Criminal Metagame - Empire of Criminals Running Every Starbase

Currently, I don't see a way to change traits on citizens, and in particular, get rid of the Criminal trait. So the only efficient workaround is to build a constructor and send them to build starbases. So now I have a metagame where most of my starbases are being run by citizens with a criminal trait and with no apparent downside. Is this working as intended?

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Reply #1 Top

That's what a lot of the rest of us are doing, too. You can turn a criminal into an ex-con by putting them in prison (click on citizen portrait and select imprison). After some number of turns you can retrain them as worker/scientist/etc.

Or with the right combination of policies, ideologies, improvements, and/or Ministry of Justice you can ignore the criminals because crime is suppressed.

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Reply #2 Top

Ok thanks, that's what I figured Imprison would do, but I didn't know how many turns it would take to remove the Criminal Trait, and generally speaking, missing out on a citizen's production for a few turns is not worth it.

And yes, late game crime doesn't really matter, but early-mid game if you aren't proactively displacing Criminals (via Constructor), then you could really get too many Criminal spawns where it becomes an issue.

Reply #3 Top

Early game the Security Lights policy (if you have it available) can be a big help with crime. Since the -5% crime applies to all colonies, it can wipe out the contribution of all colonies to your core worlds.