Criminal Heritage Restructured

Criminal Heritage Restructured is a mod designed to bring Criminal Heritage from one of those pick-on-start civics that feels like a weird economic-changing civics, to a pick-on-start civic that feels like it has total game-play changes.

This mod contains:
Two new sets of policies specifically for criminal syndicates that modify rulers, criminals, enforcement, and decisions on all of your branch offices

A new ascension perk for criminal syndicates that unlocks a new espionage operation

Allows your criminal councilor to be an official

Changes to the logic of closing branch offices

Before I deep dive into the features of the mods, I wanna talk about compatibility real quick. To do what this mod does, I needed to touch all the ruler jobs, the criminal job, and enforcers and telepaths. I also needed to touch the criminal heritage civic, as well as the councilor for it. It also touches the crime-related holdings for criminal heritage. And finally it touches the crime-decisions as well as the event related to closing branch offices. With all of that said, each of those is an overwrite by necessity, and unfortunately will not be directly compatible with any mods that overwrite the same files. If you’d like to use this mod with other mods that overwrite the same things, I recommend loading this mod last, and I will be working on some patches for my favorite mods to make this work as well.

The Content:

I’ve implemented two sets of policies with 3 options each (and a turn-off option).

The first is called Undermine Enforcement, and has to do with directly interacting with the law enforcement on your branch offices’ planets. The effects of this policy are modified based on if the host empire is using the Anti-Crime Campaign decision, and if they have the police state civic, and effects both enforcers and telepaths. To see the effects of this policy, you must build a smuggling port on the planets you want to see undermined. The policies are as follows:

Bribery: Good old fashioned bribery, you pay each of their law enforcement agents some energy to reduce their crime fighting capabilities. If they enact the anti-crime campaign on that planet, then in addition to this crime reduction debuff being completely mitigated, the host empire has to outbuy your bribes, adding a hefty energy upkeep to their enforcers and telepaths

Flood the Drug Market: You’re flooding the drug markets of your branch offices’ worlds with products stamped with your flag, increasing public resentment against the law enforcement agents efforts against your operations. You pay their enforcers and telepaths a consumer good upkeep in order to reduce the happiness of all pops on the planet per filled enforcement job. If they enact the anti-crime campaign on their planets, while the host empire doesn’t have any additional upkeep, the happiness debuff is doubled.

Arm Gangs: You arm local gangs with alloys in order to reduce the stability of the planet per enforcer as they escalate local conflicts. Your upkeep for their enforcers is alloys, and if they enact the anti-crime campaign the stability is brought to +0 instead of -1 per enforcement agent, but also costs the host empire alloys per enforcement agent.

All of these policies are modified in the host empire’s favor if they have police state as a civic

The second group of policies are called Shake the Right Hands. These policies are built around paying the rulers of planets with a disinformation center an upkeep in order to bolster your criminals’ capabilities. If the host empire takes a crime lord deal, the effects on your criminals increases, and they gain special benefits on each of their rulers. These effects are also increased by if they take specific civics that add special ruler jobs, as well as aristocratic elite increasing all of these policies. The policies are as follows:

Feed Information: You pay each of the rulers on planets with a disinformation center a research upkeep, and get a portion of that research back through your criminals. If the host empire decides to take a crime lord deal, you get more research back through your criminals, and their rulers gain increased capabilities for their spy networks. In addition, if they have technocracy or aristocratic elite, both their benefits and your criminals’ benefits are increased

Racketeering: You pay each of the rulers on planets with a disinformation center a unity upkeep, and reduce the amount of trade that your criminals steal in order to funnel more back into your branch office. If the host empire decides to take a crime lord deal, your criminals reduce even less trade, and their rulers gain a significant amount of amenities output. In addition, if they have merchant guilds or aristocratic elite, both their benefits and your criminals’ benefits are increased

Political Corruption: You pay each of the rulers on planets with a disinformation center an influence upkeep, and your disinformation center will reduce the empire size of all your branch offices and reduce the cost of new branch offices. If the host empire decides to take a crime lord deal, your disinformation center further reduces your branch offices’ empire size and cost, and their rulers will reduce the empire size of all of their empire’s pops. In addition, if they have Exalted Priesthood or aristocratic elite, both their benefits and your disinformation centers’ benefits are increased (Dev note, I would have loved to attach this to criminals instead of your disinformation centers to keep with the theme of the other policies, however getting the scope of your empire from their criminals is a total pain in the ass and decently expensive computationally, so it’s for the best both on my end and the players’ end to attach it to the disinformation center in order to reduce lag)

The next thing this mod adds is a new ascension perk called subversive operations. This ascension perk adds -10% branch office cost (the base civic now only adds -10% as well, so don’t worry about ridiculously cheap branch offices unless you’re doing political corruption) and an official slot to your empire, and unlocks a new operation called crime wave (Whose name I should absolutely change at some point because of the same-named planetary modifier that can be added by criminal underworld). This operation doubles the crime output of your branch offices and buildings on branch offices for 10 years, and disables the host empires’ ability to close your branch offices for 15 years. I also added special modifiers to the policies mentioned above based on different assets that you can use in the operation, have fun figuring out the combinations yourself!

Lastly, your branch offices can’t be closed if you’re the overlord of an empire you have branch office on. I’ve also modified the ai to more realistically choose the crime decisions based on certain factors such as your policies, their status as a criminal syndicates’ subject, their civics, etc.

TODO for currently implemented content: Some more AI tweaks, triple-checking localisation stuff (I currently have no idea if the event message you get for having a crime wave enacted on you works properly or not), and overall balancing. Please feel free to leave feedback regarding balance regarding currently implemented features as well as pointing out any bugs!

Compatibility Patches:
More Criminals Mod https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3240358094