Crime Rate Seems Broken

[fdrpi]

After many months absent, I started playing Ashes again, as Yakut of the Kurioates, latest SVN update.

When my capital was at 12 pop, crime sprang out of control, and the anger was so bad none of my citizens would work and the population went all the way down to 4, at which point the 5 or 6 crime buildings went away.

A few turns later, the population makes it back to 5... and all the crime penalties return.

This probably shouldn't be happening. If the crime rate is now an accumulation, that means that it would take dozens of dozens of turns focusing on nothing but reducing it to get it back under control, ignoring every other part of your civilization. In addition, the unhappiness and unhealthiness from crime buildings cause a chain reaction; you can't build a dungeon if you have -20 happiness.

 

[Calavente]

the only solution is to get early warriors with the anti-crime promotions;.. 1 or 2 is good enough

 

[black_imperator]

To clarify the discussion, let me first describe the current state of the system :

Crime is now an accumulated value per city. The value has no effect by itself, but at certain levels and under certain conditons (prereq pop, buildings mostly) a crime effect appears with a number of maluses (and occasionally bonuses). The first one shows up at 150 crime and the last one at 1500 iirc

The accumulation works as such :
-each pop increases the per turn value by 2 points . (So with 12 pop, you increase your crime value of 24 per turn).
- each point of happiness decreases the per turn value by 1. Each point of unhappiness increases it by 1 ( i'm removing the unhappiness part next version)
- A number of buildings decreases the per turn value, most notably dungeon by 20.
-Melee and Archery lines have access to a promotion that reduces crime perturn when stationed into a city (2 at first level, 6 at second, 12 at third)
- access to law mana decreases it by 1 point, access to chaos mana increases it by 1 point.
- You have access to the Martial Law process turning production into crime reduction perturn.


A number of stuff is still missing :
- the link with the lawful-chaotic axis
-the civ and religion unique crime effects and reductions
-the actual bonuses from the crime system, linked to the upcoming rogue unit line.

i'm still trying to balance it, so feedbacks and suggestions are welcome.

 

[Calavente]

The accumulation works as such :
-each pop increases the per turn value by 2 points . (So with 12 pop, you increase your crime value of 24 per turn).
- each point of happiness decreases the per turn value by 1. Each point of unhappiness increases it by 1 ( i'm removing the unhappiness part next version)

I didn't knew about the unhappiness.
do you mean angry faces ? or unhappy citizen ?
if it's unhappy citizen then it's not a problem IMO : those angsty citizen should bring more crime than working citizen.
if it's angry faces, it's mostly 1 per pop, + some per special events (so reducing crime to 1per pop +1per angry face would be good ...) (the issue is that crime can increase , so crime would feed crime...)

maybe it's the malus that are too big ? or maybe have a cap or multiplicator based on pop :
a village with only 3 pop should not get the malus of having 500 crime... (which you address); but if it raises in pop brutally to 6pop, it'll suddenly have the big malus (because you had already 500crime).. however the pop reached 6 only a turn ago....so it's strange/harmful.

nb : ideas :

Spoiler :

I still think that early crime reduction should be easily limited each unit could have a minimal -1 to crime. (or at least that "being in security" should give an initial -4 to crime ; ie when there is at least one unit in the city)

-furthermore, maybe you could link a multiplicator to crime (not crime prevention) linked to "corruption" : the closer to the capital, the less crime, the farther, the more crime ?
-Palace could have a big crime reduction.
- that crime specialization could be smoothed better : 3-7-12 (3, then 3 + 4 , then 3 + 4 + 5) (2 is too small IMO)
-there could be a secondary effect to "crime 3 : "Head inspector" that gives -1 anticrime to anti-crime 1 of other units (or passively give anti-crime 0 (-1crime) to all units stationned in city).

-there could be some positive effects reachable from crime : esus spells ? reduced cost of slavery ? undercouncil buildings that need a minimum crime (or which effects are related to crime rate ) ...

 

[fdrpi]

Yes it's unhappiness, so crime feeds crime and can very quickly get out of control. Removing this element of it I think would be very helpful.

I also think the punishments are too big and come on far too quickly.

 

[black_imperator]

I didn't knew about the unhappiness.
do you mean angry faces ? or unhappy citizen ?
if it's unhappy citizen then it's not a problem IMO : those angsty citizen should bring more crime than working citizen.
if it's angry faces, it's mostly 1 per pop, + some per special events (so reducing crime to 1per pop +1per angry face would be good ...) (the issue is that crime can increase , so crime would feed crime...)

it's the difference between happy and angry faces, if it's positive, you get a crime reduction, otherwise, an increase.

maybe it's the malus that are too big ? or maybe have a cap or multiplicator based on pop :
a village with only 3 pop should not get the malus of having 500 crime... (which you address); but if it raises in pop brutally to 6pop, it'll suddenly have the big malus (because you had already 500crime).. however the pop reached 6 only a turn ago....so it's strange/harmful.

Having the crime effects scale with population is a good idea. It'll require some work but i"ll think about it

nb : ideas :I still think that early crime reduction should be easily limited each unit could have a minimal -1 to crime. (or at least that "being in security" should give an initial -4 to crime ; ie when there is at least one unit in the city)

Agreed to the Garrison bonus.

-furthermore, maybe you could link a multiplicator to crime (not crime prevention) linked to "corruption" : the closer to the capital, the less crime, the farther, the more crime ?

not too fond of that one.

-Palace could have a big crime reduction.

They do.

- that crime specialization could be smoothed better : 3-7-12 (3, then 3 + 4 , then 3 + 4 + 5) (2 is too small IMO)

2 supports 1 pop worth of crime, 3 doesn't really support more than that ^^

-there could be a secondary effect to "crime 3 : "Head inspector" that gives -1 anticrime to anti-crime 1 of other units (or passively give anti-crime 0 (-1crime) to all units stationned in city).

i'll think about it

-there could be some positive effects reachable from crime : esus spells ? reduced cost of slavery ? undercouncil buildings that need a minimum crime (or which effects are related to crime rate ) ...

yeah, that's planned ^^

 

[Calavente]

2 supports 1 pop worth of crime, 3 doesn't really support more than that ^^

thanks for reading.
for that one : 2 units with crime 1 (-2crime) clears 2 pop.
whereas 2units with crime 1 (-3crime) clears 3 units. : 1 unit supports 1.5 pop .. not just "barely m more than 1 pop"
you can see in the first case that you'll need one unit per population... (unless you get access to easy xp).
Whereas with -3, you'll get the pop, plus remove a bit of the accumulated crime... or you'll only need 4 units for a size 6 city.. (not counting happy bonus)

 

[black_imperator]

ok, ok, we'll try it for next version ^^

 

[Nor'easter]

Several of the Temples (Order, Empyrean, Kilmorph, and White Hand) reduce the Crime Rate. Civs that can't build Temples (eg, the Grigori, the Chislev) are thus at a bit of a disadvantage, since they have to devote more units to crimefighting. So I would suggest that some of their UBs reduce the Crime Rate.

 

[black_imperator]

Edit : Posted in the wrong thread...

Yeah, i intend to make a pass on civ-specific buildings to add some crime-reducing where needed

 

[Aurore]

Ah ok now I understand how come I cant get a city to stay over size 4 recently. Even knowing that, its still hard to keep control of the crime rate.

I don't think units dedicated to police duty have enough impact to be honest.

 

[black_imperator]

i'm experimenting on a number of ideas to better balance it, both from this thread and the discord. After i'm done with some ai rework code, i'll commit a version with this experimental stuff to see if it works better.

 

[Aurore]

It raises the prospect of an empire actually based on organised crime with the right civics etc and crime rates high enough you could start making money and getting special criminal units!

I think the main problem im having is having now realised whats going on it takes a long time to get the crime rate down from 4000+ back to something liveable. I suppose starting from the beggining id just have allocated more police units early on.

 

[black_imperator]

Follow-up on this, here are a few things that were suggested and are implemented in the next version :
First, Crime effects can now have effects that are based on pop number ( note that i added the effect for all buildings, though it's only used for crime stuff for now, if you have suggestion for other buildings, please tell me)

Second, having units in garrison gives a small bonus to crime

Three a new national wonder, that increases heavily crime in the city it is built in, but halves crime per pop in all other cities.

 

[Calavente]

fun ideas.
they seem great in spirit.
could "penal colony" increase culture or production ? or +1specialist per mine/plantation ? (t reflect that penal colonies had growth, but also develops a lot the owner's presence (french guinea ; australia vs UK..etc)

 

[black_imperator]

yeah, i'm gonna add some production bonus to it

 

[black_imperator]

Note : I'm starting the civ-specific pass on the crime stuff now. So any civ-specific suggestion any of you may have is very welcome. the two main ideas
- certain civs may be immune to certain effects. For example, the Bannor have gallows instead of dungeons, so they cannot have breakouts
-certain civs may have different versions of certain effects, with more mixed or even fully positive

 

[Nor'easter]

I'll just quote myself from a few months ago.

Several of the Temples (Order, Empyrean, Kilmorph, and White Hand) reduce the Crime Rate. Civs that can't build Temples (eg, the Grigori, the Chislev) are thus at a bit of a disadvantage, since they have to devote more units to crimefighting. So I would suggest that some of their UBs reduce the Crime Rate.

 

[Covr]

@black_imperator - any work on the crime stuff planned for future, or is it closed feature? During my last game the crime stuff was really punishing and I am not sure if AI knows how to handle that (as the progress for every civ was super slow). But it might be a coincidence.

 

[black_imperator]

definitely not closed ^^, i'm still in the middle of adding the civ specific content and improving the ai answer to it