[Mod Request] Decreasing Corruption Over Time

[GurglingEmu]

Corruption makes the early game challenging for large empires, and that's great. It also makes late game unbearable, and that's not so great. For most of the game, having 20-25 settlements seems to net the highest income per turn. Adding new settlements will actually reduce your income, because your corruption rate will rise. Attempting to reconquer lost territories as the WRE, for example, is futile - since they will dramatically reduce your income. This really makes late game disappointing, since there's little incentive to expand or reconquer.

Here's my idea: Corruption is capped at 80% to start and then is reduced by 1% for each year that goes by until it reaches a cap of 50%. This would retain the difficulty of the early game without ruining late game.

Can anyone tell me if this is possible? Barring that, are there any mods that implement a way to reduce corruption empire-wide or is anyone working on a potential solution?

Thanks everyone!

[GurglingEmu]

There's gotta be some way to reduce corruption without reducing the challenge of early game - right?

[Dath1]

Wondering about this as well :/

[the herald]

New territories drop your income because they commonly aren't developed enough to make a net increase in income. You need to focus on leveling up the infrastructure in those new lands before they become profitable. Also bear in mind the period, the climate and failing bureaucracy of the Roman empire meant it increasing made use of client states where possible. You don't want to conquering infertile or low income areas when you could just setup a client state there.

Last but not least take advantage of the few corruption reducing elements in the game, tech which reduces corruption does it by a percentage so the higher your corruption the larger the one off change. EG. "drops corruption by 1%" this is 1% of your corruption, it isn't 1% corruption. So if your corruption is 60% this research will drop it to 59.4% not 59%. This means you NEED to save those researches for late game where possible, you want to reduce that corruption by as much as possible. The other options available of governors and spys, they both can reduce corruption in their province through skills/abilities, focus governors in your most profitable areas.

[GurglingEmu]

New territories drop your income because they commonly aren't developed enough to make a net increase in income. You need to focus on leveling up the infrastructure in those new lands before they become profitable. Also bear in mind the period, the climate and failing bureaucracy of the Roman empire meant it increasing made use of client states where possible. You don't want to conquering infertile or low income areas when you could just setup a client state there.

Last but not least take advantage of the few corruption reducing elements in the game, tech which reduces corruption does it by a percentage so the higher your corruption the larger the one off change. EG. "drops corruption by 1%" this is 1% of your corruption, it isn't 1% corruption. So if your corruption is 60% this research will drop it to 59.4% not 59%. This means you NEED to save those researches for late game where possible, you want to reduce that corruption by as much as possible. The other options available of governors and spys, they both can reduce corruption in their province through skills/abilities, focus governors in your most profitable areas.

I understand all of that. Let's say that I'm at 72% corruption empire-wide and I retake another settlement. Even if I invest 40000 into that settlement, the resulting increase in corruption makes that settlement a net loss - regardless of whether the settlement is developed or not. With a lot of settlements, no amount of development is going to make that new settlement worth it. That's beyond frustrating.

It should not be a net loss to retake and develop the Western Empire. I should not be making more money with ten provinces than eleven, you know? Worse yet, somehow taking a settlement in Britain makes my administration in Italy 2% more corrupt. WHY.

Don't get me started on the historical reasons behind the high corruption percentage. You can bet that Theodosius I was not losing 95% of his tax revenue because he had too many provinces.

[the herald]

That's incorrect though. Currently I hold 47 settlements and have corruption sitting at 59%. Having tested it, each whole province adds 4% corruption, and lets use my empire as a template. I make 26k per turn in taxes, across my whole faction with the corruption included.

At 59% that means my true taxation numbers are: 63k talents per turn, with 37k lost to corruption.

Now lets say I take a province and increase it's buildings up until a decent point, currently most of my settlements make around 4k each before corruption, with 3-4 making as high as 8k without corruption.

Now lets say I take a province and upgrade it to match my others, ie. a normal one. My net income rises to 67k talents and my corruption rises to 63%. This means my new income is: 24.8k. Not good. Now lets say I rise the income it makes to 8k, is it worth it now? Yes it is, my net income is now 26.27.

The net gain is 270 talents, which for an investment of say 100,000 talents isn't worth it obviously. But wait. You now have access to more trade income which should increase the money earned, potentially significantly depending on what resources you acquired. Gold for instance can yield as high as another 2000 in trade. Finally you should this continue you have access to more governors and spies which will decrease corruption, thus resulting in more income. Last but not least, the more you increase your corruption the larger that research will impact you finances. Get it as high as 95% for instance and a single research reducing corruption by 7% will increase your income by 10,000's of talents.

Ultimately you're correct to some extent, after a specific point expansion will become a bad investment, unless of course you are the ERE and can afford it. Timing research with large expansions will ultimately make it worthwhile up until a point, where that is will be harder to predict due to the many factors involved (income, corruption, anti corruption elements, trade, etc).

[GurglingEmu]

That's incorrect though. Currently I hold 47 settlements and have corruption sitting at 59%. Having tested it, each whole province adds 4% corruption, and lets use my empire as a template. I make 26k per turn in taxes, across my whole faction with the corruption included.

At 59% that means my true taxation numbers are: 63k talents per turn, with 37k lost to corruption.

Now lets say I take a province and upgrade it to match my others, ie. a normal one. My net income rises to 67k talents and my corruption rises to 63%. This means my new income is: 24.8k. Not good. Now lets say I rise the income it makes to 8k, is it worth it now? Yes it is, my net income is now 26.27.

Rome, fully upgraded, doesn't even have a region wealth of 7k - yet I would have to upgrade each new province past that level in order to make it worth it? I would have to turn every single settlement into a fully upgraded money-making machine while ignoring public order buildings in order to even approach 6k per settlement. Using your numbers, even the settlements with gold would barely be worth it even if they were highly populated and had nothing but income generating buildings. Settlements without trade resources would simply never be worth it even with a governor.

That's a ridiculous system. I'm doing everything in the game to reduce corruption - tech, spies, & governors. Using your numbers, it's almost never going to be worth it to take a new settlement. Holding the WRE's territories gives you a staggering 80+% corruption. You can lower that a bit with technology and a handful of agents, but new settlements are still going to be a loss long before you finish retaking the WRE.

I don't see what's incorrect about what I said. If I'm at 72% corruption and I add a settlement, even with 40k investment that settlement is a significant loss. Also, at that level of corruption, a 40k investment is going to take forever to get back.

[the herald]

Still not able to edit my post so I'll just double up. As for the idea behind the thread I like the premise but I'd propose fixing it in another way. Corruption is indeed a little too costly and hampers the late game so I would increase the ability of agents, techs and governors to decrease it. Work in percentage decreases in corruption with more researches, make the effect characters have on a provinces corruption more significant (like -50%+ instead of the -10% normally). Finally add faction wide corruption decreasing percentage affects to the army political positions, this would both make them more useful and more powerful as they should be.

[the herald]

7k? Are you sure? My settlements in the south of Italy pull in 6k per turn (without corruption), they have +3 public order and positive sanitation and they're still using buildings between tier 2 and 3 without the settlement being expanded. When I get them to T4 I should easily be hitting 10-14k I would imagine. That province is also lossing 25% of its wealth per turn due to the food shortage, its making 8k I've just momentary dropped its food below 0 (I do hate that modifier, its totally out of sync with the rest of the game).

The gold settlement also adds that 2k directly to trade by the way, so it's pure profit. The larger the corruption the more it's worth it, technically.

I agree though it is silly towards the size of the original WRE. Expanding it beyond its original borders would be a significant challenge due to the money, there should be more or better methods for reducing corruption. Not to mention the increased cost from being forced to upgrade armies as you tech. Towards the end game your armies are costing a fortune and expansion isn't cost effective.

Reminds me of a mod from Rome 2 that could work. It added a -5 to -20% reduction in corruption to libraries, that would work quite well here. Maybe add it to the t3 or t4 version?

Example of my settlement pulling in 6K: