Forbidden Palace - catch 22

[Yossarian]

Originally posted by Jared
Also, what construction do you force with the leader? My experience has been that even having a courthouse in the corrupt city helps only very marginally.

Forbidden Palace.

BTW great thread title

[Robert Plomp]

Ray K,
you're not worth my reply if you can't even read what I'm writing.
have fun playing the game !
I'm sorry that it's too hard for you !

[Tim Ward]

Isn't it a little early to be calling corruption problems a bug? It could just be because you're all rubbish you know. When I first started playing CivII I would /always/ start running out of gold and my cities would always start revolting late ancient or early renaissance.

I wasn't doing anything wrong in particular and, has everyone who can traverse acient and renaissance without ****ing up totally will attest, it isn't a bug or an inbalance.

I was just rubbish. It's probably the same here. No offence.

[Faboba]

Whine whine whine!

This isn't a BUG! It's a challenge ffs!

You just can't cheat your way round this and so are procliaming it an error. If it's too much for you, you can change the corruption rates per gov in the editor ( according to the screen shot ) so......

[Spatzimaus]

Originally posted by Jared
Not to sound like an idiot...but what's the easiest way to develop your first leader?

Also, what construction do you force with the leader? My experience has been that even having a courthouse in the corrupt city helps only very marginally.

For the first one: fight a lot. I know, it sounds dumb, but with a 1 in 16 chance of Elite units creating a Leader, you need to go through five or six enemy cities before you'll get one. I've gone through entire games only getting two or three Leaders. Note that Barracks start you off at Veteran, which will improve your odds drastically of getting Leaders fast.

Yossarian nailed the second one: build the Forbidden Palace. Suddenly, almost zero corruption in that city and it helps the nearby ones too. I didn't even think they COULD rush anything other than Wonders.

[Faboba]

Also you're cities experience higher corruption if they are unhappy. Increase the luxury rate, build some temples, trade for luxuries whatever. But make your citizens happier and corruption and waste will decrease.

[SerapisIV]

Being that I don't have the game yet (due in the mail yesterday ), but don't like the sounds of this problem and would like to enjoy large games... Here's a couple questions for those with the game:

1. Can someone check the editor for possible changes that can be made?

2. If you have spies, can you inspect a similar border-type AI city and see if they are undergoing the same problem as the player's border cities, or is this info unavailable?

3. Is it possible to raise or lower the corruption rating of different gov't types in the editor?

4. Are there ANY kind of corruption controls in the editor?

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by Spatzimaus
Yossarian nailed the second one: build the Forbidden Palace. Suddenly, almost zero corruption in that city and it helps the nearby ones too. I didn't even think they COULD rush anything other than Wonders.

Can the player still rebuild/move the capital or rebuild/move the Forbidden Palace?

[HawaiiFive-O]

Serapis, I think the problems some players are having are due to their playing styles.

I'm one of those "peaceful builder" types, and corruption, while troubling, is not the major problem they are making it out to be.

I've got about 20 cities in a Democracy on a large map, and none of them have corruption over 25%. I've had to move my palace to a more central location. I have yet to build the Forbidden Palace. I think having a lot cultural buildings helps with corruption, as those are the first things I build.

Warmongering is much more difficult in Civ3. While that may frustrate some players, it fits my style to a tee.

[albiedamned]

Corruption is not a bug, it is a feature. Everyone that is whining about it in this thread needs to quit complaining and learn some new techniques. Just because you were a good Civ2 player does not mean you will be good at Civ3 your first game.

Build roads everywhere. Connect all your luxuries to your road network and trade your excess for other luxury types. Obviously improve your government type. Build your culture. Keep your citizens happy. Build courthouses and the Forbidden Palace. All these things help with corruption, but none of them is a "silver bullet" that completely solves your corruption problem. I think people want to just build a courthouse and assume the problem will be solved. Well it's not that simple and that is by design, not a bug.

I am running a Republic around 1300AD (I'm about to enter the Industrial Age) on Warlord (level 2). Corruption is a problem for me, but not nearly as devestating as others are experiencing. I generate about 600 total commerce and lose about 100 to corruption. Most of that is in my outlying cities that I captured from another civ. I'm working on the Forbidden Palace in one of those cities now. I have trade agreements bringing in luxuries in addition to the ones already in my territory, and I have temples and libraries everywhere and cathedrals almost everywhere. My most distant cities have courthouses.

So bottom line: it is possible to deal with the corruption, but you have to put some effort into it instead of just whining that it's a bug.

[mattcj]

Ding!! Ok... so when's round 5 of the Cyber Shy - Ray K fight? This is the best fight I've seen since the Tyson - Holyfield ear biting incident. Man, you guys are hysterical . Keep up the entertaining posts.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Corruption is not a bug, it is a feature. Everyone that is whining about it in this thread needs to quit complaining and learn some new techniques. Just because you were a good Civ2 player does not mean you will be good at Civ3 your first game.

Very true. I'm with you so far.

Build roads everywhere.

check.

Connect all your luxuries to your road network and trade your excess for other luxury types.

check.

Obviously improve your government type.

check.

Build your culture.

Hard to do when your border city is getting only one shield per turn. If the culture of your surrounding cities affects this, then that means I'll have to wait an 20+ turns between building cities (the est. time to build a temple in an adjoining city). That's definitely a major slowdown from Civ1 and Civ2.

Keep your citizens happy.

Build courthouses and the Forbidden Palace.

LOL! Notice the "catch-22" portion of this thread's header. I'd LOVE to build those improvements.

All these things help with corruption, but none of them is a "silver bullet" that completely solves your corruption problem. I think people want to just build a courthouse and assume the problem will be solved. Well it's not that simple and that is by design, not a bug.

Well, for starters, unless you are one of the designers you have no clue whether it is by design or a bug. You may be defending something that crept into the game at the last minute. All I know is that the corruption is much worse in Civ3 than Civ2. That's a fact, whether you want to call it 'whining' or not. I'd like to know if this was intentionally designed into the game, or if it is just unintentionally a lot worse on the smaller maps.

Secondly, other posters have stated that the corruption bug is worse on smaller maps. I'm getting killed on a tiny map with just 7-8 cities, luxuries, theRepublic and building wonders in my capital. I'd build a courthouse or a temple in the new cities, but they only get one shield per turn no matter how many squares they work.

I am running a Republic around 1300AD (I'm about to enter the Industrial Age) on Warlord (level 2). Corruption is a problem for me, but not nearly as devestating as others are experiencing. I generate about 600 total commerce and lose about 100 to corruption. Most of that is in my outlying cities that I captured from another civ. I'm working on the Forbidden Palace in one of those cities now. I have trade agreements bringing in luxuries in addition to the ones already in my territory, and I have temples and libraries everywhere and cathedrals almost everywhere. My most distant cities have courthouses.

So bottom line: it is possible to deal with the corruption, but you have to put some effort into it instead of just whining that it's a bug.

Good for you. Now do it on a Tiny map where you aren't given the luxury of 10-15 good cities as a production base before corruption kicks in.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by mattcj
Ding!! Ok... so when's round 5 of the Cyber Shy - Ray K fight? This is the best fight I've seen since the Tyson - Holyfield ear biting incident. Man, you guys are hysterical . Keep up the entertaining posts.

glad I could help

Maybe we should start a thread going into detail on strategies for MOO3.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Ray K
Good for you. Now do it on a Tiny map where you aren't given the luxury of 10-15 good cities as a production base before corruption kicks in.

I am playing on a standard map with 8 civs (the default settings). I was only able to build a base of 5 or so cities before I a) ran into big time corruption problems, and b) ran into other civs. So I stopped my initial expansion and consolidated. The corruption problem eased up considerably as I expanded my culture and happiness. My next expansion occurred not through founding new cities, but by conquering a few cities and assimilating a few others. The conquered cities started out with big corruption problems, but they eased up as the resistors disappeared and my nearby original cities expanded their influence. The cities I got by assimilation never had much of a corruption problem to begin with.

I don't claim to understand the inner workings of the game, so I can't give you a formula for everything that affects corruption. All I can say is that the game I am playing proves it is possible to deal with corruption.

And for the last time, it is not a bug! As a software developer myself, I can tell you that a bug is when something either crashes or doesn't work as it is supposed to. This is not a bug, it is a feature. It may be that you don't like this feature, but just because you don't like it doesn't make it a bug. Personally, I consider it a new challenge and I look forward to continuing to experiment with new techniques for dealing with it. When was the last time we had to come up with new techniques in Civ2?

[Tnylr]

For those that aren't having a problem with corruption, just wait until reach the maximum number of cities that your goverment can support (modified by map size and 'Commercial' trait.) For Democracy on a Standard map, that number is <30. I have my Palace and Forbidden Palace keeping about 20 cities working and the remaining 10 are pretty useless. These useless cities have courthouses, 'Love the King', are connected by railroad to both Palaces, are size 10+, and have ~100 culture. So I don't think there's anything else I can do (still have to try Communism actually.)

If this is a feature, then the game is designed so that you can only get production and science out of 1/4 of the world. Anything else you own is just population. Bug/Feature aside this is a big blow on my desire to rule the entire world- which is how I like playing the game. It's not about a strategy to 'win' the game, it's about the fun of building my people into a world spanning advanced culture.


Someone asked about the editor:
You can change relative level of corruption for each government- from 'minimal' (Democracy) to 'catastrophic' (Anarchy.) That seems to be it for goverment tweaks.

The only way I see to improve things using the editor is to give more Small Wonders the 'Reduces Corruption' flag that the Forbidden Palace has or see if you can give additional improvements the "Center of Empire" flag that the Palace has, without breaking something. You could give move buildings the Courthouse 'reduces corruption' flag, but courthouses really aren't that helpful.

*edit Also, I don't know what the civ bonus "Commercial" does- it supposedly helps corruption. In my example about, I am not a commerical culture.

[Pyrodrew]

It seems culture is extremely potent in this game & perhaps the 1 area the AI is lacking. I haven't read of anyone losing cities to an AI because of culture, but I've read plenty of people gaining multiple cities from the enemies by culture. Culture also helps with the happiness (and thus production) of your citizens from what I've read. It almost seems culture power is too powerful... especially given the quantity of cities to be gained & since it is not seen as war-like. Comments?

[Pyrodrew]

Tnylr:For those that aren't having a problem with corruption, just wait until reach the maximum number of cities that your goverment can support (by map size.) For Democracy on a Standard map, that number is <30. If this is a feature, then the game is designed so that you can only get production and science out of 1/4 of the world. Anything else you own is just population. Bug/Feature aside this is a big blow on my desire to rule the entire world- which is how I like playing the game.

I agree. It sounds like the only way to expand is slowly outward from the center of your empire. So if you start in England & find Australia or South America empty you might as well forget building cities there since the distance/size corruption will prevent any successful cities there to exist under your rule. This gives your enemies a huge advantage when they find it (and if you build corrupt cities there the AI would be able to quickly conquer/assimilate them).

[mogul]

I haven't seen the "corruption bug" -- but then again, I have been playing with a civilization that has the "Commerical" attribute. It seems perfectly reasonable to expect that my civilization would be better able to handle commerce-oriented issues like corruption and waste better than an expanionist, militaristic civilization. Just because yours can't doesn't make this a bug. It just means that your civilization has a weakness which will either cause you to change your strategy, or you need to choose a different civilization.

However, for those people who feel that they need to have the best attributes in everything in order for them to enjoy the game, I think there is a way around this problem. I believe you can create a custom civilization in the editor, and include whatever attibutes you'd like. So I'd build one that has all of the attributes you'd like and include the "Commercial" one too. This should reduce your corruption problem greatly. I haven't tried the editor yet -- too busy playing! -- so I can't confirm this. But good luck with the game.

[albiedamned]

Pyrodrew - I would love to see someone from Firaxis list all the factors which affect corruption. But I strongly suspect that culture is one of those factors.

Tnylr - I think one factor may be having continuous territory. If there are territory gaps between your cities because your borders have not expanded, I suspect this may have a significant detrimental effect on corruption. I saw in your post that you are building railroads, yet your cities are only ~100 culture. So your borders haven't expanded too much and you may have some territory gaps between your cities. In my game, I made sure to build temples and libraries early. My inner core of cities are all well above 1,000 cp now, with my capital around 4,000.

By the way, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial. I haven't played as anyone else yet, so I don't know how much of an impact that is having on my corruption.

[kolpo]

Here a post from Soren in another thread about corruption

to stop some illusions: like the illusion that culture influences corruption or that happynes(except love king day) influences corruption)

The way corruption works is one of the biggest changes from Civ2, so I am not surprised that people are having difficulties adjusting. Under this new system, you _cannot_ control ever city in the world and expect them to still function. Thus, it takes a slightly different approach than Civ2 (or Civ1 or SMAC) required. Simply put, more cities is not always better.

There are two factors affecting corruption levels: distance from capitol (like Civ2) and number of cities (unlike Civ2).

You can fight the distance factor by:

- moving your capitol to a more optimal location
- building a Courthouse in the city
- building a Forbidden Palace near your corrupt cities
- switching to a less-corrupt government type
- being connected to your capitol via road/harbor/airport
- putting your city in "We Love the King Day" (works for shields only...)

You can fight the number of cities factor by:

- lowering the difficulty level
- building a Courthouse in the city
- building a Forbidden Palace in any city
- playing a civilization with the Commercial bonus
- switching to a less-corrupt government type
- putting your city in "We Love the King Day" (works for shields only...)

and finally...

- emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones

and also...

- think about razing cities when you capture them (although be careful... you might create an enemy for the rest of the game...)

Hope that helps.

[Pyrodrew]

albiedamned - I would love to see someone from Firaxis list all the factors which affect corruption. But I strongly suspect that culture is one of those factors.

Dan or Soren from Frixasis just did. I forget which thread (maybe the "neutral observations" one?). He mentioned distance & # of cities impact corruption & then listed the items which reduce these things (which most people said had VERY little influence)... but didn't list culture (which most posts I've read say has a VERY strong influence).


Edited to add: Kolpo just posted it. Regardless, it still seems to make any chance of sailing long distances to colonize futile. Such as the English who start in England wanting to colonize SouthAmerica or Australia... simply because of distance.

[John-SJ]

In outlying cities where corruption is a problem and you have only one shield for production, grow the city as fast as possible, then, when the population is 2 or 3 rush a temple and take the population hit. IOW, use workers to improve city growth and then trade citizens for completed building projects. I have not tried this, I just thought of it while reading this thread. I will try it tonight though.

Has anyone already tried this? Is it worth it?

John-SJ

[albiedamned]

Excellent info from Soren. I think the most important thing he said was "emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones".

In retrospect, I think there were two main reasons why I was able to handle the corruption in my game. First, I stopped my initial expansion after 5 or 6 cities and focused on infrastructure. At the time I had no great insight that this was the smart thing to do, but it turns out that it may have been. The reason I stopped was because I was starting to experience some pretty bad corruption, and because I ran into neighbors on both sides!

Second, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption.

I agree that expanding to another continent will be very difficult. You will have to build the Forbidden Palace on that continent to have any chance, and you will probably need to bring a Great Leader over to rush the FP since it will take you forever to build it otherwise. That is certainly easier said than done, but once you do that I think you should be able to expand on the second continent at least a little.

Expanding to a third continent would be virtually impossible since you can only build one FP. It would be nice if you could build one FP per continent

[Dimorier Maximus]

Originally posted by cort
cheiftein?!

no its not like in civ2. actually what a courthouse does is not clearly written anywhere..

well they have done a good job of explaining why an unhappy citizen is so -- you click on him and he says something like "%100 overpopulation"

i wonder why they didnot provide a similar thing for corruption..

Check the civilopedia, improvements: a courthouse reduces corruption and waste in the city that builds it, and it makes the city more resistant to propaganda.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by John-SJ
In outlying cities where corruption is a problem and you have only one shield for production, grow the city as fast as possible, then, when the population is 2 or 3 rush a temple and take the population hit. IOW, use workers to improve city growth and then trade citizens for completed building projects. I have not tried this, I just thought of it while reading this thread. I will try it tonight though.

Has anyone already tried this? Is it worth it?

John-SJ

Now THAT is an intriguing idea. I will try it tonight. This will only work for the small improvements though. I mean, you can't kept taking population hits and having a size 2 city with temple, courthouse, barracks, granary, etc.

[Oerdin]

Originally posted by Ray K
Well, unless I am missing something obvious, this problem is bad enough to qualify as a legitimate bug.
I'd really like to know how the playtesters and game reviewers didn't notice this problem.

The answer is simple; an inadequate amount of playtesting was done. I hope this issue will be fixed by an upcoming patch and that the game can be balanced to allow a military victory as well. Right now Fraxis has been so anti-military that controlling a colonial empire is virtually impossible.

[albiedamned]

Originally posted by Ray K
Now THAT is an intriguing idea. I will try it tonight. This will only work for the small improvements though. I mean, you can't kept taking population hits and having a size 2 city with temple, courthouse, barracks, granary, etc.

I actually did this in my game once or twice. I think right after I conquered a city which had massive corruption, a rush built a temple using forced labor. I felt bad though - I had just created an UberKrux "deathcamp". But it does work, and there didn't seem to be any lasting penalty other than the dead citizens!

Originally posted by Oerdin
The answer is simple; an inadequate amount of playtesting was done. I hope this issue will be fixed by an upcoming patch and that the game can be balanced to allow a military victory as well. Right now Fraxis has been so anti-military that controlling a colonial empire is virtually impossible.

It is not a bug, and therefore should not be patched. Firaxis has geared Civ3 towards being a true Empire building game, not just a world conquest game. The military is certainly one part of your empire, but by no means is it as important as it was in Civ2.

Thing back through history - has anyone ever conquered the world? Even those that conquered large parts of it were always eventually brought down by barbarians, corruption etc. In the modern world, no one controls the whole world or even a whole continent (ok, except Australia). Yet there are still certain civs (like America) that are superpowers and dominate the world, despite controlling only a small portion of the landmass. I believe the same thing can happen in Civ3 if you play well.

[Pyrodrew]

albiedamned - Second, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption.

I find it odd that the people who played commercial civs(who have a anti-corruption bonus) don't see any corruption problem, but those who do not play a commercial civ often have this excessive corruption problem. Would those who played commercial civs try playing a non-commercial civ next time? It sounds like the Commercial Bonus is HUGE for the Civs who have them.

[Ray K]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew


I find it odd that the people who played commercial civs(who have a anti-corruption bonus) don't see any corruption problem, but those who do not play a commercial civ often have this excessive corruption problem. Would those who played commercial civs try playing a non-commercial civ next time? It sounds like the Commercial Bonus is HUGE for the Civs who have them.

Well, I'm playing the Greeks when I see all of this corruption, so I don't think being 'commercial' is that big of an advantage. I didn't even realize that the Greeks were a 'commercial' civ until I saw albie's post.

I think that the 'max cities' limit for Tiny maps might be too low. I'm going to see if it can be raised with the editor.

[Soren Johnson]

Originally posted by albiedamned
Excellent info from Soren. I think the most important thing he said was "emphasize building a few great cities instead of a bunch of puny ones".

In retrospect, I think there were two main reasons why I was able to handle the corruption in my game. First, I stopped my initial expansion after 5 or 6 cities and focused on infrastructure. At the time I had no great insight that this was the smart thing to do, but it turns out that it may have been. The reason I stopped was because I was starting to experience some pretty bad corruption, and because I ran into neighbors on both sides!

Second, I am playing the Greeks who are commercial and thus experience lower corruption.

I agree that expanding to another continent will be very difficult. You will have to build the Forbidden Palace on that continent to have any chance, and you will probably need to bring a Great Leader over to rush the FP since it will take you forever to build it otherwise. That is certainly easier said than done, but once you do that I think you should be able to expand on the second continent at least a little.

Expanding to a third continent would be virtually impossible since you can only build one FP. It would be nice if you could build one FP per continent

btw, I wouldn't say that the point of the high corruption is "fewer cities are better." It is simply the negative side of having a huge number of cities. Certainly, there are positive things about having that many cities!

In Civ2, more cities was always better, so it failed to qualify as an "interesting decision" (one of Sid's requirements for good gameplay...) In Civ3, we believe that having more cities is better under certain circumstances and having less cities is better under certain circumstances.