Not every empire you come across in Stellaris is as law-abiding and upstanding as you. Some empires create their wealth through organized crime.
They spread crime to other worlds by building criminal branch offices. If you want an example from popular sci-fi, think of The Hutts from Star Wars.
Criminal branch offices will spread crime on your worlds, so how do you get rid of a criminal branch office?
Recommended Read: What Are the Best Megastructures in Stellaris?
This guide will give a bit of background into the crime system in Stellaris and explain the various methods of removing branch offices.
One more thing. If you play as a criminal empire in a multiplayer lobby, you are a bad person, and you should feel bad, too.
You can get rid of criminal branch offices in Stellaris by reducing crime to zero, the expel corporation war goal, and wiping out the criminal syndicate.
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How to Get Rid of a Criminal Branch Office in Stellaris
If you own the Megacorporation DLC, you may have come across or played as a megacorp.
These specialist empires can build holdings on other empire’s worlds. This is a symbiotic agreement in which both parties receive a benefit.
Corporate empires don’t have the right to build corporate holding wherever they like.
Both parties must have some sort of formal alliance or a signed commercial pact.
Genocidal empires, hive minds, and machine intelligence empires can never have corporate holdings on their worlds.
Megacorp empires that have the criminal heritage civic do things a bit different. The criminal heritage needs neither permission nor an alliance to build their criminal branch holdings on your planets.
Criminal holdings provide resources for the criminal syndicate and the planet owner.
So what is the problem with them? These holdings increase crime on the planet they operate on, and it isn’t a minor amount either.
It is also in the space gangsters’ interest to generate as much crime as possible on the host world. They receive increasing benefits depending on the amount of crime present on the planet.
There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and the same is true for removing branch offices from your planets.
You can get creative by having other empires wipe them out or even declaring the criminals as a crisis.
But that isn’t a very reliable way to do things. If you want something done right, you do it yourself, and these ways allow you to do that.
Reduce Crime to Zero
If crime on the planet is zero, there is a five percent chance that the corporate holding will close. This can be a tall order, more so if the planet’s crime modifiers have gotten out of hand.
It is the cheapest and the only way to remove the space mafia from your planet without warfare.
You can reduce crime by creating enforcer jobs, instituting increased benefits, improving pop happiness, creating a penal colony, and launching an anti-crime campaign.
This can take a long time, but if the crime syndicate isn’t causing a large issue, what is the point in rushing it anyway.
Using the Expropriation War Goal
Normal mega corp empires can build corporate holdings on your planet if they have a commercial pact with you, are in the same federation, and if you are their overlord or vice versa.
If, for whatever reason, this alliance between you and the megacorp ends, you gain the expropriation Casus belli. If you have no alliance with a criminal empire, you also gain this.
This Casus belli allows you to set a war goal of expelling the corporation.
Even if the resulting war ends in a status quo, all the branch offices are removed from your planets. They cannot build more holdings until the postwar truce ends.
They will be back after the truce ends, and you can make sure they never come back with the final method.
Wipe Out the Criminal Heritage
The final and permanent solution to space bandits is to destroy them. The best way to do this is with a total war Casus Belli.
Building a Colossus weapon is the easiest way to get one of those. After building one, declare total war on the criminal empire and wipe out every planet they own.
Not a choice for pacifist empires, but if you want to remove the criminal pest for good, this is how you do it.
How Crime Works
Life can be hard for your pops in Stellaris, especially if you choose to neglect their happiness modifier. Pops with a low happiness rating have a chance to produce crime on your planet.
If your crime ever reaches 30, your planet is at severe risk of an organized crime pandemic. Every year, if you have 30 or more crimes, there is a chance of a permanent modifier taking effect on your planet.
This modifier will further increase crime and produce criminal jobs on the planet.
These criminal jobs will be filled by your pops where possible and will reduce trade value on the planet. The jobs also add trade value to any criminal empires with holdings on the planet too.
There is also a chance that crime will cause devastation on the planet, further exacerbating things.
Getting crime back below 10 is the only way to remove these crime problems on your planet. Having plenty of enforcer jobs is one way to get this done.
This is everything you need to know about how to get rid of a criminal branch office in Stellaris.
If you have any questions or suggestions for this guide, please let us know in the comments section below. Have fun punishing those space criminals.
