NO difference in corruption between Des/Mon and Rep/Dem !!!

[blackdog2112]

I believe the manuel states that under Republic and Democracy corruption is a "nuisance" and "minimal" respectivly.

Compared to what?!?!

I, like everyone else I'm sure, have noticed that the switchover to higher forms of government hasn't equated into corruption satisfaction.

Did a little experimenting last night. The Chinese Empire controlled most of the continent of North America (huge map) during the late Industrial revolution and did a little revolution to actually compare these corruption values i.e. to distinguish the difference between "rampant" and "minimal". The turn before anarchy ended, I saved the game so as when I reverted to a particular goverment, the same conditons would be present. My results:

Income ----------- Despot Monarch - Commie Repub - Democ
Total --------------- 1069 -- 1113 --- 1044 - 1579 -- 1587
From Cities --------- 597 --- 641 ----- 572 -- 1107 ---1115
To Science --------- 319 -- 356 ------ 250 -- 622 ---- 641
To Corruption ------ 217 --- 210 ----- 260 -- 355 ---- 340
Percent Lost ------- 20% -- 19% ----- 25% - 22% --- 21%

I hope the chart is clear.

Between Despotism and Monarchy there is virtually no difference corruption wise. Losing "the whip" and traveling down a dead end tech path makes it a worthless pursuit.

I realize Lenin's dream didn't quite pan out the way he figured, but Communism is by **far** the worst form of goverment...odd since its the last one one can get. Despotism generates more income, adds way more beakers to the science pool and has noticably (for this game at least) less corrupt. Conscripts are worthless and since despotism has "the whip", this seems the way to go if one got tired of war weariness.

Like Despot/Monarch, the differernce between Democracy and Republic is negligible. I have yet to lose a city to propoganda and I captured about 50 enemy workers so the faster worker rate is no help. Going down a dead end tech branch and experiencing 5 turns of anarchy to lower corruption by a whole 1% is utter stupidity.

Going by both percentage and in total terms corruption is *worse* under the higher forms of representative governments than the supposable "rampant" levels of Despotism.

So, it looks as if Civ3 is like Civ1 - stay despotism until the republic is ready and then switch over for the rest of the game. Well, the old saying does go "the more things change the more they stay the same".

How did this get by the beta testing?!?!?!

[Slax]

I would guess that you have more cities than the critical threshold, and because of that, the government type has very little effect.
Which is stupid, in my opinion.

[Ironikinit]

Surely you can see that not only did corruption go down but your income increased. Corruption took a smaller piece of a bigger pie.

[Jaybe]

Was that chart done in all five governments with the same number of cities at the same population points?? If you just happened to cross a number of cities threshold, it could give you bogus impressions.....

It may be that actual government changes are not immediately affected, i.e., it might be better to wait for a turn (or even 2??) AFTER the government has changed over (that's what religious civs are for, after all).

[FrantzX]

Look at it this way:

Pure Numbers
Government    Despot   Monarch   Commie   Repub   Democ 
Base          1069     1113      1044     1579    1587 
To Science    319      356       250      622     641 
To Corruption 217      210       260      355     340 
What's Left   533      547       534      602     606

Set Despo's values to 100%
Government    Despot   Monarch   Commie   Repub   Democ 
Base          100%     104%      98%      148%    148% 
To Science    100%     112%      78%      195%    201% 
To Corruption 100%     97%       120%     164%    157% 
What's Left   100%     103%      100%     113%    114%

[Encomium]

Originally posted by Slax
I would guess that you have more cities than the critical threshold, and because of that, the government type has very little effect.
Which is stupid, in my opinion.

Oh, man, no. Not another problem with Civ III!

Your darn right it's stupid - so much about Civ III is stupid.

[FrantzX]

If you had looked at my charts, you would see the big difference the governments make!

[Capt Dizle]

The whole goal of the Civ3 design team was to eliminate all methods by which the human player could gain an advantage over the AI.

Therefore it is clearly in keeping with that goal to eliminate the use of government as a strategic factor. And, they did. Eliminate it I mean.

BTW, for those of you wondering why the game is not fun, Soren determined that humans having fun playing is not acceptable. Since the AI cannot experience emotions (having fun) then this is a clear game inbalance. Hence fun got hacked.

Civ3, the best single player strategy experience ever!

My A$$!

[Stryfe]

I take it that the term "scientific method" has never been heard around these parts. So far the vast majority of "issues" that people have conjured up in their brains are not the sort of issues that would last if they bothered to do actual testing of their hypotheses; what appears one way in a singular case can hardly be considered as a universal. But within these forums, this "methodology" is in fact the rule. Why not try ruling a gigantic empire, and then see how corruption affects your civilization?

And no, it isn't "stupid" that small civs experience little difference between government types; there is very little to govern. Frankly, I'm not surprised that Communism is a terrible source of corruption for a small civ, since there is a high overhead for that level of bureacracy. But even if the level of corruption IS higher--it would still be useful, and I'd still go straight to Communism away from Despotism, because of the simple fact that possessing multiple cities that are productive is better than having a productive center and useless periphery.

If more people played the game instead of trying to find supposed means by which the player was "cheated" (and the accusations that many of these people make beg for as much suspension of disbelief as any far right/far left conspiracy theory does) then they might be able to have fun.

[Kilroy_Alpha]

Originally posted by FrantzX
If you had looked at my charts, you would see the big difference the governments make!

I see that communism makes a very big difference, but in the wrong direction. I see that Monarchy makes little difference, confirming blackdogs argument. And I see that there is very little difference between republic and democracy.

So if your intention was to prove blackdog right, good job.

Anyway if he used this on a civ that controlled nearly all of N. America on a huge map, there's little question that he went over the civ size limit. While I think the limit is a good idea in principle, you can't convince me that a communist government managing a gigantic piece of land is going to experience dismal scientific progress when compared to a loosely connected government of warloads governing the same piece of land. The Mongols did some crazy things with saddles I believe, but they never produced a MIG, at least not that I know of (ok that's an unfair example, but my point stands, right?). These numbers indicate a problem with the way governments are represented in the game, regardless of city number limit (in short, communism should ALWAYS be better that despotism, and differences between other governments should be more marked, as well).

I'd like to see some data on smaller civs that haven't crossed over the city number limit. My experience with the game tells me that the differences will be more marked, but probably still not enough.

[hoonak]

This will be a fairly long post.

From post #1:

How did this get by the beta testing?!?!?!

There is no evidence that this game was beta tested.

From post #3:

Surely you can see that not only did corruption go down but your income increased. Corruption took a smaller piece of a bigger pie.

This was never at issue. blackdog2112 is comparing corruption levels among the government types. After comparing the five government types he has reached the following conclusion:

...stay despotism until the republic is ready and then switch over for the rest of the game...

After playing the game and reviewing his numbers, I agree with him and think his thesis is dead-on. It is one of the more cogent posts on the entire site.

From post #4:

Was that chart done in all five governments with the same number of cities at the same population points??

Yes

...If you just happened to cross a number of cities threshold, it could give you bogus impressions.....

Having a "corruption threshold" based on the number of cities is what's bogus, not the impression it leaves.
If there needs to be a "corruption threshold" for the number of cities within an empire, shouldn't there also be a "corruption threshold" within each city? Seriously. If corruption becomes debilitating once I reach a certain level on a planetary scale, it should also become debilitating within each city as the city approaches the population limit or has run out of surplus food.
It is preposterous to assume that once a civ reaches a certain point corruption becomes a positive-feedback loop (aka "a vicious circle") that cannot be controlled for newer cities, but it can be contained with relative ease in older cities.

From post #7:

If you had looked at my charts, you would see the big difference the governments make!

Remember the enitre thesis of this post is:

...stay despotism until the republic is ready and then switch over for the rest of the game...

Please look at your own chart. The difference between despotism and monarchy is so small as to be meaningless. The difference between republic and democracy is almost non-existent. To be blunt, In Civ3 there is no point to researching either monarchy or democracy.

From post #8: I have no problem with this post. I prefer to use @ss, but to each thier own.

From post #9:

what appears one way in a singular case can hardly be considered as a universal

I can easily justify taking a single example as a universal example in this instance because my computer works the same way every time I use it. My computer will handle the corruption calculations the same way every time I play the game unless I actively change the equation. If your computer does not do this reliably, you should consider replacing it.

If more people played the game instead of trying to find supposed means by which the player was "cheated" (and the accusations that many of these people make beg for as much suspension of disbelief as any far right/far left conspiracy theory does) ...

Bite me! At NO TIME did blackdog allege he was cheated! Blackdog put forth a thesis about the various government types based on his own personal results. Nothing more and nothing less. the only person to even mention being cheated is you.

...they might be able to have fun.

Unless of course, they define "fun" when playing the Civ series as building a HUGE empire, managing production, building things and fostering a sense of accomplishment. These things have been taken away by design decisions that can only be described as arrogant. It takes huge, well-developed gonads to put an unrealistic mechanism in the game that essentially compels players to play a certain way. to charge fifty bucks for it means those gonads are made of solid brass.

and finally, post #10:

but my point stands, right?

yes, but you did not need to offer that lame anectdote as proof of a theory about governments? What are you smokin'? We have no way of knowing what the mongols would have accomplished if they had become a country under some other form of government, but we do know that they eventually waned and now are just a pale imitation of thier glorious past. Your choice of the mongols is a good one because it shows the need for a greater difference between despotism and monarchy, but that is getting off topic.

Thanks blackdog. Good post and good theory.

[Ironikinit]

It's not a bad idea to go straight for republic from despotism, I do it all the time. However, there are situations when communism, for instance, is handy. Say if I have a big undeveloped area that I've recently captured and my home area is already built up. All I'll be building in my home area is military units, and it's good to have partial production in the new area to put in some culture.

Further, republic may have similar numbers to democracy, but democracy has a worker bonus and the cities are immune to propaganda. Also, a democracy taking cities from a republic will have fewer resisters. Same with a communist civ taking cities from a monarchy or despotism.

So it's a nice thesis (oh, and let's not forget that the democracy had a higher net income than the republic), but one size doesn't fit all.

"Cogent post", huh. What have YOU been smoking? Term papers?

[lockstep]

Originally posted by blackdog2112

Income ----------- Despot Monarch - Commie Repub - Democ
Total --------------- 1069 -- 1113 --- 1044 - 1579 -- 1587
From Cities --------- 597 --- 641 ----- 572 -- 1107 ---1115
To Science --------- 319 -- 356 ------ 250 -- 622 ---- 641
To Corruption ------ 217 --- 210 ----- 260 -- 355 ---- 340
Percent Lost ------- 20% -- 19% ----- 25% - 22% --- 21%

Two objections. First, income from taxmen, interest and other civs doesn't seem to be subject to corruption as it isn't calculated in the city screen (and as it is always 472 in your example). Therefore, income from cities is probably a better basis to calculate corruption rates. To modify your example:

----------------------- Despot - Monarch - Commie - Repub - Democ
Income From Cities ------ 597 ---- 641 ---- 572 ---- 1107 ----1115
To Corruption ------------ 217 ---- 210 ---- 260 ---- 355 ---- 340
Percent Lost ------------- 36% --- 33% --- 45% --- 32% --- 30%

So 'higher' forms of representative governments do have lower corruption rates after all.

Second, the domestic advisor's income/corruption figures are rather misleading. The first evidence is the small difference in 'income from cities' between Republic and Democracy in your example. After all, with both governments featuring a trade bonus, why should there be any difference between them before corruption? After running some tests, I can only guess that the corruption figures are 'raw' ones, while the figures for science and taxes already incorporate multipliers due to science and tax buildings. Therefore, if corruption goes down somewhat in a city with libraries and marketplaces, income before corruption goes up. In other words, differences in corruption are bigger than they seem at first.

(Another test to verify this assumption: In a city with a library but without a marketplace, income goes up if you raise your civ's science rate at the cost of the tax rate.)

[Whoha]

lockstep you just proved his point for him, he contends that there is no difference between despotism and monarchy, and similarly that there is no difference between republic and democracy. He never at any point stated that despotism was superior to republic.

[rant]
However, he did state that it seems like a waste of time to waste between 2 and EIGHT turns of anarchy(hmm at this point in the game what 80 years to switch from one representative govt to another?) to get 8 gold a turn or .5 additional worker speed, since when you need more workers isnt really that hard to build them, as your cities will have built everything and be stuck at 12 till the industrial era which you can not rush to. Immunity to propaganda is not all that good a trait as espionage is hideously expensive, and i assume that since they say that the comp is on the level then it also has hideously high action costs.

Finally you lose the ability to wage war(the single most important action in the game due to resources,ai acting erratically, keeping up in the tech game without paying through the nose,etc), since with "high" war weariness your civ falls into anarchy QUICKLY if you are defending yourself and attempt to take back cities(ai seems to know where those undefended and under defended cities are, and in one instance ive seen a horsemen charge in and kill a defending musketman... and hold the city all by himself without it flipping back...) and have all 8 luxuries and police stations out the yin yang and have universal suffrage(when your ai opponent has none of these and yet somehow staves off his citizens so they dont burn down everything and screw his govt for 80 years)even before you get the chance to punish the ai so it doesnt immediatly resume the war.
/[rant]

edit: Woohoo caught a spelling error before grammar crusade!

[Ironikinit]

Let's not forget that this whole discussion AFAIK (I'm not going back to re-read it) has overlooked waste.

[lockstep]

Originally posted by Whoha
lockstep you just proved his point for him, he contends that there is no difference between despotism and monarchy, and similarly that there is no difference between republic and democracy. He never at any point stated that despotism was superior to republic.

blackdog2112 stated that 'Going by both percentage and in total terms corruption is *worse* under the higher forms of representative governments than the supposable "rampant" levels of Despotism.' This isn't correct - going by percentage and based on income from cities, corruption is lower under Republic or Democracy than under Despotism.

I agree with blackdog that, judging from his test game, the difference in corruption between Republic and Democracy is too low and doesn't make Democracy really worthwile. OTOH, I'd like to know more details of his test game, especially the number of cities (was it more than the critical treshold of 32 for a huge map?) and the average city distance to the Palace resp. Forbidden Palace.

[DrSpike]

Commie comes off badly, but the advantage of communism is higher production in big empires. Perhaps another table.........

Care does need to be taken though. As someone mentioned the relationship between the govts (for both corruption and waste) will change depending on the number of cities you have. Also lockstep's point was a good one, leaving the common factor in all calculation biases the percentage of corruption obtained.

[blackdog2112]

Stryfe - I don't need the scientific method to prove pigs can't fly.

Hoonak - Well said...you display an excetionally high level of cognizance. If I did not know any better, I'd swear you had ESP.

lockstep - a key point. I wasn't sure if the tribute I received from the other civs (472, I don't think I had any tax collectors) was suceptible to corruption. It appears not to be the case (which is strange because in real life THIS is the income that gets siphoned off via corruption; France and Italy are prime examples that it is rampant even under representative governments). Your modified numbers unfortunetly do not make me alter my original hypothesis. Despotism and monarchy are virtually the same as is the Republic/democracy pair with Communism being by far the worse. Lowering the corruption by 2% instead of raising it by 2% also does not justify the distiction the game calls "rampant" to "minimal".

Whoha - damn, I just repeated what you said. I must say this forum has an unusually high number of people that actually read and attempt to understand another's point of view.

Lockstep, through your figures, yes you could grammatically interpret my statement as such. However, in your next paragraph you acknowledged the spirit of what I said. 8 turns of anarchy for an 1115 income instead of 1108? No thanks.

Dr. Spike - My empire was rather large. By production I don't know if you mean pure shields or general income and shields. From my experience, it appears that the waste/corruption levels are more or less proportionate in a given city, thus I think its a fair assumption that Communism will have the least amount of shields as it does income.

One thing about the size of empires. The "score screen" calculates your score through 4 criteria: Happy peoples, content peoples, territory, and future tech. No expansion because of concern for the size of your empire means no territory (a large determinate) and the AI will have more peoples.

One other thing. How big your empire is seems beyond the point. I simply want some differentiation between Monarchy and Despotism with regards to corruption whether my empire be small medium or large. Similarly, I wish the game would at least tempt me into pursuing democracy (ala civ2...corruption under republic could get pretty bad for sprawling empires). 1/2 my workers stand there with their shovels up their ass because the automated polution command will only allow 2 to a square at a time (another irritating aspect) so the 50% worker rate is not even worth 1 turn of anarchy, let alone 6,7, or 8.

I really think there is a "zero" missing in some coefficient in the corruption script.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by blackdog2112

Dr. Spike - My empire was rather large. By production I don't know if you mean pure shields or general income and shields. From my experience, it appears that the waste/corruption levels are more or less proportionate in a given city, thus I think its a fair assumption that Communism will have the least amount of shields as it does income.

This kinda misses the point. Even if there are less shields overall (the proportionality argument seems a little tenuous - more scientific method is certainly needed here ) productivity is spread in communism. I agree with a lot of the things you've said, but income is not the only factor in choosing govts. For a domination game I'd always switch to commie after my empire reached a certain size.

[Sovereign]

Blackdog, I'm curious what version did you play on? The original out-of-box version, or V 1.16?

I had like 100 cities in one game and I had size 20 cities with robotic plants and factories, as well as nuclear plants churning out like 150+ shields in hill + mine + rail terrain. Guess what? the cities only produced 1 blue shield for production and the other 149+ were red corrupted shields. Later, I downloaded the patch and experience 1/2 - 3/4 as much corruption as before. (But I want to have like 10-20% corruption, NOT 99% or 75% or 50%)

Thats such crap, because in Civ 2, you could control Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia under Democracy with like 120 cities and have almost no corruption. So I figured "to hell with it" and decided to random generate maps in the editor and click all the buildings, great wonders, and small wonders to "reduce corruption" and presto! I have Civ 2 style corruption. I don't care that I cheated to get rid of that corruption, but they should make it more realistic.

Here's a good idea...

Huge maps = optimum cities = 100

Large maps = 75

Medium = 50

Small = 35

Tiny = 20

That way, people can actually enjoy military conquest and put the conquered AI cities to some use rather than razing them all the time.

What do you think?

[Kull]

One other reason for those who like the "whip" to switch from Despotism to Communism: Science rate increases actually have an impact.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by blackdog2112
Stryfe - I don't need the scientific method to prove pigs can't fly.

Actually, that is exactly why you know that pigs can't fly. A few hundred years ago, it may not have been seen such an impossible thing.

[hoonak]

blackdog2112's originally theorized that there is an advantage to jumping directly from despotism to republic and staying there. He further postualted that there is almost no difference in corruption levels between despotism and monarchy and likewise there is almost no difference in corruption between republic and democracy.

My original post agreed with him and took several others to task for thier responses to his post. I have since played a game with the express purpose of comparing corruption levels of the various government types. My data is very similar to his. My raw data is attached as a text file. I played as France on Marla's and chose the Indians, Chinese, Zulus, Aztecs, Iroquois and Americans as my opponents to allow myself plenty of time to expand (since this was a test game, a large number of cities and high population were preferable to early conflict).

I believe that researching Monarchy, Democracy and Communism is a waste of time and resources in Civ3. All of the Governments in Civ3 are technological dead ends, so there is no long-term benefit to researching any "extra" governments. In addition, none of these governments offers any city improvement, unit or benefit that is so important that no civ can exist without it.

Everything a civ produces is lost during anarchy. This makes changing governements a very expensive proposition. The time it takes to recover the losses depends on the type of government you have and the type you are changing to.

If you are changing to democracy it takes:

• about four turns to make up the losses if you were a Monarchy; or
• about three turns to make up the losses if you were Communist; or
• about forty turns to make up the losses if you were a Republic.

That's correct. 40 turns. Just to make good the losses. If you don't believe me, run the numbers for yourself. By the way, that is the PER TURN COST. In other words, if your revolution takes 5 turns, it will take 200 turns to make up the loses. The only way to ameliorate this is to expand dramatically after changing from republic to democracy. This is easier said than done because the computer players have been putting cities down all over the place. There will probably not be any room for you to expand into without going to war.

Don't waste your time with the revolution, just pick a government and stick with it.

[blackdog2112]

Sovereign - I play with the patch.

Not sure why anarchy is markedly long in this game as compared to the others (1-4 versions civ 1and 2; here it can last up to 8), but Hoonok hits the point, your not only wasting turns producing and researching nothing but you are allowing your computer opponents to pass you.

I think the overall design for this game is very good, although there are some rather curious aspects like the no difference in corruption that are just mind boggling. Makes me think there was a sort of deadline.

It's a shame, I would have been more than happy to wait an extra 6 months to work out these irritants.

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by hoonak

If you are changing to democracy it takes:

• about four turns to make up the losses if you were a Monarchy; or
• about three turns to make up the losses if you were Communist; or
• about forty turns to make up the losses if you were a Republic.

Don't waste your time with the revolution, just pick a government and stick with it.

Hoonak - excellent post. Your research solidifies my own observations. I have made a regular strategy of jumping directly from Despotism to Republic and sticking with it; this validates my tactic.

I sometimes flip to Democracy late in the game if I already have a comfortable lead, and (honestly) I want to give the AI civs time to catch up just a bit. Of course, with late-game tedium, I've had games run for about two days (I only play for an hour or so a day during the week) with my empire in total anarchy.

[HulluKarhu]

Long interesting post lots of calculations and work to prove what I though was pretty obvious...
ie: in the game and in real world of politics..any dramatic change in government style (revolution) causes such a big break or even step back on the country's/civilisation develpoment that it takes many years to actual return to the point where the country was before the "revolutiion"...it is rare to actualy catch up with the rest of the world which avoids revolutions..
Think of history when did a revolution actualy result in that country becoming a Great world power??..daah?
Russia.."great!?"
France..."world power!?"
USA yehhh..but....."jumping directly from Despotism to Republic and sticking with it; .....this validates the idea!"


Sorry tongue now removed from cheek..What the hell do Finns know about it anyway...
:

[lockstep]

After some tests, I'm fairly sure that corruption figures in the city screen are 'raw' ones while the figures for science and taxes include multipliers from science and tax buildings. Therefore, by compiling these figures corruption is underrated. The following stats stem from a game with korn's blitz mod (v1.06 beta6), but should (in principle) also be valid for the original Civ3 v1.16f.

Played a test game with the default setting (regent, standard map, 8 civs). Cultural victory, about 1000 points. Some hard facts regarding my empire: Pop 220, about 13% of the map's land mass (had a small continent for myself), 14 cities (all level 3), average city distance to palace/FP 4.5 tiles (i.e. close to nil), 3 science and 3 tax buildings in every city (i.e multipliers of 2.5 for science and taxes without additional wonder effects), courthouse in every city. This resulted in the following income/corruption figures for the different governments (Confederation not included):

Government ------------- Desp -- Mon -- Comm -- Rep / Fasc -- Dem
A: Total Income ---------- 948 -- 1045 --- 1002 --- 1604 --- 1614
B: Income From Cities ----- 898 --- 995 ---- 952 --- 1554 --- 1564
C: 'Raw' Commerce* ---- 345 --- 368 ---- 368 ---- 605 ---- 605
Corruption ---------------- 54 ----- 47 ----- 68 ----- 71 ----- 66
Corruption / A ------------- 5.7% -- 4.5% -- 6.8% -- 4.4% -- 4.1%
Corruption / B ------------- 6.0% -- 4.7% -- 7.1% -- 4.6% -- 4.2%
Corruption / C --------- 15.7% - 12.8% - 18.5% - 11.7% - 10.9%

* commerce from city tiles/worked tiles, no science/tax multipliers included

Some comments/conclusions:

• IMO corruption / C ('raw' commerce) is the correct corruption rate. Don't believe your domestic advisor, just do some counting in every city screen. (BTW, SMAC's city screen showed science and tax figures both before and after applying multipliers due to buildings/wonders.)
• The 'correct' rate was about 2.5 times higher in my test game; as my cities had science/tax multipliers of 2.5, this is as it should be.
• With the correct figures in mind, courthouses etc. generally become far more worthwile.

('Fasc' stands for a Fascist government that is included in the mod and, like the Republic, features a trade bonus and nuisance corruption.)

Note that the original Civ3 doesn't include the stock exchange as a third tax building, furthermore its third science building (the research lab) isn't available before the modern age. Therefore the 'correct' corruption rate should typically be about 2 times higher than the one calculated with the domestic advisor's figures.

Having said all that, blackdog is right IMO that 'there is an advantage to jumping directly from despotism to republic and staying there'. As it is now, even the difference between 'minimal' and 'problematic' corruption is rather small; therefore an intermediate corruption level is pointless at the moment. I hope that Firaxis deals with this in the next patch; until then, one can at least change Republic from 'nuisance' to 'problematic' corruption to balance governments somewhat.