Why do I have so much corruption?

[eyrei]

Originally posted by Ironikinit
7% is pretty good, can you give more details? Map type, difficulty, general notes, etc.

Map type: Large, continents
Difficulty: Monarch

I started on a large peninsula on the NM edge of a large continent. The peninsula is vaguely shaped like the Big Dipper constellation, with my capital (Berlin) roughly in the middle of the round part. There is a ring of cities around my capital, 3 cities outside the ring to the north and two cities to the south. The forbidden palace is about halfway up the handle, with 5 cities adjacent to it. There is one city between the two rings formed by the two palaces. There are 19 cities total. The worst waste and waste is in the far northern cities, which lose about 3 shields out of twenty, while the others lose about one shield each. Corruption is almost nonexistent in cities that are part of one of the 'rings', and at most about 15% in the far northern cities. The government is republic, and each of these cities have a courthouse.

One strange thing about this game that is unrelated but worthy of note, is the lack of war weariness. I have not had one period of complete peace since about 300 AD when I originally switched to republic from despotism. It is now about 1700 AD, I am at war with 5 civs, one of which I have been at war with for over 1000 years, and war weariness just kicked in. I do have Universal Suffrage, but I didn't realize it had that much of an effect. I have not been the agressor in any of these wars.

Hey Zouave, are you being paid to come here and trash the game? I can't figure out any other reason you would spend so much time at it.

 

[Cerryl]

Starting off with a distinct advantage (i.e - more units at start) is not cheating. Unless of course, you're one of 2 out of 2 million players whose modern armor loses to a spearman.

Can't have it both ways, you say the AI sucks, but it would take an OUTSTANDING AI to be coded 'smart' enough to cheat.

*****, piss, moan, rant, rave, too much of a loser to go somewhere else, yes, another day and another post, if your skill level was as high as the wankerage you post, you'd be placing well in GOTM.

 

[Ironikinit]

Thanks, eyrei.

Zouave and Troyens seem to be the same person. All he does, usually, is post drive-by rants. He ignores corrections, preferring to continue to be wrong. My solution is to click on his/their profiles and ignore both.

I did get one of them to call me a punk once. It was cool because up until then I wasn't sure if he actually read anything beyond the thread titles.

Personally, I haven't modified the rules and don't plan to. I may eventually download one of the mods, but so far none have seemed attractive. One of these days somebody will start a thread discussing the best mods and I'll check one out.

 

[DarwinMayflower]

Some cities will seem to have unworkable levels of corruption once you have more than a certain number of cities. This number is determined by map size:

I think the numbers are:
Tiny: 8
Small: 12
Standard: 16
Large: 24
Huge: 32
Someone please correct me if it's wrong.

The most outlying cities over this number will suffer very large corruption. I've found that the best way to make these cities productive is by using a We Love The King Day.

First, grow the city to size 6. Focus on food production, because generally shield production will be wasted. While growing the city, connect it to your trade network. This may require a harbor; if so, buy it.

Freeze the city at size 6. Usually, this means not building an aquaduct, but if you are connected to fresh water, you may have to switch production to get zero growth. At this point you want to switch to maximize shield production. Mine everything you can, because you're not growing for a while.

Size 6 is important because it enables a We Love The King Day without making it more difficult by adding more unhappy citizens. If you are playing at an easier diifculty level, or have happiness improving wonders, you may be in a WLTKD condition already, assuming that you have all eight luxuries in your trade network. e.g., warlord level gives you four 'free' content citizens, so four luxuries for them plus two for each of the unhappy citizens makes everyone happy. If not, you may need to buy a temple or even a marketplace to push you into a WLTKD.

I've found that for these outlying cities, WLTKD works wonders for waste and corruption. You'll still be losing about half your shields to waste, but you will be able to produce city improvements at a decent rate. Now, build happiness improving features such as temples, cathedrals, colosseums, and marketplaces (for luxury mulitplication). Also, build the courthouse to further reduce corruption. With these improvements in place, you can now let the city grow even more and keep it in a WLTKD. So go ahead and build the aquaduct and expand. This way you can get to a reasonable size city with decent productivity without having to buy many of the improvements.

 

[Hellpig]

Originally posted by Ironikinit

/cut/
Personally, I haven't modified the rules and don't plan to. I may eventually download one of the mods, but so far none have seemed attractive. One of these days somebody will start a thread discussing the best mods and I'll check one out.

I think that sounds like a great new thread actually!

BTW, it seems to me... that sometimes you get a couple of cities that has roughly the same distans to the capitol/forbidden palace but the corruption differs largely. I know for fact that I see this in every game I play but perhaps that has to do with the maximum city rule?

 

[Beamup]

I've discovered something on my current game. Even without any intervention (courthouse, WLTKD, etc.) corruption in a given city apparently decreases over time! I had several cities that were about 33% corruption when initially founded, but got down to 10% or so before I switched out of Despotism or built courthouses. I'm not certain exactly how this effect works, but I'm pretty sure it contributes to how I've built a 60-city empire, spanning multiple continents, with 11% total corruption. Huge map, Regent, using Democracy at the moment, no modified rules. No city has more than 33% corruption, the only one that high is 14 squares from my Forbidden Palace and has no courthouse.

So take heart! Controlling corruption is totally manageable.

 

[Ionhead]

Originally posted by Beamup
I've discovered something on my current game. Even without any intervention (courthouse, WLTKD, etc.) corruption in a given city apparently decreases over time! I had several cities that were about 33% corruption when initially founded, but got down to 10% or so before I switched out of Despotism or built courthouses. I'm not certain exactly how this effect works, but I'm pretty sure it contributes to how I've built a 60-city empire, spanning multiple continents, with 11% total corruption. Huge map, Regent, using Democracy at the moment, no modified rules. No city has more than 33% corruption, the only one that high is 14 squares from my Forbidden Palace and has no courthouse.

So take heart! Controlling corruption is totally manageable.

This is because corruption (and waste) isn't calculated strictly on a basis of "this city has should have 90% corruption, this one (being closer and with a courthouse) has 50%" or whatever.

The waste and corruption rules give you one shield and one commerce, and then a certain number of the other shields and commerce you accumulate are lost to waste and corruption. The number of shields lost differs depending on distance from capital and how many cities have been founded. After you've reached that number for your city, every other shield becomes productive (I think, unless there's a percentage loss as well for these additional shields).

For example, one city might have 5 shields, and be so far away from the capital that the first 9 shields beyond the first are lost to waste. So one out five shields is productive, giving you 80% waste. Later on the city will have developed and will be accumulating, say 13 shields, 9 of which are lost to waste. The percentage of waste (or corruption, which i assume people say interchangably with waste) lost has gone down to 69%.