Viking stability bug?

[Kaxen]

I just started a game as the Vikings in 600 AD scenario and on turn 36 my stability changes to unstable and one of my cities declares independence. The city was founded in the dark green area, so according to the stability map it should be in the perfect place to stop this happening?

How is this even possible so early i barely started the game and never had much trouble like this with the Arabians even though i was unstable for many turns, something must be wrong.

[BurnEmDown]

Perhaps you could include a save, a screen shot, or maybe more details of what happened in your game.
(Which cities you founded, which cities you conquered, your civic choices, any significant things that happened).

[Kaxen]

My civics are Hereditary Rule, Vassalage, Slavery and whatever the other start ones are. The only strange thing i can think of that happened was being at war with the Germans as soon as i met them.

I added the save and a screenshot.

[Lone Wolf]

The stability system does strange stuff sometimes. Sometimes it penalizes the player for things it shouldn't, IMO, like having too many foreign contacts, or running deficit research.

I'd say that in your case the stability system disliked your production/commerce ratio and commerce growth or something like that. I'd advise you to build more cottages to even the ratio and to have a positive growth.

That's the negative gameplay effect of the stability - I don't think that it should encourage cottage and penalize specialist or hammer economies.

Or maybe there's really a bug of some sort here...

[Panopticon]

Stability doesn't actually punish multiple foreign contacts - it simply includes a negative modifier to compensate for all the positive benefits of foreign contacts, like trade routes and tech trading. However, it does favour cottage economy too heavily.

[blizzrd]

Originally Posted by Kaxen

My civics are Hereditary Rule, Vassalage, Slavery and whatever the other start ones are. The only strange thing i can think of that happened was being at war with the Germans as soon as i met them.

I added the save and a screenshot.

Being at war for too long will reduce your stability (unless you are in Police State). If you started out at war with Germany and have never made peace with them, this will have hurt your stability.

How many times did you go into anarchy to switch your civics? Did you do it all at the start, or later in separate turns?

Also, I notice that you don't have any Open Borders agreements with other civs. This will be hurting your economy (no trade routes) and also your foreign stability (open borders and defensive pacts give bonuses to stability). Try gifting 10 gold to your neighbours to make them happy with you, and you should then be able to sign open borders agreements with them. Germany maybe not straight away perhaps.

[Kaxen]

I switched civics on the first turn and i have open borders with Spain but lost contact a few turns earlier, the other civ wont open borders but i did do plenty of tech trading. Germany had just spawned a few turns ago aswell so not been at war long.

I did whip alot in that city though because it had plenty of growth so i thought i would get the buildings out fast,if you look at the the screeny you can see a courthouse, library, and harbor that were all whipped maybe thats what caused it?

[Soda]

Whipping does hurt, especially if you're doing it in every city. Opening borders would be useful later on, but at this point, your trade routes won't be good enough for that to make a big difference.

Try building some more workers in the beginning - get the deer camps set up as soon as possible and then start mining. Contrary to popular belief, mines are better than cottages for stability.

Also, if you haven't updated to version 1.x86, that should help too. It's much easier to build up economic stability in the latest version.

[Ready_set_go]

Economy stability is based on growth, right? So if you build a road, would that improve your economy? Or does it need to be a real improvement, like Cottage/Mine/Lumbermill etc...

[Wessel V1]

Roads don't improve economy, they have no raw value in terms of hammers, commerce or food.
To the comment that mines are better than cottages: yes they are in the beginning (they provide +2 hammers, while cottages only provide +1 commerce), but they can't grow into more valuable improvements. That means that the economic growth will be larger when you build them but as soon as you have built them, your economy will stagnate and that is bad for stability. Cottages secure growth for the long term, so they are better for stability and also for economic benefit anyway, since RFC has lots of food available which means that you won't have to rely on some farms to work the towns.

[AnotherPacifist]

Roads improve economy in that they connect cities, but if your cities are on the coast and you have a open route between them, you don't need the roads. (However, if you're at war with the Germans and your sea route is disconnected, you need the roads). OB with foreign civs is almost as important as connecting your cities since trade is much better with foreign cities and it grows with longer peace.

[Soda]

Originally Posted by Wessel V1

To the comment that mines are better than cottages: yes they are in the beginning (they provide +2 hammers, while cottages only provide +1 commerce), but they can't grow into more valuable improvements. That means that the economic growth will be larger when you build them but as soon as you have built them, your economy will stagnate and that is bad for stability. Cottages secure growth for the long term, so they are better for stability and also for economic benefit anyway, since RFC has lots of food available which means that you won't have to rely on some farms to work the towns.

2 hammers are equivalent to 8 commerce for the relevant stability calculation. Cottage growth is going to give you very little, if anything, for stability. Strange as it may seem, the Economy category of stability has almost nothing to do with commerce and lots do with hammers.

Of course, you almost certainly want cottages anyway, but they don't really help keep you stable.

[TDK]

Originally Posted by Kaxen

I just started a game as the Vikings in 600 AD scenario and on turn 36 my stability changes to unstable and one of my cities declares independence. The city was founded in the dark green area, so according to the stability map it should be in the perfect place to stop this happening?

How is this even possible so early i barely started the game and never had much trouble like this with the Arabians even though i was unstable for many turns, something must be wrong.

That sounds like something I've encountered before. Was it a sudden shift? Or did it creep in? Could you load back and see how it happened?

[Wessel V1]

Originally Posted by Soda

2 hammers are equivalent to 8 commerce for the relevant stability calculation. Cottage growth is going to give you very little, if anything, for stability. Strange as it may seem, the Economy category of stability has almost nothing to do with commerce and lots do with hammers.

Of course, you almost certainly want cottages anyway, but they don't really help keep you stable.

Then, it still doesn't help stability. The thing is, your economy needs to grow, that helps your stability. A mine is only a single time boost, and after you've built the mine, your stability will stagnate and so the economy rating will fall. Cottages provide a much lower growth, but any growth is a growth and that's why cottages provide a much better stability in the long run.

On the other hand, that probably explains why the economy stability gets so high in the Industrial era (railroads on mines and lumber mills).

[Kaxen]

Just had another game where i built more workers, used serfdom instead and never whipped once and managed to survive into the 1400s i thought it was going well but then the Russians sneak attacked me, a few turns later all my cities declare independence including my army of berserkers i planned on razing the Russian capitol with and i'm left with my capitol and one longbowman only.

What a joke this stability is why would my own founded cities abandon me so easy? It should only do this with conquered cities in my opinion, wont be playing this mod anymore.

[Lone Wolf]

^

The hysterical fit above is a little extreme, but the stability system can be unfun.

[BurnEmDown]

Kaxen I think you should try another civ maybe England or Japan, an Island civ has a much easier time defending itself so you can just focus on developing and later both these civs have a much easier time expanding (Japan to China and southeast-Asia and England to all it's colonies like India, south Africa, America, Australia.

[dragodon64]

If you're looking for something just fun and stress-free, you can't go wrong with Japan, for the reasons BED mentioned.

On an unrelated note, is that some sort of graphics mod? The texture looks amazing.

[Lone Wolf]

On an unrelated note, is that some sort of graphics mod? The texture looks amazing.

Looks like Blue Marble.

[Soda]

Originally Posted by Wessel V1

Then, it still doesn't help stability. The thing is, your economy needs to grow, that helps your stability. A mine is only a single time boost, and after you've built the mine, your stability will stagnate and so the economy rating will fall. Cottages provide a much lower growth, but any growth is a growth and that's why cottages provide a much better stability in the long run.

That seems to be a common belief, but that's not how it works. Most of the time, there's no bonus for taking more time to get the same GNP increase. In other words, increasing your GNP by X in 3 turns or in 60 turns is going to give you the same stability boost on average. You'll just have it for 57 more turns in the first case.

1.x86 actually helps cottage builders quite a bit here, since the GNP increase needed for stability bonuses is much smaller than it was in previous versions. So civilizations that can expand or grow quickly have an easier time of getting stability bonuses from just doing that.