Empire of Sin News

Empire of Sin casts you in the role of a gangster in Chicago during the era of prohibition. It may not come as a surprise to you to discover that the basis of the economic system is about the illegal production and sale of alcohol. This is done via rackets.


There are four basic types of rackets in the game. Each Racket fills its own niche inside the economic system, and you can go for a balanced approach or focus on a single racket type.



[h3]Breweries[/h3]
As the name implies, Breweries are the source of your illicit alcohol. Although styled as a Brewery, the building also covers the production of spirits through illicit stills and wine by ignoring the clear warnings displayed on grape juice concentrate by the socially responsible grape producers of America. These buildings produce alcohol every week and cost money. Essentially, breweries are dead weight and lose you money unless you can find an outlet for all this alcohol you are producing.

[h3]Brothels[/h3]
The name implies that this racket is not in the primary business of selling alcohol. However, as part of the overall customer experience, alcohol will be served if you have any available. The supply of alcohol will simply allow the Brothel to make more money from its alcohol sales. These buildings provide a nice solid foundation to any criminal empire. If the so-called law enforcement starts targeting your Breweries, your Brothels will continue to supply that cash flow that will keep your empire going.

[h3]Speakeasies[/h3]
Speakeasies are the classic prohibition racket that serve alcohol and make a healthy profit doing so. Unlike the brothel, it will not make any money unless it is supplied with alcohol, thus this racket is vulnerable to disruptions in alcohol supply.

[h3]Casinos[/h3]
Make their money from gambling. Unlike the other racket types, their revenue is not stable and will fluctuate according to just how much lady luck smiles on people. A casino can also lose money if the house has a bad night. Supplying alcohol increases the sizes of the bets, meaning the Casino will earn more or lose more depending on the roll of the dice. In the long run, Casinos will make money and be nice earners for your criminal empire. On a week-to-week basis, they are unreliable, so you will want some buffer in your finances if you are going to rely on casinos for your revenue.


There are three ways to set up a racket.

• Purchase it: You can buy an available building and turn it into a racket at a cost.
  
• Take it over from thugs: You can also take over a derelict racket from local thugs and convert it into a racket. This is cheaper than buying one as the previous owner left it derelict, and all you need to do is make it yours and pay a cost to de-thug the interior.
  
• Take it over from another faction: You can take over a racket from another faction. If you keep it as the same racket, this is free (and by far the cheapest way to expand your empire!), but if you wish to change the racket type, then the takeover costs are identical to when you took it over from thugs.

There are other options to damage, loot and shutdown rackets. I will leave someone else to describe these fun little extras for you. However, I just want to let you know they are there to answer the question, “But what happens if I beat up some thugs and don’t have enough money to convert it into a racket?”


To make money, rackets need paying customers. Each neighbourhood in Chicago has a customer pool, and if there are more spaces in rackets than there are paying customers available, then rackets will start competing for customers based on a value called Draw. Draw is simply an expression of how much people are willing to go to a place. It is a number, and when it comes to using it, we compare the draw of the racket to the average draw in the neighbourhood. Essentially, your speakeasy can be a rundown dive, but that is fine as long as everyone else’s rackets are even more rundown than yours.

Chicago is a small place (in the grand scheme of things), so customers will move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood in search of entertainment. Once they find a neighbourhood that will supply them, they will stay there until events transpire that will cause people to move on. As a player, you have a couple of tools at your disposal to help persuade people to go to your rackets in your neighbourhoods rather than other gangs. One option is when you win the battle, you can simply shut down the enemy racket. This will force the customers to look elsewhere for some entertainment. This also leads onto another value that is important, neighbourhood prosperity.

Prosperity in game terms is people’s willingness to go out and spend money in a neighbourhood. As this is the roaring twenties, Prosperity intrinsicity rises every month. Spending money on improving rackets increases Prosperity. On the other hand, the body count, the amount of people getting killed in a neighbourhood (and especially police), pushes it down. Prosperity modifies the maximum number of customers for each racket in the neighbourhood which effectively influences how much money the rackets make. There are other routes to influence how much money rackets make, for example we could have simply altered how much money people were willing to spend in rackets. However, the way we chose has a neat additional effect, customers will naturally move from low prosperity to high prosperity neighbourhoods and stay there. This has two additional consequences: long wars will inflict long-term harm on businesses in the neighbourhoods where the war is being fought. It gives you an incentive to exit a war if it is being fought in territory which you want to keep and also gives an additional way to attack the enemy. You do not need to take the racket. Just drive the customers away and inflict long term damage to the opponents.




Rackets have a value called average spend, which is effectively how much money each customer is spending in the racket. The revenue per racket is the number of customers multiplied by the average spend. To facilitate the “build tall” strategy we give you the player a number of tools with which to improve this average spend value.

The first to upgrade the ambience of your rackets. Fix up the joint and people will open up their wallets. There is also a side benefit that if your racket is near one of the same type your ambience will also influence the draw of the racket. Again this is a relative thing, as long as your ambience is better than the nearby rackets you will get a draw bonus and vice versa.



Then there is the straight forward supply of alcohol, your customers consume alcohol and supplying them with alcohol will ensure they keep spending. We touched on this in racket descriptions. What I will add here, however, is there is a maximum amount the customers will consume. Also, customers will stay in rackets even if there is no alcohol supplied. You can have speakeasies full of people desperate to spend money on alcohol who will wait months for the chance to do so. While this is unrealistic in the real world (unless the doors are locked from the outside), it’s not in Empire of Sin! More importantly, it does make it much easier to tell you things like how much alcohol you need on a weekly basis to run your empire. This in turn makes it easier for you, and the AI, to make strategic decisions on things like alcohol supply.

Then comes the quality of alcohol you supply. The basic rule of thumb is that the better grade of alcohol you supply, the more money you will make. There is one exception to this, and this is neighbourhood preferred alcohol. This is determined by the overall prosperity of the neighbourhood. The higher the prosperity level, the higher the grade of alcohol the neighbourhood prefers. So, all your garbage swill will find a home in the poorer neighbourhoods and be the drink of choice of the locals.

There are two alcohol supply strategies available to the player. The simple one is to aim to get the highest grade of alcohol possible, this will increase the income from your rackets and boost the profitability of your empire. The true min-max player, though, will seek to get just the right alcohol to each neighbourhood. It is more work, but I know some of you will have hours of fun perfecting the strategies to do it.


So your primary source of alcohol in the game are your breweries. Each brewery will produce a certain amount of alcohol. The alcohol is then available to the rackets for sale. (The moving of alcohol between a brewery and a racket is one of those things that looks so simple at first glance but as you dig into it gets more and more complicated. It is also something that is fairly simple at the start of the game where you may only have one or two breweries and most, if not all, of your rackets are in the same neighbourhood. Once your empire starts to expand and alcohol needs to be shuffled between multiple breweries across several neighbourhoods or from storage, it becomes a really quite complex problem. As a development team we chose to leave this problem alone and focus our time on things we felt would give more to the game.)

Each Brewery can only produce one grade of alcohol at a time. We wanted to make the alcohol optimization game challenging -- you don’t just need enough production; you also need different sites to produce all the grades you want.



Breweries cannot just produce any type of alcohol they want, they start being only able to produce the lowest grade of alcohol. You need to upgrade the breweries to unlock the higher grades of alcohol.

When it comes to deciding what sort of alcohol you want to supply you choose a preferred grade for that neighbourhood it will then seek to supply that grade. The rules for what happens when you don’t have the required stuff are complex and evolving so I will leave out for the moment, just take my word that they exist.


In order to make the choice of racket you set up a little more interesting, we added the idea of a synergy. Essentially, rackets in the same neighbourhood act in combination to boost the average spend in these rackets. At time of typing, these synergies were built around poker hands. For example 2 pairs or a full house. The more complex the synergy, the more the average spend gets increased.

To further boost your synergies, you can open a hotel in the neighbourhood. This is an entirely legitimate business and won’t make you any money but the friendly staff are always there to help guests who are seeking some entertainment. So, if some lonely businessperson was in town for a few nights and wanted to go some place for some... well, you get the idea. The hotel staff will be able to direct them to the right place, i.e. one owned by you. What hotels do is magnify the bonuses of your current synergies, and are limited to one per neighbourhood per faction. Hotels cannot be upgraded or attacked in the way your less-than-legitimate businesses can be, but should you no longer have a synergy in the neighbourhood, it will simply close.




Each boss has two bonuses that pertain to rackets. I am going to level with you here: we aimed to make them fun and interesting rather than punch them into a spreadsheet and try to balance them to the third decimal place. The other thing is that bonuses are designed to be very different to each other. So, you may find that some bosses are simply overpowered when combined with your play style. If so, we hope you enjoy it (as these may be nerfed later). These bonuses have a bearing on the economics of each gang, so are worth looking at when considering your economic decisions.

Each neighbourhood also has a number of effects that will impact on rackets. Some of these are fixed and are innate to the neighbourhood, but others can be earned during the game. For example, once you get enough Brothels in a neighbourhood, you can earn the title “Red Light District” and then all Brothels earn extra money. If some brothels in that neighbourhood were to suffer some unfortunate accidents that caused them to close, then the neighborhood would lose the title and another neighbourhood could pick it up.

Well, that’s it for the economy round up. I hope this gives you some insight into some of the fun choices you will have!

- Chris King, Senior Designer on Empire of Sin

Psst, hey, you! Lookin' for some... information? Brenda Romero, John Romero and the splendid crew at Romero Games will be answering YOUR questions about Empire of Sin in a grand AMA on Reddit, TODAY!

So don your fedora, bust out the giggle juice and join us for a real swell AMA on Reddit at 19:00 CEST at ♠️ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/hwi95t/we_are_brenda_and_john_romero_video_game/ ♠️

Starting Empire of Sin has a familiar cadence boss to boss. You’re going to run into someone you know on your way into Chicago, and between the two of you, you’re going to come to some kind of decision about the best way for matters to proceed.

Out on the street, it’s now time for the early-game strategy to begin.

[h2]Lay of the Land[/h2]
When I arrive in Chicago, there are two primary things that I am concerned with. First, I want to get a lay of the land. I immediately zoom to the world map from street view to get an idea of where I am and who else is here. For me, it is also one of the most exciting times in the game. I’m discovering who else is here, what they might already own, and what is nearby for the easy taking. The locations of other safehouses also gives me an idea of the level of security I need in the early game. If you’ve played any games that take place on a map (and I have a feeling most of you have), the survey of the starting map is equal parts discovery and “ass on fire.”

When I first arrive in the game or in a new neighborhood, I am looking for these things, and I’ll cover these in this post.

[h2]Safehouses[/h2]
Obviously, I’m here, but who else is? A look at the map reveals nearby safehouses. The quantity and location of said safehouses is critical. It’s important for me to learn who owns these safehouses. Each boss has their own personality which means they might be more aggressive with their territory and thus have a desire to roll over mine. If there are no safehouses (unlikely), I’ll have a good start getting this neighborhood to myself. If there are two, but we’re spaced out, I feel like I have a chance to get a foothold. If there are three or another close to mine, however, it’s time to hustle. From this early lay of the land and the quantity of safehouses, I am making decisions about putting money into security to protect my budding empire vs. putting money into production to up either the quantity or quality of alcohol I’m making. For my rackets, I need to think about drawing people into my rackets with a word of mouth upgrade vs putting people by the door to keep the other faction riff raff out. I might play a bit more risky because I’ve been playing since milestone 1, but I tend to take my chances early on, getting more cautious as the game progresses and I have more to lose.

Chris King views this slightly differently. For him, knowing who the other bosses are isn’t as important. He tries to hold back and waits to find out who the other factions are when he has grown in power. The turtle strategy has you shy away from areas with other safehouses and instead focus on growth in other areas.

In the image below, you can see that I have a busy start. There are two other bosses here. When I figure out who they are, I’ll decide how I want to act. One advantage of taking out a boss before they really get going is that you can quickly grow your empire (the disadvantage being that they can quickly grow theirs, and it’s game over).




[h2]Agendas[/h2]
Whether you’re on the world map or the street view, before long, you’ll see others checking out the world just like you are. Often, it’s people exploring (the binoculars icon). Sometimes, however, it’s people who are out for blood like the gang below.




In this start, I am concerned firstly because the other safehouse isn’t too far from mine and they are already expanding close to me. They’ve sent out an extermination squad which I’m willing to bet are coming for me. I can head them off before they get to my racket or trust that I have set up a sufficient number of guards so that they can hold the place on their own.

As the game gets more advanced, I often use the world map to monitor what my enemies are doing and to avoid people who it might be a challenge for me to run into.

[h2]Breweries[/h2]
Having a brewery early in the game is absolutely critical to your survival. Prohibition relies on a healthy supply of illegal hooch. You can get a brewery one of two ways: buy one or take one over. Breweries are pricey, however, and this results in the first interesting decision a player needs to make.

• Do you spend your money on a brewery, but have to scramble for rackets or gangsters?
  
• Do you take over a thug’s racket and pay to convert it into a brewery? This costs less than purchasing one outright. With every fight, though, there is a risk of injury or death.
  
• Do you take over another faction’s brewery thus saving a bunch of money but starting off your career with an early enemy? It doesn’t cost you anything to convert like for like (take over a brewery, and it’s free to open it as your own brewery.)
  
• Do you go the pure vice route and opt to build your early empire with brothels? Brothels are profitable without alcohol?
  
• Do you opt to build a small collection of rackets like casinos and speakeasies while beefing up the small brewery in your safehouse to supply them? Do you make an early trade deal with another faction?
  
• Each player has their own opinion of an ideal starting state. In a perfect world, I am really hoping that I’ll roll a brewery nearby run by thugs. This is a reoccurring pre-game fantasy of mine: I’ll jump into the game, and there will be a small brewery right next to my safehouse that I can take over with just a gangster or two. If it’s owned by thugs, I can take them out, and it’s mine for free. If it’s owned by another gang, I might still be able to take it over. Sure, it won’t get me off to the best start with that faction, but I hope I’ll be able to improve that or form an alliance with someone more powerful. The key is to get yourself a brewery to power your empire, however you do it.
  

[h2]Look for the Bonuses[/h2]
Scattered throughout Chicago are caches left behind by other criminals hoping not to get caught. If you get to these first, they are yours for the taking. The way I usually spot them is to look for groups of thugs who seem to be guarding something.




The caches range from a bit of cash or alcohol to something more game changing like $50K. Because of the amount of thugs surrounding this cache, I decide to hire a couple gangsters rather than going it alone.



With the enemies cleared, the cache is mine, and fortunately, it turns out to be the €50K I was hoping for. The other bosses in my neighborhood are toast.



Back to Breweries
Up to this point, and if you looked at the screenshots earlier in this article, you might notice I haven’t actually gotten the brewery that I have been raving on about. With $50K, now it’s not going to be a problem! I could purchase a building and convert it thus saving life and limb, or I could take over another racket pay less than market price to convert it into a brewery which is precisely what I decide to do.


[h2]
Next Up[/h2]
Hopefully, this gives you a good idea of how to get your criminal empire off the ground. In our next Dev Diary, we’ll cover more gameplay! Stay tuned!

Daniel McKee Jackson was a mortician from Pennsylvania who arrived in Chicago to start a funeral parlor with his family. A born humanitarian, Jackson has the needs of the downtrodden close to his heart. However, this doesn’t stop him from capitalizing on their natural inclination toward vice. When it comes down to choosing between Daniel the Businessman or Daniel the Humanitarian, what will he decide?

Is it better to be respected or feared? Daniel McKee Jackson asks, “Why not both?” Ambition and natural charm reflect his high society standing. The mayor of Chicago is on his list of acquaintances. For that he is revered, and the rumors of just what it took to get him there are reasons enough not to look him in the eye on the street. Let’s just say he’s ruthless when it comes to getting ahead in business. Still, if he gets things done for his community, who are they to ask questions? In his eyes, good intentions, like morals, are a matter of nuance. Jackson is of the opinion that the greater good should be achieved by any means necessary, and that leaves a reputation that’s not so squeaky clean.

It’s no surprise that Jackson has garnered some enemies on his way to the top. Running rackets out in the open with huge crowds, is sure to breed some jealousy in other bosses, but Jackson is a man of the people, and he lives to give them what they desire. Operating vices with such audacity is just another by-product of ingenuity and having well established friends. Others draw ire from the apparent hypocrisy between “Dan Jackson: the humanitarian”, and “Dan Jackson: the man willing to trade lives for power.”

Yet, the honorable Mr. Jackson makes no secret of his double life. He hides both in plain sight. He just requires one to be shrewd, like he is, in noticing such things. On the surface he is every bit the distinguished gentleman he would have you believe, but a closer look reveals a vicious side. Be it a threat disguised in eloquent conversation or the skull that decorates the top of his cane, something about him trumpets the macabre.

See, Jackson deals in death on a daily basis, through the legitimate enterprise of his funeral parlour, or by hand via far more questionable business ventures. The success of the former is, in part, due to the proficiency with how he deals with the latter. Here is a man who is in the business of burying evidence, and the doors never stop swinging. What could be more frightening than a man who can cut down any threat of competition and then file it in his tax return? Well, a man who can add the adulation of his peers and community to that reputation, too. Daniel McKee Jackson holds both those cards, and there’s not many bold enough to bet against that.

[h2]Chicago PD Evidence[/h2]


Letters found during a raid of Mr. Daniel McKee Jackson’s office at his funeral parlor on March 23, 1923. Items:

#1 Letter from the editor of the Chicago News clipped to
#2 Letter from Mr. Daniel McKee Jackson to the editor of the Chicago News

   

[h3]Letter #1[/h3]
Dear Mr. Jackson,

Your letter was cordially received and came across my desk via special delivery this morning. This stands to show that you are indeed passionate in presenting your most noble self. That being said sir, this letter and its attached manifesto cannot be published in this newspaper.

This is both a democratic, and in truth, a personal decision. Your reputation does indeed precede you, and though I respect that you have spent years in building your name by working for the rights of the people of this city, there are clear indications that you achieved all you have achieved most unjustly.

Simply put, Mr. Jackson, your ties to the criminal underworld are too tightly bound to leave any mystery as to your stance on civil decency. If we are to speak plainly, momentarily, I can appreciate that results of the ventures you have engaged in, no doubt speak for themselves, however, the means by which they were achieved are, to put it lightly, grisly.

Mr. Jackson, you may dismiss these ‘means’ as hearsay or rumour, but public records, documenting certain cases of criminal activity, mention you by name. Though officially, you have still managed to elude any kind of reprimand in these cases, they nonetheless hold weight to a certain stance. A stance that this honest and decent newspaper cannot be shown to uphold.

It is for this alone that we cannot print your manifesto for publication. Speaking gentleman to gentlemen, any further attempts of unconventional nature that are made to sway my decision, would only prove my point on the aforementioned rumors. Someone of your honorable upstanding, Mr. Jackson, can surely understand why that will not be necessary.

Sincerely,
The Editor.
The Chicago News.

   

[h3]Letter #2 (letter #1 is a reply to letter #2)[/h3]

Editor, The Chicago News;
The discussion of the current economic prosperity of the second ward as well as the reputation that precedes me, are in my opinion, under constant scrutiny of late. The intent by which I run business is never anything less than for the good of Chicago and indeed its people.

Attempts have been made to soil my name and social standing. The reputation that I have built, to a point of well-regarded decency, has been tarnished by ill-meaning contemporaries of mine. I hereby submit to you, for print in your publication, a manifesto that presents the truth of my motivations. It is in my hope that hearsay regarding the operations of my daily business are written off as just that, hearsay!

In short, I strive to achieve through my work the very best for the future of this good city. This manifesto confounds that point.

Respectfully,
Daniel McKee Jackson.

   

[h3]The Manifesto of Daniel McKee Jackson[/h3]

1: The pursuit of lucrative enterprise is to be made possible by the election of William Hale Thompson as mayor and co-operation is possible by your vote.

2: The continuation of such enterprises within this jurisdiction will require an upkeep toll that will be paid directly to associates of the Jackson enterprise.

3: This toll will aid as a contribution to the further ambitions of the campaign to improve the standard of living for the good civilians of Chicago’s second ward.

4: Adherence to the above will mean Policy banking by means of the Tia Juana wheel will be available for all Chicagoans in the second ward area.

5: The Broad Ax only serves to rally against our business ventures and are too vile to occupy a place in the toilet room.

6: I work in the interest of legitimate business for the growth and prosperity of this good city. To provide an acceptable standard of living for all in the community, irregardless of creed or background, and to sustain that standard for all future generations.

7: The Chicago News attempts to soil this agenda. Their interests do not lie in the growth of the local economy or the independent enterprises that work tirelessly for the betterment of Chicago. They nor anybody else will ever stop my handbooks from operating.

8: The Jackson owned funeral directory, will work to ensure the most modern of funeral industry standards are met. A directory that has been family owned for two generations insists upon the highest requirements for maintaining the dignity of our communities deceased.

9: Every person has the right to the decency of burial and their surviving estate permitted to an honourable service to pay respects and mourn their deceased. The Metropolitan Funeral System Association (MFSA), has been set up in the interest of providing funerals for low income families.



Watch the Boss Spotlight on Daniel McKee Jackson and learn more about faction AI here:
https://youtu.be/GPb3neCh1pY

If gambling is your game you oughta speak to Daniel McKee Jackson - funeral director by trade, ambitious mobster boss by choice.

Tune in for this week's Boss Spotlight Stream on Thursday at 5 PM CEST / 8 AM PDT on twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive !