Help with stability

[jeffreyac]

Hi all,

First - this is my favorite mod for Civ IV. I love the flavor, the additions, and the general feel of the game. But...

...I just can't figure out how to work stability in early and mid game. I spend the whole game with a focus on stability (never changing to slavery or caste system, or any other civic that increases instability, connecting all cities, even beelining to Monarchy to try and get a more stable government, etc) but it never seems to be enough.

Last game, for example. Had a city that was a fair distance away, so I knew it'd be a worry. Stacked it with a garrison (had the biggest army a=on the planet, and fully half my units there), had decent culture, etc. Still ended up rebelling. The listed reasons for instability included 'financial trouble' - I was running 60% science, with a surplus... Even had a successful war right outside the borders of this city - still didn't help.

So, really, what does it take to get rid of 'financial trouble'? And what does it take to keep an empire stable? Seems like, for me, any more than about 5 cities and I just begin to collapse unless I spend every effort with stability as the focus.

So, I love the mod, but I need to learn more about it. Is this normal for everyone else (focusing exclusively on stability) or am I missing something?

Is there a listing somewhere of what the various bonuses/penalties to stability are?

Lastly - I know, I could just turn the stability portion off. Problem is, I love the idea, and really want to be able to play with it. I'm just struggling greatly trying to figure out how to make it work!

Too often, my games either end with a) my empire fractures into civil war as I fail to keep my cities stable, or b) I'm successful in keeping my few cities stable, but then I'm steamrollered by another civ as I haven't really spent any effort at anything other than stability issues - so science and offensive military suffers...

 

[Afforess]

Last game, for example. Had a city that was a fair distance away, so I knew it'd be a worry. Stacked it with a garrison (had the biggest army a=on the planet, and fully half my units there), had decent culture, etc. Still ended up rebelling. The listed reasons for instability included 'financial trouble' - I was running 60% science, with a surplus... Even had a successful war right outside the borders of this city - still didn't help.

For some reason that makes no sense to me, Jdog capped the garrison effect at -8 revIndex a turn; which is very low. It means more than 8 units has no effect. I edited it to bump it up to 25. That may be your problem right there.

 

[Bezurn]

I think financial stability is both a combination of your empire wide stability, and the local stability. Thus if you have a far away city (and counts as a colony) the maintences costs will be higher than the income of the city for quite a while. So the best way to reduce this effect is to get a courthouse up before a forge, and to have the city start working as many commerce tiles as possible. Also building market, grocer, bank will help once the city has a good commerce base.

In further away cities I will sometimes put courthouse as the 4th or 5th item on the building list. Get a granary, a culture building or two, and then the courthouse. That way the city becomes far less of a drag on my empires economy and allows me to found other cities sooner. Then depending on the cities focus I will either work on hammer and military items or science / culture / espionage buildings.