Is the Corruption Level to High?

[Akaoz]

A lot of people seem to have some problems with the level of corruption in Civ3, myself included. But I have also seen many a post defending it. So who is the majority?

-Alech

PS: Never made a Poll before, hope I get it right...

[Alex 14]

From my past Civ experiance, building heaps of courthouses and using a democracy should minimize corruption.

[Akaoz]

It’s not that easy anymore. Courthouses don’t do much and Democracy is laden with corruption.

-Alech

[Moral Hazard]

I don't think corruption is too high for any variable but distance from the capital. I think that should be lowered with out a doubt. (Colonizing is virtually impossible)

[VetteroX]

Corruption is WAY too high. Maybe a city should be able to get to 6 with zero or very low currution... like small place, low crime. Then when it gets past 6, the corruption will be really bad if you dont have a courthouse or capital nearby. The problem is with the corruption as bad as it is, building large empires is very difficult, you need to rush buy a courthouse which STILL doesnt help too much, and costs like 640 gold, gold which you have a hard time getting because the corruption is so bad.

[morb]

I have a problem with it. the courhouses don't even make a dent in corruption at all. In Civ2 they would at least return a few pennies into the coffers after being built instead of being an extra item to spend upkeep on. They are useless. What bugs me the most is shield waste. That level of waste is just absurd.

Even the forbidden palace doesn't make up for this.

[Cougz]

Originally posted by VetteroX
Maybe a city should be able to get to 6 with zero or very low currution... like small place, low crime.

Terrific idea , when a place is small, there isn't much going on, corruption should not be so full on. Perhaps it should follow an algorithym where it goes up with city size, distance from capital, versus down if certain improvements are built.

[Pyrodrew]

Reaching corruption is like walking up to a cliff... once you take the step past that line you're history! BAM 99% corruption & NOTHING you can do about it. As others have mentioned, Courthouses, ForbiddenPalace, & Democracy do nothing compared to the extreme power Distance Corruption has. And the smaller the map the worse it gets... makes me want to try a 255x255 map.

I hate seeing land I know I can NEVER have simply because the distance is too far from my capital. And relocating the capital not only takes shields (which at 1shield/turn takes a LOOOONG time), but means I must LOSE all my 1st cities I built if ocean seperates the 2 areas.

What bugs me the most is shield waste. That level of waste is just absurd.

Agreed! I wouldn't mind as much if the cities were robbing me blind of science & gold, but with the waste sooo bad it makes too distant cities *worthless*.

Don't get me wrong, I love most other aspects about the game but this area definitely needs to be fixed.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I agree, corruption is crippling, but I'd rather have some way to fight it than change the distance formula. Maybe a different building or a specialist? Hmm...I kinda like the specialist idea, now that I think about it. Maybe each citizen you make a corruption specialist (cop? constable?) reduces corruption by x%?

[civmonger]

In the first game i played -to the end- the biggest problem i had was when i est cities on the second continent on my huge map. I was in a democracy but only one shield was available to build anything, talk about a drain on my money! I was surrounded by culturally superior civs cause it was two of my rivals home continent so I had to rush culture buildings. At least I was at peace with them. It would be nice if major corruption didnt start until a city was say 7 and there were more city improvements to curb corruption like a prison or a small wonder like Supreme Court or Internal Affairs. Just a thought.

[mrbilll]

1. how about a maximum cap on corruption? No matter how far flung your empire, they're either yours, in which case they're supposed to be on your side- or they're conquests, which means you BEAT them, and they're now under your heel. Even if it were capped at say, 80% corruption max (improving with better governments), you'd always get SOMETHING out of a city, even though they're still stealing you blind.

2. As has been said already, more options to CONTROL corruption. Past a certain point, you're hosed. this is not a challenge, it is a flaw. If I had to work harder to control corruption, I'd do it. Larger garrisons, police stations, culture bringing corruption down- I liked the idea of a "constable" specialist. As it is, the only things that matter are distance from Capitol and number of cities. As corruption stoppers, Courthouses and the Forbidden Palace are pathetic.

***ATTENTION FIRAXIS, AND APOLYTON HARDLINERS***

We are not newbies who can't handle complexity, and we are not just lazily trying to play Civ II over again. We're trying to point out a genuine gameplay issue that must be addressed if Civ III is going to have the legs that Civ ii had.

[Earthling7]

Corruption is a fact of life. Get used to it.

I am playing the Americans. I discovered a medium sized continent, as far away from America as possible. It was uninhabited. I sent my ships loaded with settlers and workers and founded 6-7 cities. Corruption was a major headache, but if you think about it, the capital being on the other side of the world, it makes sense.

I rush built courthouses, which helped a tiny bit, but then I built a harbour in one city, having connected them with roads. This, allowing them to receive the luxuries my old country did, helped in getting corruption down a bit, and now I'm building the Forbiddeen Palace. It's going to work out fine.

Just learn to play the game!

[mrbilll]

Don't care how you slice it, near 100% corruption is ridiculous, unless you have anarchy or rebellion. Even in societies where corruption is rampant, such as modern day Russia, they manage to get SOME things done.

By Civ III logic, places like Scotland and California would lose 90% of their productivity to corruption, simply because of the distance to their respective capitols. Since we have courts, laws and police, this is obviously not the case. Sure, CivIII is an abstraction of real civilization, but there should at least be a logical comparison between the two.

Reread my post. My suggestions are perfectly reasonable, and they could be optional, too, to keep the masochists happy. relearn the ropes- fine. Figure out new ways to deal with challenges- great. All I'm saying is give us more options, instead of shoehorning us in to one or two highly restricted strategies.

[Yaga]

Some ideas from a post on another thread, which are similar to those posted above:

-- Settlers are, one would think, can-do people selected from your citizens at the core of your empire who're looking to go far a field and stake a new claim. They, and their first or second generation decendants, will bend over backwards to found their new settlement, and while they may be looking to gain some profit from it (gold corruption) they're looking to build and improve their settlement (shield production) and impress the folks at home (science production) but will have little time to devote to intelectual persuits as they're working the land so hard. This mentality should be reflected in the game; high fiscal *corruption*, medium to low science *production* and low sheild *corruption.* Considering that Mobilization limits what you can and cannot build in your cities and modifies your shield production, there should be some way to affect similar effects for those cities not contiguous with the borders centered around your palace.

-- A Minor Wonder, call it "Manifest Destiny," or somesuch, which reduces corruption for "town" sized cities overall.

-- Some way to cull resources from your core empire to your far flung colonies. After all, you're probably getting something in return, and there should be a way to invest in them beyond sending over workers.

-- A cheap improvement, like a "Town Sherriff's Office" which reduces corruption significantly, but vanishes a la City Walls or becomes less effective after the town reaches a certain size (3? 4?)

-- "Expansionist" Civs should have lower corruption-over-distance algorithms then non-Expansionist Civs. I'm surprised this isn't already part of the game.

-- An Industial Age improvement which is more effective in reducing corruption than the Courthouse, just as Cathedrals are improved Temples.

-- Police Stations should also have an effect on reducing corruption.
--

[old dog]

In general, I think it works well as it is. Corruuption certainly makes expansion more interesting and more real feeling.

I suppose a slight tweak is possible, though, in one area: The Forbidden City works well, but it seems odd that a civ has this option in only one direction. Maybe the tweak is to allow other forbidden cities or something similar (very high cost) so that, once you have expansion to the far east, expansion to the far west is not a losing proposition.

As the game stands, the British Empire is impossible.

I would be sorry, though, if the extreme corruption were made at all easy to eliminate.

[mrbilll]

Most of us are OK with corruption being tough and/or expensive to eliminate. The objection is twofold-

- you just have to live with it. Your options to curb it are sharply limited.
- you CAN'T live with it. The max rates are so high as to make new acquisitions worse than useless past a certain point.

Constructive ideas I've heard or suggested-

-Putting a cap on max corruption, even something like 80%
-Some kind of "Constable" specialist
-Police station impact on corruption
-Upgrade to the courthouse, as there is to happiness, science, and production improvements
-Having culture, stability, and hapiness have more of an impact
-Military forces curbing corruption.
-"police" units, as in SMAC

This is a serious limiting factor in the ways you can play the game, and any or all of these ideas are doable. If you like it as is, fine. But there'd be no harm in trying some of these options, especially since they'd be just as useful to the AI as to the player.

[Honour_Shogun]

Well, as a relative newcomer to Civ 3, I must say that the one thing that makes absolutely no sense to me is that a level 1 city, with 2 shields, is losing one. Even if it is on the same continent. Even if it is near the Forbidden Palace. I think, ultimately, it is a reflection of empire size. I checked the city cap limit for huge maps in the editor. 32. Now I am probably wrong in this, but that is for each civ? So with all 16 civs, that is a lot of cities?512 cities, isn't it? If not, well that could explain the amount of corruption. With 4 civs, with 10 cities each, well, it means that the "World Pop" is over what it should be. Perhpas I am coming out of right field in my reasoning. If so, I apologize. It seems strange, though, that cities that are right next to the capital, attached via roads, with access to 3 luxuries, courthouses, what have you, still experience corruption. BTW, is the Forbidden Palace supposed to act as a palace in the city that builds it? Thus eliminating corruption? If so, it ain't working.

Well, just my opinion. Take it as you will.

[Akaoz]

Hmmmm... Many good thoughts here. The only question is, is Firaxis listening?

-Alech

[Trifna]

If it really is like it would be in reality, okay. In such a case, it will be as balanced as History is. If not...

[Wolfgang76]

In the 1.5 mod there is the change of allowing Police stations to help with corruption. While not a perfect solution it does make sense and would effect corruption only slightly as not to imbalance the game. Also as its a late game upgrade it does help those who invest in tech more than war.
I havent played the mod yet but the idea seems worthy of Firaxis checking into it as a viable way to please everyone.

2cents.

[Setsuna]

Argh, I can't believe 70 people voted that they felt it was an acceptable part of gameplay.

[VetteroX]

Earthling... your wrong, period. Ive beaten the game on emperor, I know what im doing, but the corruption is just too high. Is there 75% corruption in L.A. because its 3000 miles from Washington? Does Hanalulu (sp?) have 95% corruption? A CHALLENGE like making courthouses, police stations, garisonning troops etc is fine, but complete BS corruption like we have now is rediculous. Firaxis, please fix it.

BTW, I love Civ3, besides corruption, fighters not workering properly, and 3 or 4 units that are either too weak or too strong, the game rules.

[Farmer]

I don't have a problem with the high levels of corruption, but I do have a problem with the fact that there is no way of dealing with it effectively. This results in a game that inhibits my style of play severely, and doesn't offer me an option of a challenge to overcome this, it just exists and that's it. I don't much care for the opinion of those who tell me to live with it, because I have always loved this game for its ability to let me emulate the great civilizations of old through fantastic gameplay, now it limits me to only civilizations that sit in nice tidy compact little democracies, and not the far flung empires of the Mongols and British.

It simply isn't fun, and it's not at all realistic. America just never would have happened if corruption was 99% like it is in Civ III, you would just have big cities with no infrastructure built. In fact the British would have no doubt razed the cities rather than waste their resources supporting the outrageous corruption; and as for Australia, well just forget about that. It's not realistic because corruption is never that bad in real life, and there are ways of dealing with it. Even without courthouses, if you were a brutal dictator and killed every corrupt official and their first born - it would reduce it from 99% even if were at the cost of happiness and other factors.

The bottom line is: it is unrealistic and there are no effective means of dealing with it. It therefore needs to be fixed.

[Arrian]

Overall, the corruption/waste idea was good. It just needs tweaking. I best ideas (IMO) I've heard yet relate to either: 1) more city improvements which lower corruption/waste, or 2) a reduction in overall corruption/waste as you civilization becomes more advanced.

Personally, I like the second option.

Perhaps it could be tied to the "Age" your civ is in. The Ancient Era is fine - corruption is hideous, as it should be. Medieval times should be only slightly better. The Industrial Age should be significantly better (particularly after discovering Nationalism)... perhaps limiting corruption/waste to a max of 50% under Democracy. The Modern Age, with global communications (satelites) and such should reduce it further still... perhaps to about 35% max under Democracy. Thus, large empires would still be difficult, but perhaps worth the effort. As the game currently stands, I have absolutely no desire to win by conquest or domination.

As several people mentioned, it's the shield waste that is most upsetting. I can deal w/losing money (and, frankly, that makes more sense to me). Historically, one of the major problems England ran into was that maintaining the empire was extremely expensive - so much so that the Crown eventually asked a bunch of minor settlements on a distant continent to help pay for the upkeep of the army stationed there by paying a minor tax on tea. We all know how that turned out.

Losing tons of money on faraway cities would still limit you... particularly if you have to maintain a sizeable army. You would have to be quite selective about your overseas acquisitions or you would end up losing ground in the science race in order to pay for your imperialism.

-Arrian

[Ozymandous]

A few more ideas, or expansions on ideas already presented.

1. A 'town hall' improvement that would also help to reduce corruption (oxymoron?).

Idea: Localized government would help organize the various factions running the city and have one or two key people in charge. This improvement would be available in the "Republic" and represent localized law enforcement, civil services, etc.

2. Have the courthouse improvement boost corruption fighting capabilities depending on the government you have implemented.

Despotism: 15% effective
Monarchy: 30% effective
Communism: 45% effective
Rebublic: 60% effective
Democracy: 75% effective

This would still keep some corruption, but keep it to a minimum.

3. Allow tech's to reduce corruption, like 'radio' for example.

4. Have corruption levels decrease depending on the age (good idea whoever mentioned it), with Ancient having zero bonus, medival having 25% reduction, etc.

[eMarkM]

As a domination type player I was dismayed and concerned at first by the high level of corruption. But you just have to adapt.

Yes, courthouses and Democracy alone are useless in the really far away cities. Forbidden Palace is the way to go. It is far and away the most important small wonder, IMHO, because of the insane corruption. You have to plan ahead on who you're going to conquer, make sure in your combats to give elite units every opportunity to fight in the front lines and hence get a shot at Leader. Since the city you'll be building FP in will likely be producing 1 shield and will take centuries to complete, you need that Leader to rush build it. I can't think of a better use of a Leader than rushing FP in woefully corrupt occupied territory.

I used this strategy to make a Civ I conquered productively viable. I have my palace in the southern part of the continent and the FP in the former capital in the northern half. Then build courthouse and use Democracy. I have over half the world in my cluches now with around 50 cities and corruption is simply not much of an issue. I feel this is an essential strategy for anyone with an militiristic/expansionist bent. FP is a must!

So, no, you can't just, willy nilly, go on expanding and conquering like you could in Civ2 without thought to overextending your self. You have to THINK about corruption before launching a military campaign! This makes the higher corruption a welcome feature.

e

[player3]

There's nothing wrong with the corruption system as it stands. If you're having trouble managing, there are several things you can do to reduce corruption:

1) Relocate Palace/Build forbidden Palace

2) Switch Governments (Corruption under a Republic and Democracy is MUCH less than under other govs.)

3) Build Courthouses

4) Increase happiness so that you get a 'We love the King Day' in problem cities. (this reduced corruption for shield production only)

I've only played on warlord so far, but I haven't had much difficulty with corruption under a Republic or Democracy. It's a big problem under the other govs. but that's part of the deterrant from using them. It's also effective in discouraging old expolits like ICS (corruption increases with the #of cities you build, as well as their distance from the capital)

Finally, I'd just like to note that it's also realistic. People have used the analogy of the British Empire in trying to justify why the corruption system is unrealistic. In fact, that analogy shows why it IS realistic. Where is the British Emprie today? Gone! History has shown that EVERY attempt to create a far-flung empire across huge geographic areas has failed! Alexander the Great's conquests... gone. Roman empire... gone. British Empire... gone. Napoleon's conquests... gone. Axis conquests... gone. Soviet Eastern Bloc... gone. See a pattern here? It's VERY difficult to manage a huge empire, and this is civ3's way of modeling that FACT. If you can in fact successfully manage a far-flung empire against all threats (foreign and domestic) then you have truly accomplished something that no empire has ever done before!

[player3]

There's nothing wrong with the corruption system as it stands. If you're having trouble managing, there are several things you can do to reduce corruption:

1) Relocate Palace/Build forbidden Palace

2) Switch Governments (Corruption under a Republic and Democracy is MUCH less than under other govs.)

3) Build Courthouses

4) Increase happiness so that you get a 'We love the King Day' in problem cities. (this reduced corruption for shield production only)

I've only played on warlord so far, but I haven't had much difficulty with corruption under a Republic or Democracy. It's a big problem under the other govs. but that's part of the deterrant from using them. It's also effective in discouraging old expolits like ICS (corruption increases with the #of cities you build, as well as their distance from the capital)

Finally, I'd just like to note that it's also realistic. People have used the analogy of the British Empire in trying to justify why the corruption system is unrealistic. In fact, that analogy shows why it IS realistic. Where is the British Emprie today? History has shown that EVERY attempt to create a far-flung empire across huge geographic areas has failed! Alexander the Great's conquests... gone. Roman empire... gone. British Empire... gone. Napoleon's conquests... gone. Axis conquests... gone. Soviet Eastern Bloc... gone. See a pattern here? It's VERY difficult to manage a huge empire, and this is civ3's way of modeling that FACT. If you can in fact successfully manage a far-flung empire against all threats (foreign and domestic) then you have truly accomplished something that no empire has ever done before!

[Howling Chip]

I'm one of the 80 some in the poll who does not have big problem with corruption (although the learn the game you idiot part is uncalled for).

Tweaking it would be fine, either by adjusting impact of improvement, new improvements, or adjustments based on the age you are in. I do not want to see the inhibiting aspects of it removed however. I'm one who finds its inhibitions attractive, in that it has not stopped me from waging wars, or developing tech advances. I must use my home or core empire to support any defense or offense initiated at the far reaches of my empire. I've had to learn to develop empires based on 15 or so cities rather than 30.

I accept the games implementation as it affects my game play. Remote cities take a lot longer to develop, and cash payment is the primary method by which I develop them.

I also use culture as a weapon to compensate for their lack of production. I took the culture talk from Firaxis pre-release to heart. In all the games I have played I am either the dominant culture or on par with with any competitors. Being in this situation has benifited me vs the AI on many different levels (trade, war, diplomacy). In every game I have acquired cities and resources through cultural assimilation and border expansion.

NOTE: All my CIV III game experience so far has come from playing at Regent level.

[jbird]

I would have much less of a problem with corruption if I could somehow get Great leaders. I have had *very* little luck while playing the Americans to get Great leaders at all. And honestly, I only want two.

1. Forbidden Palace
2. My first Army

That's all I want. If maybe the first leader was somewhat easy to get (much easier than the current system imo), the second leader was somewhat harder to get (a bit less difficult than the current setup), and every other leader was as difficult to come by as they are now, i'd be fine with it.

However, as it is in the released version, I simply can't get a leader to either get my first army or complete the palace. I wouldn't mind it if I could have *two* clusters of good cities, and the rest were stuck with the crappy 1 shield 1 commerce model. However, a 90% (or 80%) cap in Democracy with a Courthouse and Democracy would be better imo than a 99% cap.

Jbird