Wanted to brainstorm a bit here and come up with some ideas or strategies to use when your civ takes a stability hit for overexpansion. I recently played a game as Persia where I thought I was doing great; I had done the usual mid east conquests, killed off 6 civs and conquered India. I even knocked off Arabia and Turkey. All of the Middle East was mine. :king: Unfortunately, when it was all said and done, instead of my expansion being 4-5 stars, it was 2 stars and I was unstable.

I immediately started to spread my state religion to all the cities, I increased culture to 20 and then 30% and started to shift the focus from military to cultural buildings. I had almost all my cities under my religion and near-100% Persian. Sadly for me, it did not matter. I was now at Collapsing, my expansion still at 2 stars despite all my conquests (I even razed Arabia instead of conquering it)

In desperation and not knowing what to do, I opened up the Worldbuilder to do some experimenting. First I started to build a couple cities in Arabia and Central Asia to see what would happen...stability was even worse. I deleted those cities and then started to eliminate some of my own: I took out Patna in Eastern India and Cochin in Southern India. Came back to the game and pressed end turn...

Immediately, my stability went from Collapsing to Unstable with the arrow pointing up and Expansion went from 2 stars to 3 stars with the arrow pointing up. Keep in mind, that these were 2 cities I had kept peacefully for centuries, had my state religion and at this time were 100% Persian.

So my question is, aside from deleting cities, what can I do to overcome the negative stability for overexpansion? For Persia, it's even more confusing as the UHV obviously calls for a huge empire so when I saw a low stability rating i wasn't sure if I was supposed to expand less or more.

Spam courthouses (for early game) and jails (after constitution) even if it means whipping. When playing as a multireligion civ like Persia, do not have a state religion.
In my Germany game my economy was 5 stars + and that made me very solid despite a below 1 star expansion. I had 3-4 vassals and together with Viceroyalty helped my foreign relations (4 stars).

In my Persia game I found that you can lose stability terrifyingly quickly. I'd completed my 8% comfortably a couple of turns before the limit, so I decided to stop expanding and turtle. Big mistake. Within around 6-7 turns I'd gone from Stable to Unstable and was spiraling to Collapsing very quickly. Of course, i'd made it infinitely harder on myself by sitting one of my shrines in Jerusalem, forgetting it flips to Arabia :sad:
So not only did I have to deal with potential secessions I also had to kick the Arabs to the curb and recapture Jerusalem before the troop flipping finished. Yech :crazyeye:

Re. German stability - how quickly did you expand Pacifist? I'm slowly playing through a German UHV attempt on Monarch and I'm pretty concerned about potential issues later - it's only around 1750 and my expansion rating is already one star. I have control of France, Greece, Italy and just finished conquering and vassalizing England. Is this too quickly? Thank goodness for Viceroyalty (I also have Spain and Portugal as vassals). The pesky Dutch have revolted twice already though, I am rather concerned of this happening in one of the UHV areas.

Re. German stability - how quickly did you expand Pacifist? I'm slowly playing through a German UHV attempt on Monarch and I'm pretty concerned about potential issues later - it's only around 1750 and my expansion rating is already one star. I have control of France, Greece, Italy and just finished conquering and vassalizing England. Is this too quickly? Thank goodness for Viceroyalty (I also have Spain and Portugal as vassals). The pesky Dutch have revolted twice already though, I am rather concerned of this happening in one of the UHV areas.

I basically got Greece and France well off the bat (1700's), took those independent Viking cities one by one over 100 years (razing some and building some up), collapsed Russia very quickly in the late 1700's after I had tanks, then when Spain foolishly declared war on me I took every city they had quickly (by then my economy was unassailable). I went for a domination victory with nuking every other civ but managed to conquer England also in the late 1800's. I had Portugal, Netherlands, Arabia, Turkey and Khmer as my vassals, then I basically nuked the Malians and Japanese into capitulation to acheive my area goal (50% of world pop was under me already).

The new world wars actually helped my Pacifistic intent. I never EVER declared war on anybody except as part of a defensive pact, so it was all self defense!!:lol:

I've played RFC many times at Viceroy and Monarch difficulty. Whenever I didn't win a historic victory I kept expanding and eventually got overexpansion problems. Never found a complete solution. I choose my Expansion civic and go along with it, but whatever I do it doesn't help much. In my current game with Rome, having 3 vassals, I can only have 2 stars for expansion at best, and my stability is always collapsing. Only the Commonwealth civic seems to work well for me.

Good ways to offset the low expansion rating is to build up your economy and cities ratings. Of course, forging a large empire means that you will only be able to keep foreign rating at 3 stars at best. Another problem seems to be the fact that not all ratings seems to have equal weight on total stability. In my game with Persia, I had 2 stars for expansion, 5 for economy, 3 for foreign and 4 for cities, and my stability was still unstable. However, when I discovered and enacted Commonwealth civic, my stability went up to shaky and even stable occasionally, although all my ratings except expansion dropped by 1 star.

I have never payed attention to stability and it's never bothered me. I think once a couple of my cities went independant, I can't remember.

Thanks for the advice. It seems that there is no easy fix for overexpansion; it's just a matter of trying to get the other stability indicators high enough to offset it. How about gifting potentially problematic cities to other civs or granting independence to some?

For Persia, it seems strange that expansion would be such an issue as one would think their UP would at least be able to at least match the negative hits you get for taking cities outside the historical area.

Beware that negative stability ratings seem to have more impact than positive ones, so better try to fix your worst ratings first, and if you raise other ratings in the process that's even better. There's a guide on wiki that may give you an idea of what is good and what is bad for your stability: http://wikirhye.wikidot.com/stability

My favorite tactics for keeping a decent stability is good control of civics. You can't just pick the civics that suit you the most in Rhye's because you will loose stability if you don't have the most liberal civics possible. The best transitions go something like this: initial -> Hereditary Rule + Vassalization + Serfdom + Religious Civic of choice -> Representation + Bureaucracy -> Democracy + Emancipation + Free Speech. Try to include your favorite economic civic in one of the transitions because your stability will drop if you use Decentralization while other economic civics are available. You can pick any other because they fortunately don't have synergies with other civics. If you have a lot of different religions in your cities it might be a good idea to switch to Free Religion in one of the liberal transitions. Also, if you have a large empire, research Democracy as soon as you switch to Representation + Bureaucracy because those two give you stability penalties for a lot of cities.

Speaking of Perisa, negative stability points for unhistorical expansion are meant to keep the game historical. Low stability will cause your unhistorical conquests to declare independence and large empires to fall as they historically all did (with exception of USA for now). Persia is no different, except that they might last a bit longer than others, or human player might have a bit more chance of successfully finishing the game with unhistorically large empire and without a civil war.

As someone pointed out, always vassalize enemies when possible, then give them some cities which the game considers historically theirs. Otherwise, why would you conquer a city just to give it to someone who is not your vassal? If you don't want a city you capture, it is better to raze it.

Nameless One, I disagree about switching to Universal suffrage soon. True, I research Democracy very soon after constitution, but not because of US, but because of Emancipation. Your large empire with all its specialists will generate more science if you stay in Representation. Usually by the time you have your many productive cities, switching away from Bureaucracy makes sense and the switch to free speech by itself (usually together with emancipation after democracy is researched) is enough to get your civics stability to at least 3 stars, assuming you have free market or communism and NOT theocracy.
In fact I stay in representation for almost the whole game unless I need hammers from my towns for spaceships. You save at least 1-2 moves with each tech (and that's like 20-30 moves until the very last tech).
I think Universal suffrage is vastly underpowered, especially in lands that do not support cottaging (e.g. much of Asia and South America with plantations, and Asia Minor with all its hills). I never get to use it together with the Kremlin because I usually get fiberoptics before I switch. Maybe in a non-RFC game it's useful for pumping out troops.

I think the strikes against Universal Suffrage are twofold - firstly, the later your civ spawns the fewer turns you have to build and grow your towns, thus making is less likely you have enough towns to make it a useful civic (and as a corollary, most UHVs finish way too early for US to have any chance of an impact anyway). Also, it takes quite a while to start colonising the New World and Oceania, further reducing town building time.

Secondly though, most of the map is just not suited for excessive cottaging anyway. Even in the flat, temperate grassy areas like Europe there are generally so many resources that it's just not worthwhile building lots of cottages. Not to mention you probably want those grasslands to be workshopped up to give some much needed production. In fact, I've only ever cottage spammed in northern Russia, and I can't really think of anywhere else it would be particularly useful.

One factor is the plague taking them down levels, it makes them harder to get into towns, shouldnt they grow faster to compensate?

deleted those cities and then started to eliminate some of my own: I took out Patna in Eastern India and Cochin in Southern India. Came back to the game and pressed end turn...

Immediately, my stability went from Collapsing to Unstable with the arrow pointing up and Expansion went from 2 stars to 3 stars with the arrow pointing up.I got exactly same effect when part of my population died from plague.

I thought we were talking about stability, not about production. I agree that Representation is a better civic when it comes to effects, but both Representation and Bureaucracy give negative stability for large empires (one for larger than 3 and the other for larger than 5 cities), and for very large empires it outmatches the bonus from synergy by far. I use Representation with large empires only to avoid transition crisis. Furthermore, discovery of Democracy tech gives negative stability unless you switch to civics it enables (Emancipation and Universal Suffrage). I'd stay in Representation + Bureaucracy only if I were running a small empire with 7 cities or less.

A Golden Age does wonders for your stability. Don't leave home without one if you are in stability trouble.

Too much anarchy is very bad for stability. Avoid anarchy at almost all costs if your civ (such as Persia) is already looking shaky.

Defensive Pacts help with stability, as do Open Borders agreements. Get these when you can (I realise that Persia can't get Defensive Pacts at that stage of history).

I'd stay in Representation + Bureaucracy only if I were running a small empire with 7 cities or less.

Take care of your economy and it will trump everything, including civics and expansion. My latest game was with Portugal, with a massive empire spanning 4 continents and 17 cities, still stable running representation. :lol:

I remember a game with the British Empire, controlling the British Isles, India, Australia, South Africa, Eastern and Western Canada, and a bunch of other posessions. Representation+Mercantilism was the only thing that allowed me to continue my research. I was stable/shaky most of the time.