ III (has anyone found any good reason
for going to monarchy yet?).

...snip...

Anyway, rant over. Two specific points:
1. Has anyone managed to do an investigate city diplomatic mission to find out whether the AI civs are as affected by corruption as we are?
2. There seems to be a lot of disagreement about whether you can use things like forests to rush-build palaces and forbidden palaces. Is it possible some of the disagreement is because the rules might be different for different difficulty levels?

On your first point, I agree. Some things that make your citizens unhappy (people in a city you just captured being bitter at you over attrocities commited by their former civ) are counter-intuitive. And the fact that the game rewards you for razing cities and starving the ones you capture seems to oppose Sid's stated objective to encourage people to play a "friendlier" game!

On your second point, I disagree in part. There are probably more ways to play Civ III than Civ II, if just because the diplomacy has been improved so much. Culture is another nice addition. And Monarchy is useful if you are warring and can't afford the war weariness that goes along with Republic. In the modern age, you may want to flip back and forth between Communism and Democracy for the same reason, although flipping is hard unless you are a Religious civ!

In answer to Question 1 - yes, the AI has the same problem with corruption. In fact, much more so because he isn't as capable of dealing with it (rushing courthouses, etc.)

In answer to Question 2 - no, you can never use cash, forests or disbanded units to rush a wonder or palace, no matter how hard you try!

 

[LeroyJr]

I just look at my border towns as being strategic and not big producers. My core cities do all the production and the outlying ones are either staging grounds for an offensive on another civ or of the "I have it and they don't" variety or better put "not a staging ground for them". What their production is generally does not matter. Normally for me I get the corruption knock for having too many cities. I always play on a huge map so that means that I have 30+ cities cranking anyway by that time.

I also think they need to consider globalization in with the corruption. Back in the middle ages when it took my industrious worker 30 turns to lay a 15 square road from Washington to Detroit it seemed like a huge distance from the capital. In the modern era when I can see the whole map and am wageing a war vs the Persians and taking cities 90+ tiles to the south, Detroit is pretty darn close to Washington. I can see Washington from Detroit on the screen!! Plus rail of course means no movement cost to get from one to the other.

The only other thing that would help in Civ IV or a mod pack for Civ III would be units that could be built to combat corruption. Just like spys in Civ II combatted other spies. The city that completes the Small Wonder FBI building, Scottland Yard or the KGB can produce agents that can be sent to outlaying community's to combat corruption. Fortify a couple of FBI agents in a city and watch the corruption go down. I think that would be a great addition. Maybe a unit for corruption and one for waste. With the advent of nationalism you should be able to build Customs agents and fortify them on your border towns to combat corruption and intercept those spies coming in from other civs.

 

[wizlock]

in the GOTM3 i accidently found a bug/exploit that gives you 0% corruption .. the trick is to never get a palace ... simply by not building a city with your first settler but instead explore and hope for warriors in huts and attack nearest civ and get a city before using the settler = no palace = no corruption

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13305&pagenumber=1

this must be the ultimate solution to the corruption problem
though the game gets pretty easy .. so i really dont see the point in using this exploit ..

 

[LeroyJr]

Of course no palace also means that your biggest culture producer is also out of play. Also better not be playing on a huge map and run into pikemen with your warrior to take that city.

 

[CivAl]

Monarchy is VERY useful!

What I always do is never build the Great Lib, but get Literature as fast as possible and trade it to the weakling and nobody else. Then I beeline to Monarchy. Monarchy lets me boost up my commerce. I build a huge army of horsemen and spearmen. Blast through all the required techs while everyone else is still struggling to Republic. Before you know it I have Knights. I conquer the weakling, capture the Great Library, and I can explore the Middle Ages, except for Education, as long as I want, while the other civs struggle through Ancient Times and hand me all the non-required techs on a silver platter. By the time they discover Feudalims I'm usually 5 techs ahead. Of course I switch to Repulic the moment they hand it to me. Monarchy is only useful as an oppurtunity to really use those knights - once you hit Republic you're going to have to pay money you never could have paid in Monarchy.

 

[SimonRobinson]

Hmmm. Interesting strategy. But I'm not clear what monarchy gives you that despotism wouldn't to help you in using that strategy. In my experience, when you swap to monarchy, your trade doesn't go up by a significant amount, and you lose the ability to use your population to mass-build all those knights that you use.

Also, just out of interest, when you give literature to the weakest AI civ, can you rely on their not passing it on to other civs?

???

Simon

 

[CivAl]

Perhaps I'm not getting as good results as I could! I don't often use pop-rushing, because I'm not sure that the shields the pop point provides are not equal or less than those it can provide working an improved tile. How many pop does it take to rush a single knight? I can usually build knights once every two to five turns in my best cities by the time I stabilise post-Monarchy.

Of course, unless you have a super-commerce city you won't often want to be pay-rushing either. Usually I find that post-expansion a build order of Temple-Granary-Barracks-and then Marketplace/Library as necessary (no sense putting a library in a border outpost), and then mil units works quite well. I can have an army of 15-20 Knights plus defense in the Early MA's.

 

[artax]

I've been playing Civ 3 for a couple of months now, and while I'm certainly no guru or anything, I have worked out a Grand Unified Strategy for dealing with corruption, which seems to work pretty well for me. By "pretty well" I mean that this system makes a military conquest of the entire world not only feasable, but only slightly more difficult than it was in Civ 2.

I'm putting the description of my system in a text file attatchment to this message. I wanted to post it directly, but I seem to be running up against the maximum message length limit for this forum.

 

[Vortex70]

I have found a way to undermine corruption. If youre empire is getting extensive. Switch back from democracy to communism. The period you should do this at is when you have so many new cities, that the most recently obtained ones are beginning to slow down significantly at producing anything. Though corruption is still a problem, it's not nearly as significant for an expanding empire if it is in a communist state. I can afford the loss of a few shields in a major city if I can have those losses made up for by a gain in production at smaller ones that need to catch up in construction.

Yes, Communism is a big pain when it comes to income, but in my opinion, the time saved by having cities capable of producing is much more worthwhile.

Vortex

 

[artax]

You must be doing something different from me. Every time I've tried Communism it only made things worse. Cities close to the capital/FP got a bit more corruption than under Monarchy, cities 10 squares away still lost about 25% of their shields and commerce, cities 11-12 sqaures away still lost over 50%, and cities 13 or more squares away were still completely useless for production.

Thanks for reminding me, though. I should have mentioned that the Core Area Radius figure of 10 squares that I use in my system is based on the assumption that your government type is Monarchy. I don't actually have much experience playing as a Republic or Democracy in Civ 3, so I don't know how that would change things. (Did I mention I've only been playing Civ 3 for a couple of months?) I used to use them quite often in Civ 2, but every time I've tried it in Civ 3 the War Weariness was too crippling and I had to switch back. I've never been able to stay peaceful long enough for Republic or Democracy to be viable. That's probably because I always like to go for world conquest and a military victory.

Just thinking hypothetically, however, even if Republic or Democracy did allow you to build productive cities farther out than 10 squares, I'm not sure it would make sense to do that unless you were sure you could stay a Republic or Democracy for the rest of the game. Because if you ever had to switch back to Monarchy (for example if you got into an extended war), those cities would become useless again.

 

[Peteus]

Artax - were your observations done pre- or post-patch? Communism is intended to smooth out corruption across all of your cities. I thought that was fixed in the patch. And I've found it very useful for expansion - especially the ability to rush improvements with foreign citizens that I want to get rid of anyway!

Communism should definitely provide better overall income and production than Monarchy, especially in a large empire. If it isn't, something is wrong!

 

[artax]

I haven't tried the patch yet. I know the manual says distance from the capital isn't supposed to make any difference to corruption in Communism, but that seems to be completely wrong (at least without the patch). Is that a bug? If so I'm surprised one that big would make it into the release.

As for using forced labor to get rid of foreign citizens, I never get many of them anyway since I usually raze enemy cities I capture. Also even when I decide to keep them, by the time I've captured them my catapults/cannons/artillery have usually reduced them to size 1.

 

[Grey Fox]

I usually build cities on a pattern I include in the image...

the cities closest (the blue ones on the image, red is Capital) is almost my only good cities (and the cities closest to them that is...), every other cities goes from 10% production to 1%, (waste is worce then corruption), and I never build a courthose in those cities because I've noticed it doesn't help them...

the only cities worth building a courthose/police building, is the core cities who can gain 1-2 shields by doing that...

but when you have 50 (or 100-200) cities... it's only annoying...

What I think should be in the game:

- Lower the corruption/waste for Gods sake!!!
- The police station / courthouse should work better...
- It should exist more corruption battling units/buildings...


You know This GOTM (3), the island in the EASt.... well I never built a Palace/Forbidden there, I had them on a perfect location I think... so My waste/corruption was so high... I only built Irrigation, and built temples / cathedrals / marketplace / Mass transit system by rushing them with money, 25 cities or so (never built on the hills / tundra, afraid of domination victory) cost a lot... more then 20 000 gold or so


this is my city building map, (made it myself):

 

[artax]

Grey Fox, two questions:

What size world are you playing on, and what difficulty level?