Issue: Criminal Syndicate, The AI and endless enforcer spam....

[Paestan]

Hello,

In my last game, I started as a "Criminal Church" and after meeting every other empire and spreading.... the love *cough* and totally legal things.... have I come across a major Issue.

The AI spams, as it seems, Precinct Houses, once crime gets over 10-20%, AS SOON as they get the next building slot and they don't stop, every time you try to get the crime back up they just throw in another Precinct House and they keep them for ever until they run out of building slots.

Through this have I not only lost every branch office, but I can't open any new ones! Because I would need to create in most empires over 100 crime, before they shut it down.... which in my futile attempts they did before the second building was even up, every, single, time. (And yes I even started with the Smuggler's Port for the +50 Crime)


The only work around I found was to wait until the Planets have only 1-2 Building slots left, or have over 100 Pops to get enough base crime.... but I really hope this is not what you had in mind for this mechanic. If this is working as intended then the best way to play criminal syndicate, would be to not be a criminal syndicate until the endgame....

 

[Hyomoto]

Well, this will be interesting to see. I mean, I would probably do it too. Crime is a product of opportunity: if you break in while someone is home and awake you wouldn't be surprised if they call the cops immediately. It might be intended, you are basically competing and damaging their flexibility by forcing them to respond to you.

 

[Paestan]

Yes, I can understand that view.

But the problem lies primarily in the AI, as it gets, based on the difficulty, buffs to their economy and they're less affected by problems we as player run into because of it. They can afford to build 4 Precinct Houses, making the entire playstyle of the Criminal Syndicate impossible to pull off. As I stated, the only way, at least I found in the past hours of testing around, to play a Criminal Syndicate, is to not get any branch offices until close to the endgame, when most of the AI planets are either close to or fully developed, as the AI seems to ignore even 90+ Crime once it filled out every building slot.

This makes the Criminal Syndicate horrible to play in the early to midgame, in special if you play a criminal church, and then you rake in insane benefits in the endgame as the AI does nothing against you anymore.... but if you started to early, you can forget to open a branch office ever again, because they will never demolish the Precinct Houses.

And this, feels wrong and not intentional.

 

[Hyomoto]

Might be, seems like an odd oversight. Granted it might have been missed during the devclash since they had bunch of players, the whole "sounds good on paper" but not in execution is plausible.

The question I would ask then, is what does the solution look like? Even if the player would have a harder time playing that way, it's clear the game has a "fix" that causes a severe detriment to a criminal empire. It seems to really fix that, the other player would have to have a this-or-that type solution: keep it and mould around it, or bleed resources fighting it. That way, yes, they can still kick you out, and you passively benefit from the cost involved, but it also gives you a chance to get a hold.

 

[Paestan]

I second the thought, that it might be an oversight. I need to wait on testing it against other players until the weekend, but from what I saw by personally trying to fight against the crime I could produce myself. I would cripple my economy severely until the Branch Office would be shut down and then rebuild back to what the planets economy was supposed to be, or just stop the crime from getting to high, as it is still giving me benefits, as long as the crime does not go out of hands.

A suggestion for an easy fix, would be to have the AI rebuild some of the Precinct Houses once a local Crime Branch has been shut down, and rebuild other buildings for Precinct Houses once a Crime Branch opened up at a later date again.

A more in depth fix, would be to have the AI weigh the deficit of the crime against the benefit of the Branch, together with weighing in the Edict / Civic choices of the empire. But as this would take horrendous amount of work in form of balance, I would doubt that we will ever see the AI this intelligent.

(Edit: These are 2 thoughts I had while writing this post, I would go more into detail but it is 3:30am for me ^^)

In the end, am I just looking if everything is working as intended and if so, never play a Criminal Syndicate outside of a bigger MP session.

 

[Paestan]

*looks left, then right, kicks the thread as it is now a more appropriate time to get an answer and then hides in the shadows to not get punched for bumping the thread*

 

[wormasc]

I also ran into this problem; I opened a branch office, built the highest crime generating building I could (which bumped crime up to above 50%), and then about a year later the AI was like 'oh hey crime', built one precinct housing, and crime immediately went back to zero, and the office was immediately shut down

 

[Tripodeu]

Yup same issue.
Some empires already pre-spam their capital with precinct houses just for being in close proximity to you.

 

[SteelVolt]

Hello,

In my last game, I started as a "Criminal Church" and after meeting every other empire and spreading.... the love *cough* and totally legal things.... have I come across a major Issue.

The AI spams, as it seems, Precinct Houses, once crime gets over 10-20%, AS SOON as they get the next building slot and they don't stop, every time you try to get the crime back up they just throw in another Precinct House and they keep them for ever until they run out of building slots.

Through this have I not only lost every branch office, but I can't open any new ones! Because I would need to create in most empires over 100 crime, before they shut it down.... which in my futile attempts they did before the second building was even up, every, single, time. (And yes I even started with the Smuggler's Port for the +50 Crime)


The only work around I found was to wait until the Planets have only 1-2 Building slots left, or have over 100 Pops to get enough base crime.... but I really hope this is not what you had in mind for this mechanic. If this is working as intended then the best way to play criminal syndicate, would be to not be a criminal syndicate until the endgame....

Believe it or not, this issue used to be much worse. The AI used to queue up as many as it could afford, because it did not register the effects of one being built. Now it should only build one at a time if there is still crime.

While I have played a crime syndicate under these circumstances without getting completely shut down, I agree that it really needs a balance pass.

Some empires already pre-spam their capital with precinct houses just for being in close proximity to you.

It's more likely that crime used to be higher there, and it hasn't replaced the buildings. The reluctance to replace is also a thing that will be looked at.

 

[Paestan]

Thanks for clarification <3 Can't wait to fully enjoy my totally legal and not back-alley church


(And I can believe it, I often had fun to break AI's / Systems in other games I played with... often the weirdest start up and outcome.... If you place a mine there, the AI will approach it, notice it, start disarming.... WHY THE FLUFF IS IT DANCING IN THE SKY )

 

[Tripodeu]

It's more likely that crime used to be higher there, and it hasn't replaced the buildings. The reluctance to replace is also a thing that will be looked at.

How high the crime had to be at roughly 50 years into the game for the AI to build 4 of those in a row?

 

[Paestan]

found this in my second play through this morning, was his second colony @Tripodeu (about 70years in)

 

[SteelVolt]

found this in my second play through this morning, was his second colony @Tripodeu (about 70years in)

View attachment 425564

But crime free

 

[Jabby]

Maybe wieght it so that AI only build enough to reduce crime to 0.

 

[RoverStorm]

How high the crime had to be at roughly 50 years into the game for the AI to build 4 of those in a row?

I don't think the amount of crime matters really. How I understand the AI works, it just says "is there more crime than my programming allows me to have for my AI personality?" If it is, then the next building will be a precinct house. If not, then it goes through similar questions until it determines what building to build next.

It also miiiiiiight check if neighboring_empire = has_criminal_syndicate_civic. If = yes, then it builds another precinct house until the economy DEMANDS something else, which takes a lot longer since AI get buffs to something related to economy.

 

[Paestan]

But crime free

Yeah, the definition of a police state... maybe this AI got inspired by a certain anarchist empire from somewhere *thinking*

 

[Tyrax Lightning]

Curiosity: Could Crime Corps have been meant to be more effective vs Empires far away from that Corp's turf then it is vs Empires much closer to the Corp's doorstep?

I have made my Criminal Church Corp Empire & wanna learn how this stuff works.

 

[starchitect]

Ive found the same thing, I looked into the AI weighting and did some tests here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...cinct-houses-enforcers.1134053/#post-24929934

I think the problem is the game doesnt know how negative its crime value is, both -300 crime and -1 total crime return as planet_crime = 0. So the AI has no idea how over policed its police state is. Is there a way to figure out the actual value of crime including if it is negative as an in game modifier? Possible a custom variable that sums the effects?

 

[starchitect]

For now, a short term fix would be putting back in the first AI weight modifier to precinct houses. It used to make the AI never build precinct houses until there was positive crime on the planet, but was commented out, I assume because of crime spirals. But its too far in the other direction now

 

[BarnCape]

Sorry for hijacking the thread but how exactly can I create a custom empire thats a criminal syndicate or church? I can get one from generate random empire, but none of the criminal civics are in the list when I use create new.