Criminal Heritage

[Cadmus]

Had a recommendation to try a Criminal Heritage Megacorp, with Subterranean Origin.

Being hearing a lot of mixed things about the Criminal Heritage Civic and I wanted to get some advice on it :)

[mss73055]

Lick up to a federation, and then troll the @ out of them.
Else you will get stomped by the galaxy like you're a genocidal without boons.

[HappySack]

Bottomline it's bad.

Anyway considering your main gimmick as a MegaCorp is trade I personally prefer to play with Void Dwellers instead, with Gospel of the Masses and Fanatic Spiritualist as an ethic you swim in money the moment the game starts and of course you can convert it into free consumer goods and unity once you speed through the Mercantile tradition on the account of being spiritualist.

And as you're playing more tall you have more influence to make branch offices with but the problem here is that you can't target colonies that don't have unused building slots because the AI will immediately build precinct stations to plummet crime to 0% in response, so basically you can only ever touch homeworlds.

[Astasia]

Originally posted by Nekros185:

I wanted to get some advice on it :)

My advice is, pick a different civic.

[Oakshadow]

It's a counter intuitive civic to play which makes it really hard. When you play a normal megacorp your goal is to establish branch offices and to keep them as long as possible.

But when it comes to a criminal syndicate megacorp you actually wield your branch offices more like weapons than you use them for profit.

Keep in mind you can't play a criminal syndicate as a peaceful empire. You have to go the military route. Supremacy and Espionage are the two tradition trees you want to grab early on. Do not bother trying to make friends. Only improve relations to stall out an empire attempting to harm relations to the point of declaring war.

All the rest of your envoys should be working as spymasters. When you target an empire for branch offices..... spam them until most if not all of their colonies have one. Use rivalries to boost your influence gain.... and hit your neighbors while you generate enough intel to determine their relative strength. (if you blitz the first empire you find they are sometimes still weaker than you, making it an easy subjugation)

Once you've got you're ready to fight, close your branch offices and aim to subjugate.
After you do that don't reestablish your branch offices or you'll risk your subject having a rebellion and becoming a new empire that isn't your subject.

Rinse and repeat.

The thing you have to remember is that Syndicates play like flares. You're branch offices give you an enormous temporary boost to your income, weakening your enemy and allowing you to out build them for a very short time. However as the AI builds precinct houses in response your income will diminish until the income from your offices gets too low to be worth it. They AI won't remove those building either, at least not until they've exhausted all other avenues of increasing their economy.

If you spam your branch offices too much too early you'll burn out and the one advantage you have as a syndicate will be useless. Make sure you're only establishing branch offices against enemies you're currently trying to build up to fight.... and save your long term branch office goals for empires that are already struggling or are actively at war. As it'll take longer for them to respond to their presence.

I'm still tinkering with some non-conventional strategies to make the play style more viable. For example you can use expropriation wars as a way to subjugate without closing your offices.... but you have to have a weaker fleet starting out and provoke the target empire into declaring war against you.

Also thinking about how you might be able to utilize the expel population mechanic to overwhelm a neighboring empire's planets to help generate more crime and weaken them further. But this one is sort of a catch 22.... since you're basically giving an enemy empire more pops for free.... and there's no guarantee they'll end up in the empire you're currently targeting. So I have to experiment a bit.

Also And this is just a good strategy in general..... soon as you can find marauders utilize them against your target. Early game especially they're really effective at laying havoc to the AI's fleets. Which can swing the war in your favor.. Even if you think you've got it in the bag.... No resistance is still better than some resistance.

Hope this helps.

Edit: almost forgot..... And it's actually really important. When the AI start forming federations use your envoys to spam smear campaigns so that you can break the federations up. IF you have enough momentum going, you should be able to keep any major federation for cropping up to oppose you.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Jay:

All the rest of your envoys should be working as spymasters. When you target an empire for branch offices..... spam them until most if not all of their colonies have one. Use rivalries to boost your influence gain.... and hit your neighbors while you generate enough intel to determine their relative strength. (if you blitz the first empire you find they are sometimes still weaker than you, making it an easy subjugation)

Once you've got you're ready to fight, close your branch offices and aim to subjugate.
After you do that don't reestablish your branch offices or you'll risk your subject having a rebellion and becoming a new empire that isn't your subject.

Rinse and repeat.

"First, you shoot yourself in the knee, then you break your own ankles, and then you fight the enemy, that's how you play a Criminal Megacorp properly."

[Sedmeister]

I love my criminal syndicate empires. I have one particular build modelled on the Pyke Syndicate in Star Wars. Most of the advice I would give had been covered already.

One thing that hasn't been covered, make friends with your most powerful neighbour and DON'T open branch offices on any of their worlds. Keep on good terms with them and form a defensive pact with them ASAP.

[Cadmus]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Originally posted by Jay:

All the rest of your envoys should be working as spymasters. When you target an empire for branch offices..... spam them until most if not all of their colonies have one. Use rivalries to boost your influence gain.... and hit your neighbors while you generate enough intel to determine their relative strength. (if you blitz the first empire you find they are sometimes still weaker than you, making it an easy subjugation)

Once you've got you're ready to fight, close your branch offices and aim to subjugate.
After you do that don't reestablish your branch offices or you'll risk your subject having a rebellion and becoming a new empire that isn't your subject.

Rinse and repeat.

"First, you shoot yourself in the knee, then you break your own ankles, and then you fight the enemy, that's how you play a Criminal Megacorp properly."

LMFAO!!!!