Crime overhaul Discussion thread

[pineappledan]

@Gazebo has stated his intention to change how crime is calculated.

The reason for this change is that the current system, which relies only on city defence, is overly static, inflexible, and harshly punished large cities in a way which cannot be countered.

The new proposals have been:

• Create a hybrid of City Defense, Food, and Production
• Create some other mix of / or / or /
• scrap Crime as a source of unhappiness entirely, and re-assess all other forms of unhappiness
• EDIT: if the system goes forward without the inclusion of defence, then the system will be renamed “distress”, since the yields in question will be more of a reflection of basic human survival

Given that this is a very large change, and will require a lot of re-tooling of the tech tree, buildings, and balance, this thread is here to discuss hurdles, possible issues, preferences for how this system should be implemented, and other issues related to Crime.

Before posting, please give your preference for how you would like this Crime system to be implemented

 

[tu_79]

Why food alone is not an option?

 

[Gazebo]

@Gazebo has stated his intention to change how crime is calculated.

The reason for this change is that the current system, which relies only on city defence, is overly static, inflexible, and harshly punished large cities in a way which cannot be countered.

The new proposals have been:

• Create a hybrid of City Defense, Food, and Production
• Create some other mix of / or / or /
• scrap Crime as a source of unhappiness entirely, and re-assess all other forms of unhappiness

Given that this is a very large change, and will require a lot of re-tooling of the tech tree, buildings, and balance, this thread is here to discuss hurdles, possible issues, preferences for how this system should be implemented, and other issues related to Crime.

Before posting, please give your preference for how you would like this Crime system to be implemented

To be clear, I don't think it will require a re-tooling of the tech tree or buildings in general. Maybe a few small tweaks, but I don't see how it will affect things in any drastic fashion.

G

 

[Txurce]

To be clear, I don't think it will require a re-tooling of the tech tree or buildings in general. Maybe a few small tweaks, but I don't see how it will affect things in any drastic fashion.

G

Are you trying to ruin this thread?

 

[pineappledan]

Current issues I see with a crime overhaul, and things that will have to be addressed:

Spoiler Problems if Food is included :

• Most obviously, Growth increases population, which in turn makes needs more difficult to satisfy, as more and more marginal tiles and specialists are exploited. If controlling growth necessarily means increasing Crime, you're in a bit of a Catch-22.
• A single enemy ship, even if a city is well-defended with units, locks a huge number of ocean tiles. If food is used n the calculation, then Naval blockades of any sort will create massive local Crime
• Food buildings (Aqueduct, Grocer, Hospital) all currently address Poverty. This would have to be changed to crime, and poverty re-balanced as well. As an aside, these buildings addressing urban poverty just makes more "sense" to me. I don't see how a hospital could ease urban crime rates. If anything, they increase them.
• Specialists necessarily do not produce food, and specialists already generate their own type of unhappiness. If any occupied specialists slot is contributing to BOTH crime and specialist unhappiness, then players are being double-punished for using specialists.
  • If Specialist unhappiness is done-away with as a way of addressing this, then the "Capitalism" Freedom tenet will have to be changed
• Food-centric civs might be able to sink happiness globally, by shifting median food production. Harrappan Reservoir and Floating Gardens are both very high buildings, and would probably need to be assessed for how they affect crime.
• Any civ with UIs which give food (Inca, Hun, France, Denmark, Shoshone, Dutch), and any civ which relies heavily on bonuses to terrain (Songhai, Iroquois) will have to be reassessed for balance.

Spoiler Problems if Production is included :

• Production is already the bottleneck through which literacy and boredom are addressed, since those two metrics rely mostly on buildings.
• A mine is 2x as much per turn as an engineer specialist. This might make specialists even harder to justify, because they are a delayed reward tactic for more GEngineers later. If a person has to deal with less per turn AND unhappiness in the short term, it might be hard to work engineers.
• Internal trade routes will become extremely valuable for controlling happiness. Hammers in cities directly reduce crime, and can be leveraged to address boredom, illiteracy, and poverty as well.

Spoiler Problems if Defence removed entirely :

• Crime served a purpose as a steady, highly predictable happiness tax. Having it float as much as the other unhappiness sources could make happiness fluctuate even more than people have been complaining about.
• Currently, military buildings and wonders reduce crime as a matter of flavour. If defence is removed, it will be awkward if Barracks, Armory, Terracotta, etc. retain their Crime reduction.
• Constabularies and Police Stations, the main Crime Solver buildings, have more of a defensive flavour, since their other main purpose is reducing spy effectiveness. If Crime is a function of Food/Production, these buildings will be disjointed.
• "Extra" sources of city defence available under special circumstances, like Orders, the Walls of Babylon, and the Acropolis, will have to be buffed, since their usefulness as crime reduction buildings would be taken away.
• The Fealty Scaler and Imperialism Finisher policies would need to be overhauled, since they were made with the assumption that they would address Crime.
• Garrisons would have no effect on cities, outside specific policy choices, and there will be very few reasons to keep a standing army.
• Removing as a metric for happiness encourages risky play. If defensive buildings have no peacetime value, then only border cities would need to invest in walls. However, if an invading army is able to outflank a defending force, optimal play dictates that they should be able to 1-shot core cities, if they can get around the main defending force. This change in happiness mechanic could drastically affect how fast an empire can fall, if their main defending army is either defeated, or bypassed

Please note that I am not trying to use these as justification for why this change shouldn't happen. These are just what I can think of for what work needs to be done, or what problems I can already predict for how these systems might be abused/gamed.

EDIT:

To be clear, I don't think it will require a re-tooling of the tech tree or buildings in general. Maybe a few small tweaks, but I don't see how it will affect things in any drastic fashion.

Nu-uh! -G

 

[Blue Ghost]

I voted defense only. I think that the strong role of defensive buildings in mitigating unhappiness was one of the best additions in VP. I would never build defensive buildings in vanilla, and being punished by an invasion for failing to build a series of buildings with no internal effect feels bad to me. If defense were uncoupled from happiness, defensive buildings should give some other internal benefit, but that would require reworking all of them, which is not ideal.

I also don’t like the idea of tying happiness to food or production. Those yields are critical to city (as opposed to global) development, so you’re already heavily incentivized to prioritize them in every city. Penalizing food/production deficiencies with unhappiness would be redundant.

 

[pineappledan]

Why food alone is not an option?

Because of all the possible options available, it is so clearly the worst one that I don't even see how it merits discussion.

My own opinion is that there indeed is a problem with how Crime does not, and cannot scale, suffocating civs which have bonuses to production or growth. Production civs can build everything, and still not manage to satisfy all their happiness issues. A civ encouraging growth is, in so many words, being given a noose by which to hang themselves. Civs which have reliable bonuses to gold/culture/science which other civs don't are handed an easy-out for those unhappiness metrics. Crime partially scaling on / at least gives civs like India a way to punch back.

That having been said, if we unmoor crime from city defence, it clearly causes more issues with janky play and tech tree reworks than it solves. I think the optimal system is one where every point of or is worth 1 "crime point", and every point of CS is worth 4 or more. Keep the crime metric primarily rooted in city defence, but augment it with food and production, so it can at least a little bit.

 

[Gazebo]

• Most obviously, Growth increases population, which in turn makes needs more difficult to satisfy, as more and more marginal tiles and specialists are exploited. If controlling growth necessarily means increasing Crime, you're in a bit of a Catch-22.
  • The median will adapt to this, though. So only cities falling dramatically behind will be hurt (as it should be).
• A single enemy ship, even if a city is well-defended with units, locks a huge number of ocean tiles. If food is used n the calculation, then Naval blockades of any sort will create massive local Crime
  • And shouldn't it? It's an effect that Crime was theoretically designed to represent, but it never really could. Starving out your opponent now has a place.
• Food buildings (Aqueduct, Grocer, Hospital) all currently address Poverty. This would have to be changed to crime, and poverty re-balanced as well. As an aside, these buildings addressing urban poverty just makes more "sense" to me. I don't see how a hospital could ease urban crime rates. If anything, they increase them.
  • You assume I'm going to keep calling it crime. I'm not. If I go with Food/Production, it'll be called 'Distress,' and the 'need' will be called Basic Needs. Public order (law, barracks, etc.) will make it easier to make sure that all people are getting their basic needs. That seems reasonable.
• Specialists necessarily do not produce food, and specialists already generate their own type of unhappiness. If any occupied specialists slot is contributing to BOTH crime and specialist unhappiness, then players are being double-punished for using specialists.
  • Unless the specialist unhappiness penalty is reduced slightly. We'll see.
    • If Specialist unhappiness is done-away with as a way of addressing this, then the "Capitalism" Freedom tenet will have to be changed
• Food-centric civs might be able to sink happiness globally, by shifting median food production. Harrappan Reservoir and Floating Gardens are both very high buildings, and would probably need to be assessed for how they affect crime.
  • One or two civs aren't going to shift the median. That's the point of a median.
• Any civ with UIs which give food (Inca, Hun, France, Denmark, Shoshone, Dutch), and any civ which relies heavily on bonuses to terrain (Songhai, Iroquois) will have to be reassessed for balance.
  • Same as above.

• Production is already the bottleneck through which literacy and boredom are addressed, since those two metrics rely mostly on buildings.
  • I don't view this as a valid con.
• A mine is 2x as much per turn as an engineer specialist. This might make specialists even harder to justify, because they are a delayed reward tactic for more GEngineers later. If a person has to deal with less per turn AND unhappiness in the short term, it might be hard to work engineers.
  • Engineers have other benefits.
• Internal trade routes will become extremely valuable for controlling happiness. Hammers in cities directly reduce crime, and can be leveraged to address boredom, illiteracy, and poverty as well.
  • A con?

• Crime served a purpose as a steady, highly predictable happiness tax. Having it float as much as the other unhappiness sources could make happiness fluctuate even more than people have been complaining about.
  • Honestly, though, it was just as unpredictable, because the 'wave' of defense median growth was often the culprit of players spiraling into unhappiness.
• Currently, military buildings and wonders reduce crime as a matter of flavour. If defence is removed, it will be awkward if Barracks, Armory, Terracotta, etc. retain their Crime reduction.
  • See above re: Distress.
• Constabularies and Police Stations, the main Crime Solver buildings, have more of a defensive flavour, since their other main purpose is reducing spy effectiveness. If Crime is a function of Food/Production, these buildings will be disjointed.
  • See above.
• "Extra" sources of city defence available under special circumstances, like Orders, the Walls of Babylon, and the Acropolis, will have to be buffed, since their usefulness as crime reduction buildings would be taken away.
  • Why? Defense still has it's use. If anything it opens up choices.
• The Fealty Scaler and Imperialism Finisher policies would need to be overhauled, since they were made with the assumption that they would address Crime.
  • Again, I disagree. Defense has its role.
• Garrisons would have no effect on cities, outside specific policy choices, and there will be very few reasons to keep a standing army.
  • Except for the time it takes to create them.
• Removing as a metric for happiness encourages risky play. If defensive buildings have no peacetime value, then only border cities would need to invest in walls. However, if an invading army is able to outflank a defending force, optimal play dictates that they should be able to 1-shot core cities, if they can get around the main defending force. This change in happiness mechanic could drastically affect how fast an empire can fall, if their main defending army is either defeated, or bypassed
  • That's fine. Risk is good. One of the most common complaints I see about VP is that it forces all buildings in all cities. Stripping away defense means you can choose where and when to fortify your cities. That's a good trade-off.

G

 

[chicorbeef]

Why food alone is not an option?

Both food alone and production alone as options should be included if it is to be a fair poll. There are some people who would vote for that (though not me).

 

[Rekk]

I don't think it is necessary to switch hospital/grocer etc. to crime. Poverty (gold yields) is already disconnected from these buildings. In the same way, museums reduce illiteracy, not boredom (...or so I thought? I swear they did, but the wiki disagrees with me), so there is precedent for needs to not be directly associated with buildings that produce associated yields.

I see no reason to rename Crime to Distress, nor to change the buildings that reduce crime needs.

 

[Gazebo]

In case it gets lost above, if we go ahead with the food/production change, the need will become 'Basic Needs' (Food/Production) and the unhappiness type will become 'Distress.' So we'd have Poverty, Illiteracy, Boredom, and Distress as the yield-based unhappiness types.

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

• Most obviously, Growth increases population, which in turn makes needs more difficult to satisfy, as more and more marginal tiles and specialists are exploited. If controlling growth necessarily means increasing Crime, you're in a bit of a Catch-22.
  • The median will adapt to this, though. So only cities falling dramatically behind will be hurt (as it should be).
• A single enemy ship, even if a city is well-defended with units, locks a huge number of ocean tiles. If food is used n the calculation, then Naval blockades of any sort will create massive local Crime
  • And shouldn't it? It's an effect that Crime was theoretically designed to represent, but it never really could. Starving out your opponent now has a place.
• Food buildings (Aqueduct, Grocer, Hospital) all currently address Poverty. This would have to be changed to crime, and poverty re-balanced as well. As an aside, these buildings addressing urban poverty just makes more "sense" to me. I don't see how a hospital could ease urban crime rates. If anything, they increase them.
  • You assume I'm going to keep calling it crime. I'm not. If I go with Food/Production, it'll be called 'Distress,' and the 'need' will be called Basic Needs. Public order (law, barracks, etc.) will make it easier to make sure that all people are getting their basic needs. That seems reasonable.
• Specialists necessarily do not produce food, and specialists already generate their own type of unhappiness. If any occupied specialists slot is contributing to BOTH crime and specialist unhappiness, then players are being double-punished for using specialists.
  • Unless the specialist unhappiness penalty is reduced slightly. We'll see.
    • If Specialist unhappiness is done-away with as a way of addressing this, then the "Capitalism" Freedom tenet will have to be changed
• Food-centric civs might be able to sink happiness globally, by shifting median food production. Harrappan Reservoir and Floating Gardens are both very high buildings, and would probably need to be assessed for how they affect crime.
  • One or two civs aren't going to shift the median. That's the point of a median.
• Any civ with UIs which give food (Inca, Hun, France, Denmark, Shoshone, Dutch), and any civ which relies heavily on bonuses to terrain (Songhai, Iroquois) will have to be reassessed for balance.
  • Same as above.

• Production is already the bottleneck through which literacy and boredom are addressed, since those two metrics rely mostly on buildings.
  • I don't view this as a valid con.
• A mine is 2x as much per turn as an engineer specialist. This might make specialists even harder to justify, because they are a delayed reward tactic for more GEngineers later. If a person has to deal with less per turn AND unhappiness in the short term, it might be hard to work engineers.
  • Engineers have other benefits.
• Internal trade routes will become extremely valuable for controlling happiness. Hammers in cities directly reduce crime, and can be leveraged to address boredom, illiteracy, and poverty as well.
  • A con?

• Crime served a purpose as a steady, highly predictable happiness tax. Having it float as much as the other unhappiness sources could make happiness fluctuate even more than people have been complaining about.
  • Honestly, though, it was just as unpredictable, because the 'wave' of defense median growth was often the culprit of players spiraling into unhappiness.
• Currently, military buildings and wonders reduce crime as a matter of flavour. If defence is removed, it will be awkward if Barracks, Armory, Terracotta, etc. retain their Crime reduction.
  • See above re: Distress.
• Constabularies and Police Stations, the main Crime Solver buildings, have more of a defensive flavour, since their other main purpose is reducing spy effectiveness. If Crime is a function of Food/Production, these buildings will be disjointed.
  • See above.
• "Extra" sources of city defence available under special circumstances, like Orders, the Walls of Babylon, and the Acropolis, will have to be buffed, since their usefulness as crime reduction buildings would be taken away.
  • Why? Defense still has it's use. If anything it opens up choices.
• The Fealty Scaler and Imperialism Finisher policies would need to be overhauled, since they were made with the assumption that they would address Crime.
  • Again, I disagree. Defense has its role.
• Garrisons would have no effect on cities, outside specific policy choices, and there will be very few reasons to keep a standing army.
  • Except for the time it takes to create them.
• Removing as a metric for happiness encourages risky play. If defensive buildings have no peacetime value, then only border cities would need to invest in walls. However, if an invading army is able to outflank a defending force, optimal play dictates that they should be able to 1-shot core cities, if they can get around the main defending force. This change in happiness mechanic could drastically affect how fast an empire can fall, if their main defending army is either defeated, or bypassed
  • That's fine. Risk is good. One of the most common complaints I see about VP is that it forces all buildings in all cities. Stripping away defense means you can choose where and when to fortify your cities. That's a good trade-off.

G

I happens not that often, but I fully agree with Gazebo.
I agree, making food or hammers alone the counter to "crime", will create some side effects. Cause of this, the solution is: +.
Hammers increase relativly steady over time, and compensate greater swings by food consumption if you switch your focus or use more specialists to stop growth. Often enough, if you focus one of the 2 yields, the other one suffer, and can compensate each other.
And as Gazebo mentioned already, one civ cant have that much influence over the game, cause the median is used.

And with the changes to tech tree and buildings.... I think it shouldnt be that complicated to switch some of the need reductions from one building to another.

 

[pineappledan]

I have edited the OP with a bullet point re: “distress”

@Gazebo, it would be more fair to say that my bullet points are topics for discussion. You only interpreted them as negative criticism, and dismissed them as such. I don’t think any of the issues I raised can be dismissed quite so casually, though some of them would require trying the system out first

 

[Gazebo]

I happens not that often, but I fully agree with Gazebo.
I agree, making food or hammers alone the counter to "crime", will create some side effects. Cause of this, the solution is: +.
Hammers increase relativly steady over time, and compensate greater swings by food consumption if you switch your focus or use more specialists to stop growth. Often enough, if you focus one of the 2 yields, the other one suffer, and can compensate each other.
And as Gazebo mentioned already, one civ cant have that much influence over the game, cause the median is used.

And with the changes to tech tree and buildings.... I think it shouldnt be that complicated to switch some of the need reductions from one building to another.

Holy terra, is the world ending? We agree on something?

G

 

[tu_79]

Holy terra, is the world ending? We agree on something?

G

No. It's the mod development what's coming to an end.

 

[ElliotS]

Specialists necessarily do not produce food, and specialists already generate their own type of unhappiness. If any occupied specialists slot is contributing to BOTH crime and specialist unhappiness, then players are being double-punished for using specialists.

Scientists don't produce culture, and already produce happiness. If any occupied scientist slot is contributing to BOTH boredom and specialist unhappiness, then players are being double-punished for using scientists.

See why your point makes no sense? We won't set the threshold so tight that you can't use specialists, so don't be silly.

Removing as a metric for happiness encourages risky play. If defensive buildings have no peacetime value, then only border cities would need to invest in walls. However, if an invading army is able to outflank a defending force, optimal play dictates that they should be able to 1-shot core cities, if they can get around the main defending force.

Why do people keep saying "Walls would be useless, so you wouldn't build them and then your cities would all get taken over and your empire would crumble in a flash!"? Avoiding losing core cities in the blink of an eye doesn't sound useless, and the element of risk and strategic choice seems beneficial.

 

[Stalker0]

Because of all the possible options available, it is so clearly the worst one that I don't even see how it merits discussion.

Sorry but I do not agree. It absolutely should be an option to discuss.

 

[pineappledan]

Why do people keep saying "Walls would be useless, so you wouldn't build them and then your cities would all get taken over and your empire would crumble in a flash!"? Avoiding losing core cities in the blink of an eye doesn't sound useless, and the element of risk and strategic choice seems beneficial.

Not useless, "situational". As per @Gazebo's point, one oft-repeated criticism of VP is that "every building needs to be built in every city". The flip-side to that same argument is "every building is useful in every city". That 'criticism' is entirely dependent on personal preference; the criticism that there are situational buildings with little value is equally valid for vanilla.

The other matter is how some civ's unique buildings replace these newly 'situational' buildings. Do people begin to resent having to build WoB/Missions/Ostrogs in every city, because they would never build walls/castles/arsenals in that city, had they been playing any other civ? The closest thing we have in current VP is Customs House/Hanse. The customs house is pretty situational (though the poverty reduction is nice), but the Hanse is arguably the best UB in the entire game. That's how current VP gets around that problem with Germany: It made the Hanse dynamite. Do we have to give the same treatment to WoB/Mission/Ostrog?

Sorry but I do not agree. It absolutely should be an option to discuss.

Okay, well then discuss it. I didn't add it as a choice because I thought the complete lack of merit to those options was obvious, but by all means.

Refer to the 06/14 patch thread for how Food or Production alone have been debunked by several people via several different lines of reasoning; such a system is clearly unworkable.

 

[grmagne]

In case it gets lost above, if we go ahead with the food/production change, the need will become 'Basic Needs' (Food/Production) and the unhappiness type will become 'Distress.' So we'd have Poverty, Illiteracy, Boredom, and Distress as the yield-based unhappiness types.

G

In this scenario, do walls & barracks cease to affect a city's happiness? i.e. we'll only need to build those if a city is at risk of invasion? In that case, I'd be in favor of keeping both Crime & Distress so that military buildings continue to help reduce unhappiness.

 

[chicorbeef]

In this scenario, do walls & barracks cease to affect a city's happiness? i.e. we'll only need to build those if a city is at risk of invasion? In that case, I'd be in favor of keeping both Crime & Distress so that military buildings continue to help reduce unhappiness.

If I go with Food/Production, it'll be called 'Distress,' and the 'need' will be called Basic Needs. Public order (law, barracks, etc.) will make it easier to make sure that all people are getting their basic needs. That seems reasonable.