Player feedback request: Crime removal.

[x4000]

I've been uncomfortable with Crime for a while in terms of how it works in the game.  I think that Misery sums it up well:

So, the "total random" map type.... pretty fun.   Tried that out today, it really makes things interesting indeed.  Really have to shape strategies based on how the region is shaped and what tiles are where, and smiting and adding tiles yourself becomes more important.

Overall, things are really looking good here.... except for one thing:   http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=11477


The crime system... seems a bit of a mess.  On Hard, half of the game becomes JUST anti-crime stuffs (which mostly consists of finding ways to spam more basic military buildings and related production buildings) and building more cities to house resources to be used by the anti-crime stuffs (which themselves must still contain a blob of random military buildings to prevent the crime in the resource city).   The actual battles between units and all of that became.... trivial.     There was actually LESS strategy here as time went on.

The impression I get about the crime system is that it is there to encourage the player to make a decent amount of military buildings on each side, so that there's always a large-ish number of units (thus being more difficult to manage).  I have to wonder, though, if there arent better ways of doing this.   But also, it's just very.... monotonous.  The player has very little in the way of actual options, and even less in the way of real strategy, to specifically deal with crime.  Makes city-building less interesting also as it gets more and more out of control.


Definitely thinking that this needs some sort of change;  I was finding it really hurt the gameplay as a whole.   I dont know what to suggest here specifically, but.... one way or another, I really think it simply doesnt work.   I would much rather base my city designs on current plans/strategies, and also on reactions to the current situation, and stuff like that, rather than constantly fighting a simple arbitrary number that just wont stop rising.

The goals of crime were to make it so that you couldn't just have completely passive towns that sat around just doing nothing but being peaceful and generating resources or pursuing diplomacy.  When that sort of thing happens, the whole enlightenment model is really quite out of balance, as well as making it really easy to have too-protected resource producers.

THAT said, the following negative things about crime have been bugging me (as well as clearly others):
- The too-protected resource producers thing is still happening anyhow.
- It does create too-homogenous towns.
- The stats for crime aren't very visible, and the effects of it aren't very clear (bad kind of complexity).
- This has almost no effect on the lower difficulties, and on the higher ones potentially has too much.
- Diplomacy isn't really affected too much because bandits pose a threat anyhow, and you can't have towers and diplomacy since diplomats can't pass towers.

My thoughts on how to rectify this are chiefly to just remove crime.  With the woes system that is incoming, we can make the woes react to situations like resource production towns that are too unmolested, and have those towns be a special target for woes.  Although that gets back into the land of monotony, in many respects.  The simple fact is that it is FUN to build up big empires with well-protected innards.  I love mazes of walls that lead to enemies coming in and getting caught in my clever deathtraps -- how many times did I do that sort of thing in games like Empire Earth?  I find turtling fun, and that's basically what we're talking about here.

TLDR: I think that letting the player turtle is fine, and then just having the woes be random and cause chaos as they will in terms of which towns they strike and how, is the better course.  That way you aren't intentionally setting yourself up with a rubber-band system ala Mario Kart if you're being to effective with your turtling, etc.  That's never fun.

Thoughts?

[Mick]

With bandits you fight units. With crime you fight a number. I think crime should be removed and bandits pumped up a lot. Leaving a town in defended is already dangerous because bandits can pop up on any edge.

[Hearteater]

I could go either way.  Removing it is probably the right call given the time frame for release.

But, if you do want it, Imaybe:
1) Set a maximum Crime%, maybe 50%.
2) Crime% reduces all resource production and conversion in the town by that percent.
3) Crime% is fixed, based on the resource buildings you put in a town.  Each building would have another building(s) it doesn't like to be adjacent, which increases the Crime% by some fixed amount.
4) Each military building reduces Crime% by a fixed amount.

So you can either be careful how you construct your towns to keep Crime% low without Barracks, or use enough Barracks that you overcome the Crime%.

[chemical_art]

Behind the scene factors are important, but it would be better overall I think if bandits were buffed and crime was removed. This isn't like a Gs where you are expected to manage spreadsheets of numbers in your calculations.

[x4000]

Going with Mick's idea on the bandits thing, what if we revamped how bandits are spawned?  Right now it's just a global number and bandits appear periodically based on the number, always on new tiles that are coming into the game (aside from the dead forest spawns, which are a different matter).  What if, instead:

1. There was no global "bandit spawn counter."
2. Instead there was a "percent chance of bandit spawn" on each tile on the map.  This starts at 0% and counts up every turn for every tile.
3. Every time a military unit is produced, the bandit spawn counter is reduced a certain amount in a certain radius.
4. If the percent chance gets high enough that a bandit spawns on a tile, then all the tiles within a certain radius of the tile that just got the bandit revert to 0% chance of a bandit for now.


There's a good chance that would be a #$^$& to balance, though...

[Mick]

Hmm it's interesting, but I don't really know if that complexity adds much. I think the system as it is now works fine if you just increase the spawn rate a lot more. On normal, the spawn rate is a trickle, and the bandits feel like gnats.

[chemical_art]

For me, that almost goes to the crime's problem of behind the scenes numbers...

In a grand strategy game, you often gain arbitrary chance of rebellion, etc. In those games, as you are in effect a dictator (benevolent or otherwise) and having to manage big things, while your vassals manage little things, so random rebellions which are annoying but not threatening are OK.

In this game though, with you not having direct control, and having the potential of random things causing game loss, a global RNG just...doesn't sound fun.

[Winge]

I like that idea, but I would add the following nuance:

I would make each tile have a relative spawn chance.  Military Buildings and Town Centers have no chance to spawn bandits.  Resource Buildings would have a very small chance (you never know what a beleaguered Wheat farmer will do).  Plains have your 'baseline' chance to spawn bandits.  Forests, Inhabited Forests, and Hills have a slightly higher chance.  Swamps higher still.  Finally, Dead Forests have the highest chance to spawn bandits.  Impasses and empty tiles do nothing, of course.

It would work similar to Threat in AVWW2

[iozay]

I don't really like the idea of crime. So yup, remove the unnecessary clutter for the sake of fun

[madcow]

I'm all for removing crime.

[Greywolf22]

I agree that removing crime would be a good idea.  Although I will say that the randomly spawning bandits definitely do make me rethink my strategy when they appear.  So while I'm not in favor of crime, I do like the bandits.

[Penumbra]

3. Every time a military unit is produced, the bandit spawn counter is reduced a certain amount in a certain radius.

I think there is an inherent problem with linking the production of military units and bandit spawning. Military units already battle bandits, with more units being able to defeat more bandits.

If a larger military had the benefit of having fewer bandits to fight, it would be a double advantage. I don't really see how they could be directly related.

[orzelek]

Going with Mick's idea on the bandits thing, what if we revamped how bandits are spawned?  Right now it's just a global number and bandits appear periodically based on the number, always on new tiles that are coming into the game (aside from the dead forest spawns, which are a different matter).  What if, instead:

1. There was no global "bandit spawn counter."
2. Instead there was a "percent chance of bandit spawn" on each tile on the map.  This starts at 0% and counts up every turn for every tile.
3. Every time a military unit is produced, the bandit spawn counter is reduced a certain amount in a certain radius.
4. If the percent chance gets high enough that a bandit spawns on a tile, then all the tiles within a certain radius of the tile that just got the bandit revert to 0% chance of a bandit for now.


There's a good chance that would be a #$^$& to balance, though...

This sounds... "Fun" +1 from me
Coming out with numbers for tiles, growth and reductions per turn would be a bit of work. But with stuff like randomization of starting values per tile it would be a good alternative to current crime mechanics.

@Penumbra:
This system is not directly about more military = less bandits. It's all about location - you would have safe and dangerous areas depending on where is your military created.

[Pepisolo]

Crime in it's current incarnation definitely seems poor to me. It should certainly be overhauled or removed.

I would make each tile have a relative spawn chance.  Military Buildings and Town Centers have no chance to spawn bandits.  Resource Buildings would have a very small chance (you never know what a beleaguered Wheat farmer will do).  Plains have your 'baseline' chance to spawn bandits.  Forests, Inhabited Forests, and Hills have a slightly higher chance.  Swamps higher still.  Finally, Dead Forests have the highest chance to spawn bandits.  Impasses and empty tiles do nothing, of course.

Sounds good to me in conjunction with the bandit spawn revamp. Might provide an incentive to be even more thoughtful about where you build stuff, too.

[Mick]

I think of AI War, and how fun that would be if building up turrets and military meant that the AI sent waves less often or with less ships in it.

I think it's more fun if you build a bigger military to deal with the bandits that spawn, not build a big military to make them spawn less. As someone else said, it's a "double advantage" that way.