Official Corruption Solutions Thread

[joespaniel]

I havent noticed any real reduction in corruption/waste from WLTK in my cities, even though the civlopedia states this is supposed to. Or am I missing something?

The courthouse drops c/w about 25%-33% on average, so in large cities it is worth it.

Building 6 cities around the capitol, if you can, gives a nice "core" that have low c/w. Then once you find another solid area, do the same with the FP. Better yet, do the FP in the capitol, then move the capitol trick, it works VERY well! Especialy if your on more than one continent.

There doesnt seem to be any sure fire way to deal with c/w aside from Democracy, and carefull city placement/capturing.

If your a real wimp you can alter the editor for governments, and bump each one up a notch.

 

[pravda]

hmmmmmm

Anyone tat complains about coruption just has to get Civ II out of their brain, and start enjoying a challenge.

I just finished the GOTM, I had plenty of corruption , but it by no means ruined my game, just required different tactics. The one thing that made Civ II boring was tat you could just expand and build hundreds of cities and completely dominate the map. It was so easy and tedious and basically it meant I haven't even touched Civ II for 2 years, far too simple.

I like the coruption, it makes for a eal strategy game, not just a kill enemy build heaps of cities game.

just my opinion.

 

[Erik Tan]

Originally posted by kayser
What are those magic numbers? I guess thay are a function of the map size and difficulty. I searched tha manual and the civilopedia and the home page of civfanatics. No result. Anyone knows?

Regards Kayser

Optimum number of Cities
Tiny map : 8
Small map : 12
Standard map : 16
Large map : 24
Huge map : 32

You can edit the optimum number of cities using the Civ3Edit in the game directory. Open up the Civ3Mod.bic file.

 

[Beam]

Originally posted by joespaniel
I havent noticed any real reduction in corruption/waste from WLTK in my cities, even though the civlopedia states this is supposed to. Or am I missing something?

The courthouse drops c/w about 25%-33% on average, so in large cities it is worth it.

Building 6 cities around the capitol, if you can, gives a nice "core" that have low c/w. Then once you find another solid area, do the same with the FP. Better yet, do the FP in the capitol, then move the capitol trick, it works VERY well! Especialy if your on more than one continent.

There doesnt seem to be any sure fire way to deal with c/w aside from Democracy, and carefull city placement/capturing.

If your a real wimp you can alter the editor for governments, and bump each one up a notch.

Agree with most of this Joe, and would like to make the whimp statement more firm. There are ways to handle corruption. In a large map / regent game I just finished as winner corruption was at about 20%. This with standard rules. Thing here is to implement a lot of improvements that deal with corruption. So don't blame Firaxis or edit rules, there are tools at hand, many of those listed in this thread.

On WLTK, it reduces corruption AND gives a better shield waste ratio. However, to get there you need a couple of things. Those are temples and cathedrales to fight unhappy citizens, workers to irrigate and quickly reach 6 pop, access to empire luxuries through road/harbor/airport and finally cashflow for rushbuilding.

Achieving cashflow is a different story, yet in the game I played I adjusted the Tax / Science slider a lot to develop max. speed vs. max. income a lot. For example, in industrial age I could develop max minus 1 turn on average AND have 500 bucks of net cash per development. The cash is used to rush improvements in corrupt cities.

All this brings cities on pop 6 quickly and allows the WLTK at which point the city can develop itself independantly!

 

[Baron23]

Personally, all of you seem to be making good points, although I truly think that most of you are missing the point. Corruption IS part of the game. That fact is obviously undeniable. And maybe corruption is sometimes overwhelming and unconquerable but it doen't mean that it takes aways from the game. Corruption SHOULD be part of the game cause it makes us better players. However, I only raze cities if they are strategically useless. Granted, if you don't plan on taking over the rest of a civs cities, but the one you did take happens to be in the middle of a culturally rich civs continent, well, you're in touble unless you sell - which is always an option. However, taking over cities or expansion into 98% corruption areas doesn't mean you shoud not do it. No one ever forces your hand. Some choose to create close knit cities thereby eliminating expansion corruption woes but others seem to suffer with the corruption in hopes of attaining extremely valuable resources. I am of the latter type, to an extent. I may take over an island with some coal or oil knowing full well corruption will dampen my mood. Al I am saying is that you have to decide what type of gamer you are. If you do not think that the extra oil, uranium, or rubber will do you any good, then don't expand - rape and pillage and then raze - it works very well although you leave a void - so MAKE A CHOICE - so I guess the moral of the story is.. To be a truly expansionistic society with no cares for corruption and loss, one needs the cash to back up rush builds in order to maintain those cities and reap the benefits of a far reaching resource rich civ. Enjoy the challenge, I for one really get annoyed at times, but its certainly a challenge and I embrace it. That's just my opinion I could be wrong!

 

[jclayton]

I've just read through this thread and I have a question for those of you that have played the game that may or may not shed some light on the 'causes of corruption' ...

Does the nationality of the population have any bearing on the level of corruption observed in a given city ?

That is to say; if you conquer a city all the population will be "foreigners" even tho' the city is under your control. Does this make the corruption experienced in this city any worse as compared to the exact same city whose population are not foreign ??

If so will this effect lessen as the city grows with new non-foreign citizens?

james

 

[tetley]

What's the "build Forbidden Palace in the Capitol, then move the Capitol" trick?

 

[Peteus]

The forbidden palace allows you to have two cores of cities which are good producers, free of the rampant corruption that haunts a sprawling empire. You might capture a continent and want to put the FP there to make those cities productive. But, the FP is a Wonder and can't be rushed, so you face a 300 turn wait in a typical distant city (30 waste, 1 production)
You can rush a palace though, so you can move your capitol by building a palace in the new core instead. Since your old core is probably cruicial to your science and production, you don't want to leave them high and dry so pick the ideal spot for a capitol there and build the FP to control corruption in the "old world".

I like this better in concept (because I hate to waste 400 shields, and I hate to lose the culture in my capitol, which is probably rushing for culture victory):
Start the palace in the appropriate central "new core" city;
Rush-build it with cash and be prepared to waste 100 shields or partially rush it with forestry and/or smaller improvements, up to 300 shields-ish;
Switch to FP and enjoy.

Yes that is an exploit, but since Sid in his infinite wisdom decided to remove the Civ2 change-between-prod-types penalty, who am I not to take full advantage!


Edit PS: I can't claim that I've actually tried this, and others have stated that you can't rush a palace, so they're probably right! You can rush other high-shield improvements though, if they are available to you (ex. Factory, Hydro/Solar Plant) to get close to or over 300 shields. Not that you can likely wait that long for your FP, unless you didn't get into the global war expansion game until late!

 

[Wislem]

Nobody has mentioned the "Commercialist" civ attribute so far. It's supposed to lower corruption, but it's impossible to tell how much since you can't just switch civs mid-game. I've been playing the Greeks and I have to say corruption is still really brutal, but maybe it's lower than it normally would be, who knows. I'm also not sure if they mean just commerce corruption or overall corruption when they say "lowered corruption". Has anybody figured out whether it makes a significant difference or not?

 

[nikitos]

You cannot rush a palace.

Its really annoying when people say that you can, well you cant, so deal with that. What is really meant by the 'moving palace' trick is this. You build a FP next to your original palace, keeping that core essentially the same. Then you build a palace a few cities away where the corruption is not yet bad, so it will not take too long. This will give you an extended area of corruption coverage. Now you build the palace a few cities away again. The corruption will not be bad there either since the new palace that's standing is helping to keep your production decent in your new city. This is the best way to build a palace in a far away location without having to wait 400 turns with a 1 shield producing city. If however you're a military civ, you can just hope for an early leader and go rush build a FP anywhere you please .

 

[tetley]

Oh. So this palace thing isn't really a trick at all. It seems too much of the game rides on getting a Great Leader to rush the FP. Kind of stinks when you don't get one.

I wonder if it's possible to force a reloc of your capitol by getting your first one captured? Just sell a city right next to it & start a war. That sure would be far cheaper than rebuilding the Palace. And then maybe the culture reverts it back several turns later.

 

[rikhis]

I love the new edge corruption has given the game - it forces me to be a bit more machiavellian.

In Civ2, you conquer half an enemy's territory and you just end up with a bigger empire. And that's that. Yawn.

But in Civ3, you keep the few really good cities and give the rest to your weakest ally. Or divide them up among rival civs in a way that's sure to cause tension. Either way, you win gratitude and avoid creating a power vacuum. (But remember - your loyalist allies are those who are completely dependent on you for military resources. )

I also like selling cities I've just taken and know I can't defend (heh heh). Razing should be reserved for those annoying settlements that interfere with your cultural boundaries.

 

[Binomag]

Imo a possible solution for corruption should be a formula that takes into account the gov type, the distance from the capitol or fp and happiness (and buildings of course) than applies a % of lost trade and shields to the total.
It will be less challenging but more logical, but the real matter is whether all this stuff adds or detracts fun...my 2 liras...

 

[ghostrider]

well this is how i deal with waste.

I tend to take a civ with commercial or/and commercial, so i think France is just perfekt.

I build or aquire cities around two main clusters.
one will get Forbidden palace and the other has the palace.

mostly i do not need to build courthouses or other mesures againt
curroption as this system keeps it to a minimum.

at around 10+ cities i tend to change to democracy.
I never have more then 15 cities.

from here i just make the cities better and have research at about 80%/90%, still going about 30+ per turn.

a medium sized army in strategic places keeps me on my feet.

I go for improvments/wonders that give more money like wallstreet/leonardos workshop/pyramids.

This is not a world domination tactic, its more a cultural/political or sometimes even spacerace tactics, as you always end up being much more evolved then you co-players

 

[ghostrider]

The above tactic also requires a special hand with politics.

You NEVER start a war.

you just compain complain and complain about the tresspasses untill they start the war.

with this system you are almost always cash fat so you choose 1 or 2 good nations to start a pact against the enemy and they will in turn get there own allies. the whole world will be against you enemy.

do this twise or so and the tension between nations will let you work quite freelee.

also when you the a nations leader with tension give him 20 gold
and so you keep him from wanting to start a war.

 

[JayKay]

Originally posted by nicketzsche
Would someone please be as generous as to enlighten those of us that are unsure of what the "magic" numbers are concerning the max number of cities you may have on each map size before corruption grows. Be clear please as to if it goes mad after the sizes given or when that size is reached. Thanks!

Max number of cities until corruption starts:

Tiny - 8
Small - 12
Standard - 16
Large - 24
Huge - 32
_________________________________________________

Portugal
Nation of: Magellan's (from Magellan's Expedition);
Vasco da Gama (Discoverer of the Maritime path to India);
and Pedro Álvares Cabral (Discoverer of Brazil in 1500)

 

[shaglio]

Two solutions I came up with to help reduce corruption are:

1) In the Civ 3 Edit I changed Police Stations so that they also combat corruption as well as reduce war weariness

2) In the Civ 3 Edit I changed the ammount of shields needed to build the Forbidden Palace from 100 to 10. Cities far from the capital that only have 1 usable shield would normally take 100 years to build the FP which is ridiculous! The city would be sitting there stagnant for centuries.

 

[Wislem]

Why do people insist on posting CIV3Edit "solutions"? They aren't solutions, you've just cheated, essentially changing the rules of the game. Why don't you just deal with corruption by exploiting the 999999999 gold per turn bug or upping the magic corruption numbers to 9999? You haven't solved the problem, you've simply changed the rules so that the problem is either no longer there or mutated into something smaller.

 

[ApocalypseKurtz]

I've found that if you want to have a huge empire, you're only realistic choice is democracy. You could go with communism, but you will lose ALOT of shield and gold. Of course it will be about average in all cities, so you will have alot of medicore cities. Under Republic, once you're empire gets big corruption will be a tremendous problem, so you can either switch to Democracy or lose some cities.

 

[Peteus]

I think it's funny that we are talking about 15-20 cities as a "big" empire.

In Civ II, big meant any more than about 100 cities on a normal map! I have to admit, I haven't gotten with the program yet in that respect. When I see that my neighbour has some Rubber that I need, well, I might try to trade for it...but sooner or later he'll get greedy, so I'll march over and take it from him. Then I'll probably look around and say, "You know, while I'm here, I might as well take his capitol to ruin his culture. And he built Sun Tsu's in that city over there, and beat me to it by a turn, so it's only fair for me to take that too! After all, I just built some Panzers, and it's a shame to have them sitting around rusting...

So before long I have 50 cities, and my corruption is way out of control (the old 98% in Democracy with courthouse debacle.) Maybe sooner or later I'll get with the program and decide that smaller is better!
I will provide this warning though...if you let your enemy grow unfettered so that he has 30 or 40 cities to your 15, he will probably be smart enough to fill his cities with temples and libraries, and before long you will be facing a massive cultural deficit...and that's no fun at all! Babylon did that to me in my first-ever game...then I started coveting their rubber resources...

You'll never reach 100,000 culture with 15 cities, I think. The effect of mass library/temples is just too overwhelming. Of course, you still have a shot at the 20,000 in one city culture win.