Does anyone have the numbers involved as I am confounded by this thing.

When two civics are noted as being stable with one another how much does that actually mean (+3/4, higher?)?
How about when unstable with each other?

What is the penalty for Merchant Republic when going over 5 cities?
Regularly see Germany/France and even Norse running it with up to ten cities while being solid.

What is the penalty for Bureaucracy when exceeding 6 cities?
Regularly see just about anyone (even Byzantium, that bloated monstrosity!) run it with ten or more cities but cannot do so myself without teetering on collapse.

How on earth can stability change 3-4 points with no significant changes to cities/civics, as in out of nowhere? See it a lot with Norse whose stability fluctuates wildly at times.

PS: Is it possible to add +1 stability to the Pagan Shrine? Would really help Norse as they generally don't get religion until fairly late so can theoretically hold off on monasticism for a bit and the early expansion hurts like a mofo ;)

durp.

Does anyone have the numbers involved as I am confounded by this thing.

look into RFCEurope\Assets\Python\Stability.py if you are interested in the exact numbers. You can open it with any texteditor.

When two civics are noted as being stable with one another how much does that actually mean (+3/4, higher?)?
How about when unstable with each other?

the earlier ones have +-1/2, the later ones +-3/4/5

What is the penalty for Merchant Republic when going over 5 cities?
Regularly see Germany/France and even Norse running it with up to ten cities while being solid.

What is the penalty for Bureaucracy when exceeding 6 cities?
Regularly see just about anyone (even Byzantium, that bloated monstrosity!) run it with ten or more cities but cannot do so myself without teetering on collapse.

The AI gets almost no penalties for running those civics. Their penalty is capped at -1/2. For Humans its around -4 or -5 i think. So it makes no difference above 10 cities.

How on earth can stability change 3-4 points with no significant changes to cities/civics, as in out of nowhere? See it a lot with Norse whose stability fluctuates wildly at times.

I've seen this with the norse too. I think its caused by conquering/razing cities. This effects economy and city ratings in the following 4 or 5 turns alot.

Economy is the thing that can fluctuate without "apparent" reason. I will try to keep an eye on the Norse.

still he raises a good point. Is there a way to see all the algorithms and such for stability without delving deep into the code?

Economy is the thing that can fluctuate without "apparent" reason. I will try to keep an eye on the Norse.
Figured that might be it, guessing it has to do with trade routes, they come and go repeatedly as pirates and independent ships travel the seas .. as it does seem to be more pronounced when markets are built.

Would be enough (for me at least) to have a reference page like that made for RFC (http://rhye.civfanatics.net/wiki/index.php?title=Rhye%27s_and_Fall_of_Civilization_ guide_to_stability). Hard numbers would be awesome but not necessary and one could say they detract from the experience of balancing everything, so ... :)

Is it true that provincial stability can improve over time? Read it a few times in various threads but haven't seen it myself.

Figured that might be it, guessing it has to do with trade routes, they come and go repeatedly as pirates and independent ships travel the seas .. as it does seem to be more pronounced when markets are built.

Would be enough (for me at least) to have a reference page like that made for RFC (http://rhye.civfanatics.net/wiki/index.php?title=Rhye%27s_and_Fall_of_Civilization_ guide_to_stability). Hard numbers would be awesome but not necessary and one could say they detract from the experience of balancing everything, so ... :)

Is it true that provincial stability can improve over time? Read it a few times in various threads but haven't seen it myself.

Stability changes a lot, such a page would have a rather short half-life. Eventually we will add a proper guide.

Stability changes a lot, such a page would have a rather short half-life. Eventually we will add a proper guide.

I know that a complete stability guide makes no sense yet, but i think that some kind of document is necessary. It could be used as a reference for discussing further changes or to track down inconsistencies. It won't help new players but for those who are a little bit into RFCEurope and want help to improve the mod it could be usefull.

If you don't want to do it i can do it. I'm familiar with the python codes and i think i can write down a list of most of the stability effects in Beta 9.

There was a guide somewhere. Look at the Beta 7 or Beta 8 threads. Another problem with temporary guides is that they get lost, buried in the threads.

I am not stopping you in any way, a guide would be useful, it is just that people will have hard time finding it. I hope that soon we will have enough finalized things to start working on real guides.

Ok, here is the first try of a list of the current stability modifiers.
I think that the list is complete except for the economy rating. For the AI the values differ at some points. They are not listed here.
I tried to stick to terms that are used ingame and not the ones used internally whereever possible. I hope that this document is comprehensible and that
it gives an insight into how stability is calculated.


Any comments are appreciated.

List of stability modifiers
last update February 25. 2013, RFCE 1.0, svn revision 1056

The F2 Screen
On the F2-screen you can see the four main stability categories: cities, civics, economy, expansion and a special fifth category called swing.
The main categories have two values: the one on the left side is the sum of all permanent modifieres and the one on the right side is a value that is calculated every turn.
The swing category has only one value and represents effects that last only a few turns. Most of the time this value should be zero.

All values are sumed up and give the total stability or simply the stability (The value that can be seen on the main screen). This is the only value that matters in the end.

The two ways how stability is calculated
There are two ways in which stability is calculated: event based and state based. You can say the state based modifiers look at what you have (eg. total number of cities) and the event based look on how you got there (eg. if you found a city yourself or if you conquer one).

The state based modifiers have to be updated once in a while. This is usually done every turn or every three turns or when it is obvious that the state has changed (eg. founding a city will change the total number of cities and therefore triggers a recalculation). Because they only look at the current state they can be recalculated from scratch every time. Previous values don't have to be remembered. That means if an error occures, this error can not accumulate over several calculations and the total effect of one modifier can easiliy be limited.
The effects of state-based modfiers are hard to track because all effects are calculated at once.

The event based modifiers on the other hand can not be calculated from the scratch every time and therefore have to be remembered. This is done by storing a single number for each category. It holds the sum of all modifiers that have been triggerd so far. That means those modifiers are permanent and cumulative. And that means also that errors can accumulate. And because only a single number is stored it is impossible to say how often a certain event has occured and therefore it is impossible to limit the total effect of a single modifier.
The effect of event-based modifiers can easily be seen. Just found, conquer or raze a city and look on the F2-screen how the corresponding value has changed. Sometimes more then one event is triggerd at once (eg. razing a city triggers also conquering a city)

The swing category has only event based modifiers but in addition this value gets halfed every turn, so that it rapidly converges to zero.


List of event based modifiers / permanent stability:

Cities

entering a war -1
building a courthouse +1


Civics

building a nightwatch +1
beeing in anarchy max(-2, -numCities/4) (this applies for each turn in anarchy)


Expension

building a castle +1
founding a city
- in a solid province +1
- in a unstable or OK province -2 (0 for Portugal and Norse)
- while numCities < 5 +1
conquering a city in a solid province +1
conquering a city while running Militarism +1
razing a city -2 (-1 for Norse)
loosing a city in a solid province -2
loosing the capitol city -5 (-15 for Byzantium)
moving the palace -3
building a colony while running colonialism +1


Economy

building a manor house +1
founding a corporation -2
researching certain techs -1
(Feudalism, Guilds, Gunpowder, ProfessionalArmy, Nationalism, CivilService, Economics, Machinery, Aristocracy)


Swing

beeing in anarchy -8
entering a war -3
own improvement destroyed -2
moving palace -5
conquering a city in a solid province +3
loosing a city in a solid province -5
loosing a city in another province -2
loosing the capitol city -10

(note: those values are high, but their effect gets halfed every turn)


List of state based modifiers / Base stability

Cities

for an average city happiness of at least
3 +1
5 +2
7 +3
etc.

for a prosecution countdown of at least
1 -2
11 -4
21 -6
etc.

add for each city that
- is healty +1
- is unhappy (angry population) -2
- has at least one foreign religion -2 (-1 if running paganism, 0 for Poland or if running free religion)
- has unhappy population because of hurrying -1
- has unhappy population because of no military -1
- has unhappy population because of war weariness -1
- has unhappy population because of religion -1
- has less than 40% own culture -1 (0 for Hungary and France)

the sum of war weariness and no military penalties for all cities together will never exceed -2
the sum of all values so far is bound between -6 and 8

add the stability bonus for orthodox civs (+0.08 per faithpoint)
add +8 while in a golden age


Civics
The following civic combos give bonuses/penalties

Feudal Monarchy with
- Wonder Stephansdom +2
- FeudalLaw +1

Divine Monarchy with
- Paganism -4
- StateReligion +2
- Theocracy +3
- OrganizedReligion +2
- FreeReligion -5
- ReligiousLaw +2
- Wonder Stephansdom +2

Limited Monarchy with
- Wonder Stephansdom +2
- CommonLaw +3
- FreePeasantry +2
- FreeLabor +2

Merchant Republic with
- FeudalLaw -4
- TradeEconomy +3
- CommonLaw +3
- FreePeasantry +2
- FreeLabor +2
- Number of cities max( -3, 4 - NumCities )

Feudal Law with
- Serfdom +1
- Manorialism +1
- FreePeasantry -4

Bureaucracy with
- Number of cities max( -4, 5 - NumCities )

Religious Law with
- Paganism -5
- Theocracy +3
- FreeReligion -5

Common Law with
- FreeLabor +3
- Theocracy -4

Serfdom with
- Manorialism +2

Apprenticeship with
- Guilds +3


Expansion

for each own city in
- an unstable province -3
- a OK province -1

with Imperialism +1 for each city in a non solid province (up to a maximum of +6)
(as France +2 per city with a maximum of +12)

for each foreign city in
- a core province -3
- a normal province -1
(note that core and normal provinces are in game both labeld solid)
(these penalties do not apply if the civ is running Militarism or hasn't owned a city in that province at least once)

for each vassal +1 (+3 with Vassalage)

for beeing a vassal of someone else +8

for total number of cities beeing at least
7 -1
9 -2
11 -3
12 -4
15 -5
for each city beyond 16 add -1
for each city beyond 31 add -2
(the exact formula is -(numCities*numCities)/40 )
(Turkey and Moscow get five cities for free, that means -1 at 12 cities, -2 at 14 cities, etc.)


Economy

The total value is bound between -7 and 7

Awesome guide. I will eventually put something like this in the reference folder (after we get a few more tweaks).

Some notes:

- You should not get instability for foreign cities in OK provinces. Note that the difference between Core and Normal are hidden from the player.

- The instability from number of cities increases quadratically. The largest Empires of the Byzantium, Moscow and Ottomans should get a few "free" cities.

(note that I don't have the code with me, so I may be off)

Economy:
- For each city, consider the ratio of food + production per citizen. You have to work improved tiles and you get a bonus for working on resources. Once the cities increase in size, you have to build Guilds and Forges to get extra +xx% production bonus.

- There was also some bonus for foreign trade routes. I don't remember off hand.

- There are penalties for making too many military units and/or wonders (those hurt your economy).

Thanks for the flowers :) It took me some time.


- You should not get instability for foreign cities in OK provinces. Note that the difference between Core and Normal are hidden from the player.


You are right. I didn't want to confuse the players with core, normal, potential, etc provinces. Somehow i got mixed up myself. Maybe i should include a more detailed look on provinces in the future.

I include your proposals.

AWESOME Guide, answered many questions.

Unfortunately I still have a lot of questions about how stability works.

Questions:
1. Is the city razing penalty permanent? (cus it sure seemed like it in my game - which sucks). Also do things like founding a city bonuses, moving capital, etc are those permanent? (The guide is unclear - it says left and right when things are only on the right)

2. Why do the techs and founding corporations decrease stability, is this just to offset the larger number of courthouses, manor houses, etc later in the game?

3. Why are manor houses obsoleted so early? Move back to later? (later civs suffer a lot from this)

4. Why is orthodox bonus so low? It seems to do very little to nothing (most AI will never get more than 1 or 2 points)

5. Is there a limit to civic pairing bonuses/penalties?

AWESOME Guide, answered many questions.

Unfortunately I still have a lot of questions about how stability works.

Questions:
1. Is the city razing penalty permanent? (cus it sure seemed like it in my game - which sucks). Also do things like founding a city bonuses, moving capital, etc are those permanent? (The guide is unclear - it says left and right when things are only on the right)

2. Why do the techs and founding corporations decrease stability, is this just to offset the larger number of courthouses, manor houses, etc later in the game?

3. Why are manor houses obsoleted so early? Move back to later? (later civs suffer a lot from this)

4. Why is orthodox bonus so low? It seems to do very little to nothing (most AI will never get more than 1 or 2 points)

5. Is there a limit to civic pairing bonuses/penalties?

4. Yeah, it is really low, 29 faith as Muscovites and I get +2 stability (1:14) & -14% (1:2) civic upkeep. Islam gets the power of the Mohammedan hordes (1:2) and a huge diplo bonus (1:10) that is double Catholicism (1:20), I forgot exactly the bonuses of Protestantism, but I finished the tech tree as Germany in 1650 in Beta 9 and got every project.

I think orthodoxy should get 1 stability for every 10 points to help Bulgaria, Kiev, and Moscovy. My only concern is that it will help Byzantium, which seems to be that superpower we were so concerned with before about 1 out of every 3 games. If maybe we could give Byzantium another tiny nerf, this could be good.

1. Is the city razing penalty permanent? (cus it sure seemed like it in my game - which sucks). Also do things like founding a city bonuses, moving capital, etc are those permanent? (The guide is unclear - it says left and right when things are only on the right)

Yes, all the modifiers you mention are permanent. In general all, modifiers in the event-based list are permanent. Left and right refered to the position on the F2-screen. I try to clarify that paragraph.


2. Why do the techs and founding corporations decrease stability, is this just to offset the larger number of courthouses, manor houses, etc later in the game?

3. Why are manor houses obsoleted so early? Move back to later? (later civs suffer a lot from this)

4. Why is orthodox bonus so low? It seems to do very little to nothing (most AI will never get more than 1 or 2 points)


Good questions. I can only say how it works now, not why it works that way.


5. Is there a limit to civic pairing bonuses/penalties?
There is a limit in the way that you can only pair four civics at the same time.
When you switch civics, the bonuses for the old combination are lost. Thats why those effects are listed under the state-based list.

I think orthodoxy should get 1 stability for every 10 points to help Bulgaria, Kiev, and Moscovy. My only concern is that it will help Byzantium, which seems to be that superpower we were so concerned with before about 1 out of every 3 games. If maybe we could give Byzantium another tiny nerf, this could be good.

As much as it pains me to say... boost Ottomans.

I updated the guide.
I tried to clarifiy the two ways how stability is calculated and removed the term "base stability" completely because i think it is missleading.

I hereby request that the in-game text saying "turn your great person into a .." be changed to "Turn your great person into Caliom ..", because he is clearly a saint in his own right :D

Some modifiers there I didn't know about that may change the order I do do some things so yay. If nothing else, its now in print as it were so finalizing it when the time comes will be easier.

"own improvement got destroyed -2"

So, massive pillaging is maybe the best strategy for civil war?

Yes, all the modifiers you mention are permanent.

Good lord, this is a serious problem. What if I dont like the city available to me in the recently captured territory - razing it gives me a penalty. How about going after rogue city states nearby that are spawning annoying ships - I get a penalty.

They need to be split up into permanent and non permanent.

Permanent would be things like +1 for the city buildings (castle, manor house etc) as long as you keep that building/the city its in. Also colony bonuses and researching those techs (still unsure why they have a penalty).

I think just about everything else should be temporary (last for 5 turns, or the effect dwindles like the swing, but maybe not as quickly dwindling). Otherwise seemingly in-the-moment things like razing a city, entering a war, and moving the capitol hurt you in the long run.

Good lord, this is a serious problem. What if I dont like the city available to me in the recently captured territory - razing it gives me a penalty. How about going after rogue city states nearby that are spawning annoying ships - I get a penalty.


I agree with you that -2 is hard for small cities. Mabye the penalty should scale with city size. With now penalty for small cities, around size 1-4.

But i wouldn't remove it completly because i think flavour wise it should give a penalty. Razing a city means that you kill a lot of innocent people. That cannot be unseen by your own people.

If you don't want the control over a city yourself then you should give it to someone else. I'd rather see the improvemnts here than removing the penalty for razing. Razing a city should be the last option. Some kind of puppet state would be cool, like the way you grant independence to colonies in bts, where a new civ spawns as your vassal. But i think this would include much more work than just enabling the bts modus, because those civs shouldnt have UHVs, you need aropriate names, etc.
But for the beginning it would be ok if you could gift a city to the independent civs, because sometimes there are no civs alive you could gift a city to.


Remember that when you race a city, the modifiers for conquering a city get also applied. That means you can decrease the penalty by 1 when you run Militarism.
This also leads to the oddity that razing a city in a solid province has a lesser penalty than razing a city in a province that is far far away (because you get the +1 for conquering a city in a solid province) I think this should be fixed!


Permanent would be things like +1 for the city buildings (castle, manor house etc) as long as you keep that building/the city its in. Also colony bonuses and researching those techs (still unsure why they have a penalty).

I think just about everything else should be temporary (last for 5 turns, or the effect dwindles like the swing, but maybe not as quickly dwindling). Otherwise seemingly in-the-moment things like razing a city, entering a war, and moving the capitol hurt you in the long run.


You want to remove all negative permanent modifiers but keep all positive ones, that makes no sense to me.
I think there should be penalties for some things you do. If you can't handle the stability drop then don't do it.
As those penalties are event based they have to be permanent. A flexible limit to the duration would be cool but this is much more work to implement. Making them permanent is just easy to implement. I think it is ok, and you have all those buildings to counter that.
Before BETA9 there where even more permanent modifiers. I think it is going in the right direction now.

2. Why do the techs and founding corporations decrease stability, is this just to offset the larger number of courthouses, manor houses, etc later in the game?


I think this is a left over from Rhye's original mod.
The tech penalty is probably only for flavour (certain technologies had a greater impact on the daily life of people than others and somehow they got angry at their rulers). Gameplay wise it makes no sense to me, because all nations suffer those penalties and it doesn't affect any of my actions.
The corporation penalty is there to offset the huge benefit of a corporation. That's at least what a comment in the code says. But then it should be better attached to the one who controls the headquarter, not the one who founds it. Thats what i think. Or remove it completly.

As noted, there are four and one half categories. Cities, Civics, Economy, Expansion and the special Swing stability. Swing resets very quickly, so -2 points for pillaging improvements is not that bad. You will have to pillage really a lot of improvements over a very short period of time (2 - 3 turns and at least 10 - 15 improvements) to make a significant difference.

For each of the regular categories, you have permanent and temporary modifiers that can be either positive or negative (also note that Expansion wights a bit more as you can gain/lose more points from it than other cats). In all cases, permanent boosts come from building the corresponding buildings (night watch, court house, manor house, castle).

Economy loses stability from some techs, however, those techs do give boosting building and/or they are associated with big changes the Medieval Economy. At any rate, if we remove that, then what event should cause permanent loss of Economic stability?

Note that in the original RFC, Economic stability is the biggest "voodoo". We have all played RFC and it does work, however, the logic behind Economic stability doesn't make sense.

Hi, I just wonder, if the random flipping of single city to independent is result of negative stability.

Is there no option to cheat re stability of this mod? The other RFC mod i play has the Crtl+Shift+Q then Shift+S option to cheat on the stability.
I know, I'm a dirty, terrible cheater :p

Is there no option to cheat re stability on this mod? The other RFC mod i play has the Crtl+Shift+Q then Shift+S option to cheat on the stability.
I know, I'm a dirty, terrible cheater :p

The F2 Screen
On the F2-screen you c

All values are sumed up and give the total stability or simply the stability (The value that can be seen on the main screen). This is the only value that matters in the end.


I don't think that the final number is the simple sum of all the visible numbers. There are many other hidden modifiers.

But generally speaking, this guide must find it's way into Pedia. I am a big fun of Stability concept, I wish they create a symbol for it for this forums, like for :strength:, or :move:, or :health: . I am constantly feeling like checking the Pedia, not Internet, while micromanaging the stability of my Empire. One strange thing about stability from happiness though -- culture slider never improves the stability even though you get more happy faces. This is unfortunate, because it could encourage to use the culture slider in very bad stability situations, so Rhye's mechanics would naturally fuse with Fraxis' mechanics.

I don't think that the final number is the simple sum of all the visible numbers. There are many other hidden modifiers.

But generally speaking, this guide must find it's way into Pedia. I am a big fun of Stability concept, I wish they create a symbol for it for this forums, like for :strength:, or :move:, or :health: . I am constantly feeling like checking the Pedia, not Internet, while micromanaging the stability of my Empire. One strange thing about stability from happiness though -- culture slider never improves the stability even though you get more happy faces. This is unfortunate, because it could encourage to use the culture slider in very bad stability situations, so Rhye's mechanics would naturally fuse with Fraxis' mechanics.

There are many variables involved in the stability and city happiness is only one of them. The happy slider does affect your stability, it is just that the affect is soft-capped in RFC and hard-capped in RFCE, so if your cities are already happy, this will not help you much.

If you are at war and suffering from war unhappiness, then the slider will help significantly.

@ Caliom

Can you update this list (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10468207&postcount=10)? I'm adding the stability guide to the Civilopedia, but this guide is a bit outdated.

The list seems to be up to date.

stability.py has not been changed since Mai 5. 2011.
I also saw no entry in ChangeLog.txt that refers to stability since then.

@3Miro: can you confirm this?


however i fixed some typos and added some UPs that i had overseen before.
-iUP_StabilitySettler for Portugal and Norse
-iUP_ReligiousTolerance for Poland
-iUP_CulturalTolerance for Hungary and France

The list seems to be up to date.

stability.py has not been changed since Mai 5. 2011.
I also saw no entry in ChangeLog.txt that refers to stability since then.

@3Miro: can you confirm this?


however i fixed some typos and added some UPs that i had overseen before.
-iUP_StabilitySettler for Portugal and Norse
-iUP_ReligiousTolerance for Poland
-iUP_CulturalTolerance for Hungary and France

Hm, sounds right. Maybe it is time to change this. I think tweaking the penalty for razing cities to depend on the size, like cities below 5 get only 1 point penalty, while cities of size 12 or above get 3 points penalty.

I don't think that the final number is the simple sum of all the visible numbers. There are many other hidden modifiers.


Why do you think that? Did the simple sum of all visible numbers ever differ from the final number in your games?

in game most modifiers are hidden. The numbers in the five categories are already sums on their own. I do not know of any moddifier that isn't already represented in one of those categories, and i see no reason why it shouldn't be the simple sum ;)

Why do you think that? Did the simple sum of all visible numbers ever differ from the final number in your games?

in game most modifiers are hidden. The numbers in the five categories are already sums on their own. I do not know of any moddifier that isn't already represented in one of those categories, and i see no reason why it shouldn't be the simple sum ;)

Total stability is just the sum of all 5 categories. Some nations have a stability boost on start, but it is not hidden, it is reflected in both F2 screen and the main screen.

Hm, sounds right. Maybe it is time to change this. I think tweaking the penalty for razing cities to depend on the size, like cities below 5 get only 1 point penalty, while cities of size 12 or above get 3 points penalty.

I agree, that sounds like a good addition
Also, I have a few questions/reports/possible bugs based on playtesting:

- When your empire is already big (10+ cities), and you capture and raze an enemy city. First your stability goes down when entering the city (number of cities + new city in unstable/ok province penalty), like it was an addition to your empire. But then you raze it, and the stability further goes down, by the city razing penalty!!
Tried to test if it's only a hidden modifier, but seemingly both negativ stability modifiers stays. So, instead of the normal -2 stability for city razing you actually get something between -6 and -10 (depending on the size of your empire and on the province being unstable or OK)

- Imperialism civic should give bonus simply by having cities outside core area, right? In my experience I only got the +1 stability when actually build those cities, simply having them wasn't enough

- I'm not totally sure on this, but about city liberation:
It's rather annoying when you liberate a city, and get a stability penalty for this
City liberation should never cost in your stability. If you can and willing to liberate a city, why should we penalize this?
Also, an idea: Shouldn't this be dependent on whether the target city is in the given civ's core area?
So gifting away/liberating cities don't add anything if they are in the "wrong" area, but giving +1 stability if it's in the core area

I will look into this. The issues may be due to stability not being recalculated properly after the city is founded/razed (i.e. exactly when do we call the function). Another possible issue comes from the dynamic provinces, if you capture a city in a stable province, only then does a province truly become stable. If the enemy has cities in it, then you will be hit with that penalty right when you capture the city.

I will look into this. The issues may be due to stability not being recalculated properly after the city is founded/razed (i.e. exactly when do we call the function). Another possible issue comes from the dynamic provinces, if you capture a city in a stable province, only then does a province truly become stable. If the enemy has cities in it, then you will be hit with that penalty right when you capture the city.

I agree, it's probably about the stability not being recalculated
First you get your stability loss with the onCityAcquired function (it recalculates your stability as if you have one more cities)
Then you get an additional stability loss for actually razing the city (I found a bug in the onCityRazed function, now it works fine)
So, you get that -2 stability for city razing, like you should.
The problem is that the previous function doesn't refresh, and your expansion stability somehow remains calculated with +1 cities AND one razed city

I agree, it's probably about the stability not being recalculated
First you get your stability loss with the onCityAcquired function (it recalculates your stability as if you have one more cities)
Then you get an additional stability loss for actually razing the city (I found a bug in the onCityRazed function, now it works fine)
So, you get that -2 stability for city razing, like you should.
The problem is that the previous function doesn't refresh, and your expansion stability somehow remains calculated with +1 cities AND one razed city

onCityRazed should be calling the function to recalculate the expansion stability. Maybe the bug was causing it to fail or maybe the razed city isn't removed from the player's list of cities until later (so when the expansion stability is recalculated it is still with +1 city). In the second scenario we should add something in the code to recalculate the expansion stability at the end of the players' turn (before the secession or collapse functions are called).

In the light of the byzbug (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12248989&postcount=333) I took my time to discover how to deal with this strange concept called Stability, and IMHO some things have to be done:

The byzbug is a minor display problem that corrects itself after the first city founding by the byzantine, so it's actually a minor bug and doesn't affect gameplay at all (it may only scare some people like me and make they think the game is cheating against them).

I have just tested a french game and tried to finally discover if I was right about Stephansdom +2 Stability Bonus not being working properly. And indeed, I was a Feudal Monarchy and WBed Stephansdom. Nothing changed under the Civic column of Stability. I passed the turn, and still nothing happened. I reloaded to actually build Stephansdom and the same result in the turn and in the following one. I tried with all 3 monarchies, not one gave me the bonus (with limited monarchy I gained 2 pts in Economy in the following turn, but Stephansdom bonus should be in the Civics column, so it's probably another thing)

And a major redesigning of permanent and temporary stability bonus/penalties should be discussed. For example: -1 permanent stability for each DoW (or entry in a war, not sure if it's only applied when you declare war) may become a total mess, and seems unreal. It's strange to think my stability in 1760 AD is being affected by the war I declared against the Norse in 1050 AD being the Spanish (imagine the Arab with their last UHV and one of the earliest spawns).

Hm, sounds right. Maybe it is time to change this. I think tweaking the penalty for razing cities to depend on the size, like cities below 5 get only 1 point penalty, while cities of size 12 or above get 3 points penalty.

This is a really good idea, was this implemented yet? But honestly, why permanent? So if I razed Burdigala with the french in 540 AD I would still suffer from this in 1700 AD? Even if I was forced to raze (1-pop city) and rebuild it (because it's a good spot for a french city)?

I agree, that sounds like a good addition
Also, I have a few questions/reports/possible bugs based on playtesting:

- When your empire is already big (10+ cities), and you capture and raze an enemy city. First your stability goes down when entering the city (number of cities + new city in unstable/ok province penalty), like it was an addition to your empire. But then you raze it, and the stability further goes down, by the city razing penalty!!
Tried to test if it's only a hidden modifier, but seemingly both negativ stability modifiers stays. So, instead of the normal -2 stability for city razing you actually get something between -6 and -10 (depending on the size of your empire and on the province being unstable or OK)

Was this corrected? I never raze cities (only with the Norse for obvious reasons) so I'm not sure.

- Imperialism civic should give bonus simply by having cities outside core area, right? In my experience I only got the +1 stability when actually build those cities, simply having them wasn't enough

And this? It's a really good idea Absinthe. BTW, why not letting Imperialism without a cap? Honestly, there is not a single game where I don't change to Militarism ASAP and never change it anymore, just because it doesn't have a cap.

- I'm not totally sure on this, but about city liberation:
It's rather annoying when you liberate a city, and get a stability penalty for this
City liberation should never cost in your stability. If you can and willing to liberate a city, why should we penalize this?
Also, an idea: Shouldn't this be dependent on whether the target city is in the given civ's core area?
So gifting away/liberating cities don't add anything if they are in the "wrong" area, but giving +1 stability if it's in the core area

I guess the part of liberating a city was changed as you suggested, but the second suggestion seems nice and I think it wasn't implemented. This would make "Saving Wars" a lot more common, something that really happened in Europe. BTW the AI should know and use this.

Economy:
- For each city, consider the ratio of food + production per citizen. You have to work improved tiles and you get a bonus for working on resources. Once the cities increase in size, you have to build Guilds and Forges to get extra +xx% production bonus.

- There was also some bonus for foreign trade routes. I don't remember off hand.

- There are penalties for making too many military units and/or wonders (those hurt your economy).

A detailed guide about this would be a great advantage.

BTW, is the cap for vassals because of Stability? I can't understand why RFCE has a cap for vassals.