You’ll often be at war with other gangs in Empire of Sin. As you progress, you’ll also increase your faction’s notoriety, and you might even commit bribery or play a bit of diplomacy. Here’s our guide to help you out.
Note: For more information, check out our Empire of Sin guides and features hub.
Empire of Sin: Notoriety, diplomacy, and bribery guide
Increasing your notoriety
Notoriety represents your chosen boss’ rise to the top of Chicago’s criminal underworld. You’ll gain some nifty effects as you increase your notoriety value:
- You’ll be able to recruit characters that have a higher notoriety requirement. They tend to be expensive, but they’ve got better stats. Unfortunately, you’ll need to level them up which can be a hassle if you already have a full crew with underlings that have the skills you want.
- You can assign crew members to additional roles (i.e., mole, advisor, and underboss).
- Upgrades for your rackets/businesses will be cheaper.
- The downside is that you’ll take a bigger hit when it comes to diplomacy with the cops and rival gangs. Since notoriety tends to increase as your empire grows, this expansion is perceived as a threat.
Notoriety, in general, increases as you progress further in Empire of Sin. Controlling rackets and recruiting characters slightly helps with this. You can also execute your foes to spread your notoriety all over Chicago.
However, the biggest boost comes from completely eliminating a major faction. If you’re at war with a faction and you attack its safe house, you can kill all the hostiles (including the faction’s boss) to gain a lot of notoriety.
Playing with a bit of diplomacy
You might be interested in playing with a bit of diplomacy. Still, as mentioned in our Empire of Sin official review, this tends to be a wonky mechanic. At best, the diplomatic bonus/perk of your chosen mob boss might help offset the threat generation as you expand. Unfortunately, everything still feels like an uphill climb.
In any case, when you click on the “handshake” icon at the top-right corner of your HUD, you’ll see the major factions in your current Empire of Sin campaign. Click on the “dialogue box” icon to see the diplomatic options:
| Action | Sitdown | Discuss | Favors |
| Trade – Directly exchange resources and items for cash. | End war with – Coerces a faction to end a war with another rival gang. | Offer tribute – Give a one-time payment to increase your diplomatic relations with that faction. | Kill someone – A request to assassinate a unique character/crew member that’s not in your faction. |
| Enact/break business arrangement – You can boost a faction’s racket type while they boost yours. | End business arrangement with – Coerces a faction to break off their business arrangement with another gang. | Standing order – Think of this as a regular trade that lasts for a period of time. | Borrow money – Take out a loan from another faction. |
| Declare War – Allows you to attack a faction’s units and businesses. You can take over a faction’s safe house and kill its boss to capture every racket owned by that faction. | Request truce – Think of this as a non-aggression pact. | Defense Agreement – This defensive pact makes a faction join your side if someone declares war on you. | Borrow alcohol – Get some alcohol from another faction. |
| Demand retribution – If a faction has been a thorn on your side (i.e., killing your units or taking over your businesses), you can demand a bit of vengeance. | Offer/request protection – You or the faction will pay a sum of cash each week to protect your business interests. | Put in a good word – If a faction has a business arrangement with another, you can ask for a diplomatic relation boost with that third party. |
Note 1: For sitdown meetings, these are required if you agree to one when you first meet a faction. Asking for a sitdown meeting and not attending it leads to a diplomatic hit.
Note 2: Since Empire of Sin‘s only victory condition is eliminating all other major factions/bosses, trying to play the “diplo game” is akin to delaying the inevitable. You’ll need to go to war and annihilate everyone else anyway. There’s no peaceful way to win the game (i.e., consolidation or merger), so these mechanics feel quite moot. Indeed, I’ve tried to be buddies with AI factions and I found that I was just helping them grow rather than curbing their ambitions from the start.
Bribery and dealing with cops
The options you have when dealing with Chicago’s police can also be found in the same diplo panel if you click on the arrow keys. These are:
| Action | Discuss |
| Bribe – Pay some cash to increase your faction’s rating. | Request protection – Pay a lump sum so the cops protect your business interests for six months. This requires the Honorary Deputy rank. |
| Shop – Buy some items from Chicago P.D.’s armory. This is separate from the Black Market’s shop. This option becomes available once you’ve reached the Honorary Deputy rank. | |
| Clean Slate – Turns your faction rating into a neutral state. You must not have any gang member imprisoned, and the cost for this goes up due to a negative rating. | Turn a blind eye – Cops will no longer raid your rackets. |
| Bail All – Bails out all your incarcerated gang members. |
Like diplomacy with other mob bosses, dealing with the cops can be a hassle, too. Again, this is another Empire of Sin mechanic that’s good on paper but clunky in execution.
Cops will think of you as “Public Enemy No. 1” as your notoriety increases. Plus, if you get into a firefight in the streets, cops will come running. Waiting for the AI to take them out is useless. As such, you’ve got no choice but to kill cops which further lowers your rating.
Empire of Sin is available via Steam. For more information, head over to our guides and features hub.
Published: Dec 1, 2020 06:45 am