Taxman66
King
My same arguement aboit scaling the malus yet again.
Rethinking Crime
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Noriad2
Emperor
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As crime level depends for a significant part on population size, a 50 pop city produces much more crime than a 1 pop city. Therefore, given the same anti-crime measures, the 50 pop city will have much higher levels of crime. And with higher levels of crime you get much worse acts than just pickpocketing.
Furthermore, the damage of crime is generally much greater than the profit for the criminal. In extreme cases, people have been murdered in the streets for the 10 dollars in their pockets. And burglars often wreck the place they illegally enter, causing damages far in excess of the value of the stuff they steal.
Regarding arresting criminals, higher crime levels not only make it progressively more likely a new barbarian thief will spawn, it will also mean it is harder to investigate one. Thus while crime is high, it is very hard to investigate them successfully. After you bring crime down below zero, investigating the barbarian thiefs will be much easier.
There is only one remedy for high crime levels, and that is to build enforcers like crazy, even in nearby cities (and move those to the high-crime city). Get crime down below zero as quickly as you can. Don't be complacent with just a small reduction each turn, as more barbarian thiefs may spawn, and as crime becomes lower you lose a bit of the natural decay of the crime value towards zero. Once crime is below zero, disband any excess enforcers to save money. And as you arrest more barbarian criminals, disband more excess enforcers.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
This is part of the problem. As Noriad wisely points out, investigation efforts are made much more difficult with crime levels being high and only the primary investigator (best local law enforcement unit at investigation) is adding his entire amount of investigate while the rest of them are adding only 10% of their values to the check. Aside from the primary investigator, focus mostly on crime control until you're under 0 crime then shift the excess over to investigations to add a little more edge.
I continue to strongly agree with you and Taxman on this point.
Speed really doesn't scale property growth but when criminals spawn they sure do and so does banditry now, as a civic.
I can only assume you are beginning to find the system more tenable now that it's better understood, right?
To All who come here looking for answers, for a complete breakdown of the criminal spawn mechanism: This is the latest explanation, written as an addendum to the v37 Player's Guide. Should be VERY informative.
I have to ask though... would those of you commenting on this thread in any capacity, feel that the spawn rates (or rather the chance of spawn) should be cut in half perhaps? Could that help maybe? Pros/cons of this proposal as you see it please.
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Noriad2
Emperor
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Hmm in my latest V37 deity game, very early ancient, most AI cities have crime either negative or mildly positive. The only exception is one of Zara Yaqob's cities that has high crime (+383 on its central map tile). Checking World Builder, I see he has 4 barbarian thiefs and 1 barbarian rogue in the city. But he has no crimefighter units there. Worse, he is not even building them, but building boats instead. So I guess that this is a flaw in AI priorities rather than AI not being able to cope.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
I've noticed an issue with secondary cities not responding as they should. I've gotta look into that.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Correct. And they are.
Also Mugging has already been lowered Twice from what it was when Hydro made Crime a part of the Mod. Like Toffer said, more work is needed.
And to think when Hydro Introduced crime and I was it's Biggest opponent! It then turned out to be me that made the initial changes to the Individual crimes that Hydro meant as the way crime would be introduced and dealt with. And I did not nerf it but gave it a steady path to follow. But now a new factor has been added in the recent new addition to the crime "family" and things are in flux. When T-brd gets his end of it (his recent additions thru LE and Criminal) under control/balanced then this recent firestorm will subside. And the process of getting and giving feedback will involve passion unfortunately. Players just can't help it when they like or dislike something in a Mod they want to play.
JosEPh
Taxman66
King
I would suggest adjusting the cap of maximum number of criminals in a city to be based on the city size. Say 1 criminal per 2 or 3 pop at least until size 20, then maybe 1 per 5.
I also suggest the potential of a crime war with higher number of criminals. Where criminals of different factions fight each other. This could start off as indirect fighting (e.g. criminals dropping dimes on those of other factions), it could also turn violent causing ceiminals to start killing each other, though there could be collateral damage to buildings, happiness etc..
Some particularly nasty criminals (crime lords, police killers, or those that just happen to piss off the nobility) have been known to be taken out by assassins, or law enforcement who don't bother with evidence at the time and fudge it afterwards
I also suggest the potential of a crime war with higher number of criminals. Where criminals of different factions fight each other. This could start off as indirect fighting (e.g. criminals dropping dimes on those of other factions), it could also turn violent causing ceiminals to start killing each other, though there could be collateral damage to buildings, happiness etc..
Some particularly nasty criminals (crime lords, police killers, or those that just happen to piss off the nobility) have been known to be taken out by assassins, or law enforcement who don't bother with evidence at the time and fudge it afterwards
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Nerfing isn't all about making less impactful. That's why many of us are clammoring for % modifiers instead of hard +/- changes. % modifiers help to scale the damage. Small cities would see a minimal impact but large cities would see a far greater impact. This smoothing of the measuring of the damage against the existing size of the economy would also reflect better how it works in RL. 15 gold is a lot for a small city but nothing to a big one. 15% is very little to a small city but a hell of a lot to a large one. (In this case, small and large are measured by amount of existing base gold income rather than population.) -15 gold can put the total city income into the negative, theft of more than exists basically, while -15% takes a portion of the city income and unless the total negative % with other % modifiers totals up to more than -100%, it won't put the city into the negative.
I'm considering how to perhaps adjust the balance on my system but I think that the above needs stronger consideration in the application of the crime buildings as well. Or do you feel that crime only causes small cities problems but in large cities it's no big deal that it happens? I do agree that in smaller communities a bigger deal is made when a crime takes place. So maybe there's something to hanging on to a flat +/- adjustments instead. But this suggests more that flat happiness adjustments would make more sense when happiness is concerned (morale of the community) whereas where gold impacts are concerned, they would usually be measured in %s.
Just thinking outloud.
I take it you're saying here also
That you do feel that what needs to happen is an adjustment to the spawn rates? I can take that as a vote for halving them.
I'm right now compiling a DLL that should make the AI much better at managing cities outside the capital... I've just recently done some tracking on them and found that they are indeed pretty pisspoor about it so I looked into why and it seems that the problems are on them before they can build prerequisite buildings to train LE units with and that's what has them holding off on doing so and they aren't asking for help from the larger cities in this struggle so they are falling into big trouble before addressing it. I've given them numerous ways to improve on this much faster now.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
This is probably a good idea. I've been considering something similar. 1 per 2 population seems reasonable. There's always going to be a cap of 10 due to the divide by 10 rule but I figured I could add another maximum check at 1 per 2 pop.
I'll do that now. Good thinking.
I really want to do this but it really requires either very specific programming or a few AI teams and the ability to assign criminals to one or another. The later would be cool but overengineered and tough on memory. The first would be opened up by allowing assassination to target units of your own like arrest can but then that opens up another can of worms and some new AI decisionmaking so that it would happen at random for the Barbarian Criminal AI that they would be willing to take such a shot. MIGHT be fairly easy but I'd have to research a lot to see if it can be done without much trouble. Players would have to be careful not to assassinate their own units without meaning to. (Hunters taking out their own escorted animals for example)
It's very possible as it is now, at the point of Assassins being introduced, to use such criminals to help control criminal spawns with assassination without waiting for the ability to arrest. But assassins are later in the game and I've been wondering if it should be all criminals that can do this. (You can't assassinate your own player's units but you can use an assassin against criminals if they are a special target... which criminals may have to wait for a later stage than assassins to gain criminals as targets...)
I've been intending to add promotions that can add special target types for assassination too.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
Here is a "quick" gist of the current Crime situation as I see it in the mod's inner workings.
Here is were the real problem is over Crime. This is the 1st of a whole New group that adds Crime to the Crime levels triggering the Individual Crimes much much faster. The Red highlighted area is the amount of Crime this building/Unit gives Per Turn. 8 is an extremely high level for when this gets introduced into the game. In fact the whole range of Crime per Turn of this new section to this xml file is Extreme. This unit gives +8/turn. So when you see those "invisible" units (like Thieves) in your city that you can't move out guess what. Each one is adding +8 per unit to the city's main tile Crime level. If you see even 1 in your city you are behind in crime management. Let alone like some have posted with multiple units siting there. Add it up.
What is double concerning is this, was this amount of new injected Crime evaluated with the Crime Diffusion property?
Crime in the City is shown in the city screen under the right side tab that lists crime, disease, education etc. levels. But what is Not shown is that Crime's level in the city is then run thru a % modifier and applied to every Adjacent tile (the 8 tile that make up the 1st ring of tiles around the Main City tile) surrounding the City. This accumulates at a % modifier. Then that build up is then processed again and a % is sent Back to the City to be Added to the Main City tile's Own Crime level. This was working fine when the Individual crimes were adjusted to their current levels last year by my efforts to balance.
Now there is also another factor to be added into the whole crime process. Units that give crime per turn. A Crime giving unit is sitting on one of your 8 surrounding tiles to your little city (or Big City). That unit is adding, not by a % but by a set +/turn number of Crime, to the Tile it is on. This tile is now generating much More crime than just the diffusion process from the Main city to adjacent tiles. So the number of Crime coming back to the City is increased and in some cases substantially. This is why it was Preached long ago Do Not let crime giving Units sit is your Own territory! Send them out of your country to your opponents lands. And when you find an opponents crime giving unit in your land...kill it quick! You make an exile, thief, rogue, assassin, etc. do Not let them sit around in your Empire.
And we are still not done with things in the Mod that adds crime/turn to your empire. Each Citizen adds Crime per turn( giving +x Crime per turn. It was 4 crime per pop. I don't know what it is now with out further digging). Your Leader May add crime per turn (many do and it's thru the Negative Traits for the most part) to every pop count you have.
Are we done with crime yet? Hell No! Low Education levels add crime per turn, Tourism add crime per turn, individual bldgs that give you gold add crime per turn. Are we done yet? NO! Your very handicap level you chose to play on adds crime per turn by Pop levels.
And I think I've left out another 2 or 3 sources even yet. Aren't % Modifiers Wonderful!
Now one More Item. Every LE unit's ability to reduce Crime was Lowered. Let that sink in a minute. And all new criminals have new Crime giving levels too as shown above. And those already in the game prior were raised.
The example I posted above is the 2nd level for building the Bandit's Hideout. The 1st comes when you research the Tech Theft which is a very very early tech and it gives +6/turn as soon as you finish researching Theft, it allows the building of Thieves.
So the whole Rethinking Crime answer lies within all these examples of where Crime is generated from. The adjustment of Individual Crimes will not mitigate what has been added to the whole Crime property system. Mugging is Not your problem and reducing it will Not fix it either. The problem Is Too Many Crime giving sources at Too High of levels.
Is this understandable to all concerned? Was I clear enough? Sometime I get reactions like I'm speaking an unknown foreign tongue when I try to explain problems. And then I get accused of being "nasty" when I do.
In RL I talk with my hands too. 
Are there solutions to fix the current dilemma and consternation? Of course there are.
Impho, the 1st thing to do is return all LE units Back to their original Crime reducing levels, then perhaps a small boost, even the Tribal Guardian at game start needs it's crime reduction number returned.
2. All Crime giving levels in this new section with these new buildings/units need reduced by a full 2/3rds reduction if not more. And when I say ALL Crime giving levels this includes the units as well as the buildings.
3. Reduce ALL Handicap levels Crime giving numbers significantly. If not out right removal.
4. Further reduce (what I started to do when I ordered the Individual Crimes) each individual Leader trait that Adds Crime to the Empire. Some of them are still real doozies!
At this point it can then be re-evaluated thru play and honest feedback before any other changes are made. Not knee jerk feedback.
JosEPh
Here is were the real problem is over Crime. This is the 1st of a whole New group that adds Crime to the Crime levels triggering the Individual Crimes much much faster. The Red highlighted area is the amount of Crime this building/Unit gives Per Turn. 8 is an extremely high level for when this gets introduced into the game. In fact the whole range of Crime per Turn of this new section to this xml file is Extreme. This unit gives +8/turn. So when you see those "invisible" units (like Thieves) in your city that you can't move out guess what. Each one is adding +8 per unit to the city's main tile Crime level. If you see even 1 in your city you are behind in crime management. Let alone like some have posted with multiple units siting there. Add it up.
What is double concerning is this, was this amount of new injected Crime evaluated with the Crime Diffusion property?
Crime in the City is shown in the city screen under the right side tab that lists crime, disease, education etc. levels. But what is Not shown is that Crime's level in the city is then run thru a % modifier and applied to every Adjacent tile (the 8 tile that make up the 1st ring of tiles around the Main City tile) surrounding the City. This accumulates at a % modifier. Then that build up is then processed again and a % is sent Back to the City to be Added to the Main City tile's Own Crime level. This was working fine when the Individual crimes were adjusted to their current levels last year by my efforts to balance.
Now there is also another factor to be added into the whole crime process. Units that give crime per turn. A Crime giving unit is sitting on one of your 8 surrounding tiles to your little city (or Big City). That unit is adding, not by a % but by a set +/turn number of Crime, to the Tile it is on. This tile is now generating much More crime than just the diffusion process from the Main city to adjacent tiles. So the number of Crime coming back to the City is increased and in some cases substantially. This is why it was Preached long ago Do Not let crime giving Units sit is your Own territory! Send them out of your country to your opponents lands. And when you find an opponents crime giving unit in your land...kill it quick! You make an exile, thief, rogue, assassin, etc. do Not let them sit around in your Empire.
And we are still not done with things in the Mod that adds crime/turn to your empire. Each Citizen adds Crime per turn( giving +x Crime per turn. It was 4 crime per pop. I don't know what it is now with out further digging). Your Leader May add crime per turn (many do and it's thru the Negative Traits for the most part) to every pop count you have.
Are we done with crime yet? Hell No! Low Education levels add crime per turn, Tourism add crime per turn, individual bldgs that give you gold add crime per turn. Are we done yet? NO! Your very handicap level you chose to play on adds crime per turn by Pop levels.
And I think I've left out another 2 or 3 sources even yet. Aren't % Modifiers Wonderful!
Now one More Item. Every LE unit's ability to reduce Crime was Lowered. Let that sink in a minute. And all new criminals have new Crime giving levels too as shown above. And those already in the game prior were raised.
The example I posted above is the 2nd level for building the Bandit's Hideout. The 1st comes when you research the Tech Theft which is a very very early tech and it gives +6/turn as soon as you finish researching Theft, it allows the building of Thieves.
So the whole Rethinking Crime answer lies within all these examples of where Crime is generated from. The adjustment of Individual Crimes will not mitigate what has been added to the whole Crime property system. Mugging is Not your problem and reducing it will Not fix it either. The problem Is Too Many Crime giving sources at Too High of levels.
Is this understandable to all concerned? Was I clear enough? Sometime I get reactions like I'm speaking an unknown foreign tongue when I try to explain problems. And then I get accused of being "nasty" when I do.
In RL I talk with my hands too. Are there solutions to fix the current dilemma and consternation? Of course there are.
Impho, the 1st thing to do is return all LE units Back to their original Crime reducing levels, then perhaps a small boost, even the Tribal Guardian at game start needs it's crime reduction number returned.
2. All Crime giving levels in this new section with these new buildings/units need reduced by a full 2/3rds reduction if not more. And when I say ALL Crime giving levels this includes the units as well as the buildings.
3. Reduce ALL Handicap levels Crime giving numbers significantly. If not out right removal.
4. Further reduce (what I started to do when I ordered the Individual Crimes) each individual Leader trait that Adds Crime to the Empire. Some of them are still real doozies!
At this point it can then be re-evaluated thru play and honest feedback before any other changes are made. Not knee jerk feedback.
JosEPh
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JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
The Highlighted area is what determines the level of the gold reduction. Which in turn is then modifed by Handicap level played as well as possibly leader traits used, and several other area. Some are % modifiers that adjust this straight integer level. Too many Modifiers attached to too many xml files that change the base integer.
Research is even worse.
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
This is not a unit. This is a building. The crime levels given to these criminal spawning auto-buildings are reflective of the same buildings you can build as a player but don't benefit the player. I suppose the extra crime could be removed but it's successfully making crime harder to get rid of once you have it, which was much of the point. What I'm finding is that with effects like these in play, it might be wise to spread out the crime table to a larger operational range so that we're not totally dying at 500 crime so much as it's a tough level of crime to uproot. This would give crime a more real world feel.
No... they are adding +whatever THEY add, which is dependant on the base unit:
A rogue has:
Code:
<PropertyManipulators>
<PropertySource>
<PropertySourceType>PROPERTYSOURCE_CONSTANT</PropertySourceType>
<PropertyType>PROPERTY_CRIME</PropertyType>
<GameObjectType>GAMEOBJECT_CITY</GameObjectType>
<RelationType>RELATION_SAME_PLOT</RelationType>
<iAmountPerTurn>12</iAmountPerTurn>
</PropertySource>
<PropertySource>
<PropertySourceType>PROPERTYSOURCE_CONSTANT</PropertySourceType>
<PropertyType>PROPERTY_CRIME</PropertyType>
<GameObjectType>GAMEOBJECT_PLOT</GameObjectType>
<RelationType>RELATION_SAME_PLOT</RelationType>
<iAmountPerTurn>6</iAmountPerTurn>
</PropertySource>
</PropertyManipulators>I suppose, based on your next comment as well, that this is because crime insulates itself in the plots on and around the city as well, making it so that it supports itself.
This is the base amount of crime one must always fight and it is based on the handicap infos. SOMETHING needs to introduce crime and this is where it begins. I've been playtesting on Immortal and finding crime controlable.
YOU have been finding crime controlable. And proving that if you do take the time and effort to control it then you never let it get away from you and it doesn't become a massive economy crushing problem, which is not really against the intention of the design. I think we need to clarify that right there... it's working the way it's intended to. The only thing I think we could benefit from is scaling the EFFECT of crime to the cities it is plaguing.
We're not asking for a reduction. We're asking for its impact to scale to the city.
Young cities, historically, often had to deal with high levels of crime. Look at the old west for an example that is fairly recent in human history but wasn't unique wherever settling had taken place for eras and eras beforehand. Criminals from larger areas tend to flock to newer settlements because it's harder to control them there. This is totally normal from an RL perspective, that it takes a tremendous effort, initially nearly impossible, to get on top of crime in new areas. So the crime dynamic is working quite accurately. It is the fact that when crimes hit, they are not scaling to the size of the city but are giving flat +/- effects that is causing it to be impossible to manage on some games, where the whole nation can go into strike because one frontier city cannot control its crime. That frontier city may itself be completely incapable of adding any benefit to the nation because of its crime situation but should that mean that it causes the whole nation to collapse? Not saying that some backlash shouldn't be potentially felt but I'd love to see it be possible for a city to rot in crime and be a major thing to later clean up without having to immediately panic because it's causing everything else to fall apart everywhere. The point that crime can only really impact an economy as far as that economy is productive is a very good one made elsewhere here.
So we can make it easier to control crime and make its effects unmanageable once you do have a problem, or we can make crime a real tough thing to completely control and something that gets easily out of hand, but make its effects damaging but not unmanageable. When you compare the two options, which seems more appropriate?
You aren't being nasty here at all. I'm quite impressed with this response actually. It allows us to drill down to where, exactly, we have a design disagreement and why, without it becoming frustrating and personal.
Many of these crime control units never had an original crime reducing level. We could certainly ramp them up a little but there's a reason for the levels they are at.
I made the criminal units exactly twice as crime-inducing as the era equivalent LE units. This is because it takes a lot of effort and challenge to get a criminal of your own in to infest an opponent city and I wanted to highly reward the player that does so. The cost of recapturing control on crime should be higher than the cost of the crime itself, making it a thorn you have to really invest into to overcome then you can retract some of the added efforts to save on the expense of having so many control units. Criminals, themselves, also cost a lot for the player to maintain so they had better be giving their money's worth in benefit when used to hamper a foe.
If I felt that making crime more controllable was the goal, rather than smoothing its impact, I would first consider removing the added crime on the unsanctioned buildings, removing the 'hook' effect they give and leaving that to the criminals they MIGHT spawn.
The buildings, I can see removing the crime from and letting them just be kind of a natural expression of other effects that crime is having and let the criminals themselves represent the hook that makes higher crime tougher to manage than lower crime. But reducing the impact criminals themselves have reduces their value for a player to use them. I just fixed some serious AI issues with managing crime in cities outside the capital. They were managing crime flawlessly in the capital but had a couple of hitches in their additional cities. As it is, in the capital, I can send as many criminals as I want and they can always handle it, if not a little hindered by doing so. Once they start doing it back to the player it should be tougher for the player to handle than the AI. My point is that I'm still unsatisfied with how much damage they do. But ramping it up further doesn't seem to be necessary either so it's about right.
We often fail to consider the value of USING criminals when we have these discussions.
This is the base amount. I'm sure that an honest Deity player is not complaining about this effect but is relishing in the new challenge it gives. Crime is so manageable on Noble and less that it's almost completely ignorable with units to help control it and that's a big part of what's making AI cities so capable of managing the criminals I'm sending to harass them.
Smoother adjustments from traits would be beneficial.
What I and so many others are saying is that this should be using the <CommerceModifiers> tag instead. That way the punishment to the city self-regulates so that it's not as painful to younger cities, where crime should be almost impossible to manage, and highly damaging to large cities, where it requires a bit more irresponsible governing to allow crime to be that high still.
I can see some reasons to bend on some factors in my own design and I'm just asking for you to consider some bending as well and between both we may end up with a little more fun a system somewhere in between.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
I had building at 1st draft, but for some reason during my editing session before posting changed it to unit.
And the Handicaps themselves are messed up from tinkering with them over the years by various modders. The gradiation from Noble to settler for the AI is off. As is the gradiation from Noble to Deity for the AI. Noble itself is no longer a level playing field between AI and Player, like it is supposed to be. So your perception is off in this regard.
This is a false assumption since none of my current v37 games are even out of Preh Era.
Now prior to v37 I've been able to handle crime up to a point. Because again even then most test games never got to Ren Era before new changes forced me to abandon them. And yes I have learned over the years to be vigilant on Grime watching. It is checked every turn in every city when the empire is young and growing. By the time my empire spans 25 cities, just like our pbem game, it is checked every time the build que is adjusted/amended/updated. Which can be almost every turn. Of course some players resent this because it Is Micro management and boring and tedious to the impatient player that fusses because they have not had a war to deal with in a couple hundred game years.
And all I did was show were it's at and how it starts. Change it however you want. Because really if you change the <iCommerce>-10<iCommerce> to iCommerceModifier you have and will have nerfed it.
But this too is more than just about Crime though as it also is tied to Game speeds as well. If you constantly test as a modder or play as a player your changes on 1 GS you have No Idea of the magnitude of those changes that actually occur on either end of the spectrum. You as a Modder with this new system Must test it on Normal GS as well as Eternity GS before you can say it's balanced or running as designed when all your testing as a Modder or playing as a player has been done on Snail. (And we really as a team Have to get away from saying Snail is the Recommended speed if we are going to give the player 6 GS to chose from to use.) But this is another discussion about overall game play in full aspect of what we offer.
There is so much more I need to say and correct as I can see that from your viewpoint you have not grasped what I'm trying to get across and by the time I get to this point in a post I'm finding that my typing errors and incomplete sentences are amking me go back and correct so much of what I'm saying that I start to losing my focus and thought trains. Which in turn makes my post seem disjointed. So I can not go into more detail because frustration is setting in from the constant stream of errors in just typing this small response out.
JosEPh
For an arbitrary crime called "The Crime" that affect all cities in this example:
<iCommerce>-10<iCommerce> vs <iCommerceModifier>-10<iCommerceModifier>
iCommerce:
One city produce 500
, and 10 is lost to "The Crime".Two cities produce 300
, and 20 is lost to "The Crime".Five other cities produce 20
each, and 50 is lost to "The Crime".Sum: 80
lost to "The Crime".iCommerceModifier:
One city produce 500
, and 50 is lost to "The Crime".Two cities produce 300
, and 60 is lost to "The Crime".Five other cities produce 20
each, and 10 is lost to "The Crime".Sum: 120
lost to "The Crime".P.S.
No offense intended Joe, just felt it needed to be said that it doesn't necessarily need to be a nerf.
Actually it should make crime more devastating in the long run.
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Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Ok... I figured you would not have confused the two and it must have just been a typo or a confused thought for a moment. You might notice that I actually stated that the 'problem' if it is one, that you were displaying, was actually rougher than what you said it was.I had building at 1st draft, but for some reason during my editing session before posting changed it to unit.
We're not talking about all the other aspects of handicaps, just crime. Reviewing the HandicapInfo.xml, it looks like it's still as originally established, at +.5 per population per difficulty level, starting at 1.5 at Warlord (Settler looks to have had it's one per population completely removed entirely??? That's... odd) and leading up to 5 per population at Deity level. BTW, I THOUGHT that Disease was established on the same platform and same progression scale?!? What happened to disease here? Or am I wrong? Does this mean that cities aren't getting any disease factors from population any more? That's... completely insane... That means that only buildings, traits and slavery would ever introduce any disease factors into the city now if I'm not mistaken.
Ah... You had spoken in other threads as if you had more recent experience. But then, you're IN the eras that people have been discussing the issue with total nationwide economic collapse from crime. So you stand as an example of a player who shows that you CAN avoid having the crime trigger the runaway point. And that's what I meant.
I'd say that's enough of a test for now anyhow considering that LE units get far more powerful as time goes on, making it easier to control to keep cities from ever falling into a problem and easier to recover when it does. Criminals are more powerful in that era, making their ability to influence things even more dangerous, but right now, if you can get control of crime, you don't have too much to fear from enemy criminals with the current AI.
Right, which is why I'd like to smooth things out a bit. I've halved the chance of criminal spawns and limited the maximum amount of them to 1 per 2 population and I AM considering removing that added crime from unsanctioned spawn buildings. But I also think we should consider expanding our perspective on what the crime RANGE should be and how to impact cities along that arc. With the current progression of having these booster shots of crime itself making crime grow further still, it pushes the range itself out further. So we can react by taking out anything that makes crime act like gravitational forces, where the more gravity, the more it attracts, the more it attracts the more gravity it will have. Or we can react by enlarging our expectation of what the upper end of the scale will be. I'm thinking that a lategame city that hits a real stride with criminal spawns (lategame criminals being more powerful than early game criminals) would easily hit a balance point (meaning what you'd reach if you were completely ignoring crime) of about 2000 or more. If we stretch the expected operational range to upwards of 2k then we could space out the autobuilds more and make the gradiation of pain a little farther out.
You will have nerfed it for smaller cities, yes. But you would have also, as Toffer points out, beefed it for more developed cities. The complaints seem to center on things being too rough on smaller cities and although unspoken, perhaps things are too light on more developed ones.
This is possibly true, but from what I can tell, game speeds just give more or less time for properties to find their equalibriums. This COULD mean that a faster gamespeed may be giving a faster ability to the player to react before the levels find their peaks. I don't think you'd find there would be too great a difference in the game experience with properties but I could be wrong.
It's possible I'm missing something you're trying to express. You haven't sounded disjointed so far... in fact it's been a very strong discussion on the real issues I think. But I get how it feels when you find your thoughts aren't holding together well enough to express them in a concise manner. Take some time to heal the frazzled synapses and come back with more. I'll be looking forward to it. We only have these discussions because you do have insights you know.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
For an arbitrary crime called "The Crime" that affect all cities in this example:
<iCommerce>-10<iCommerce> vs <iCommerceModifier>-10<iCommerceModifier>
iCommerce:
One city produce 500
Two cities produce 300
Five other cities produce 20
Sum: 80
iCommerceModifier:
One city produce 500
Two cities produce 300
Five other cities produce 20
Sum: 120
P.S.
No offense intended Joe, just felt it needed to be said that it doesn't necessarily need to be a nerf.
Actually it should make crime more devastating in the long run.
Oh none taken at all Toffer, and jump into this discussion more. Please.
That icommerce at -10 is half of what Hydro had it set at originally. And back then he had crimes clustered more together. Now in his defence he also had (and some they are still that way) crime that do not show up till as late as late Modern Era and I think CyberWarfare Crime is Trans Era. Because of the Prereq tech that unlocks it. So there was some staggering. Unlike Pests that hit you when your city pop hit size 5,6 and 7 before my adjustments to it. (need to revisit Pests again someday soon too.)
In the S[ecialBuildings xml file though the Ind. Crime level range is set at 0 to 1000, but in the Properties xml file it is 0 to 100000. Which I found strange with no explanation of why.
And that 800 level Crime I've mentioned it was so bad that Iirc I cut it down in half and it's still a killer Crime. Murder, Rape, and Kidnapping actually had low levels for their introduction too. I raised 2 of them to 500. Murder was a very early Crime. I think Hydro had the idea or the premise behind the idea that Cain slaying his brother Abel was the reason for the game to have Murder introduced basically at game start. Which holds true for Judeo-Christian societies. By raising it's crime Level I held it off longer for cities to get it.
In Settler's Crime property set up 1 is inferred and it is there. SO's NM gives 6.
Side note here: T-brd, remember that you gave the AI 2 bands of homo sapiens to start the deity level with. So those AI that successfully settle both are building early Crime twice as fast as the player is all the way up to Tribalism. Of course they are supposed to be building everything else twice as fast too. The "supposed to" is not quite right yet in the Handicap files.
Well enough for tonight, my poor old brain is tired.
JosEPh
Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
In the properties file, the upwards operational range is just a maximum that's needed for the AI. Since we wanted to indicate no effective maximum (where the AI just gives up trying to control crime) we just put it at a number that will never be reached. The only really honest measurement of the top operational range is where we stop putting buildings. If it gets no worse after that then you've pretty much capped out.
I'm finding that with the criminal spawns and crime buildings adding to crime, the upwards end of this should perhaps be higher because more and more as the game progresses and the city grows, crime, once it settles into the city after getting just a little out of hand, is going to want to hit a balance at a much higher level than previously, but it IS only one possible solution of many.
I figure it's because man's been murdering man since day one, regardless of what society it is. Murder is one of those things that doesn't need to be defined as such for it to take place.
hmm... really?
Code:
<PropertySource>
<PropertySourceType>PROPERTYSOURCE_CONSTANT</PropertySourceType>
<PropertyType>PROPERTY_CRIME</PropertyType>
<GameObjectType>GAMEOBJECT_CITY</GameObjectType>
<RelationType>RELATION_ASSOCIATED</RelationType>
<iAmountPerTurn>
<AttributeType>ATTRIBUTE_POPULATION</AttributeType>
</iAmountPerTurn>
</PropertySource>I didn't. That was a Vanilla Civ feature.
Crime effects don't come into play in all cities at once, just in the cities that have high enough crime to trigger them in those cities. So sure they are getting nationally twice as much crime but isn't crime only measured locally and who cares how much they have nationally? I AM zeroing in on further problems for the AI in working with cities beyond the first with crime though. But rationally, both cities should be pretty much equals in such a case and more often than not they'd both get to the point where they are controlling their own crime at about the same time... early enough to keep from being a problem. It's the later ones they settle that they haven't been addressing correctly up to now. There's just some really strange behavior in the AI I'm seeing now that I've GOT to sort out and do something about. I'm finally good enough at reading the codes there to start having a chance to solve issues like what I'm seeing here but it's really frustrating either way.
Code:
<iAmountPerTurn>
<Mult>
<AttributeType>ATTRIBUTE_POPULATION</AttributeType>
<Constant>1</Constant>
</Mult>
</iAmountPerTurn>
<iAmountPerTurn>
<AttributeType>ATTRIBUTE_POPULATION</AttributeType>
</iAmountPerTurn>First says:
Amount per turn = Population * 1
Second says:
Amount per turn = Population
Therefore:
First = Second
I remember changing it from the first to the second one when I was cleaning up XML about a year ago.
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Thunderbrd
C2C War Dog
Ah... I get it.
Toffer, could I ask you to take a look at the crime buildings and review, as a third party, for balance and make some suggestions? Pretty sure Joe and I both highly respect your opinions and you've been following both of our statements. I don't think we have DEEP disagreements on things but it could help to have you arbitrate here.
JosEPh_II
TBS WarLord
I started a new Normal, Deity, on a Large PM2 map game last night with 6 AI. By the time I reached tribalism Crime was starting to run rampant even with all the things I know to do. I have not reached Sed Life and Ancient Era yet. But I have 4 cities just like the 2 AI I have met so far.
I have met and had to deal with Barb Guides, Rogues, Rangers, Archers, and Javelineer's while I still only have Stone Axe, Atlatl, Stone Spear, Slingers, and Hunters.
The AI of course with it's 2 city start is quite a few tech's ahead of me. And are building armies bolstered by battering rams already (their armies have all the units, of course, that the barbs are using). Life may not be long on the penisula I got stuck on as Theodora and Shaka have me cut off.
But the Crime is growing by Surges. The diffusion part will have to be reduced if the new Crime Autobuildings and Criminal Units crime/turn is not adjusted downwards. Can't imagine how bad it was before you T-brd reduced their Spawn numbers down and capped it at 10.
LE and (especially the) Criminals is a bit of a runaway train, imho, at this time just on the observations from last nights game. The new LE units are too weak the original LE's (like TW) should never have been reduced, again imho. But I don't have the vision of where Crime is going anymore. So I'll just report what I see and what I believe are the reasons for what I see.
JosEPh
I have met and had to deal with Barb Guides, Rogues, Rangers, Archers, and Javelineer's while I still only have Stone Axe, Atlatl, Stone Spear, Slingers, and Hunters.
The AI of course with it's 2 city start is quite a few tech's ahead of me. And are building armies bolstered by battering rams already (their armies have all the units, of course, that the barbs are using). Life may not be long on the penisula I got stuck on as Theodora and Shaka have me cut off.
But the Crime is growing by Surges. The diffusion part will have to be reduced if the new Crime Autobuildings and Criminal Units crime/turn is not adjusted downwards. Can't imagine how bad it was before you T-brd reduced their Spawn numbers down and capped it at 10.
LE and (especially the) Criminals is a bit of a runaway train, imho, at this time just on the observations from last nights game. The new LE units are too weak the original LE's (like TW) should never have been reduced, again imho. But I don't have the vision of where Crime is going anymore. So I'll just report what I see and what I believe are the reasons for what I see.
JosEPh
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