Rethinking Crime

[Squidimp]

Do you think you could review our Rev structure throughout the mod as a whole and help to calibrate it more towards its originally intended balance? You seem to understand the meanings in these tags better than any of us on the current team do and I feel for those who appreciate this option, it would be helpful to have someone who 'knows what's up' work on that side of things. Would you be willing to help us there?

I'm more than willing to help out here; what nature of contribution did you have in mind? Buildings and the revolutions.ini are easy enough.

@JosEPh_II If an AI city is completely and hopelessly taken over by crime, it is actually a blessing for the AI if the city revolts away. Also as far as I know, the revolt parameters are influenced by difficulty level, and therefore the AI already gets an advantage due to playing on a relatively low difficulty level. Assuming of course that the player plays above Noble.

This doesn't hold in the long term! Additionally, crime continues to accumulate during times of anarchy, but it becomes impossible to build crimefighting units/buildings. This can result in ever-rebelling cities drowning in crime; any new rebel state is doomed from the beginning, and will likely suffer a secondary rebellion if it does successfully break away.

Rev is affected by difficulty level, but clearly not enough that it stops the AI from spontaneously-collapsing.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'm more than willing to help out here; what nature of contribution did you have in mind? Buildings and the revolutions.ini are easy enough.

I'm thinking more of handing you a blank check to review every. and I mean EVERY element in the game to see if you think it should or should not play a role in revolutions somehow and to help balance the rev system so that it has the same kind of structure balance that was intended by the original designers. DH has said some good things about how it 'used' to be and I know many players would appreciate striking the right tones with the option, which I don't think we really are right now.

I also recently fixed the national vs local rev index modifier tags but nothing has been done in the xml to fine tune them.

I think you're skilled enough to know what I'm talking about... Am I right?

 

[Squidimp]

I'm thinking more of handing you a blank check to review every. and I mean EVERY element in the game to see if you think it should or should not play a role in revolutions somehow and to help balance the rev system so that it has the same kind of structure balance that was intended by the original designers.

I'll start doing a review of the XML. IIRC it's pretty much just crime buildings and a few anti-crime buildings that directly modify rev (and Aachen Cathedral, but that's not super relevant), but I'll check to make sure nothing's changed.

I'll see if there's an old thread I can revitalise, and we can stop hijacking this crime thread.

I also recently fixed the national vs local rev index modifier tags but nothing has been done in the xml to fine tune them.

Oh good. That's been a problem since rev's inception I think.

 

[Noriad2]

I have Never seen an AI City "completely and hopelessly taken over by crime" in Any game I've ever played. Has to be a direct correlation to Options used, and I don't use Rev.

Several months ago I have seen AI cities crippled by crime (1000+) while continually building enforcers ,and disbanding them due to lack of money. But Thunderbrd fixed some AI bugs and that solved it.

Furthermore, you keep talking for years now about how REV regularly destroys entire massive AI empires. I have not seen that, just the occasional remote town revolting away creating a one-city civ that stays in a continual death spiral of crime and rebellions.

Since you play with REV off, Are you SURE that your opinion on REV is still relevant for the CURRENT game?

 

[JosEPh_II]

So you are trying to tell me that an AI empire that has a "remote city" revolt never has another "remote city" do the same later on? Or are you telling me that the AI empire is now immune to these revolts after 1 of their "remote" cities has done this? 1 revolt per empire and it's all done?

My opinion of Rev stands whether it's from long ago 1st experience with it when it was 1st introduced into RoM as an add on. Or when I was with AND for awhile, or even the "current" C2C game.

The base premise is still there. Cities revolt, break away and the overall empire is diminished every time this occurs. Even if it occurs only once in an Empires existence in the game it is still diminished. The AI splinters. Do you refute this? Or are you playing a game of semantics with me?

 

[Noriad2]

Losing a single city is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run if it is your worst city. There are penalties connected to the size of your empire. Upkeep (based on number of cities and distance from capital) is the most obvious, the need to defend it which needs units that also require upkeep, even happiness if you have the penalties from civics due to number of cities. Losing your worst city makes economic room for a new city that is potentially more valuable. Economic room of course slowly increases as the game progresses, as a civ gets new techs and develops its core cities.

Again, a city doesn't revolt away because everything is fine with it. It is probably completely overrun with criminals and probably costs the owning civ more than it benefits. A well-governed civ won't lose cities due to REV.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I'll start doing a review of the XML. IIRC it's pretty much just crime buildings and a few anti-crime buildings that directly modify rev (and Aachen Cathedral, but that's not super relevant), but I'll check to make sure nothing's changed.

I guess I've been feeling it should be ... more. That there should be more interactions with game objects we've introduced but didn't really know how to work Rev into the picture with.

 

[cammcken]

I guess I've been feeling it should be ... more. That there should be more interactions with game objects we've introduced but didn't really know how to work Rev into the picture with.

Not all stability effects come from explicit sources like buildings, civics, and garissons. If I understood the hints correctly, "growth" and "stagnancy" also affect it. Whether that means technological growth, city growth, or imperical growth, I don't know. It seems like the creators were trying to give it a "natural" feel, instead of just fulfilling checklists. If so, Rev needs to be rebalanced from its BtS expectations of reasonable growth to an assessment of growth more realistic to C2C.
But I never mastered Rev either, so I don't know for sure. It must have been wildcards like these that kept throwing me off.
And also this thread is way off topic

 

[Thunderbrd]

If so, Rev needs to be rebalanced from its BtS expectations of reasonable growth to an assessment of growth more realistic to C2C.

Exactly... unfortunately I don't understand rev enough to even try to make such adjustments.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Losing a single city is not necessarily a bad thing in the long run if it is your worst city. There are penalties connected to the size of your empire. Upkeep (based on number of cities and distance from capital) is the most obvious, the need to defend it which needs units that also require upkeep, even happiness if you have the penalties from civics due to number of cities. Losing your worst city makes economic room for a new city that is potentially more valuable. Economic room of course slowly increases as the game progresses, as a civ gets new techs and develops its core cities.

Again, a city doesn't revolt away because everything is fine with it. It is probably completely overrun with criminals and probably costs the owning civ more than it benefits. A well-governed civ won't lose cities due to REV.

You are side stepping my questions. And you replace my emphasis of impact on AI with what "your" empire does vs what the AI can and will do or can not do.

You are free to play Rev to your hearts content. But if you refute the base premise of what I have posted it is because you do not want to acknowledge that Rev gives the player an advantage over the AI. And the AI is hurt more by Rev than the player every time. It destroys the AI in the final analysis. That is the bottom line. All else is posturing. Players that want to use it as a means to destroy the AI with out their direction intervention like it. And I "get that". Everybody likes to win. Even if it means using a system that will do it for you. You don't have to put any effort into because the system will do it for you. Not the kind of game I desire to play.

 

[Noriad2]

@JosEPh_II: "destroy the AI" is a massive exaggeration. Nowadays most AI's don't lose a single city to REV.

What REV does is forcibly amputate a city from a civ if the crime situation has become hopeless, rather than the civ trying to remedy it endlessly without results. Revolutions are not random events. They are the ultimate consequences of long term crime mismanagement.

REV is both punishment and mercy. But the more competent the AI plays, the less it suffers adverse effects from REV. And the AI has improved a lot over the last few years.

While it is true that a competent player can avoid cities revolting away in almost all situations, he must often divert a lot of the means at his disposal to do so. Especially at nightmate difficulty level, where crime grows much faster, this can be costly, while the player generally has less means at his disposal than the AI.

 

[Galadrion]

I have Never seen an AI City "completely and hopelessly taken over by crime" in Any game I've ever played.

I have, but it's not anything to do with Revolutions - it has more to do with me sending in criminals and spies. Not just cities, but entire empires destabilized, crime-ridden and plague-infested, and the economy tanked trying to cope with the situation... while I continue pouring oil on the troubled flames and waiting for disgruntled citizens to tell their former emperor to shove off as they flee to my welcoming strang- er, embrace. 'Tis an evil thing to do, but it works...

 

[Hydromancerx]

I like the idea of giving just the AI a big revolution stability bonus while the players don't get it. That way players can experience the fun parts of revolutions, and the AI will not fall apart because of revolutions.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I have Never seen an AI City "completely and hopelessly taken over by crime" in Any game I've ever played. <snip>

I have now seen this from a save game from StrategyOnly that made it to the Information Era. And it's a bad deal but I'm working on it. All the Individual Crime Autobuildings are going thru a complete review. When they come into play by Era/Tech/and level of crime. Many will have their introductory levels increased as the Range of these levels are also being increased, 0 - 3000 vs 0 - 2000 it's current range.

But I'm finding modifiers for the subject below to be troublesome.

Thunderbrd wrote:
Investigation

Once you have criminals in your city, what do you do? In an effort to create a game model that closely emulates reality, while creating balance for the players that would use criminals to their benefit by injecting them into enemy cities with the awareness that if they are very clever and successful they may be able to avoid being eliminated for enough time to be useful, the system of Investigations and Arrests has been designed and implemented for v37.

Each round, for each criminal in a city, a single Investigation check is made to see if that criminal's activities have led to the criminal being placed on the 'wanted' list for local law enforcement.

This check is made by the most investigation-capable law enforcement unit in the city. His own Investigation ability is the root of the chance of success. However, there are many other factors that then play into that check:

• The criminal being checked has a rating, himself, called Insidiousness, that resists this check directly. The total Insidiousness of the criminal being investigated reduces, point for point, the chance of the Investigation to be successful. A criminal may develop improved Insidiousness levels with promotions and upgrades, just as the Law Enforcement unit can develop Investigation levels in the same manner. Generally speaking, it's not unlikely that if both Law Enforcement unit and Criminal are of the same general tech levels and have both taken full advantage of their promotions to develop these abilities, they'll pretty much cancel each other out, leading to no chance of success of investigation. But obviously, this is likely to vary somewhat between the Law and Crime units involved.
  
  
• Insidiousness can be generated from local buildings, making it easier for the criminals in the city to avoid being investigated. Much of the insidiousness that can be generated in this way comes from crime autobuilds. So if you are trying to catch lurking criminals, fight your crime levels as a major priority so as to leave these rats nowhere to hide!
  
  
• Investigation can be generated from local buildings like police precincts and so on with examples of Investigation enhancing buildings throughout all eras. THIS is what will mostly tip the balance for you if you have ridden your city of crime otherwise.
  
  
• Buildups can help with both insidiousness for the criminal and investigation for the law enforcement officer.
  
  
• The sum total of Investigation values on ALL other Law Enforcement units present in the city will be divided by 10 and added to the total Investigation amount of the lead investigating unit. This isn't much but can add up a lot, so once crime is controlled, switching other Law units over to Investigation efforts can help.
  
  
• There are specialists, most notably the Detective, which add Investigation values to the city which adds directly to the checks made to investigate in that city.

Improvements to investigation and insidiousness are measured in decimals of percentages so it seems difficult to improve investigations, and once you have investigation values in the positive over the insidiousness of the criminals you're trying to catch, it will still take some time for the criminal's luck to run out. But if you strive to achieve as high a level of investigation as you can, it will eventually happen.

There are "problems" with the rate of insidiousness given. There is no game mechanic that tells you at what level this criminal enhancing value is at. We have 86 auto buildings called Individual Crimes. 82 of them give this hidden element insidiousness. The amount each gives ranges from 1 to 50 (that I've looked at so far. This value may go higher). Now compound this that we have no game mechanic to display Investigation either. And trying to find were LEs gain Investigation points from is not easy either.

With this said I'm finding that the insidiousness levels given are (sorry to say this T-brd) looking haphazard?! Why would Drunk Driving give Any insidiousness value? Yet it gives 6. And Littering gives 1. Small values yes but both these buildings come in early and stay a long time. In fact only a handful of these Ind crime auto bldgs even go Obsolete. Almost all of them come in at Motorized transportation (an Ind Era tech) and go Obsolete with Teleportation (a Galactic iirc tech).

On the other hand, Armed Communities one of 2 Anti-Crime Individual Crime auto buildings of course has no Insidiousness but does give 20 Investigation. Vigilantism is the other and gives 10 Investigation. These 2 are at least helpful but the Crime level they come in at plus the Era you get them to start being part of the Game play can be a problem as well.

Is there a real balance for Insidiousness vs Investigation now that we have more Late Eras. Game play suggests we do not.

 

[Thunderbrd]

I can answer to all of that and there IS a place where the total city insidiousness and investigation is listed. I've mentioned it about a hundred times now. lol... look at the defense help hover. If you need more info on that there's a whole section on it in the player's guide.

I had to take my turns here or I'd say more now. I'll respond to the bit about the assignments after work.

 

[MacCoise]

I like the idea of giving just the AI a big revolution stability bonus while the players don't get it. That way players can experience the fun parts of revolutions, and the AI will not fall apart because of revolutions.

That's possible in the Config/revolution, just adjust the Human Multiplier....?

 

[JosEPh_II]

I can answer to all of that and there IS a place where the total city insidiousness and investigation is listed. I've mentioned it about a hundred times now. lol... look at the defense help hover. If you need more info on that there's a whole section on it in the player's guide.

I had to take my turns here or I'd say more now. I'll respond to the bit about the assignments after work.

Guess you will have to keep on reminding like me.

I have found a building that gives 100 insidiousness. Are there any buildings that give 100 Investigation?

 

[Thunderbrd]

Insidiousness counteracts investigation amounts. It does nothing else. This is then to say that as crime goes up and individual crimes introduce more insidiousness into the city, the city becomes easier for criminals to evade investigation in. So one of the first things you'll need to do to investigate local criminals is to reduce the crime levels so the autobuildings that are bringing in more insidiousness (as well as other nasty effects) can be eliminated by the crime being too low for those buildings to remain.

So let's say you have 0 crime in your city. Very few buildings one would choose to build bring in much insidiousness. But Law Enforcement buildings like Police Stations and such would be adding investigation amounts. If you decide not to invest into supporting the criminal element for your own uses, the Investigation buildings will easily overcome the small amount of insidiousness you might have opted to introduce yourself. If you are the type to build all the voluntary crime buildings like the Pirate's Cove etc..., then your building sourced Insidiousness and Investigation will be pretty close to a tie. At which point, a specialized LE unit in Investigation would only have perhaps a slight edge over a truly insidious specialized criminal but enough that given time he'd eventually get the criminals he's investigating, and the player at that point also has the potential to assign specialist citizens to the Investigator role to tip the balance further for investigation.

Another factor to consider in this balance tug of war of insidiousness vs investigation, all units that can investigate are giving 10% of their maximum investigation values over to add to the lead investigator. So another 10 LE units = a whole 'nother investigator's worth of investigation, which can help to overcome insidiousness when it starts to make things a little too easy for the criminals. Criminals do not add any of their insidiousness to other criminals to help them avoid investigation.

But as crime goes up above 0, it gradually makes it harder and harder to investigate. Even to the point that when insidiousness overwhelms investigation, it becomes impossible to. Why? Because more petty crimes are distracting the police from the more important cases. Have you ever been pulled over and wanted to ***** at the cop to go do something more important than harass you over a stupid infraction? There's some reality to that... all the minor crimes going on are distracting the police from pursuing the more major ones and the more severe these crimes actually are, the more they distract from proving specific masterminding criminals have cause to be arrested.

One of the moe effective strategies to managing crime at this point where crime is out of control to the point that local criminals are incapable of being investigated is to fight fire with fire. Get your own vigilante criminals into those cities that can 'assassinate' other criminals. They often have better visibility on criminal invisibility types themselves because they are part of the underworld. Specialize them in taking down other criminals and you may be able to handle things outside of the law. This can be enough to help the law to start getting on top of things. But then, those criminals you hunt may be just as capable of hunting you...

I have found a building that gives 100 insidiousness. Are there any buildings that give 100 Investigation?

I assume that building that gives 100 insidiousness is a crime derived building. The balance intended there is not to have it be directly countered but to make it important to start overcoming the crime first. Once that building is removed because the crime levels have fallen, it goes away.

I think you'll find that later game LE buildings that the player can opt to build, and usually would as it's important to do so to enable the LE unit upgrades, can give quite a bit of investigation assistance, perhaps that high or higher.

 

[JosEPh_II]

One of the moe effective strategies to managing crime at this point where crime is out of control to the point that local criminals are incapable of being investigated is to fight fire with fire. Get your own vigilante criminals into those cities that can 'assassinate' other criminals. They often have better visibility on criminal invisibility types themselves because they are part of the underworld. Specialize them in taking down other criminals and you may be able to handle things outside of the law. This can be enough to help the law to start getting on top of things. But then, those criminals you hunt may be just as capable of hunting you...

Have you thought about what this means if the AI tries to do this too? Can they? And if so, Is this part of what we are seeing in SO's savegame on top of the overwhelming and that is starving AI cities to pop 1?

Was going to post 2 screenies that showed 2 cities levels from the Black Rook symbol. 1 has 1.9% and the other has 2.9% where it reads : Current Investigation Total:. So I assume that since the 1.9% and 2.9% are positive that Investigation out weighs Insidiousness. Do these % actually display a "-" % when Insidiousness is > than Investigation? Can't see that in SO's savegame because can not manipulate the City screen for that AI whose citiy has starved down to 1 pop. And not sure if it will display in WB either.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The AI should be doing all it can to overcome the crime levels. It also, if this is working properly, once it can reach a point in its build priorities, should seek to get an investigative specialist unit in each city. Plus if there are local criminals in the city it will prioritize investigative specialists higher.

If theres a problem in the ai it can come from two spots. The first is the operational range of the property. If the crime gets too far over that range then the ai tends to give up on trying to fight it. Setting that range too high could also lead to them not responding well enough in the earlier side but thats easy enough to resolve in code.

The second is in the code itself who knows where. I saw that painfully few cities were training LE units. Im still not quite sure why when that was such an obvious problem. It could take some serious evaluation time to look that deep but I will eventually.

I think they had some problems with having access to the upper level law units and thats what started the crime snowball and how they failed to address it when they were strong enough to have done so.