Crime overhaul Discussion thread

[CrazyG]

I feel like crime existed in a fine state for a long time. We have issues because its exponentially scaling (the issues really only start at about 30 pop, which is just because its exponential)

 

[Txurce]

I feel like crime existed in a fine state for a long time. We have issues because its exponentially scaling (the issues really only start at about 30 pop, which is just because its exponential)

Even before hitting 30, my capitals have a weirdly high crime rate. There's something more intrinsic going on.

 

[Amecareth]

Relying on defence alone for the crime rate doesn't exactly make any logical sense. I believe it should be called something like "fear" because people should be a bit scared if their town is left unprotected (depending on your ideology, during the late game). This "fear" factor should also not depend as much on the amount of people (or some other tweak to make it less punishing).

Crime rate could be a reduction to food, production and gold (without any direct effect on happiness) as criminals will just typically steal stuff or just do some sabotage.

Overall, happiness would be more stable, yet the development of your civ wouldn't grow that much as crime reduces your ressources (aka food, prod and gold)

That's my opinion on the subject .

 

[CrazyG]

Even before hitting 30, my capitals have a weirdly high crime rate. There's something more intrinsic going on.

Right, but like 6 months or a year ago, did you have issues?

I've been able to handle it. I just expect to expand less than before, or invest in happiness from something like pacifism.

 

[HalfEmptyMug]

Food should be avoided if you have happiness issues. I'm growing too much, so I need to work more food? It just seems iffy to me.

Which is why production should also be a factor, so focus can be shifted to correct this without punishing you too harshly.

Diligence > Thrift (I think its already better overall, but this seals the deal)

Depends on the combination. Gold's a very versatile yield that can combat all needs through investing. If anything it makes asceticism more appealing.

I'll just throw in that I like the Food/Production model since it'll promote specialization and inherently balances some of the policy trees. In the ancient era Tradition will be more viable with its growth bonuses, Authority will be more appealing to non-warmongers and help a tall AI that picks it for situational reasons, and Progress will have its heyday early while being less effective in the long run. In the industrial era Rationalism's growth and Industry's production bonuses will make them more competitive against Imperialism's policies.

Also, like Gazebo mentioned, I don't think much would need to be rebalanced since these yields already flow naturally from policies, buildings, and tiles. It gives the player more options on how exactly they want to tackle it and more tangible control.

 

[chicorbeef]

Right now >50% of voters in the poll voted for some way for defense to stay in. I guess that means majority opinion is against the change then?

 

[Gazebo]

Will Aqueduct->Hospital also be switched to distress?
Will Poverty reduction be added elsewhere to compensate?

Ostrog is already an incredible building. As long as it doesn't require walls I think changes to it probably aren't necessary prior to testing
Mission is a really strange one because you can faith buy them instantly, so once again I'd prefer to wait and see
Walls of Babylon was a marginally situational building before this change. Have you given much thought to how Babylon will be compensated for losing their big lead on crime?

I don't see a need to switch any buildings to distress. Crime->Distress.

As interesting as the discussion is, honestly, as I've thought about it more I'm in the don't change it camp.

My reason....gold version. We are trying to get down to the very last few changes.....and now we are tearing up the happiness system by its roots and making dramatic changes. This is going to impact happiness, buildings, religious beliefs, leaders, etc. It has ramifications in a lot of places. We have been making adjustments to the happiness system....FOR YEARS. Its time to put it to bed.

I'm back to just make a change to the formula to account for high pop cities. Yes the formula is inelegant.....but no one is going to notice. None of us look at the needs on our cities and pull out the calculator to crunch the formula and see how that number came up. We will see a need. And when the city grows big the need will still increase....just a little bit slower. No one will notice that the math changed a little bit, and we don't have to tear up a bunch of other balance work to fix it.

G I'm appealing to you on this. I know you don't like the math. I get it....but really and truly if we are going to put the gold shine on this baby and immortalize this as a wonderful and beautiful project (as opposed to that project that just never quite got finished), we have to stop messing with the innards.

I know. It's a pain. But I really have been battling with this for a long time. I've even floated the idea (of changing it to production or something other than defense) multiple times in the past year. I have so much funky code and variables and whatnot and the only stick in the mud, over and over again, is crime. The happiness system is the 'effervescence' of the game's rules - changing it now won't wreck balance because we're simply exchanging one 'happiness tax' for another, except - in this case - it's a much more stable tax. I've been testing a version with these changes and, even this early, major spikes in unhappiness are much reduced. I also don't think we're tearing it up 'by the roots' - we're replacing one tax with another. Aside from a shift in balance for things that get zero-sum advantages to food and production (UAs, UBs, a few Wonders), it's not going to require a complete rework. I wouldn't even have dreamt of changing this if it wasn't a persistent thorn in my side.

I've rolled back changes in the past, so I'll make you a deal: I float a beta, soonish, with the new system in place. We let it bounce around for a bit. If it doesn't work, we switch back and I shoehorn in a crime value that works well enough to get us to gold. Deal?

I feel like crime existed in a fine state for a long time. We have issues because its exponentially scaling (the issues really only start at about 30 pop, which is just because its exponential)

This is exactly what I'm talking about, though - solutions to existing problems always need loopholes for crime because it's wonky.

G

 

[Txurce]

Right, but like 6 months or a year ago, did you have issues?

I've been able to handle it. I just expect to expand less than before, or invest in happiness from something like pacifism.

No, a year ago Gazebo had the perfect game!

I do the same thing as you now. It works. I'm just noting that there's something going on with capitals, whether it be being a "capital," or their size relative to other cities -- apart from hitting 30.

 

[Gazebo]

No, a year ago Gazebo had the perfect game!

I do the same thing as you now. It works. I'm just noting that there's something going on with capitals, whether it be being a "capital," or their size relative to other cities -- apart from hitting 30.

It's not just capitals. And it's not just because of the pop scaler.

G

 

[Jakethedane]

Ive always felt the system should be based on population vs the bottom insert#here% of the world and revolve around culture, science, and crime. There are situational things like outside influences (religious unrest, pillaged, etc) but those are not the focus.
So I guess without having the education to put it into an equation I’ll have to describe my idea:

If you have a city of any population, it’s needs should be compared against the output of all cities globally but only on the lower side of the average except for technology which I think is perfect right now (requiring more from tech leaders and stopping snowballs)

Let’s say hypothetically the highest output of culture in the game is “civ a” with 100 a turn from its biggest city of 36 population.
Let’s then say there 5 more civs with varying outputs, the lowest of them being 30 a turn.
If we look at 30 being the very lowest end, (and this civ will for sure have culture issues) then we take the difference between them (70*.33) which gives us an only slightly restictive ~53 required minimum for a 36 population city to be without culture needs. This of course could be changed to be harsher if it was too easy or hard.
But obviously this would affect cities differently based on size at which point you just find the average output per citizen, and make that the requirement..
example:
civ a 36 population = 1.47 culture req per pop based on 53 base min requirement of world

civ f with new population 3 city requires 4.41 culture output to be without culture needs.
Now keep in mind this random percentage I’ve set for my math (33%) was just for examples sake and I think there is a sweet spot somewhere in there.
Now I know I’m not a genius or wizard so please any contradictions are welcome.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

It's not just capitals. And it's not just because of the pop scaler.

G

In this case, I disagree. YEAH, Iam back!
At the moment, an average city size of around 25 looks like the maximum a normal civ can reach. Anything above is extreme hard to support, cause the unhappiness goes crazy.
The average city size of other empires in my India game are: Poland 22, Mongolia 19.5, Inka 21.5, Assyria 21, Morocco 21 (With a 36 capitol), Celts 23,5, Austria 20
The celts having a bit higher populated cites may be the result of their pantheon choice: yields per population and +2 happiness from celid halls. The extra happiness allow them to grow more.
I have 9 cities, average size of 29. Zero Happiness. My cities would burn, if I hadnt pacifismn generating 52 happiness (more than a third of my total happiness generation).
The average size of the AI cities have not changed that much since one era, except celts (happiness bonus from pantheon) and assyria (small 5 city empire, bottom of the scoreboard).

And I dont think we want a game were 25 pop is the maximum a normal civ can reach. Why even go tradition with 5 more specialist slots and growth bonus, if you cant even work your 20 normal slots and the growth bonus is useless in the second half of the game? Some say its ok, if MEGA-cities have a down side... but I think we all agree... 25 pop ISNT a mega city....

Edit: And a change in crime/distress will not help with that problem. Sure, crime is at the moment generating double the amount of unhappiness than any other single need. But even with stopped growth, working nearly all specialists in my cities, improved specialists by mastery and humanimn.... I generate tremendous amount of unhappiness from boredom, illiteracy and poverty. Reducing crime/distress to the level of the others, would allow only 1 or maximum 2 more citizen per city. And ive reached again the point where I am now.....

 

[tu_79]

If your generating only 1 or 2 food vs a median of 50?

Then you are really doing bad. If half the cities in the world are generating at least 50 extra food per population (meaning that a city with 10 population is generating 500 excedent food), then you should be able to produce some growth on your own. The exception could be when producing settlers.

Now Growth.... wheres the lower limit? Zero, if you dont want to kill your population.

Yes, zero is the lower limit. But two things. 1. You can select 'Avoid growth', I believe that this still produces excedent food, only that it just does not allow your cities to generate new citizens. 2. You are assuming that the unhappiness is going to be calculated as a ratio. Anything divided by zero is infinite, so you are fearing infinite unhappiness. But there are other ways to compare growth per population in your city to the median.
For example:
People_affected_by_crime = City_population * (N_discovered_techs / Total techs) * (Median_value - City_value) / Median_value. When Median_value > City_value. And these values are the excedent food per citizen in each case.
It can make 100% of your population unhappy in the late game if neglecting food, but you can limit it to be only 25% of the total city size if you like.

Right, but like 6 months or a year ago, did you have issues?

I usually had too much happiness, so I didn't bother about crime going up and down. I guess that trying to reduce it (by increasing pop demands) is what has shown how budgy the crime is. Crime has always been the biggest unhappiness in my tall cities. When growing your city, you can use your population to get more culture, science and gold, but you cannot use it for increasing defense. I see your point about arsenals, but if it ends up being an useless building, maybe a little extra supply might do the trick (tightening beforehanded the total supply so it counts).

If you have a city of any population, it’s needs should be compared against the output of all cities globally but only on the lower side of the average except for technology which I think is perfect right now (requiring more from tech leaders and stopping snowballs)

Not needed. The median already does its work: it removes from the comparison capitals and most cities with guilds and world wonders. So you are really comparing your city to a completely normal city without guilds and world wonders, and not recently settled either.


Side note. Again. Demands scaling non linearly on population has to be dealt separately. Maybe opening a new thread?

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Then you are really doing bad. If half the cities in the world are generating at least 50 extra food per population (meaning that a city with 10 population is generating 500 excedent food), then you should be able to produce some growth on your own. The exception could be when producing settlers.

Its not about doing badly, not being able to produce excess food. Its about the decision to stop growth. If your cities are already too big and generate lot of unhappiness, you want to stop the growth to fight it. But in the same turn you stop growth and use your citizen as specialists to fight boredom, poverty and illiteracy, your unhappiness from specialists rise AND your distress rises. In most cases you want to stop growth in your biggest cities, and reducing a value from "fitting the median" down to zero or 5-10% of it will cause tremendous unhappiness cause of the large population and the big swing.

This would lead to a downward spiral. If you cant compensate the unhappines generated by distress, you have to generate excess food for your citizen and increase the population and the pressure even more. How do you want to escape from that mechanic?

Yes, zero is the lower limit. But two things. 1. You can select 'Avoid growth', I believe that this still produces excedent food, only that it just does not allow your cities to generate new citizens. 2. You are assuming that the unhappiness is going to be calculated as a ratio. Anything divided by zero is infinite, so you are fearing infinite unhappiness. But there are other ways to compare growth per population in your city to the median.
For example:
People_affected_by_crime = City_population * (N_discovered_techs / Total techs) * (Median_value - City_value) / Median_value. When Median_value > City_value. And these values are the excedent food per citizen in each case.
It can make 100% of your population unhappy in the late game if neglecting food, but you can limit it to be only 25% of the total city size if you like.

I dunno if its calculated as ratio. But my cities are well working, and even with lot of culture, science and gold generation, they generate huge amounts of unhappiness.. I dont want to know how much unhappiness you generate, if one of the needs is only satisfied with 0-5%. ( which is possible, if you only count excess food)

 

[ofmiciv5]

hate to say this but how JFDLC deals with crime is what i like and preferred.

 

[tu_79]

Its not about doing badly, not being able to produce excess food. Its about the decision to stop growth. If your cities are already too big and generate lot of unhappiness, you want to stop the growth to fight it.

Click on 'Avoid growth'. You prevent further citizens increasing your unhappiness while allowing some excedent food (growth), meanwhile you get new infrastructure.

 

[saranwali]

It's not just capitals. And it's not just because of the pop scaler.

G

Now I’m confused about what the problem is. It seems important to define the problem to get to the solution. In what way is Crime wonky?

Is it that Crime, unlike the other Unhappiness markers, has too few tools to allows humans and AI to influence it? Poverty, for instance, can be addressed not only by buying new buildings (both ones increasing yields and ones that reduce poverty), but also by rearranging workers and specialists. Crime can only be addressed by buildings that increase defense, buildings that reduce crime, and garrisoning one unit.

Thus, once a city gets over 25 or so population, Crime increases even after the player has exhausted every available tool to fight it (built every defense and crime reduction building, garrisoned strongest unit).

Or is there something else about Crime that is problematic?

 

[tu_79]

Thus, once a city gets over 25 or so population, Crime increases even after the player has exhausted every available tool to fight it (built every defense and crime reduction building, garrisoned strongest unit).

This, mostly.
Also, there are big jumps in happiness when building defensive buildings. In my case, when I find myself having like 6 crime in most my cities, I build castles everywhere, and this suddenly reduces unhappiness by 4 in each city. This is a jump of 20 happiness in very few turns.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Click on 'Avoid growth'. You prevent further citizens increasing your unhappiness while allowing some excedent food (growth), meanwhile you get new infrastructure.

If you stop the growth, you go down to ZERO or irrelevant low values in fighting the median of distress. What will happen if you sell all your defence buildings and dont use a garison in a 25 population city? Tell me, cause its that what will happen if you stop growth in a city, using your mechanic.
What is, if you have 3 positive happiness and you have to shut down 3 of your cities and each of them generate 8 unhappiness cause of distress? You have to switch some of the workers back to deny the revolts. But if you do that, your cities will grow and generate later more unhappiness?
If you reached some point, theres no return. Stopping the growth will push you into unhappiness, and the only solution to it is working food tiles, which increase the population and causes even more problems.

 

[saranwali]

This, mostly.
Also, there are big jumps in happiness when building defensive buildings. In my case, when I find myself having like 6 crime in most my cities, I build castles everywhere, and this suddenly reduces unhappiness by 4 in each city. This is a jump of 20 happiness in very few turns.

In that case, it seems the easiest solution is not adding Ptolemaic model adjustments to the need requirement, but to add a new tool to address Crime, one which makes Crime less discrete and more continuous. That could be done by changing how garrisoning works (i.e, allowing more than one unit to garrison or adding combat strength of units within the city borders to Defense). Either one smooth out the curve, and allows for a small impact on Crime in just a few turns. Or it could be done by giving a Crime reduction whenever units are disbanded in home territory (ex-military turning into police). This would feel sort of like expending an inquisitor to fight Religious Unrest.

I definitely get the hesitation with continued Ptolemaic model fixes to the Crime needs model. There can only be so many epicycles added before you need to scrap the model entirely. But maybe the problem is not in tuning the math, but I’m adding in tools to fight the drastic swings.

I’m not categorically opposed to axing Crime for Distress, but Crime is more appealing to me both from a gameplay standpoint (I’m not a micromanager, and tinkering more closely with two more yields doesn’t seem all that fun), a simplicity standpoint (as a casual player relatively new to VP, trying to wrap my mind around all the possible ways to fix a growth and production hybrid inexplicably tied to Defense buildings and the opportunity costs for each seems mind numbingly complex), and the close to gold argument made by Stalker above.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Now I’m confused about what the problem is. It seems important to define the problem to get to the solution. In what way is Crime wonky?

Crime is wonky because defense is yield you have no granularity of control on. Either you have the defensive buildings, either you don't. You can't work more "policeman specialist slot" to decrease crime (though it would be a fun new kind of specialist), and you can't work tiles that increase defense (and adding defense as a tile yield is not possible without major performance problems)

Since this yield work differently from the other, he is always "the exception" in the code.

(To be fair, another exception is religious division. But changing religious division to a faith yield need does not seems very reasonable)