Crime Revisited

Faustmouse said:

When murder was commonplace, did it have such a strong psychological effect on a witness? I mean, if you see it all day, you get kinda used to it. If I'd see someone get beaten to death with a club I'd be stunned since I never saw it IRL. Same with rape. But on the other hand groups were much smaller and you knew everybody you see and you mostly knew the victim personally. When you outlaw it, it becomes rarer, you feel more secure, but if it happens then, it has a stronger impact because of this.

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The happiness penalty could be introduced to the crime at a tech later than the crime itself, but the (representing life expectancy) penalty from murder would stay the same throughout time.

Faustmouse said:

That's maybe just one of the topics that I think about and then realize that it is on a level that civ can't emulate and then I delete the text again - normally

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I can relate; the amount of detailed text I've deleted right before posting is piling up, because I realize it isn't constructive/plausible for the mod at all.

Faustmouse said:

In the beginning of the game you are basically an animal. I think Rape or Murder were pretty normal back then.

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Even if we apparently still need to research how to be a nomad and how to speak at the beginning of C2C, 50,000 BC is considered to be the advent of emotionally modern humans (behavioural modernity), i.e. ones that thought and behaved in pretty much the same way as we do today. (Contrast this with anatomically modern humans, who date back to 200,000 BC.)

As several have mentioned Theft should be a non Prereq Tech in Preh Era as a core crime with no Obsolescence Tech.

Many of the Theft crimes afterwards are but specific manifestations of the Crime.

Murder is also a "core" crime and should not be attached to "warfare" thru any Era.

As I study these crimes it is becoming more apparent that a goodly portion of these have never seen their activation level hit by the avg player. Only a player who purposefully ignores crime would see these.

The Core Crime level generator is the diffusing effect from city tile to adjacent tiles and then the re diffusing back to the City tile (which has been Arakhor's biggest complaint over Crime). If I lower these individual Crimes Min Values, Crime will be more of a burden to watch over. Extrapolating this, the sudden swings in Crime levels should become more pronounced as More of these heavy weight crimes come into play.

Also there are myriads of other Buildings, units, and Properties that also generate crime that the 2 Files I've concentrated on produce. Hydro injected the Property Crime on much much more of his modding work, even Leader traits are included that were not his work. This is a crooked trail left by those that made it.

JosEPh

I think properties should be limited to buildings (including wonders) and promotions, otherwise it just gets way too spread out, as you've noted.

Arakhor said:

I think properties should be limited to buildings (including wonders) and promotions, otherwise it just gets way too spread out, as you've noted.

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Take a look at the leader traits sometime. There was some really "weird" Crime Property stuff put into some of them. And it's one of the reasons I use None of the Leader Trait Options at Game set up with the occasional exception of using ls612's Focused Traits.

JosEPh

I just go with default (positive-only) leader traits, mainly because there are so many of them and so many leaders. I just generate a random leader/civ and be done with it.

Faustmouse said:

Was being drunk in public a crime back than? I'm not 100% sure but I think in Germany public drinking is allowed. As long as you cause no harm or harass someone at least. I never had problems with that and I don't know anybody else who did. And that may be true for other countries as well. I would move it at least far down the tree, to maybe Renaissance at least?

With Rape having such a low crime treshold now, I think it could use a tech req. In the beginning of the game you are basically an animal. I think Rape or Murder were pretty normal back then.

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If you want to have a way to reflect these things... civics! A crime can be civic dependent and vary based on differing civic choices by having a second variant that's active on a different civic.

Example: Murder may not have been as psychologically impacting on more primal communities but may have had a larger effect on the really innocent ones. So perhaps there are differing variants of Murder that have different civic prereqs on the Warfare civic selections?


We were going to have yes/no civics but so many projects so little time... working with what we have, this would be a very interesting way to get a better reflection of your more in-depth thinking on crime.

Joe said:

Take a look at the leader traits sometime. There was some really "weird" Crime Property stuff put into some of them. And it's one of the reasons I use None of the Leader Trait Options at Game set up with the occasional exception of using ls612's Focused Traits.

JosEPh

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I'd love to work with you on a more rational set. I really don't like ls612's either. Did you ever take a look at the proposals I had put forward? In retrospect they need to be toned down a bit and a few less effects added to each but the BALANCE between the differing traits would've been there at least. I just never got a chance to fully audit/finish the effort. The three of us fell apart at so many fundamental disagreement points.

@TB,
Back then I probably didn't because of the way my "concerns" were being handled by the modder making the new traits. I had at one time pages of notes about what he was doing and asking why and to maybe explain, But he took it personal.

Many players use the Trait "System" that is obvious. But to condense, refine, and to combine some of the Options, I feel would help more than hurt the Mod.

As for this modmod on crime, I will probably reduce the number of Crime overall. Several will get moved (as my tables are beginning to reflect) and at 1st go may actually make crime tougher to deal with; till I get a better feel thru play on what needs loosened a bit and what needs tightened.

I think too that 1 variable in the crime properties set up will need a small downward adjustment to help with the sudden surges and dips. Roller coaster rides are fun but not the Crime one.

JosEPh

Caveman detective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KHxewWUNyo

Noriad2 said:

Caveman detective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KHxewWUNyo

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I've been meaning to really assert after some rounds at the early game being played through here - WE NEED A 1PT law enforcement unit Somewhere in the Prehistoric!

I'd make him myself but I don't have time.

But the problem is if you start collecting population from captives and putting them into your cities you'll blast out your ability to control crime too quickly and overwhelm your buildings. While all other properties can be controlled by units to handle excess, crime cannot and it can really cause you to suffer for your success.

Edit: Note that I didn't continue the discussion on traits here to keep from hijacking the thread. If you want to start that discussion seriously, by all means. I remember your conflicts with SGT Slick and how they were handled.

Thunderbrd said:

But the problem is if you start collecting population from captives and putting them into your cities you'll blast out your ability to control crime too quickly and overwhelm your buildings. While all other properties can be controlled by units to handle excess, crime cannot and it can really cause you to suffer for your success.

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After all, that's a strategical decision instead of a no-brainer slave-stacking. Founding too many cities cripples through maintenance, so you also suffer from your success. Same with "too many units" etc...


And Joe, I just don't understand: You said crime had a too big impact on the game and yet you want to decrease the threshold of them so it becomes even more important to controll them?

Faustmouse said:

And Joe, I just don't understand: You said crime had a too big impact on the game and yet you want to decrease the threshold of them so it becomes even more important to controll them?

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I'm all for refining the numbers of crimes and replacing (say) crime_theft_1 with crime_theft_2, both of which would localise as (C) Theft, but if you reduce the crime intervals, you'll also need to adjust the crime effects, so as to avoid overrunning the cities.

Just please change the static gold penalties with %gold penalties.

Faustmouse said:

<snip>

And Joe, I just don't understand: You said crime had a too big impact on the game and yet you want to decrease the threshold of them so it becomes even more important to controll them?

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Maybe I wasn't clear enough so I'll quote my self:

As for this modmod on crime, I will probably reduce the number of Crime overall. Several will get moved (as my tables are beginning to reflect) and at 1st go may actually make crime tougher to deal with; till I get a better feel thru play on what needs loosened a bit and what needs tightened.

I think too that 1 variable in the crime properties set up will need a small downward adjustment to help with the sudden surges and dips. Roller coaster rides are fun but not the Crime one.

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I hope this helps with the understanding as it's a step process.

@Taxman,
Could you expound why you would want % over simple +/-?

JosEPh

Ah ok fair enough

% are more realistic; the richer a town, the more you can steal from it. Also, it won't hurt smaller, poorer towns (in the beginning) as much as a plain malus. In the later game however, it strikes much harder.

Faustmouse said:

After all, that's a strategical decision instead of a no-brainer slave-stacking. Founding too many cities cripples through maintenance, so you also suffer from your success. Same with "too many units" etc...

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Right... your ability to manage so much population is still limited with a very weak law enforcement unit but it injects at least a symmetry. You CAN get much earlier disease controlling and educating units so it's terribly frustrating that you can't also CHOOSE to try to control your crime, even if it costs you a lot to do so for the return at that stage.

Arakhor said:

I'm all for refining the numbers of crimes and replacing (say) crime_theft_1 with crime_theft_2, both of which would localise as (C) Theft, but if you reduce the crime intervals, you'll also need to adjust the crime effects, so as to avoid overrunning the cities.

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I actually like this idea BUT I'd suggest to save it for a little more development on the advanced property building system (once called advanced disease but would grow to apply to other types) that is already pretty much built to enable increasing frequencies of a particular problem.

If we implement that sort of thinking on the BASE crimes then it will really complicate implementation of that. As if its not complicated already.

Faustmouse said:

Ah ok fair enough

% are more realistic; the richer a town, the more you can steal from it. Also, it won't hurt smaller, poorer towns (in the beginning) as much as a plain malus. In the later game however, it strikes much harder.

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Totally agree. Think of the crime as being a % of people engaging in it. Larger communities would have a larger portion of those communities affected by each significant crime problem because a larger overall total of population would be engaging in it.

In addition to what Mouse said.

I also feel its better for game balancing the impact of crime.

JosEPh_II said:

@Taxman,
Could you expound why you would want % over simple +/-?

JosEPh

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It is my belief that the monetary effects of crime should be based on city size.
As long as crimes are simple on/off Booleans it doesn't make any sense that a particular crime (e.g. shoplifting) would have the same loss in a massive city (say London or New York) as it would in a smaller city (e.g. San Diego).

Of course the fact that crimes (and diseases, and pests for that matter) are Booleans to begin with is a bit of a head scratcher as well.

I'm an Assembly programmer and don't know XML or python (or would have time to mod even if I did); but I would probably have done crime differently than disease. If possible a single crime 'building' or entry that would have all the various malus effects (unhappiness, sickness, % gold loss, etc...) be tied directly to the crime rate/value and possibly certain technologies (e.g. crime value/x = Amount of unhappy, crime value/y = %gold loss etc...) That way the crime rate/value affect would be more granular, particularly with gold loss as that wouldn't have to be tied to whole numbers like unhappy or sickness amounts.

Diseases make a bit more sense to separate out as technologies, events, Wonders (Polio Vaccine, TB Vaccine, etc...) possibly even UN decisions could/should lead to eradication of some of them.

Pests are similar to diseases, however while they'll likely never be completely eliminated world wide they can be effectively controlled or countered (build exterminator and remove a whole host of them).

Thunderbrd said:

Right... your ability to manage so much population is still limited with a very weak law enforcement unit but it injects at least a symmetry. You CAN get much earlier disease controlling and educating units so it's terribly frustrating that you can't also CHOOSE to try to control your crime, even if it costs you a lot to do so for the return at that stage.

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Actually, I meant the opposide
You CAN control crime early on: By carefully watching your slaves and city sizes and by avoid building +crime buildings. It's a trade off: Many slaves or low crime? An early crime figher would take that away...

Faustmouse said:

Actually, I meant the opposide
You CAN control crime early on: By carefully watching your slaves and city sizes and by avoid building +crime buildings. It's a trade off: Many slaves or low crime? An early crime figher would take that away...

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Who uses slaves, and who builds + Crime buildings? Not I!, said the little red hen.

But then again Hydro added Crime to buildings that, imho, didn't deserve them. But that was another time and place in a Galaxy far far away...........

JosEPh

JosEPh_II said:

Who uses slaves, and who builds + Crime buildings? Not I!, said the little red hen.
JosEPh

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Well I do - but I am relatively new to this mod.

As for crime giving (and gold) buildings I counter them with anti-crime buildings - to still get a gold increase, but not the crime.