Crime!

[Shrugging Khan]

So, Crime. Crime!

Crime is an abstract value that comes from a bunch of sources. It is not dependant on population.

I came to realise the significance of this when my city of 50 crime and 3000 population jumped to 1000 crime the next turn, after which it proceeded to depopulate itself down to a sort of equilibrium at 1000 crime and 200 population.

I had about six or seven police stations spread all over and a cultural bonus to police, so all that came a bit suddenly. I guess my population just went full Mad Max and turned the city into a dystopian anarchy, but still - no fun. I guess the sudden rise in crime came about from some cascade event in which crime injured the police workers, who could no longer police, thus increasing crime...and so on.

In any event, might it be good to cap crime-related events somehow; perhaps based on population?
Would it be good to get some advance warning about such events?
Should criminals maybe die off for a while after such events?

Because as it is, it's practically a game over. As the player, I was completely incapacitated.

[Aklyon]

I had a ton of crime happen when I replaced a couple of my few police stations with riot police, but once the population recovered (mine had stabilized at 100 population and no remaining crime) I had much less problems.

[nas1m]

As a hint, you might be able to garner some population and thus police force by microing your buildings (as in disabling everything that does not create births  or police as well as anything you strictly need at the moment).

At least this worked for me in my current game.
I sure was tedious, though.

[Shrugging Khan]

Yeah, I figured I could do that. But as a player, I'd never do something like that with the 90 buildings I had. I'd rather scrap the game and start over, or play something else.

...some people hate micro-management.

[ptarth]

I started this a while back, but it got no traction: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,17428.0.html
I believe it still is relevant.

The major Crime component is coming from building count. The next two major contributors are pollution and population. Changes are being made to make crime the limiter on city size and it isn't working. I had hoped the changes would have relaxed the constraint of having riot police placed at 2 space intervals, however now I believe the answer is riot police at every 1 space interval, but only the building that suffer crime. It isn't fun.

[crazyroosterman]

personally aside from the suggestions made already I've been thinking it would be good to robotasize police stations it would mean that situations were your police all get shanked and you then have no way of fighting crime would not happen.

[ptarth]

I don't like the trend towards removing employment and using robots everywhere. I believe this is the result of where the player's turn is positioned relative to when things are processed in a turn and the information provided by the GUI (see other thread for details). If this continues everything will be done by robots and employment will not matter.

[Vacuity]

As Shrugging Khan said, the alternative is micromanaging the status of three- or fourscore plus buildings due to a freefalling population.  That's an exceedingly protracted series of clicks for something that's not fundamentally very interesting.

I'm going to throw out a suggestion of my own lifted from the old Impressions Games city builders.  If people have never played any of them (yes, they're a bit old, like me), I can provide a screenshot of the relevant section of GUI, but essentially it allowed the player to shut down entire industries with a single click.  If you didn't want/need to continue producing bronze?  One click and it's automatically shut down and the workers reallocated or unemployed.  In need of spare men to defend against an imminent invasion?  Well, you've a huge stockpile of {product_x}, so shut that down with one click and use the manpower for as long as necessary where it's really needed.  This kind of system would be a decent halfway option to me.

Is a screenshot of the relevant GUI section desired?  I haven't played any of the game in a very long time indeed, so don't have a save game with multiple industries available, and my Google-fu is failing me...

[crazyroosterman]

hate to burst your bubble but you can already do that in the city management screen you double click on the line between the number of currently active buildings and max buildings over all granted it is fairly obscure and probably needs changing to just clicking on either side of the line.

[Shrugging Khan]

Sounds extremely useful. That really ought to be more visible.

[crazyroosterman]

agreed when Chris first patched it in I had a hell of a time figuring out that out also my quarantine/toxic screening/genetic screening seem to have disappeared I should probably mantis that.