Criminal Syndicates and Police State

[Kharrus]

Two underperforming civics that have gotten the short end of the stick, Criminal syndicates have always been weak due to the AI overreacting to them, and Police state lacks any clear policy focus or strategy with it to make it useful.

I have a proposal to fix both issues by altering how criminal syndicates handle fighting crackdowns via enforcer spam:

-Intelligence assets within the empire you're exploiting can do an operation to give a modifier on that planet that corrupts local enforcers, making them less effective and adding a happiness penalty per enforcer job on that world. The way out of this would be for the AI to either pay you off if it decides that it isn't worth locking down the planet over, or tanking happiness until martial law is declared, assuming they don't shut down the branch office first.

-If payoffs on high-crime worlds continue for long enough and you have enough intel on that empire, you can perform the option to form a coup, which after being successfully completed, generates a small tributary criminal syndicate that takes over that system after rebelling.

-On the other side of it, the Declare Martial Law edict will increase the effectiveness of enforcers(by default for everyone), and the Police State civic gains a -50% penalty to foreign intel asset generation in your empire, as well as halving the resource penalty for martial law.


This allows criminal syndicates a strong form of disruption that doesn't require rewriting how the AI reacts while fixing the issue with maintaining branch officies, as well as giving Police State empires some unique defenses against infiltration, and dealing with large masses of unhappy pops which should be their focus anyway. This also minds current strategies for using criminal syndicates effectively.

 

[Dragatus]

When thinking about how to improve Criminal Syndicates it's very important to consider both how to make it fun to play them and how to make it fun to play against them. And while I quite like your idea from the former perspective I am averse to it from the latter.

Criminal Syndicates are already very annoying to play against as is when they only increase crime and you start getting those stupid crime events (a freighter crashed and killed 4 pops, really?) so I shudder to think what it would be like if they got to make my planets secede.

What I'd like better is if a Criminal Syndicate could make a clandestine agreement with an empire it's operating in that would give bonuses to both. Maybe Enforcers would reduce crime less, but would provide more Unity and possibly Stability, while the annoying crime events would get blocked. So you'd get more crime, but fewer bad effects from the crime. The host then benefits from more Unity and higher general productivity at the expense of TV while the Criminal Syndicate has an easier time operating.

 

[Bezborg]

My suggestion for criminal syndicate removal:

- criminal syndicate branch office puts a modifier on the planet, that has certain effects that are beneficial to the syndicate but harmful to the planet owner
- once this planet modifier is present, the planetary owner has access to a unique planetary decision/project
- Planetary decision, "planetary crackdown" will have a cost and a time interval
- once completed, the planet gets an "event", like a first contact event
- an envoy is required to resolve this event, this removes the branch office.

It's procedural, and plenty of opportunity for lore. Ties in to your intelligence idea as well, plenty of room to combine these ideas as well.


All in all I like your idea

 

[BrokenSky]

When thinking about how to improve Criminal Syndicates it's very important to consider both how to make it fun to play them and how to make it fun to play against them. And while I quite like your idea from the former perspective I am averse to it from the latter.

Criminal Syndicates are already very annoying to play against as is when they only increase crime and you start getting those stupid crime events (a freighter crashed and killed 4 pops, really?) so I shudder to think what it would be like if they got to make my planets secede.

What I'd like better is if a Criminal Syndicate could make a clandestine agreement with an empire it's operating in that would give bonuses to both. Maybe Enforcers would reduce crime less, but would provide more Unity and possibly Stability, while the annoying crime events would get blocked. So you'd get more crime, but fewer bad effects from the crime. The host then benefits from more Unity and higher general productivity at the expense of TV while the Criminal Syndicate has an easier time operating.

The problem is that it's already not fun to play against criminal syndicates - the solution to criminal syndicates on your planet is "stop what you're doing and build enforcer buildings until the branch office goes away". That's not fun for anyone because there's a big lack of back-and-forth which makes the whole interaction feel shallow.

I would certainly tie fixing criminal syndicates into their having unique operations, but the problem is that at the moment espionage itself probably needs fixing because the counterplay for that is also simple and passive. If espionage were more interactive, fixing criminal syndicates would of course be a synch, but as is the problem is that, from the recipient end, espionage is basically just something which happens at you, not something you really interact with. Fixing this core gameplay issue is probably the real problem with criminal syndicates.

I feel like turning criminal syndicates into another mutually beneficial economic tool kinda screws up their whole "economic warfare" deal, but giving them a "deal with the devil" vibe could be ok 'cause I don't feel like the niche is well filled either.

 

[SaintD]

The problem is that crime and enforcers are completely and totally pointless additions to the game. They serve basically no good gameplay purpose. Like.....what is crime supposed to be doing? Some sort of additional pop job tax like bureaucrats for having a large population? I don't know. And even if a dev walked in here and tried to lay out a detailed explanation, I'm gonna straight up call bull***t on it because I'm certain they don't know what the actual hell it's supposed to be for at this point. They could secretly remove it and the vast majority of the player base would probably fail to notice, and completely forget it existed a few minutes after they found out.

So there's a normally completely pointless number that taxes one or two pops on a planet for some unknown, byzantine game design reason, and 'crime syndicate' rocks up and the only interaction available with this crime mechanic is to launch the number straight to the f***ing moon. Because that's all it CAN do. It's just a little number that does basically nothing normally. It's never been expanded on, never reconsidered, nothing. It's just....there....eating one or two pops.

'Crime' is such a completely dead mechanic in the game that anything interacting with it is going to be similarly dead on arrival. Crime needs to be overhauled to actually do something before you can even think about fixing criminal syndicates.

Ok, so, whatever, let's spitball. Rename crime to 'corruption' and it works as a tiny total percentage (that also has a cap dependent on various local and empire factors) that is what's lost from the final produced yields on the planet (so everything is calculated up, and corruption happens last to take from that final number). Normally, that corruption loss just disappears into the aether, but when a criminal syndicate sets up on the planet they're essentially taking over local crime and all the corruption losses go directly to THEM, and their offices work to increase that corruption. As a balancing act, higher levels of corruption start unlocking planet decisions and edicts allowing a victim greater and greater levels of direct intervention at the expense of paying for those interventions, none of which exist at a lower level of corruption. Even further, the criminal branch office still provides some tasty pop jobs as part of the buildings, so.....hey, we're servin' the community, an' you make a little bit on the side, what's the problem? You gotta pretty wife and nice kid to care for, I just wanna help ya out....

Now a criminal syndicate left to run wild will essentially be stealing a couple percent of the output of the entire galaxy. Presumably, it should hook into subterfuge and whatnot to also make it somewhat realistic in that a completely out-of-hand galactic criminal syndicate is able to bribe, intimidate and murder politicians everywhere.

 

[DeanTheDull]

Criminal Syndicates have a couple issues that make them less-fun on multiple levels.


There are a couple issues, for both defenders and those playing Syndicates, with their current operations.

1- The Syndicate doesn't need a commercial pact to set up an office.
This is the early-game tradeoff vis-a-vis other MegaCorps, and obviously the Crime Syndicate shouldn't be looking for legal invites to operate. On the other hand, this means that dynamic of a Syndicate-office is a unidirectional one. The target not only doesn't get a say in if it's done, but- worse- has no way to have a say in how it's done. There is no way to, say, strike a devil's bargain with a Syndicate in which you give them access/better rewards in exchange for mitigating the problems. The Defender is purely reactive in dealing/mitigating with the issue, with no pro-active options to pay off/pay-away the problem for a time (ie, a Danegeld option to protect one's self for 10 years or so).

With only two defenses available- more enforcers, or warring the Syndicate into the ground- there's little flexibility for the defender in 'how' to manage the Syndicate.


2- Syndicate Offices can only be booted out 1 a decade...
IIRC this was a 3.0 change to make CS more viable in the face of AI enforcer-spam. While in the early game there's only one world per empire with a decent income return (the homeworlds), in the early/mid-game it used to be non-viable because enforcers would easily remove all crime, which after awhile closes the branch office. Syndicate Branch Offices would be money and influence sinks with minimal returns short of a RNG crime spiral outnumbering enforcers, and even that could only maybe be covered with specific branch offices that kept up with 2 enforcers per 5 pop building slots. With branch offices being closed only 1 a decade, the Syndicates can afford to replace offices, but defenders have pretty much no means to peacefully eject a Syndicate.

3- ...but Syndicate Offices are closed entirely, rather than specific buildings.
When a Syndicate Office is booted for low-crime, the entire branch office is ejected at once, and all buildings are lost. While the energy/minerals of the buildings isn't that big a deal, the influence/energy of a Branch Office establishment-cost are substantial. Syndicates are one of the influence-hungriest civs in the game, and there is no longevity expectation aside from the overall limit on Office Closures. Aside from being very annoying for the Syndicate player, it also is driving the 1-a-decade limit on the Defender closures, which in turn is limiting the Defender's peaceful options to deal with the Syndicate.

If Low Crime closed buildings rather than the Branch Office (unless, say, there were no buildings), then you could remove the one-a-decade limit and let the overall flow of the relationship be one of 'Defender regularly removes Syndicate buildings, getting a temporary reprieve', while 'Syndicate replaces buildings, keeping them engaged with targets.'

This would be my strongest recommendation, because if you change this dynamic then you could balance peace-time competition around this idea of feuding over the Syndicate Buildings rather than the (1000+ energy/50+influence) very expensive Branch Offices. You could give both players options- as Operations, or Diplomatic Dealings, or Planetary Decisions, or Edicts, or changes to Branch Office building options- to exploit it.


4- Syndicates and normal Mega-Corps have poor options in dealing with each other.
...which is especially annoying as the game seems to populate your galaxy with more mega-corps if you are one.

Branch Offices are generally a 'first come first serve' dynamic for getting on planets. Unless an empire is weak AND hated enough for an expropriation war, there is no other means to remove them. Once emplaced, the main tool for replacing eachother is the 'Hostile Takeover' casus belli, which lets the winning corporation take the branch offices of the other (aside from those on the loser's Federation Allies). What this generally means is that Mega-Corps will want to form a trade-federation in which they are the only member, and monopolize the branch office value of all the members while competing for those outside of the Federation.

However, Criminal Syndicates can't access the casus belli. Which means that Syndicates are nearly hard-countered by normal Mega Corps. If a Syndicate Branch Office is closed, another Mega-Corp can sweep into the vacancy, but a Syndicate has extremely limited options to replace a normal corp. A Syndicate can't ideology war a rival Mega-Corp to remove their branches because they'd still be a mega-corp at the end. A Syndicate can't vassalize/integrate because, as a mega-corp, Syndicates can't have vassals to integrate. A Syndicate can't force/trick/drive an empire to launch an expropriation war on another empire, because the tools don't exist. (The 'Sabotage relations' intel operation is random, not directed.) The only way for a Syndicate to replace an accepted mega-corp is to use influence to claim and conquer either the target planets or the rival mega-corp directly. For what is already one of the influence-hungriest civs in the game.

This wouldn't be so bad if Branch Offices weren't so all-or-nothing, but Syndicates need options for replacing other Mega-Corps. The Hostile Takeover would be one, but if not that then at least Operations that can reliably eject rival mega-corps from planets you want to set up on.

 

[zZander56]

If Low Crime closed buildings rather than the Branch Office (unless, say, there were no buildings), then you could remove the one-a-decade limit and let the overall flow of the relationship be one of 'Defender regularly removes Syndicate buildings, getting a temporary reprieve', while 'Syndicate replaces buildings, keeping them engaged with targets.'

This would be my strongest recommendation, because if you change this dynamic then you could balance peace-time competition around this idea of feuding over the Syndicate Buildings rather than the (1000+ energy/50+influence) very expensive Branch Offices. You could give both players options- as Operations, or Diplomatic Dealings, or Planetary Decisions, or Edicts, or changes to Branch Office building options- to exploit it.

This is a really solid suggestion.

4- Syndicates and normal Mega-Corps have poor options in dealing with each other.
...which is especially annoying as the game seems to populate your galaxy with more mega-corps if you are one.

Branch Offices are generally a 'first come first serve' dynamic for getting on planets. Unless an empire is weak AND hated enough for an expropriation war, there is no other means to remove them. Once emplaced, the main tool for replacing eachother is the 'Hostile Takeover' casus belli, which lets the winning corporation take the branch offices of the other (aside from those on the loser's Federation Allies). What this generally means is that Mega-Corps will want to form a trade-federation in which they are the only member, and monopolize the branch office value of all the members while competing for those outside of the Federation.

However, Criminal Syndicates can't access the casus belli. Which means that Syndicates are nearly hard-countered by normal Mega Corps. If a Syndicate Branch Office is closed, another Mega-Corp can sweep into the vacancy, but a Syndicate has extremely limited options to replace a normal corp. A Syndicate can't ideology war a rival Mega-Corp to remove their branches because they'd still be a mega-corp at the end. A Syndicate can't vassalize/integrate because, as a mega-corp, Syndicates can't have vassals to integrate. A Syndicate can't force/trick/drive an empire to launch an expropriation war on another empire, because the tools don't exist. (The 'Sabotage relations' intel operation is random, not directed.) The only way for a Syndicate to replace an accepted mega-corp is to use influence to claim and conquer either the target planets or the rival mega-corp directly. For what is already one of the influence-hungriest civs in the game.

This wouldn't be so bad if Branch Offices weren't so all-or-nothing, but Syndicates need options for replacing other Mega-Corps. The Hostile Takeover would be one, but if not that then at least Operations that can reliably eject rival mega-corps from planets you want to set up on.

And these are some really good points.