How to tackle "Bad relations" stability penalty?

[LukeAtmey]

As the title says. I've tried looking guides everywhere but I can't seem to find a proper answer on how the "Bad relations" penalty is calculated and how to avoid it. In addition to giving me a huge stability hit it seems in most of my games majority of AI civ also suffer a bad relations hit in the region of -12 to -18 even. That's pretty huge and prevents most CIV from being stable. So in short how do I tackle this problem? The world builder used to have an option to prevent collapses but as I recently downloaded a new version from github that option seems to be gone from the WorldBuilders game options menu. Any help? Many thanks!

 

[Leoreth]

Relations stability depends on the sum of AI memories (the different factors that contribute to an AI's opinion in the diplomacy tooltip) for each civilisation. Basically, the resulting stability is positive if the the number of civs where this sum is positive exceeds the number of civs for which it is negative, and vice versa.

 

[Bernd-das-Brot]

Is this in addition to the factors mentioned in the Civilopedia or a "new" system?

 

[Rodnok]

I had even bonus for Good relations in the recent game. And that was when running Orthodoxy religion which almost no one had. Lot of open borders and I even gifted technologies to backward civs to improve relations.
There is even a section for Foreign stability in Civilopedia - Concepts - Stability factors (for example being the worst enemy of a higher ranked civ is pretty bad with -4).

 

[Leoreth]

Is this in addition to the factors mentioned in the Civilopedia or a "new" system?

Not sure how up to date the pedia is, but it's one of the foreign stability factors.

I had even bonus for Good relations in the recent game. And that was when running Orthodoxy religion which almost no one had. Lot of open borders and I even gifted technologies to backward civs to improve relations.
There is even a section for Foreign stability in Civilopedia - Concepts - Stability factors (for example being the worst enemy of a higher ranked civ is pretty bad with -4).

That's kind of the intent of the system. If you have an opportunistic foreign policy where you constantly blow off requests it's easy to end up with negative stability.

 

[TJDowling]

Not sure how up to date the pedia is, but it's one of the foreign stability factors.


That's kind of the intent of the system. If you have an opportunistic foreign policy where you constantly blow off requests it's easy to end up with negative stability.

Okay, but for every request you accept there's usually a downside. If you give a tech to someone then 8 civs dislike you for trading with them, so you get up to 4+ for one civ but generally more civs you get negative points. So then is it a bad idea to gift techs from a stability standpoint... unless the civ is very popular? Then you agree to war then whoever you declared war on and their friends hate you. You agree to stop trading same. I almost always grant techs and almost always end up with negative relations stability but rarely accept trade embargos/war declarations.

 

[bluepotato]

Okay, but for every request you accept there's usually a downside. If you give a tech to someone then 8 civs dislike you for trading with them, so you get up to 4+ for one civ but generally more civs you get negative points. So then is it a bad idea to gift techs from a stability standpoint... unless the civ is very popular? Then you agree to war then whoever you declared war on and their friends hate you. You agree to stop trading same. I almost always grant techs and almost always end up with negative relations stability but rarely accept trade embargos/war declarations.

That's why I actually hate the foreign stability system, I always end up having a -7 or bigger penalty at the end even by being nice. The problem is that you get a stability penalty for simply meeting civs (-3 for meeting 2 if I understand correctly) and the friendly civ bonus is simply too low (+1). That means you have to open borders with everyone and be friendly with every second civ to actually be at zero, that's simply impossible after the medieval era. The only way to have a positive foreign stability is getting to multilateralism (which is way too hard to get) and signing a ton of defensive pacts (and potentially getting destroyed because of the wars), or signing defensive pacts with civs that have more score than you. And then we also have to consider the instability from furious relations, being a worst enemy... ultimately the only way to get a positive foreign stability in the late game is murdering your economy by switching into isolationism and removing the whole foreign stability penalty. Which is quite stupid to be honest, I think the "meeting civs" penalty should be tuned down quite a bit.

 

[Leoreth]

That's not true, it's been a while since number of contacts or open borders had an impact on foreign stability. The largest contributor here is what is labeled "relations" and it works like I explained above, except you also get a penalty for having worst enemies that are more powerful than you.

 

[bluepotato]

That's not true, it's been a while since number of contacts or open borders had an impact on foreign stability. The largest contributor here is what is labeled "relations" and it works like I explained above, except you also get a penalty for having worst enemies that are more powerful than you.

Oh okay, sorry. I've checked and the civilopedia section is a bit outdated then, it still says that the stability works like before the stability overhaul commit.

 

[1SDANi]

That's not true, it's been a while since number of contacts or open borders had an impact on foreign stability. The largest contributor here is what is labeled "relations" and it works like I explained above, except you also get a penalty for having worst enemies that are more powerful than you.

So it's worse than what @bluepotato described then?

 

[Leoreth]

Okay, I should probably revise this before release.