Germany collapsing due to overexpansion?

[Weyd]

Hello everyone, let me start by saying that I absolutely love Rhye's and Fall of Civilization. I have hardly touched the normal game ever since I've tried out the mod for the first time.

In one of my most recent game as Germany on Monarch, I've come upon a rather odd circumstance. After conquering all of the necessary territory (as in accordance to the UHV) by 1900 AD, all of a sudden my stability started rapidly going down and by around 1915 AD I was collapsing and by 1922 AD I have finally went into a civil war. The fact that I had 5 stars in both Economy and Civics didn't seem to help much at all.

After reading the Stability guide, the only cause I've found applicable to my current situation, was expanding too quickly, but then again most of my game went like that- constantly being at war with at least one civ who is next on my conquering list, but before I never went below shaky even though my expansion even then was only 2 stars.

Did these 40 odd turns from the UHV condition really have such an impact on the overall picture or could there be another reason why I collapsed so rapidly?

I also have a second question: Is stability proportional to the average of the 5 categories or can a single category drag me into collapsing even though the rest are very good? (By looking at my situation it seems to be the latter.)

I have also attached a save which is a turn prior to me collapsing. I have started conquering Turkey, but I was already collapsing before I conquered their first city, so I'd say that's out of the question.


View attachment Germany collapsing!.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I haven't looked at your game yet, but in general if the number of cities is too large, even if the same area is occupied you have more instability (hence I raze half the Viking cities and sometimes also Marseilles or Rennes/Cherbourg).
You may not have built enough courthouses or jails.
You may have too many unhappy/recently conquered cities (happiness is really important in the "cities" category, and dialing up culture and building theaters may help).
I can post, as an example, how my Carthaginian domination game is going. I have 4 star cities, 3 star civics (before democracy), 2 stars expansion (due to squatting on multiple civs' turfs), 4-5 star economy and 4 star foreign. I'm only "stable" but it took me a while to get from shaky/unstable to stable (I had to sacrifice 2 great people to get a golden age, signed on the Vikings as vassals even though they're crap with expansion, gave Pagan to India my vassal, bypassed bureaucracy and went straight for liberalism (1100 AD) and free speech due to my many cities, etc). I currently occupy most of Germany, all of Italy, Greece, Egypt, and North Africa, which is not how Carthage usually plays out due to their small historic area.

Stability is tough.

 

[Weyd]

I have about 32 Courthouses in 37 of my cities. A sligthly lesser amount of jails, but I reckon that shouldn't be a huge factor. I do have recently conquered multiple cities (All the ones that were left after the collapse of Russia). I have the occupation civic so all the anarchy shouldn't affect me and my cities category is at 4 stars.

According to the guide I actually get a bonus for having more cities if I run Police State (which I do). Could my large amount of cities cancel the bonus out and cause problems in the expansion category?

All of my cities are happy. Only one of them has a health problem.

My civics are Police State, Nationhood, Emancipation, State Property, Organized Religion and Occupation all of which seem to work well together and suit the playstile of a conqueror.

I would be glad if you could maybe post a save of one of your conquests to see how exactly you did it and still manage to keep yourself stable. I am still somewhat of a newbie player (playing on noble, but could probably take on prince) after all.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

You have it down mostly. You need more jails (I remember building a jail in all of my cities as soon as they are conquered, since it has a bonus with police state). If you have other religions you may want to go to free religion.

And yes, the number of cities eventually does overwhelm the occupation/police state civics. (How the heck did you get 37 cities? 3 in England, 2 in France, 1 in Netherlands, 3 in Scandinavia, 1 or 2 in Italy, 3 in Greece, 3-5 in Russia and 5 in Germany is all that's needed, that comes out to be 24). I'll post my English domination game when I get back home.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I looked at your save, and boy did you have too many small conquered cities. I liberated Sur to Turkey and instantly became just unstable and rising. You should evacuate Turkey except for Constantinople and Sogut (for the former's sake, not for itself since it's a useless city). Why Pompeii AND Messana? (I see you're still playing the old version since you have Milan).
Also, the English criteria does not require Ireland.

 

[Weyd]

I've actually tried replaying it before your last post and tried to liberate Ireland. I thought it would just further my instability, but surprisingly it bumped it all the way to stable and then to very solid soon after. The rest of the game went as smooth as silk with an eventual victory.

Guess I figured it by myself, but thanks for all of your tips.

I took Pompeii and Messana before I really understood what the victory condition meant (Thought you had to cower all of Greece with your culture to count). I guess Milan is there since I play the unlocked RFC.

 

[blizzrd]

There are penalties for having your culture in tiles that are historically not part of your nation's territory. For Germany, the UHV requires occupying quite a number of areas of Europe which all cause stability issues.

 

[Sovietof17]

Seems like the stability is ultra picky for the Germans. I could easily conquer the world with their production but they would collapse far before then from cities

I am having a problem just collapsing with the cities inside the UHV area [France, nothing in Scandanavia/Russia yet, Rome, Greece/Turkey]

 

[blizzrd]

Because a lot of the German UHV areas are outside of the German historical area, you need to time your expansion into these zones to be close to the deadlines to avoid some of the stability issues that occupying another civ's core area brings.

 

[kbk]

Yeah, Rhye recently turned up the stability costs for having cities in other civilization's cultural core areas. This is of course completely at odds with the German UHVs (control their areas!).

So you really cannot pull this off under any civics but nationhood/police state anymore. You should probably also run police state (avoid great depressions), emancipation and occupation. Christo the Redeemer helps a lot with switching civics.