Rethinking Crime

[Pepo]

Crime is one of the properties mechanics currently in game that tries to reflect the real life problems when it come to controlling cities. In game, it something you want to keep as low as possible, and if a city doesn't control it, it will probably end on a death spiral. I wanted to touch two topics on this topic: the first part about balance changes to balance the mechanic (and which I think most of us can agree on) and the second part about how I think the mechanic should really work as to make it more engaging and also more AI friendly

Crime balance is currently really odd. On the lower levels of crime, you get some really harsh penalties (-14 gold of mugging for 150 crime can be deadly to the economy) as soon as you hit an arbitrary level of crimes. Transition should be way smoother , with gradual levels of occurance for each crime, so a small amount of crime doesn't hurt that much and can be more easily controllable( so mugging at 50 crime would be -1 gold, at 150 -3, at 300 -8 etc). And crimes should increase the chance of discovering criminals at the higher levels (buildings like hideouts would still protect then) to try to mitigate the current tendency of badly manage cities (read:AI) to became completely unsalvageable for their owners. Also revolution modifier should be taken out of crime autobuilds. The amount of unhappiness and unhealthyness a city would produce at higher levels will probably cause a revolts for sure (normal buildings should also have their modifiers taken away- revolutions should be influenced by the civics and the situation of the city, not by buildings that break the system by making it way too stable). Finally crime per pop should probably be adjusted by era, so that while on early ones is lower, it gets higher on the latter ones (to make early crime less brutal, specifically on newly founded cities, while being higher latter when the players can control it easier)


That were some suggestions to balance the current system. However, I think that the problem with crime is in how it works, and that a more radical approach would solve death spirals and be more AI friendly while also reflecting better real life situation were crime always exists, what matters is at what amount. My suggestion is to make crime a system with several equilibrium points. What I mean with that? Basically, that crime will find an stable position,say 150 crime, and be around that level counteracting smaller changes on the level, unless a big change occurs and the system move to a new equilibrium where it becomes stable. This will be a really big change in how crime works: while in the current system a thief would be always increasing crime unless it is counter by anti-crime buildings and law enforcement units. With the equilibrium points system, the amount of damage a thief causes will be limited even without being counter, and the same for the effectiveness of law enforcement units. The system will also make the equilibrium point harder to move the higher the level of crime is, making law enforcement more effective, and vice versa for reducing it. Thus it would be really hard to reach the insane amount of crime without significant investment by foreign actors, and non-existant crime would be a very expensive option

Combine this with the balance system I propose(more specifically, making crime autobuilds and I think we would get a more interesting system for the player who could have more liberty at balancing crime, trying to find a sweet spot where the benefits of lowering the level(ex:less unhappinessl would be smaller than the benefits of keeping it, instead of the current gameplay where there is no decision to be made, always trying to keep crime down to make sure it doesn't shoot up to the sky. Law enforcement units would still be vital to counter criminals (and with most cities having some crime, spawning will be more common yet less harsh), while death spirals would be a very rare occurrence.Here is an example to make myself more clear


Example: we got a city which is hovering around 125 crime (equilibrium point number 1) and the difference between positive crime and negative crime is +1 while the amount needed to change it is +3/-15. A rogue enter the city increasing crime by 3. The equilibrium is broken and the crime level start to increase at +4 per turn as the equilibrium as been broken, reaching a new level at 250, with the amount needed to change the equilibrium now being +5/-12. If the thief is caught during the transition, the level will go back to the previous equilibrium point. If however the new equilibrium point has been reached, the player will need to get to -12 to get it back to 125

To conclude, the system would be make even more interesting if the equilibrium points were meta-stable, meaning that a city could sometimes experience spikes of crime that could move crime up to a higher equilibrium, or periods were crime moves down without player intervention, similar to a chaotic system but that's for another moment if my idea ever gets implemented

 

[Thunderbrd]

Now that we're speaking more directly on a topic I can break down the statements and suggestions and reply to each point here:

On the lower levels of crime, you get some really harsh penalties (-14 gold of mugging for 150 crime can be deadly to the economy) as soon as you hit an arbitrary level of crimes. Transition should be way smoother , with gradual levels of occurance for each crime, so a small amount of crime doesn't hurt that much and can be more easily controllable( so mugging at 50 crime would be -1 gold, at 150 -3, at 300 -8 etc).

Gradual increases in the damage caused by crimes and additional levels of given crimes would be very helpful to smoothing things a lot and I think that would be a very good thing. I just today suggested the same, in essence, to Joseph who is mostly in charge of these factors at this time.

And crimes should increase the chance of discovering criminals at the higher levels (buildings like hideouts would still protect then) to try to mitigate the current tendency of badly manage cities (read:AI) to became completely unsalvageable for their owners.

Interesting. Higher crime level autobuilds actually currently decrease the chance by adding more insidiousness from unsanctioned activity buildings that provide safe houses and backdoors and laundering activities and so on. There ARE some buildings that fight crime that emerge from high crime, such as vigilantes and neighborhood watch, representing the community fighting back. Maybe some more of this. And maybe some more investigation given to some of the harder crimes, however, the thinking here was that with common (unit criminals are the legendary uncommon) criminals performing these acts around the city, it dilutes the efforts of investigators to narrow in on the kingpins (the units.)

Maybe we could have some vigilante units that may spawn from high crime as well which could help stem some of the runaway. However, consider that the runaway IS limited since for every criminal unit in the city, the chance to spawn a criminal is divided by 10. Thus there can only be 10 criminals in a city, no matter the source, for the city, at any crime level, to produce criminal spawns.

Also revolution modifier should be taken out of crime autobuilds.

Maybe rebalanced perhaps but some of the best cause for revolutions to be more interesting here and less automatically stable are these modifiers. That said, I'm not well qualified to manipulate these since I don't usually play with rev.

The amount of unhappiness and unhealthyness a city would produce at higher levels will probably cause a revolts for sure (normal buildings should also have their modifiers taken away- revolutions should be influenced by the civics and the situation of the city, not by buildings that break the system by making it way too stable).

You could be right about this given my last comment about my qualifications to manipulate values for rev. We could use an XML specialist on Rev here.

Finally crime per pop should probably be adjusted by era, so that while on early ones is lower, it gets higher on the latter ones (to make early crime less brutal, specifically on newly founded cities, while being higher latter when the players can control it easier)

I've been considering making it grow tougher due to the increasing abilities of LE units expanding faster than populations But I want some play experience to see if that's necessary or not and I'm working on that right now.

My suggestion is to make crime a system with several equilibrium points. What I mean with that? Basically, that crime will find an stable position,say 150 crime, and be around that level counteracting smaller changes on the level, unless a big change occurs and the system move to a new equilibrium where it becomes stable. This will be a really big change in how crime works: while in the current system a thief would be always increasing crime unless it is counter by anti-crime buildings and law enforcement units. With the equilibrium points system, the amount of damage a thief causes will be limited even without being counter, and the same for the effectiveness of law enforcement units. The system will also make the equilibrium point harder to move the higher the level of crime is, making law enforcement more effective, and vice versa for reducing it. Thus it would be really hard to reach the insane amount of crime without significant investment by foreign actors, and non-existant crime would be a very expensive option

Surprisingly, this is actually very closely explaining how properties mathematically work. The higher they get the harder they are to push higher and the easier they are to pull back down. There is one equilibrium point usually... 0. There is also decay. Generally speaking, if you get no further property modifiers affecting a city for a while, it will drift to a central value and stay put on that value. Assuming no bleedover from plots are taking place and so on. It's very complex math and I'm pretty sure what you're trying to suggest is already a part of the system.

 

[Noriad2]

If the AI mismanages a city and crime goes completely out of control, having it revolt away could actually be of benefit to the AI, as a crime-ridden city is usually a net cost. Too bad the new country inherits the 10 criminals so it has no chance of surviving. Would it be too hard to program that if a city revolts away and a new nation is formed, all crime and barbarian criminals are reset to zero?

P.S. I suspect that whenever somebody talks about "balancing" crime, they mean nerving it into irrelevance.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Would it be too hard to program that if a city revolts away and a new nation is formed, all crime and barbarian criminals are reset to zero?

Crime, I think, does. The criminals that are there... not so much. One would think that they would tend to be all the more inspired by the breakdown of society though, emboldened by being able to live without the rules for a while and would make it very hard to tame the region.

 

[Noriad2]

Crime, I think, does. The criminals that are there... not so much. One would think that they would tend to be all the more inspired by the breakdown of society though, emboldened by being able to live without the rules for a while and would make it very hard to tame the region.

Keeping the criminals in the newly revolted nation would be realistic yes but from a game perspective, if there are 10 criminals present they will immediately make crime shoot through the roof and the new nation will have little chance of becoming successful.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

Actually criminals like organization too. After all if the town does not prosper then they don't also. Perhaps they need to get organized...

 

[Noriad2]

I'd think, after the Revolution, the criminals become the new government. That's quite historical in many cases. From a libertarian perspective, the difference between the government and criminals isn't that great. If fact, many governments started out as what the mafia calls protection rackets. They just started calling the payments "taxation". The "nobility" oppresses the peasants, the peasants pay tax, with which the nobility hire knights to continue oppressing the peasants. And keep competition away.

As Ron Paul said: "thy shall not steal. The government doesn't like competition".

 

[JosEPh_II]

Crime balance is currently really odd. On the lower levels of crime, you get some really harsh penalties (-14 gold of mugging for 150 crime can be deadly to the economy) as soon as you hit an arbitrary level of crimes.

No it's not. I spent considerable time rebalancing the Individual Crimes and their levels that they occur at. Mugging was way worse. And I suspect your preferred Game Speed is Eternity. Eternity, even though I shortened it, is till a trouble maker for most of the Property systems in place in this mod.

The Individual Crimes used to come in bunches. And in fact, even if you had the crime level at 0 there was a Major crime given that could only be gotten rid of by being Below 0, negative Crime. I made a progression out of the Individual Crimes. And it was fairly stable and decent. But this was right before T-brd introduced his LE and Criminal subsystem. Once he began to implement it things that were "balanced" became distorted. Now players and even T-brd wants the scale to go from it's current range of 0 to 800+ to 0 to 2000+. This is Too Much Impho (and I Hate Crime still to this day), yet I'm the one that balanced it into something that had a logical progression and did Not take it's fangs out. Some times Simple just works better than Complex.

Don't be upset with my opinion on your take of Crime and How you see it Pepo, but I disagree with most of what you are saying. It will only add Bloat to the Mod, make adjusting it harder in the future, and adding more frustration to future new players to adjust too. Sorry T-brd but your LE and Criminals imhpo has done this already. It is Way way too complicated and needs scaled back drastically. But my saying so won't change any of it either. This I am fully aware of.

I had another point about crime but it's slipped my mind right now, oh well I'll remember it later when it's no longer relevant.

JosEPh

 

[Pepo]

Surprisingly, this is actually very closely explaining how properties mathematically work. The higher they get the harder they are to push higher and the easier they are to pull back down. There is one equilibrium point usually... 0. There is also decay. Generally speaking, if you get no further property modifiers affecting a city for a while, it will drift to a central value and stay put on that value. Assuming no bleedover from plots are taking place and so on. It's very complex math and I'm pretty sure what you're trying to suggest is already a part of the system.

What i 'am suggesting is not part of the system, as instead of a single equilibrium points there will be N equilibrium points. Single equilibrium systems have the problem where there is only on stable point, and the system automatically trends to that point, meaning that any change in the system will be eventually be ignored and on the longer run the system will go back to the equilibrium point. The current system in game doesn't have a single equilibrium point, as the trend of the system is that once the level starts to increase, it gets harder to get it down. It autoregulates, making increasing crime harder on the bigger levels, but that doesn't help went new autobuilds futher increase crime. My suggestion instead allow for more points of stability, doing what the current model actually does ( decrease the efficency on higher levels of the spectrum) while also making death spirals very hard to get, and more easy to get out. I suppose is hard to get what i'm trying to sell but i think it would be a much needed improvement

I'd think, after the Revolution, the criminals become the new government. That's quite historical in many cases. From a libertarian perspective, the difference between the government and criminals isn't that great. If fact, many governments started out as what the mafia calls protection rackets. They just started calling the payments "taxation". The "nobility" oppresses the peasants, the peasants pay tax, with which the nobility hire knights to continue oppressing the peasants. And keep competition away.

I don't think that criminals should always form the goverment, and that an amount of the criminals in the city should be killed due to the chaos during the riots and infigthing by the bands. Also i wouldn't base myselt on a libertarian/anarchist analysis of goverment, as they always portray then as inherently bad, and not as something "natural" due to the circustances

No it's not. I spent considerable time rebalancing the Individual Crimes and their levels that they occur at. Mugging was way worse. And I suspect your preferred Game Speed is Eternity. Eternity, even though I shortened it, is till a trouble maker for most of the Property systems in place in this mod.

The Individual Crimes used to come in bunches. And in fact, even if you had the crime level at 0 there was a Major crime given that could only be gotten rid of by being Below 0, negative Crime. I made a progression out of the Individual Crimes. And it was fairly stable and decent. But this was right before T-brd introduced his LE and Criminal subsystem. Once he began to implement it things that were "balanced" became distorted. Now players and even T-brd wants the scale to go from it's current range of 0 to 800+ to 0 to 2000+. This is Too Much Impho (and I Hate Crime still to this day), yet I'm the one that balanced it into something that had a logical progression and did Not take it's fangs out. Some times Simple just works better than Complex.

Don't be upset with my opinion on your take of Crime and How you see it Pepo, but I disagree with most of what you are saying. It will only add Bloat to the Mod, make adjusting it harder in the future, and adding more frustration to future new players to adjust too. Sorry T-brd but your LE and Criminals imhpo has done this already. It is Way way too complicated and needs scaled back drastically. But my saying so won't change any of it either. This I am fully aware of.

I had another point about crime but it's slipped my mind right now, oh well I'll remember it later when it's no longer relevant.

JosEPh

First i don't know where you get that I was playing at eternity speed ( i always play at Epic or Marathon, but i suppose it don't matter to you) so i would like if you actually get the information from what i wrote instead of making baseless suppositions. Second, I base my analysis on the current situation. It doesn't matter that before it was even worse for the current discussion, but if i offend you due to my wording it wasn't my intention. still i think that there could be futher tuning as to make the progesion less brutal. If you disagree i would like to know why

i liek that you bring the point of simple sometimes work better than complex things, and that it will bloat even more. I agree on the first point in regards of some parts of the mod ( buildings need serious axing to balance then out), I think that my propose system would only add a little more complexity in calculations, while making crime more intuitive and easier to control for the ai. as for the second part, it may not be slower than the current system, althougth is true that it would probably hurt performance a bit

 

[JosEPh_II]

First i don't know where you get that I was playing at eternity speed ( i always play at Epic or Marathon, but i suppose it don't matter to you) so i would like if you actually get the information from what i wrote instead of making baseless suppositions.

Please don't go there, please.
To quote myself,

And I suspect your preferred Game Speed is Eternity. Eternity, even though I shortened it, is till a trouble maker for most of the Property systems in place in this mod.

The Key word is "suspect". You analysis is common from players that only use the Eternity game speed. Hence the inference of suspicion that you play that game speed. And you are partly right it doesn't really matter on faster GS.....much, but on Eternity it does.

Second, I base my analysis on the current situation. It doesn't matter that before it was even worse for the current discussion, but if i offend you due to my wording it wasn't my intention. still i think that there could be futher tuning as to make the progesion less brutal. If you disagree i would like to know why

I did reply as to why and no you did not offend me. I just do not like your ideas it's really that simple. Don't be offended by my disagreement.

JosEPh

 

[Taxman66]

Crime effects, particularly gold cost should be based on the city's revenue. I've proposed this before, but I believe the loss should be a % malus against the city's revenue. No way that a crime in a small city is going to 'cost' the same as one in a large one. That -14 gold in the example above can be a killer early in the game and be a huge percentage against a small city revenue while it wouldn't be hardly noticed later.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'd think, after the Revolution, the criminals become the new government. That's quite historical in many cases. From a libertarian perspective, the difference between the government and criminals isn't that great. If fact, many governments started out as what the mafia calls protection rackets. They just started calling the payments "taxation". The "nobility" oppresses the peasants, the peasants pay tax, with which the nobility hire knights to continue oppressing the peasants. And keep competition away.

As Ron Paul said: "thy shall not steal. The government doesn't like competition".

I love the suggestion but how would it be implemented in the game exactly?

Sorry T-brd but your LE and Criminals imhpo has done this already. It is Way way too complicated and needs scaled back drastically. But my saying so won't change any of it either. This I am fully aware of.

If you're talking about criminal emergence, investigation and arrest, I've been considering optioning this out. Is that what you're suggesting?

If you're talking about the amount of upgrades, doesn't the current unit structure lead to smoother transitions? How is that 'bloat' exactly? I WOULD like to move the second upgrade rung to more of the later stage of the prehistoric but that would require moving naturopathy and there seem to be reasons it's stuck where it's at. Would also then require changing when rogues come into play but that's not a big deal imo.

The current system in game doesn't have a single equilibrium point, as the trend of the system is that once the level starts to increase, it gets harder to get it down.

That is incorrect. The higher crime is, the easier it is to reduce it. In the math at least. You're talking about the secondary effect that the criminal spawns are adding that tend to, at random, boost crime sources as crime climbs. This is acting like a booster rocket to the system... but that booster does run out after a time because the ultimate amount of spawns is limited. WHERE it runs out of steam on the crime scale is highly varied based on how powerful the criminals are being spawned.

My suggestion instead allow for more points of stability, doing what the current model actually does ( decrease the efficency on higher levels of the spectrum) while also making death spirals very hard to get, and more easy to get out. I suppose is hard to get what i'm trying to sell but i think it would be a much needed improvement

I get it, I think... your explanation ties a knot upon itself and makes some self-contradicting points but I understand that you'd put multiple stages of magnetic strength that seek to pull the property towards those 'equalibrium points' but I'm NOT going in to modify the math behind the system. It's already far too complex to try to explain very well.

buildings need serious axing to balance then out

You will NEVER find support for this. Not here. Not ever. More is more in C2C. The key to rebalance that we will use is to edit, fill in and counterbalance, to add what is missing rather than to retract what has not yet been made harmonious. There are very few times in the history of C2C that buildings have been removed.

Crime effects, particularly gold cost should be based on the city's revenue. I've proposed this before, but I believe the loss should be a % malus against the city's revenue. No way that a crime in a small city is going to 'cost' the same as one in a large one. That -14 gold in the example above can be a killer early in the game and be a huge percentage against a small city revenue while it wouldn't be hardly noticed later.

I completely... COMPLETELY agree. % per pop is even better, thus it's a matter of being scaled to city revenue AND population (pool of potential victims.) It takes a keen understanding to realize that %, % per pop and flat +/- changes are not stronger than one another, just different uses for different modelling. It's when they are used out of balance or without being accurate to the modeling purpose that we get an imbalance from them. A flat change can be far more unbalancing than a % when you are talking about a young city at just a few population. As you point out.

 

[Noriad2]

I love the suggestion but how would it be implemented in the game exactly?

Once a city revolts away, crime and criminals present should be cleared, to give the new nation a fresh start.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Once a city revolts away, crime and criminals present should be cleared, to give the new nation a fresh start.

There are a lot of places where revolts take place. I'm not sure where all of them are. Sometimes revolts don't mean the city has changed hands either. This means a huge search through both code and python to find all these instances. ugh...

 

[JosEPh_II]

It will only add Bloat to the Mod, make adjusting it harder in the future, and adding more frustration to future new players to adjust too. Sorry T-brd but your LE and Criminals imhpo has done this already.

@T-brd,
Take it in this context.

It is, after all, just my personal view of the mod overall and my Opinion. You, just like Hydro, are a Prolific Modder and you have the wherewithal, passion, skills, and freedom to have that type of freedom with the making of this mod. What ever ideas I may have had about crime and it's impact on the mod are long gone. Kinda trampled in the dust like the early pioneers saw from the buffalo herds as the pioneers moved across the great plains. You the Great Buffalo and me the lowly pioneer.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

@T-brd,
Take it in this context.

It is, after all, just my personal view of the mod overall and my Opinion. You, just like Hydro, are a Prolific Modder and you have the wherewithal, passion, skills, and freedom to have that type of freedom with the making of this mod. What ever ideas I may have had about crime and it's impact on the mod are long gone. Kinda trampled in the dust like the early pioneers saw from the buffalo herds as the pioneers moved across the great plains. You the Great Buffalo and me the lowly pioneer.

JosEPh

I realize that things probably need a little recalibrating once more but that seems a little melodramatic... I was trying to get the basis of this system in place before too many of your efforts were trampled in the process so that you could take it all into account but you were pretty quick to plan and implement your thoughts on things and beat me to the punch so now you feel like what I've done destroyed the fine tuning you had in mind. I actually do totally understand how that feels actually. I wasn't trying to ruin your structure and I know I'll never quite see what clever design features were woven into that such that I'll ever 'get' the full vision you had in mind. But surely, you could adjust your end vision and rework from here to achieve it, could you not?

 

[JosEPh_II]

Crime effects, particularly gold cost should be based on the city's revenue. I've proposed this before, but I believe the loss should be a % malus against the city's revenue. No way that a crime in a small city is going to 'cost' the same as one in a large one. That -14 gold in the example above can be a killer early in the game and be a huge percentage against a small city revenue while it wouldn't be hardly noticed later.

We (T-Brd, Pit2015, and I) have already had this conversation. Mugging was actually lowered twice because of those conversations. In None as in Zero of my test games have I ever had a city go belly up ("killed") by Mugging. What it really boils down to (when this particular scenario happens) is a total disregard for keeping Crime down, by said player who is now complaining, until Long after that fact that the neglect is now eating that players lunch because of a lack of attention.

@T-brd,
As to having a "vision" for Crime....I don't know that I do any more. When Hydro 1st introduced crime I asked if it would become the Mods focal point. He said No. But I see (and saw back then) that it would be a major factor in the mods play. I also saw that Hydro left it unfinished and unbalanced. But I just did not have a working knowledge of how it did it's thing, back then. When I made my small Modmods for Crime, Disease, and Pests, Then members of the Mod team saw some of what I had been saying since Crimes Inception. You all saw that, even though I hated the Property of Crime in the mod (that was well documented right here in the C2C forum), that I did not nerf it "to irrelevance" but just gave it some order and rationality in it's progressions. Same for Pests and Disease. But I made no further changes to Disease because DH has/had a plan for it.

Your goals in these areas are more grandiose and more verbose in both structure and involvement. As this is your method of modding. Very similar to Hydro's during his heydays of building line modding. Creative juices flowing and such..... But he called me Mr. NoNo back then. Because I questioned why it had to be so much. You probably think the same thing too at times because of my responses to your complex additions (or that I don't use many of them). Because really anything you have made has layers and layers. Many players love this, some are meh about it, and some like me occasionally say, "don't you think that is enough" or "aren't you taking that a bit too far". Maybe it's just me tainted from my MoOIII modding days and hearing players say it was just a "micromanagement hell on a spreadsheet", when I really did love how you had to micro and pay attention to detail or get defeated by that game. I spent 7 yrs on it only to have those that called it a "failure" to harangue me for actually loving it. Bear with me as I psychoanalyze my self of the micro management you love to put into this Mod and that I now find at time to be too much for even me the micromanagement from hell MoOIII modder. I've seen both sides of the fence now after spending 9 1/2 years in the progression of mods, the forerunners (RoM and RoM/AND) that is now called and culminated in Caveman2Cosmos.

Right now I just see imbalances that can be cleaned up by some simple xml changes and logical progression of the modifiers found in those xml files. I'm finding that My days of wanting to write that "novel", so to speak, is gone. I just want some fun when I play and mod. Maybe it's because I feel I have no artistic license?

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

Your goals in these areas are more grandiose and more verbose in both structure and involvement. As this is your method of modding. Very similar to Hydro's during his heydays of building line modding. Creative juices flowing and such..... But he called me Mr. NoNo back then. Because I questioned why it had to be so much. You probably think the same thing too at times because of my responses to your complex additions (or that I don't use many of them). Because really anything you have made has layers and layers. Many players love this, some are meh about it, and some like me occasionally say, "don't you think that is enough" or "aren't you taking that a bit too far". Maybe it's just me tainted from my MoOIII modding days and hearing players say it was just a "micromanagement hell on a spreadsheet", when I really did love how you had to micro and pay attention to detail or get defeated by that game. I spent 7 yrs on it only to have those that called it a "failure" to harangue me for actually loving it. Bear with me as I psychoanalyze my self of the micro management you love to put into this Mod and that I now find at time to be too much for even me the micromanagement from hell MoOIII modder. I've seen both sides of the fence now after spending 9 1/2 years in the progression of mods, the forerunners (RoM and RoM/AND) that is now called and culminated in Caveman2Cosmos.

I can understand your position on this. These feelings among players and the spectrum of feelings players have is exactly why I design things with so many layers in mind, each layer applicable to the degree the player enjoys including that layer. It's an incredibly difficult method of modding but it works to solve for the tremendous differences in game experiences that players feel attached to while at the same time wanting to reach for more in other ways.

I feel Hydro and I had very similar goals and game experience backgrounds and were striving for a similar mod so I can see why you'd relate our efforts.

 

[Samael]

I think, as is, Crime is far too intense in its effects. I play on the slowest speeds and once crime stats to be a thing, it becomes intensely difficult to unseat it. It has gotten so bad in one city that when it riots due to instability added by fighting and the like that I go from making a defecit of about 60 to making a profit of about the same. I am playing on Eternity but the game has entirely devolved to managing the needs of a single city. I didn't treat this city significantly differently and I rapidly prioritized its crime defences both internally (buildings) and externally (enforcers). It is both difficult and, to be frank, not very fun to hold one city's hand this hard and why? Because pick pocketing and mugging exists, period, they lose far, far more than they can actually gain. Why should endemic pickpocketing effect a tiny, 1 population village to such an intense degree that, proportionally, it is far worse than that of a 50 population? How is it able to steal substantially more wealth than is generated by that village? If its the inefficiency of running new colonies during this period of prehistory, well, that is is already in as Maintenance.

The reason, perhaps, Joseph does not have the same issue as the players is because of both their playstyle and their involvement in its development. You know exactly what you're dealing with and you like to deal with it. It feels a little like not being able to see the forest for the trees because you planted each tree personally. You know exactly where you are, you know each and every tree and you maybe don't understand why some people may become lost. I don't mean this to be seen as insulting, only to say you have a different perspective on the matter than, say, other players and I feel you're being a little dismissive of long standing issues with the Crime system. I can't learn how to deal with it if it becomes debilitating that hard and fast in a game where everything else is slow paced as it outpaces my ability to do anything about it. The appearance of Crime around Conduct has always marked having to deal with it gamewise, but it is more debilitating than disease, pests or even war. If it becomes bad, as I said above, one of my four cities, the same size as three of them, somehow became Crimier than the others (than one settled before it and after it of equal population) and because of its rapid climb to 500+ Crime before Sedentary Living is even a thing, I have to spend more on Enforcers for it than any other city. Literally every anti-crime building I could have is there, and Enforcers are on both Anti-Crime and Investigation. My entire economy, currently, is dedicated to dealing with this one town and yet I still cannot get the crime to drop by a level of maybe more than -1 or -2 per turn and the second another Rogue is created, bam, now I've got to train 2-3x the number to make a difference again. The tools to deal with it, especially at this point, are far outstripped by the tools presented to it. The time involved in finding and arresting them is also substantial, even with ten times it's population in guards, most of whom are on Investigate. I the hundreds of turns I've watched this city, I have found and arrested... perhaps two rogues.

I think the crime system is a novel idea and I think its great. I think getting less controllable is to its advantage - it makes sense - and I still remember a time when the crimes cost was way higher and the tools to fight it in the early game (see: Enforcers) were non-existent. I've played since, what, did it grow out Rise of Mankind originally? I know I've been playing it since way back in any case. Its been a long time in any case and I always felt that having a system for this was part of what set it apart from other mods. However, the consequences of it are intensely severe that they cost more than the country is capable of producing. A proportional method, growing with the size of the town and its wealth would make more sense and feel more fair. I'd rather see Crime take away control of my economy, putting it into the pockets of others, rather than generating negative money as it does. A percentage or a staggered cost (say -0.1 per population point for Mugging) feels a better way to do it than the sudden effect of -15 gold. I don't know how the speed effects it but it looks like it doubles it implicitly which feels weird because I'm already losing more money from it due to the speed in the longterm, is the additional modifier needed? I feel that slowing the growth and decay may help at slower speeds - I don't know how fast it works on others - but here it ramped up faster than I could control it and it cost more than I could produce. Nerfing the gold it costs of Mugging isn't a reasonable answer and treats it as a special case only because it is one of the first crimes that is dealt with and thus can be debilitating for the early game. There is no need to treat it that way and nerf it specifically if it and other crimes are treated proportionally.

 

[Toffer90]

@Samael:
Joseph didn't actually plant all the trees, they were already planted by another modder when Joe started modding C2C.
He recently started modifying the effects of crime and in the process made many crimes more forgiving on small population cities than large ones.
I can only say that crime balancing is far from finished and more work is likely to be made on it for the next version of C2C.
Thing is, new concepts and mechanics are being developed that require complete rebalancing on the crime system such as the lately added criminal promotions, build up system and spawning criminals in cities. More are likely to come, so putting too much effort into balancing it before the waters have calmed down may not be an effective strategy in the long run as one would have to rebalance later. Thus we do it a little here and a little there along the way.

Anyhow, your feedback is valuable.