Only one shield production - does the patch fix this on new games?

[Rushton]

I am certainly one of the experienced band of Civ II players and am pretty pleased and excited by Civ III. I have just one major thing that irritates me:

My own cities (not captured) on the edge of my civilization start off with a shield production of one and they bloody well stay like that! This forces me to buy temples and cathedrals there to stop them being lost doe to culture. This in turn forces me to spend all my spare cash on this and put science at a lower level

1) So does the patch fix this when you start a new game as on my saved game it has made no difference? I don´t want to move my capital as it is my culture city.

2) A separate question. After patching the game no longer shows the computer moves. Is this intentional?

Thanks

Paul

[Skanky Burns]

About the corrupt cities: the post-patch jury is still out on these types of cities so far...

About the comp not showing its moves - This is a setting in the preferences menu (ctrl-p) which allows you to set which movements the computer shows you.

[Grim Legacy]

In the mean time, try some of the in-game options to reduce corruption. There are many.

-(Forbidden) Palace placement
-Roads/Harbors/Airports
-Courthouse
-WLTKD
-Police Station (patch!)
-building on same continent/minimal distances
-better form of governement
-4 more things I forgot to list

(lol I crack myself up with these 'other' smilies)

[Rushton]

Thanks for the advice - unfortunately I´ve tried most of these.

I have a pangea (to avoid these things)
"Forbidden Palace in 120 turns" REALLY helpful!
Roads, etc seem to have no affect
Democracy!
WLTKD all the time!



And in reply to SB. I changed the options but nothing happened and upon patching for some reason the moves were gone. I´ll try again.

Paul

[napalm010]

The 1 shield output cities will not be affected by any corruption improvements. It is based on the # of Optimal cities in the editor's world sizes page.
Map Size - # of Optimal cities
Tiny - 12
Small - 14
Standard - 16
Large - 24
Huge - 32

These # are also affected by the % of Optimal cities in the Difficulty page in editor. Higher difficulty levels have less than 100%. Which makes the # of Optimal cities smaller for current map size played.

So if your playing a standard size map, chieftain difficulty, any cities created or captured past 16 total in civ will be 1 shield output.

Edit: Actually the corruption reducing improvements will have some effect. Building all of them in the city will give u maybe 3 more shields. But the gold upkeep for those improvements will cost u more than shields produced.

[AHO]

I was soooo frustrated with this production problem that I nearly quit the game and shelved it. It really is irritating to have your outer edge cities losing 99% of their production, commerce, and science to corruption, while in the meantime, the AI spreads out faster than you do but is still able to sail miles ahead in science and production.
While this has been "tweaked" in the patch, and courthouses and police stations DO work, it takes forever for the corruption to come down to a level at which your city is worthwhile. The only thing to do is to build the Forbidden palace. The problem is, as you pointed out, it takes 120 turns or more to build. That translates into thousands of years of worthless production and civil disorder in those cities.
I would suggest, in order to make the game a bit more enjoyable in the early stages, that The Forbidden palace should be "tweaked". Reduce its production cost in the next patch, please.

[Jack_www]

In all most all the games I have played so far I have been able to build the Forbidden palace in a reasonable amount of time. What I do is build it in a city that is at the is 4 to 5 cities away form my capital. Usually the city has 50% corruption, but not total corruption so it takes about 20 turns or so. If you try to build the Forbidden palace in a total corruption city it is immpossible to do. The only way I see that you could build the Forbidden palace in those cities is to use a great leador, but usually you only get one or two of them in a game.

One thing I did was to make airports reduce corruption, that way I can reduce corruption by 75% in cities that really far away form my capital. I have also heard people make banks reduce corruption as well. One thing that I thought that as communication and travel becomes faster in the game, that corruption should also decrease as well.

[Rushton]

I finally got the Forbidden Palace in a city about 4 away from my capital. It took about 50 turns but now none of the others are only one shield. So obviously you have to do this as quickly as possible.

Still think the whole thing is bloody stupid though

I mean a city connected to my capital by railroad with 95% corruption - I think not.

It´s as if Los Angeles would have 95% coruption because it is so far away from DC .......What do you mean it has?

Paul

[rjpageuk]

I have found that the Forbidden Palace is insanely good at reducing corruption.

Whenever I play now, very early in the game, I build the Forbidden Palace in a place which is in the general direction of my expansion, so long as it takes less than 100 turns.

Once this is built, many cities are turned around, making them very productive, and paying back the cost of the Palace in probably only a few turns.

I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to build a Forbidden Palace early. Forget waiting for a Great Leader to build it in an ideal place, just build it a few cities away from your Capital (as close as you can to keep it under about 100 turns) and it will still pay back its cost very very quickly.

[kailhun]

The forbidden palace is great, but you can only build one. The rest of the empire is left hanging.
Using the editor I've given the barracks and temple the same corr./waste reduction as the courthouse. With these three and the police station, I only gained three gold and one shield.
I've also given some small wonders the forbidden palace corr./waste reducing factor (Intelligence Agency and Smith's trading comp.), but haven't tried these out yet.
I am still of the opion that the base corruption/waste is too high and that the reducing factor attached to the courthouse (originaly) is too low.

Robert

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Rushton
Thanks for the advice - unfortunately I´ve tried most of these.

I have a pangea (to avoid these things)
"Forbidden Palace in 120 turns" REALLY helpful!
Roads, etc seem to have no affect
Democracy!
WLTKD all the time!



And in reply to SB. I changed the options but nothing happened and upon patching for some reason the moves were gone. I´ll try again.

Paul

Roads and cultural linkage are at least rumored to have an effect. And roads bring in luxuries and resources too.
The size of the world map and difficulty level are also big factors. On a tiny map, your empire will surpass the optimal number of cities quicker than on a large map.
Finally, you can rush the Forbidden Palace with the help of a leader.

Well I'm just trying to help you minimize the problem. Maybe you were doing all these things already.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Rushton
And in reply to SB. I changed the options but nothing happened and upon patching for some reason the moves were gone. I´ll try again.

Your preferences menu should look something like the one below. If not, the patch isnt installed properly
Just set the ones ive 'arrowed' to on, and the comp should show you all moves that happen.

NOTE: This only shows you their moves very quickly. If you want to see their moves in "real time", set the Animate Enemy Moves which will show all movement of the enemy

[Rushton]

Thanks Shakey!

I managed to get that sorted out myself. I was just a bit confused that the patch re-set the preferences, particularly as I hadn´t changed them myself before.

Paul

[Xentropy]

Originally posted by Rushton
I managed to get that sorted out myself. I was just a bit confused that the patch re-set the preferences, particularly as I hadn´t changed them myself before.

They're kinda new prefs, and I think Firaxis assumed the majority did NOT want to see enemy moves because of all the complaints and made this new pref default off.

Used to force on and not be a pref at all is why this happened.