The Issue of Corruption

[Moonsinger]

Since I have heard many complains about corruption from the three GOTM15 spoiler threads, I thought we can talk more about those complains here. Note: This is not a spoiler thread; please don't mention anything related to the current GOTM.

Because there are plenty of information on how to deal with corruption on the Strategy & Tips and the Strategy Articles forum, there is no need for Corruption Managment 101 here, but I'm sure someone will remember and post the link to those threads.

Here is my take on corruption. It works just like taxes in the real world. The more money we make, the higher our tax rate and the more tax we are going to pay. For example, if we make 1 million a year, our tax rate is 70% (1 million * 0.3 = 300K to take home after taxes) . If we make 30K a year, our tax rate is 25% (30K * .75 = 22.5K to take home after taxes). Note: This is just an example; depending on where you live, the actual tax rate may be more or less, but the principle is pretty much the same.

Clearly, we are much better off making 1 million a year and paying the higher taxes than making 30K a year and pay a very little in taxes.

I think corruption in Civ3 works pretty much in the same principle. The bigger empire (the more cities we build), the more corruption we have to deal with and the higher rate of corruption as well. This isn't a bad thing because (if manage correctly) we are making a lot more gold with the larger empire size. Just like paying taxes, we are better off making 1 million dollar and pay 70% to taxes comparing to making 30K and paying very little taxes. Therefore, the next time, anyone has a problem with corruption, I hope he/she doesn't complain about it but learn how to deal with it.

 

[planetfall]

I am not disturbed by corruption per se, but I don't care for the way corruption is built into the default Fireaxis rules. After dealing with corruption a long time, I don't like changing the play style of the game by reducing the corruption slider from 100%.

However, I wish the builder style player would be able to build improvements that would effect corruption just in that city where the improvement were built. This option does introduce more incentive to not run to complete war monger. Some obvious improvements that might have turned on the reduce corruption flag are:

temple
cathedral


However setting both tends to reduce the corruption effect too much. I perfer to only set cathedral with reduce corruption flag. Players then have to still build temple. The corruption reduction of

courthouse-police station - cathedral

is slightly more than

courthouse- police station.

Interesting

courthouse-cathedral has less corruption reducing effect than

courthouse-police station.


Ok the Corruption Straw Man is posted.

Have fun at the skeet show.

== PF

 

[cracker]

Part of the corruption issue is directly related to issues that I tried to raise for us to discuss as a group when we began discussing concepts of landmass area and number of rivals.

In Civ3 corruption is not a fixed and unchanging problem that you can always deal with in the same way. There is a continuous curve that relates the number of civs in the game to the available landmass area per civ and this is just simplified down to the three slices that most players see when the see a small, standard, or large sized map. The reason Firaxis has set different valuse for the tech rate and the Optimal Cities Number is to reflect the expected differences in the sizes of the empires that players must build on the different size maps.

The OCN value is tuned to produce more than the desired levels of corruption when your empire is larger than the expected size for the map. Corruption can also be a problem if the shape of your empire gets extended to anything different from the perfect concentric set of rings.

These are some of the built in challenges of the game that are designed to increase the difficulty of dealing with management decisions as the size of your empire gets larger.

Expanding corruption is just one of those dimensions included in the game to force the players to be managers that think in more than just the X and Y dimensions. The conflict exists in any system that rewards you in score and power for maximizing territory while punishing you in the level of task management that is required whenever you exceed the idealized perfectly compact little civilization.

 

[Justus II]

I actually looked back at some of the data from this GOTM to determine how successfully, or unsuccessfully, I dealt with corruption in this game. Since this is not a spoiler thread, I will hold off on some of the game-specific details until after the submissions are closed, but I can talk in general terms about what I found.

Since this was a standard-sized map, the Optimal City Number was 16, meaning above that point, corruption should grow faster relative to what you gain for additional cities. I also believe this is the point where even adding another worthless city can affect corruption levels for other, productive cities in your empire. With the Forbidden Palace, it is possible to create a new list of core cities, and potentially, double the number of cities before going over the OCN threshhold (if it were perfectly placed, with no overlap).

Unfortunately, I built my FP too early, because I had intended to go with a small empire, keeping myself around 24 cities (OCNx1.5). I generally use a fairly non-dense build, with cities spread out so there is little or no overlap. This means fewer cities cover a larger area, which unfortunately increases distance-based corruption, but allows each city to grow to larger sizes eventually, and I try to place them so each city can get 2-4 bonus resources within their radius (furs, gold, cattle, whatever). I then try to build every improvement in each city, to try to maximize the output of these relatively non-corrupt cities.

My goal is to keep, or get, all of my cities at less than 50% corruption, unless it is one I need in a strategic location, in which case I can tolerate a couple of the 95% kind, although I will still try to rush/buy courthouses and police to bring them under 75%. Also, by using 1-2 entertainers, WLTKD will reduce waste somewhat (I think this only works for shields, not gold).

As it turned out, by the time I reached 25 cites, I had an overall level of 24.4% waste and 19.3% corruption throughout my empire. 3 cities were over 50% in waste, one of which already had a courthouse and was at 61% (but in a strategic bottleneck), and the other two were within 3 turns of courthouses. I had 4 other cities with courthouses at that point, usually bringing corruption from the 50% range down to 30%. The key is that all my cities at this point were able to pay for maintaining their own improvements. Even the highly corrupt ones, 70%plus, would gain at least 2 gold with a courthouse, and maintainence was only one. Usually I would also build a library, for culture.

What suprised me was that as my empire later grew (after some wars were forced upon me), I was able to maintain or even improve the corruption rate. By the time I had reached 36 cities, waste had grown to 28% overall, and corruption 21%. 10 of those cities were over 50% waste, 5 in spite of courthouses. However, once I started adding police stations, within the next 10 turns, I was able to get it down to 18% waste and corruption. At that point, I still had 7 cities over 50%, but only 2 of them were over 75%, and all were producing at least 2 shields and 3 gold, most 4 shields and 6 or more trade, easily paying for the police and courthouse (2/turn).

I did a more thourough analysis closer to the end of my game. By this point, I had 38 cities, but corruption was down to 15% overall. All but 3 had courthouses at least, 13 had police stations. I still had 7 over 50%, but none over 80%. I found that by now courthouses were worthwhile even in my core cities (other than the capital), since cities within 5 spaces of the capital might have 3-5% corruption, but by now, (with market/bank and Library/university) were generating 100+ trade. The courthouse could reduce that to 1-2%, saving 2-3 trade, and usually 1 shield in the process, paying for itself. Those cities that were still highly corrupt after court and police were still puting out at least 4 shields and 6 trade for the most part, better than the normal 1/1 for border cities. Except for one newer, undeveloped city, they all generated at least as much in trade as they cost in maintenance. (i.e. 6 trade, vs. 5 maintenance (Library-1, University-2, Court-1 police-1). At this point, most of my trade was allocated to science, so it might not show up as gold, but the point is they were making a positive contribution.

Was it worth it? I did a little more analysis at this point, to summarize my empire, looking at the impact of my best and worst cities. Obviously, the higher corruption cities tended toward the bottom of the list, but that was not always the case. I had several cities over 15 tiles from the capital or FP, that were 40-60% corrupt but still producing double digit shields and 20+ trade. I still thought this was interesting:

-----------------Shields-----Trade
Top 5 cities -- 33% ----- 31% [% of total for empire]
Top 10 ------ 57% ----- 59%
Bottom 10 ----- 5% ----- 6%

When I looked at these numbers, I also thought (like Moonsinger) about our tax system, and the oft-quoted numbers of how the top 1% or 5% pay 50% of all taxes. Civ is not quite as skewed, but you can see it does tend to clump near the top. Also, as I mentioned, having improvments can influence this somewhat, but at this point all but 5 cities had universities, and those werent always the most corrupt cities (I was rushing universities in my border cities to boost culture/prevent flipping). Every city had libraries. Most cities had banks, and I was running 80% science, so the university/library combo had the most effect on trade.

This was a longer post than I intended, but hopefully this will show that corruption can be managed even with a relatively large empire (territory-wise), at this point I had 916 tiles (dont want to give away anything that would be a spoiler, but I posted a map screenshot in the last spoiler thread, this is before the final war).
And that even in corrupt cities, improvements can help to make them at least be a contributor to your economy.

 

[civ_steve]

Good write-up, Justus II !!

To recap: the corruption/waste restrictions within the game allow you 20-30 large, highly productive cities (the numbers may go up or down based on games settings) centered around your Palace and Forbidden Palace. Distance from the two palaces will dramatically increase Corruption/Waste, once you're about 10 tiles away or so. And too many cities will also start increasing Corruption/Waste (but in my experience, not enough to prevent me from founding additional cities if I so desire.)

So, one should build most of their improvements in these core cities, and do only minimal improvement of marginal border cities. When discussing these highly corrupt, all waste cities, most people consider them to be useless. Even though they are not as productive as your core cities, they are still quite useful. 1.) They increase your controlled territory for Domination calculation; 2.) Once a cultural improvement is built, they add to your civ's cultural value; 3.) That 1 shield is eventually used, either as Wealth, or to build a unit that eventually can be disbanded; 4.) Assign some of the citizens as Taxmen to add Taxes to your treasury. A size 6 city, with irrigated lands and RailRoads on the Irrigation, can support 3 Taxmen. 100 such cities ...

 

[Moonsinger]

Here is my little trick for getting the most out of those corrupted 1-shield cities:

• Don't build anything other than the market and harbor (aquaduct and hospital are optional). I'm sure everyone here already know this; there isn't anything new here.
  
• Set most citizens to tax collectors. Corrupted cities are really our cash cows. Again nothing news here.
  
• Queue them up to build factories. Since each of them is producing 1-shield per turn, they are perfect for storing shields. Think of them as potential energy in reserve. When our enemy declare war on us, we would immediately switch and rush hundred of our best units. By the next turn, we would have hundred more units to play. The war would end quickly for anyone who would dare declaring war on us.

 

[zagnut]

I like your idea of storing shields for future military units. Wish I had thought of that.

Why not also build a library to expand the city borders? While you probably won't develop all the squares, the expanding borders may link your cities, or prevent the other civs settlers from founding a town nearby, or give you a little more culture (which we can all use). I would think library, market and harbor would be the choices.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by zagnut
Why not also build a library to expand the city borders?

Since those cities are extremely corrupted, you would be losing money if you build library, temple, courthouse, or police station; if I remember correctly, each of those building cost at least 4 gold to maintain (not including the cost of building them). If you build those corrupted cities about 4 square apart, they don't need any culture at all.

 

[zagnut]

I just checked the Info Center. Here are the figures on the 3 improvements:

Cost Culture Upkeep

Marketplace 100 0 1
Harbor 80 0 1
Library 80 3 1

Usually I am not building those very outlying cities, but am conquering them. Unless I raze and rebuild, I can't always place them as you suggest. I find a Library helps, but usually don't build anything else beside your two suggestions.

 

[zagnut]

That didn't come out the way I typed it. Anyway, the 3 numbers from left to right are the values for cost, culture and upkeep.

 

[Moonsinger]

In any case, why pay the extra 3 gold per turn to maintain each of the library? Not to mention that you have to pay another 280 gold or something to rush build them. If you conquer those cities and want to keep them that way, that's fine; I'm sure there is a hill near by where you can put up another town in between to expand your border (in these corupted region, hill is useless anyway since it can produce only 1 food no matter what).

PS: I was right about the other building like courthouse, police station, you know. They do cost around 4 gold to maintain them.

 

[Justus II]

Library, Courthouse, and police station only cost 1 gold each for upkeep. The courthouse and police station only help if the city is large enough, to produce 15 or more shields potentially, then the two of them together will get you up to 3 or 4, plus an equal amount of gold, which will pay for itself. Now if it is totally corrupted AND not very big, it is probably not worth it, changing from 95% corruption down to 85% won't help if your potential is only 10 or less.

 

[el_kalkylus]

Originally posted by Moonsinger
In any case, why pay the extra 3 gold per turn to maintain each of the library? Not to mention that you have to pay another 280 gold or something to rush build them. If you conquer those cities and want to keep them that way, that's fine; I'm sure there is a hill near by where you can put up another town in between to expand your border (in these corupted region, hill is useless anyway since it can produce only 1 food no matter what).

PS: I was right about the other building like courthouse, police station, you know. They do cost around 4 gold to maintain them.

But won't building more cities just increase the corruption further in every other cities?

 

[civ_steve]

JustusII said:

The courthouse and police station only help if the city is large enough, to produce 15 or more shields potentially, then the two of them together will get you up to 3 or 4, plus an equal amount of gold, which will pay for itself.

Actually, the Courthouse and PoliceStation only reduce corruption , which is the loss of commerce. The only way to increase the shields generated (reduce the waste ) is to celebrate We Love The King Day (WLTKD). This happens for size 6 and larger cities when 50% or more of that city's citizens are happy, and there are NO unhappy citizens; there are several ways to make more happy people, which I wont go into here.

If the city is far enough away from the Palace or FP, and you have more cities that the optimal number allowed, the Courthouse and PoliceStation do nothing; don't bother building them.

el_kalkylus: building more cities does increase corruption and waste in inner, core cities, but it seems to reach a certain limit and only slowly grow with more cities, at least in my experience. This is assuming that it's later in the game, and your core cities are large and well-developed, and you're in Republic or Democracy.

 

[Justus II]

Actually, the Courthouse and PoliceStation only reduce corruption , which is the loss of commerce. The only way to increase the shields generated (reduce the waste ) is to celebrate We Love The King Day (WLTKD).

. . .

If the city is far enough away from the Palace or FP, and you have more cities that the optimal number allowed, the Courthouse and PoliceStation do nothing; don't bother building them.

As far as I know, that is not true, the Courthouse and Police Station affect BOTH waste and Corruption. The WLTKD does affect waste only (shields), not corruption. Therefore, when evaluating the cost of the Courthouse and/or Police Station, take into account both the extra gold and shields. If you want more details, check out this strategy article:
"Do you think you understand Corruption
Generally, even if it only improves it from 1 shield/1 gold to 2 of each, you eventually come out ahead, as the 1 gold pays for maintenance, and you get one extra shield, which after 80 turns pays for the building cost, but that is a marginal case.

The article shows a complex formula for calculating corruption, and the effect of courthouses and police stations. Roughly, it is a 25% difference, but keep in mind that some totally corrupt cities are effectivly worse than 100%, but still get the minimum one shield and one gold. So for example, if the formula results in a 130%, the improvement from the courthouse wont show up. Also, if it is a low potential city (1/6 or 1/8), even an improvment to 80% corrupt might not result in more than one shield or gold.

I usually look for cities that are losing 10+ shields and/or gold, as a courthouse will often generate one or two more shields and gold. In some cases, you can get a 3-4 shield and gold increase, meaning even if you have to pay to rush it, a courthouse pays for itself in 10-20 turns. Police stations are cumulative, and sometimes are needed for more corrupt cities.

One of the other points I was making in my earlier posts was that I have found courthouses to be worthwhile even in "core" cities, which might only be at 5-10% corruption. The courthouse will often reduce a loss of 3-4 shields to just 1, and will always gain at least one gold in a large city, paying for its own maintenance. The extra shield or two can sometimes be the difference in completing units on schedule (for example, a city that produces 13 takes 6 turns to complete a knight, but at 14 finishes in only 5 turns).

 

[Bolan Longpants]

The government type is very important for the amount of corruption. I posted the following numbers and conclusions some time ago on 1BC. Please note these figures were taken under a communistic government.

'I checked with one of my games and checked three cities: London (capitol), Heliopolis (FP) and Paris (far away from London and Heliopolis). I had a look at waste, total amount of shields, corruption and total amount of commerce. Here's my observation. All the cities do not own a courthouse, police station, factory and have no WLTKD (we love the king day).

waste/shields corruption/commerce
London 15/22 20/38
Paris 15/22 23/38
Helio. 15/22 20/38

Again only this time with a courthouse
London 8/15 14/38
Paris 8/15 16/38
Helio. 8/15 14/38

Courthouse and WLTKD
London 7/15 14/38
Paris 7/15 16/38

Courthouse, WLTKD and policestation
London 6/15 11/37
Paris 6/15 13/37

Conclusions (under communist government):
-The palace and the forbidden palace have no influence on the amount of waste but they reduce corruption.
-Courthouses reduce both corruption and waste
-A WLTKD will only reduce waste. The amount of corruption is the same.
-A police station will reduce both waste and corruption.

I haven't figured out the influence of a factory on waste.

Bolan'

Please correct me if some of my conclusions were wrong.

 

[Megalou]

With the Forbidden Palace, it is possible to create a new list of core cities, and potentially, double the number of cities before going over the OCN threshhold (if it were perfectly placed, with no overlap).

Justus II,

Are you referring to the limit after which each city gets a higher corruption? This limit is 16 at Chieftain (standard map, non-militaristic civ), but are you sure it is doubled with an FP? I'm asking because Pyrkaige doesn't say anything about it in his/her great posts at
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37490&highlight=Pyrkaige

Another thing:
Judging from Moonsinger's skill it is probably a good idea to pretend that libraries cost 4 gold in maintenance.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Megalou
Another thing:
Judging from Moonsinger's skill it is probably a good idea to pretend that libraries cost 4 gold in maintenance.

I just check with the list of building cost here and there isn't anything that costs 4 gold for maintenance. Now, this is really strange because I have always thought that most buildings do cost more than 4 golds to maintain. I wonder if Firaxis has increased maintenace cost in patch 1.29f. There has to be a logical explaination where that number 4 coming from.

 

[cracker]

Moonsinger,

One thing you may be thinking of with maintenance cost is not the actual maintenance cost in terms of red piles of coins

.

But more in terms of the net effect that the maintenance cost has on your economy.

When you have a building in place that costs 2 x

to support, this falls through to lost research or lost tax dollars at a rate that is multiplied by the science or commerce multipliers for that city. A high science city (90-100% science) that is supporting a bank, gives up 3 x

if a library is in place or 4 x

. if both a library and university are present.

---------------------
FYI, we have added some extra graphic images that all GOTM players may use in their posts just by placing the URL's inside of the img tags in your messages. The general location is at:
http://gotm.civfanatics.net/common/red_coins.gif
but images for a number of common game features will be supported. Currently you have choices of:
red_shield.gif
blue_shield.gif
red_coins.gif
gold_coins.gif
content_face.gif
happy_face.gif

 

[Justus II]

RE: Forbidden Palace- building the FP doesn't actually raise the OCN number (i.e. 16 for standard map), but what it does is creates a new ring of cities which 'think' they are in those first 16. For example, the 17th city in distance from the capital will experience high corruption, but if it is near the FP, then it is considered to be that rank (say 2nd or 3rd) in terms of calculating it's corruption. So you could have 16 cities near the capital, AND 16 near the FP, that would be under that limit. If there is overlap (i.e. the 12th furthest city from the capital is 14th away from the FP), it uses the lower rank, but is still considered the 14th from the FP in terms of how it affects #15. Not sure if I am saying this as clearly as I would like, but hopefully you get the idea. I am not sure how that affects cities that are outside the radius of both FP and capital, i.e. if they beyond 16 on both lists, does that mean they are treated as #17, or #33. I'm not sure.

BTW Cracker-cool icons, that is a great ideal!