Noob advice for RFC.

I really like the idea of the 'real world' game, I think the stability concept is very interesting, but it is very difficult and leaves in my opinion not enough space for different kinds of playing with one civ. I would love to see two modifications :

1. Explain the impact of every action on stability - I played RFC only three times and in my third game I really couldn't understand why my stability was low. I played as Japan, was in my historical borders (I assume that Corea is part of it), had not much war but a lot of open borders and trade, lost only one battle and won serveral ones, built wonders, courthoueses and jails, took care that my civics are not creating instability (I read the wiki thread about stability) and changed civics only during a golden age... well all I earned was 'unstable' and so the loss of my corean city. It is quite frustrating not to know what influenced my stability. If there could be a special stability advisor screen, explaining the total stability value - since stability influences every action in the game, it would be only fair to explain it a bit more. It could be like the detailed happiness in a city, with little green and red smileys and a short explanation.

2. Reduce the impact of stability. Everything has to be considered under a 'stability point of view' which in my opinion reduces much the possibilities that are left to the human player and so a bit of the fun of civ. Well that sounds very hard, especially since I like RFC much. Another way would be to have more permanent positive impacts on stability - for instance, my japanese people were in peace and quite rich for several centuries and yet there was no improving of my stability rating !

In conclusion I think there is a real discrepancy between the quite low possibilities of (re-)acting on stability due to a lack of understanding/information and the immense consequences of stability on the whole game. Well I guess it is partly wanted in order to give an advantage to the AI, but as I said before it can create a lot of frustration.
 
Well I think my issue with stability has as much to do with its outcome than just its calculations. By that I mean instability in excess leads to fragmentation of your empire either revolution where your whole empire falls apart, one city or a region and this peterbs me. IMO instability should have more imaginative impacts than simply the undoing of civ size. To that end I suggest that one penalty for instability and collapse should be revolution like when you change your civics. In fact if it could be programmed I'd like to see the civic reset and no research and city production could be done. This might help to recreate the chaos of the French revolution and not let a player off the hook so easily for overexpansion. As it is right now you can kind of cheat instability by when you get close to the limit you found a new city and wait to see how it impacts your stability. If the effect is to great/unending then you can attempt to trade it away and get back within your stability boundaries before its too late. In this way you can still expand without having to really risk anything, but if what I suggested was done you might be more inclined to hang on to cities knowing that all you are really losing is several turns of instability. Of course the worse your situation is the longer the revolution could last. I feel this would be a great enough penalty because it could expose you to extreme risk militarily to an oportunistic adversary. Additionally you could fall severely behind in the tech race.

Resetting your civics could also be a pain because it would cost you an additional amount of turns.
 
Stability mechanisms are very fragile, and I must always think twice before changing anything.
I recall seeing games without penalties for expansion which ended up in the human players controlling 50% of the world (search for "Japanese Imperial Challenge" in the RFC forum, you'll see what I mean).

Anyway, you are welcome to play the new MP version of RFC, in which you'll be able to confront your skills with other humans

MP VERSION!? Where!!? Gadamit I want it!!!
 
Go to Civ 4 Creation and customization -> Mod development (the lowest subforum) -> Rhyes and Fall of Civ4 -> MP rhyes and fall

I won't give you the link, that'd be too easy ;)
 
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