Why rank cities for corruption at all?

Master Shake

Warlord
Joined
Oct 26, 2003
Messages
165
Why do corruption models for Civ3 involve city "ranking" lists at all? Why don't they just do a calculation based on distance?

Is there a reason known for this?

It seems like all the nasty problems stem from the impossibility of having a sensible city ranking system...

-mS
 
I suspect it had to do with undermining the ICS tactic that I gather was popular in Civ 2 (I never played Civ 2, so just going off of comments read here and there re: ICS).

Without a city rank -- and the corrseponding OCN number -- packing in a tremendous number of cities, destined to remain small, instead of playing a more "spread" empire with room to grow, would be very powerful. In fact, it still is powerful, but not to the extent it would be without penalties that counteract massive expansion or intensive city-packing.
 
just make it distance multiplied by a modified version of your city number.
 
Originally posted by Catt
penalties that counteract massive expansion
Hey!! I LIKE "massive expansion", if by that you mean a large empire with lots of cities - what's so wrong with wanting to rule the world like Alexander or Rome?????? And build cities everywhere?

I take great umbrage with someone deciding to penalize my play style... it's a Solitaire game, remember??

One man's strategy is another man's exploit.
 
Originally posted by tomart109
Hey!! I like "massive expansion", if by that you mean a large empire with lots of cities - what's so wrong with wanting to rule the world like Alexander or Rome?????? And build cities everywhere?

There's nothing wrong with that. I guess that's why most of us play the game (there's the OCC people, but they're weird :p ).
But I guess Firaxis decided that it made the game too easy. I agree that they've chosen an awkward solution to the problem, and one that may open for other (just as) exploitive strats.
 
They should just calculate distance "blocks" then. What I mean is, you should get no less and no more corruption in a city two tiles away from your capitol then you would in a city say 6 tiles away. Then 7 tiles to 11 tiles would make your next distance "block," and so on.

And corruption is calculated just based on which "distance block" the city is in. Nothing to do with what order cities were founded in or anything like that.

Would this fix the problem with packing cities too closely together?

-mS
 
I thought I would sum it up with "bad design", but I admit that this post does a better job at taking the essence of the situation :
Originally posted by microbe
No good reason. It uses a over-complicated, always exploitable, nobody-understood formula to do a simple job.
And this one sums up the reasons :
Originally posted by watorrey
The developers take great pride in thier ability to concieve unecessarily complicated formulas to achieve the most basic tasks.
 
Originally posted by tomart109
Hey!! I LIKE "massive expansion", if by that you mean a large empire with lots of cities - what's so wrong with wanting to rule the world like Alexander or Rome?????? And build cities everywhere?

I take great umbrage with someone deciding to penalize my play style... it's a Solitaire game, remember??

One man's strategy is another man's exploit.

Hey - it's only my speculation - take it up with the designers, not me!

And besides, from a game designer's point of view, what they're really after is good balance -- i.e., present the player with lots of interesting choices. If there is no "penalty," or at least rapidly declining benefit, to expanding, then the interesting choices are weakened -- do I remain content with my compact and efficient empire? Why no, I think I'll expand to produce a large and efficient empire. Without something to weaken massive expansion, why wouldn't you always seek to expand your power- it would always be more effective (so less interesting choice). The game then becomes even more skewed towards "the strong get stronger and the weaker get weaker" -- again IMHO, there is ample evidence that the game is designed in a way to reduce this effect (tech costs much lower for the laggards; more powerful civ tends to get "ganged up on" by others; price of luxuries is much greater for larger empires, etc.)

I'm not saying I love the present corruption regime, but I do agree with the philosophy that continuous expansion must not provide continuous, linear, benefit. And even with a distnace corruption factor in place, I still think you need something to inhibit ICS -- if it weren't penalized by some methodology, it would unquestionably be more powerful, which again reduces the interesting choices available to the player. YMMV.
 
The corruption model may be suboptimally designed, but I see nothing wrong with the basic principles.

Realistically, both physical distance and number of cities should contribute to corruption, since both make it harder for the central authorities to keep all local functionaries and officials under control.
 
Originally posted by The Last Conformist
The corruption model may be suboptimally designed, but I see nothing wrong with the basic principles.

Realistically, both physical distance and number of cities should contribute to corruption, since both make it harder for the central authorities to keep all local functionaries and officials under control.

I agree with this. What i fail to understand is how the heck they keep screwing it up!

How many ppl are not buying C3C because of the bug reports? How many ppl bought it and aren't playing it? Someone should lose thier job IMO.
 
Hmm....

Some of us are not having as much fun as we would like, therefore...

Someone should lose their livelihood and their ability to support their dependents?

Hmm... makes sense to me.

:(

-mS
 
Originally posted by watorrey
How many ppl are not buying C3C because of the bug reports? How many ppl bought it and aren't playing it? Someone should lose thier job IMO.

Well, as the game is selling great, apparently very few. If you bought it and aren't playing it, they still have your money (and it's your loss, many people are playing it and having fun with it).

If someone lost their job every time a bug was put into software there wouldn't be any software made at all. I've never known a programmer who never made an error (and I've known quite a few great programmers) nor a QA department to find all bugs with any software no matter how much money was spent on it or how important it was (and niether of these are the case for games).
 
I don't pretend to understand the development process, but it seems that such obvious problems as the GPT or FP bug or submarine bug (back again after being fixed once) should not have made it into the official release and someone should get into some trouble with somebody.

They are in it to take our money, pure and simple. There should be consquences for shoddy workmanship.

Instead of that, we have a whole community of players that are willing to suck up to the developers just so they will be nice enough to patch thier mistakes.

Disclaimer:
having a bad day... that is my feelings at this particular moment in time and are subject to change at any time.
 
Originally posted by watorrey
Instead of that, we have a whole community of players that are willing to suck up to the developers just so they will be nice enough to patch thier mistakes.
Though I disagree with the harshness of the rest of your post, this part is just too true...
And the sad thing is, it's true for almost any game. Minimal work quality is no more a standard, it's actually a bonus.
 
On the original subject of the post i think a rank order is a very acceptable way of implementing corruption. The other suggestions that have been made are very easy to exploit, and would favour certain plaiying styles to much.

Regarding bugs and researchers; which of these scenarios do u want:
1) Game released several months later due to intensive testing by a few hundred testers (off course a few quid more expensive, the testers need a living too), but almost bug free.
2) Game released only a little delayed with a multitude of bugs (unplayable), but after a few weeks of "costumer testing" a patch is released fixing the most major ones, later on there are new patches to fix smaller bugs and add a tweaks and features due to popular demand from the "testers".

I think the latter suits me better.
 
Regarding bugs and researchers; which of these scenarios do u want:
1) Game released several months later due to intensive testing by a few hundred testers (off course a few quid more expensive, the testers need a living too), but almost bug free.
2) Game released only a little delayed with a multitude of bugs (unplayable), but after a few weeks of "costumer testing" a patch is released fixing the most major ones, later on there are new patches to fix smaller bugs and add a tweaks and features due to popular demand from the "testers".

I think the latter suits me better. [/B]

You are assuming these bugs which make the game "unplayable" can only be found by consumers, not QA or beta testers.

This is not the case. Otherwise QA/Beta testers don't need to exist at all.

Minor bugs are OK, nobody expects it to be bug free. But please no showstoppers. And if there are showstoppers, release a patch ASAP without any other changes/enhancements!
 
Originally posted by microbe
And if there are showstoppers, release a patch ASAP without any other changes/enhancements!
Hey, this seems like a good idea. I don't know if there is some technical or business reason to bundle all the fixes into one big patch, but i would think a quick patch just to fix the broken FP would have been appreciated, and let us get on with a lot more quality play.
 
Originally posted by microbe

Minor bugs are OK, nobody expects it to be bug free. But please no showstoppers. And if there are showstoppers, release a patch ASAP without any other changes/enhancements!

I agree with u. I was only trying to make a point about the fact that costumers doing some of the "testing" didnt have to be a bad thing.
 
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