Reflections about corruption ...

[Mîtiu Ioan]

I'm not bothering anymore like a game feature about corruption BUT about some social and historical facts ...

1. Corruption isn't corect to be linked with the distance of capital, but with the size of a city !!!

In fact in many countries over the history the capital was the leading city of the corruption !! For example in my country Bucharest is a city far corrupted than the small an border city of Satu Mare !!!

In fact - this is almost a social rule - if the number of citizens in a city increase then also increase the problem related with crimes, black market and so on. Also - the economical decisions concentrated in capital is more likely to generate "influence traffic" ( I don't know exactly the english expression for this ... ).

2. Doesn't matter if this will shock many people - corruption not neccesary decrease the industrial productions !! In fact in many cases corruption increase the production - by deturning governement funds for private-held corporations, tax facilities and so on - more likely the corruption affects happines of citizen !!!

I know this is probably some of my ideological view here - and CIV III is just a game and playability is the main purpose - but this facts really make my angry ...

Regards

 

[royfurr]

Hmm, Mîtiu Ioan, you make an interesting point. Truely, it must be very discouraging to live in a place where one must make constant little bribes for the little things those of us in the US might take for granted ... the (basic) honesty of the traffic cop, the port official, the taxman, the code inspector. (Yes, I know, there is PLENTY of corruption of those things in the US, but I ask my fellow US CIV'ers- when was the last time YOU had to grease a palm to get outta the fake traffic violation accusation or to NOT have a major unfair increase in your property assessment? And how often? Lets face it we live here in a relatively less corrupt society then many places. THAT IS *NOT* MEANT AS A PUT-DOWN TO OTHER COUNTRIES!!)

But back to Ioan's point. Corruption DOES have an effect on happiness. People DO dispair over things like this. And it IS related to the simple number of people.

Perhaps an approach that would make people deal with corruption better (both DEAL with it AND feel better about having it in the game) is to
1) tone down the WASTE (shield loss part) and the Tax revenue cost of corruption a bit
2) Add in a hit on pop. happiness, mostly related to city pop (that is boost the current effects that are like that), to somewhat counter the reductions in (1)

This way we still have an effect to combat ICS, but now its not so frustrating. I don't know about this, but for me anyway, there is just a massive frustrating psychlogical reaction to thsose endless fields of 1 shied/ 1 Tax cities covering a continent that isn't your home contitnent. We KNOW for sure how to deal with happiness problems and have tools to do so. I think this would overall help the game.

If there was just such a simple answer to the Naval aspect of the game ...



The nornmally quiet Lurker begins putting on his fireproof environemental suit complete with air supply as he starts to run from the room ...

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Originally posted by royfurr
Truely, it must be very discouraging to live in a place where one must make constant little bribes for the little things those of us in the US might take for granted ... the (basic) honesty of the traffic cop, the port official, the taxman, the code inspector. (Yes, I know, there is PLENTY of corruption of those things in the US, but I ask my fellow US CIV'ers- when was the last time YOU had to grease a palm to get outta the fake traffic violation accusation or to NOT have a major unfair increase in your property assessment? And how often? Lets face it we live here in a relatively less corrupt society then many places. THAT IS *NOT* MEANT AS A PUT-DOWN TO OTHER COUNTRIES!!)

Yes - happines is EXTREMELY affected by little bribes ( major trouble like propriety violation is anyway unfrequent in Romania today ) - but necessity to pay for many little "governamental service" which is supposed to be free is devastating for citizens loiality !!

And related with this I have two ideas :
- somekind of "less corruption flip";
- Cathedral is normal ( IMHO ) to have effect on corruption reduce - usually the fear from a "divine judge" may be very effective !!

And related with this - probably somebody will tell that is just a game, but IMHO, PC games, like television have in our time a significant role to "educate" or at least to inform people - so IMHO - is necessary for soft designer and programmer ( I'm a programmer too and game tester BTW ... ) to have somekind of "proffesional ethics" - information should be as accurate as possible - also with some social mechanism.

Please don't kill me for my opinion ...

Regards