Loving the potential of the criminal playstyle as it's about the closest to spying we can currently get; but my play experience with them is showing that criminal empires are currently lacking a certain amount of polish. Feedback of issues I've noticed as follows, currently playing 2.2.4:
1, The AI is still over-reacting to crime from branch offices when planets are still developing. I've had the AI cripple its planets trying to eradicate medium levels of crime with precincts at the expense of amenities, food and housing - it really should prioritise the basics of avoiding starvation and societal collapse before thinking about crime.
2, Likewise the AI doesn't react to crime at all in the late game when you open a branch office on a planet with its buildings full, it never seems to take a decision to replace a building with a precinct office when required, or to replace redundant precinct offices after a branch office has been successfully closed down.
3, The Expropriation Cassus Belli isn't explained properly in the war goals and war screen, making no mention of the fact that any systems you occupy as the criminal empire will break off as a subsidiary in event of status quo - you are also incorrectly offered the chance to set your own war goal as the defender, such as humiliate, but it gets over-ruled by expropriation.
4, I appear to be unable to do anything to kick out normal megacorporation offices from an empire, however they are able to use the "Hostile Takeover" Cassus Belli on me to kick out my branch offices. This makes it impossible for me to get a foothold into certain empires.
5, Subsidiaries continue to persist with attempting to stamp out your branch offices despite being under your rule, which makes little sense. It would be good and flavourful if subsidiaries automatically switched to activating "Crime Lord Deal" on all of their planets if relations are "Loyal".
6, A crime empire ends up banking up large amounts of influence with little to use it on - it would be good to be able to use it somehow to increase the levels of crime on planets and as such have a way to fight back against enforcer spam and keep branch offices open, albeit at a cost.
7, Building on the spy aspect of criminal branch offices, I would love to see a sensor outpost building for them that acts like a starbases listening post, and activates sensor vision.
8, It's rather unnatural to have to shut down all of your branch offices before going to war as a criminal empire and it jars the overall play experience - An alternate Cassus Belli would go a long way to improving the flow of their expansion. Have it trigger the current "Expropriation" war conditions but with the criminal empire as the aggressor and rather than closing branch offices, have it demolishes precincts. Top of my head here, but call it "Criminal Uprising" and only have it useable on empires with crime levels above a certain threshold - it would make high levels of crime much more risky to endure than it currently is and give criminal empires a much more natural path of expansion and conquest.
1, The AI is still over-reacting to crime from branch offices when planets are still developing. I've had the AI cripple its planets trying to eradicate medium levels of crime with precincts at the expense of amenities, food and housing - it really should prioritise the basics of avoiding starvation and societal collapse before thinking about crime.
2, Likewise the AI doesn't react to crime at all in the late game when you open a branch office on a planet with its buildings full, it never seems to take a decision to replace a building with a precinct office when required, or to replace redundant precinct offices after a branch office has been successfully closed down.
3, The Expropriation Cassus Belli isn't explained properly in the war goals and war screen, making no mention of the fact that any systems you occupy as the criminal empire will break off as a subsidiary in event of status quo - you are also incorrectly offered the chance to set your own war goal as the defender, such as humiliate, but it gets over-ruled by expropriation.
4, I appear to be unable to do anything to kick out normal megacorporation offices from an empire, however they are able to use the "Hostile Takeover" Cassus Belli on me to kick out my branch offices. This makes it impossible for me to get a foothold into certain empires.
5, Subsidiaries continue to persist with attempting to stamp out your branch offices despite being under your rule, which makes little sense. It would be good and flavourful if subsidiaries automatically switched to activating "Crime Lord Deal" on all of their planets if relations are "Loyal".
6, A crime empire ends up banking up large amounts of influence with little to use it on - it would be good to be able to use it somehow to increase the levels of crime on planets and as such have a way to fight back against enforcer spam and keep branch offices open, albeit at a cost.
7, Building on the spy aspect of criminal branch offices, I would love to see a sensor outpost building for them that acts like a starbases listening post, and activates sensor vision.
8, It's rather unnatural to have to shut down all of your branch offices before going to war as a criminal empire and it jars the overall play experience - An alternate Cassus Belli would go a long way to improving the flow of their expansion. Have it trigger the current "Expropriation" war conditions but with the criminal empire as the aggressor and rather than closing branch offices, have it demolishes precincts. Top of my head here, but call it "Criminal Uprising" and only have it useable on empires with crime levels above a certain threshold - it would make high levels of crime much more risky to endure than it currently is and give criminal empires a much more natural path of expansion and conquest.
