How do you deal with chronic corruption?

[scubatim84]

So I've been reading up on it, and it seems as if the general consensus is to get governors in as many cities as possible, have a spy in each city, and train up academics/scriptoriums/walls/etc. to increase your law bonus. Also, having high or very high taxes will encourage corruption. The problem is, I still have 97k corruption after having done all that for a long time. I had a lot of excess money, about 100-150k a turn, so I did see it creep up slowly from 61k to 70k and then all of a sudden it seemed like it was at 97k. No big deal, just keep it under 50k and that will curb corruption right? Well, I've been broke for the last several turns and my army upkeep isn't even that high, and it hasn't changed corruption much at all. So how do you guys deal with this very stupid situation since I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets this?

[DimeBagHo]

Any settlement with a governor should have it's taxes set to at least high. Otherwise the governor will get bad tax traits.

Corruption of the kind you see in the city scroll is purely a function of distance from your capital and law, so there are two ways to reduce it: (1) Move your capital to a more central location in your empire; (2) Construct buildings that have law bonuses (temples of law etc, walls, academies).

That's one reason why I use law temples almost everywhere in my Empires, except in cities that will be recruitment centers, or in cities that are quite close to my capital.

[scubatim84]

Any settlement with a governor should have it's taxes set to at least high. Otherwise the governor will get bad tax traits.

Corruption of the kind you see in the city scroll is purely a function of distance from your capital and law, so there are two ways to reduce it: (1) Move your capital to a more central location in your empire; (2) Construct buildings that have law bonuses (temples of law etc, walls, academies).

Really? I thought it was the other way around, if the taxes are too high then the governors will get bad tax traits. Unfortunately, my capital is roughly in the middle of my empire, and the corruption has not been an issue before...it basically skyrocketed from 70 to 90k in one turn. In most of the settlements that have a negative income from corruption, I've checked, and they all are maxed out on buildings that give law bonuses. Reinforced stone walls, ludus maximas (or whatever the third tier of academy is called), etc. are all there.

[DimeBagHo]

Really? I thought it was the other way around, if the taxes are too high then the governors will get bad tax traits. Unfortunately, my capital is roughly in the middle of my empire, and the corruption has not been an issue before...it basically skyrocketed from 70 to 90k in one turn. In most of the settlements that have a negative income from corruption, I've checked, and they all are maxed out on buildings that give law bonuses. Reinforced stone walls, ludus maximas (or whatever the third tier of academy is called), etc. are all there.

A tax setting of 'high' is generally best. If you set it to 'very high' then they might get some tax traits that have both good and bad effects, but if you set it lower they will get tax traits that are just plain bad.

Because of the distance effect, corruption is always going to increase as your empire expands. It will also go up as you absorb other factions. There's no way to get rid of it, so all you can do is reduce it a bit with law buildings.

[scubatim84]

Ahh ok, well that clears it up. I did find some governors who do have bad traits like "Wildly Extravagant" and "Poor Organizer" so I'm going to rotate them out, but that's only going to be a few thousand denarii difference in the long run. Too bad, doesn't seem like corruption should cripple your empire once it gets big. I'm running a skeleton army now because I can't afford to do anything else, heh.

[Ninefingers]

A tax setting of 'high' is generally best. If you set it to 'very high' then they might get some tax traits that have both good and bad effects, but if you set it lower they will get tax traits that are just plain bad.

I'm at work (shh, don't tell anyone I'm browsing TWC forums!) and so can't check the files, but I was wondering what traits are affected by the High and Very High tax settings? I've played campaigns using both High and Very High as the norm (depending on population rates) and haven't seen any difference in the acquired traits - regardless of which tax setting is used, all governors eventually develop the third level of the GoodTaxman trait, which IIRC gives +30% tax income and +2 unrest (Cruelly Efficient Taxman, or something like that).

Personally, I preferred the way the GoodTaxman trigger worked in vanilla - where the trait would only be triggered when a city's happiness was below 100% and the taxes were set to very high. As it stands I would have to leave taxes to normal to avoid the +2 unrest from this trait, but that in turn triggers other bad traits.

[DimeBagHo]

There's a bunch of others that can be affected depending on circumstances and culture, but these are the basic ones: GoodBuilder, ArchitectSkill, GoodTaxman, GoodAdministrator. If your tax rate is very high then you will probably gain some of the Tyrant line, and if the settlement rebels then your governor is very likely to pick up some other bad traits.

[Grimbold]

What? I thought it was the other way around. If you have loads of money coming in and your generals are sitting in cities doing nothing then they'll be corrupted, seems more logical to me. Keep your generals moving.

[DimeBagHo]

If you have too much money sitting in the treasury at the end of each turn then that will cause your governors to gain corruption or extravagance traits, but I think scubatim84 was asking about the kind of corruption that shows up in the economy stats of the city scroll.

[knguyen_93]

Can we have 3 or 4 capitals If getting more than 80 provinces? It is highly possible because the Persian Empire has 3 capitals, Roman has 2, so why cant we make it a little more realistic. Moreover It will decrease corruption and unrest

[Dog Fart]

^ i think that excedes hardcoded limits. but you could add bonuses to the campaign start building for certain factions if they capture those cities.

[scubatim84]

Hell, it can be even easier than that, just add in another law building that reduces a percentage of corruption when you build it, add in a unit that does the same, or add that attribute onto the end-stage academy upgrade.

Although I've discovered part of my income issues have come from rebel brigands being all over my empire and my trade being damn near 0...oops.

Edited to add:

Jesus christ. So I just figured out from reading these threads that you can demolish buildings you don't want. Shocking discovery, who would have thought? So after all that pain and suffering, I trash all the barbarian buildings I don't want, trash the shrine types I don't want and start over with Athena, trash the catapult ranges, urban barracks, etc. that are depleting my tax income, and lo' and behold I make 130,000 denarii a turn now. FML.

Well, on the positive side, I'm learning so much more about how to play the game by perusing this forum. On the negative side, I feel like a ing idiot.