Stability Collapse sudden, arbitrary and not at all fun

[1SDANi]

I personally love the idea of tying the Stability system into the Rhye's and Fall system by having lower stability increase the chance of converting population, workers, and military units into secessionist settlers, workers, and military that'd emigrate to empty areas and found independent cities, new empires, or join existing players. IMO, it'd allow for alleviating some of the most gamey parts of both systems while also making the game far more spontaneous and far less railroaded.

Massive overhauls aside, what about stability based events? Things like an event that occurs with at least 1 instability from losses to barbarians and increases in likelyhood the more instability of that source you have. Civilians in a particular city are losing their trust in the military's ability to protect them and unrest is swelling. You can either draft 2 defensive units at twice the happiness cost, let the city fall into anarchy for 1 turn (event may reoccur next turn), or promise that there's nothing to fear (if any units lose to barbarians near that city in the near future, the event will reoccur and the city will gain +2 Unhappiness until the next Golden Age)

 

[Leoreth]

That is a massive overhaul.

I don't wanna be a dick in this thread but the problem with all of those ideas is that I've had them already.

 

[1SDANi]

That is a massive overhaul.

I don't wanna be a dick in this thread but the problem with all of those ideas is that I've had them already.

It absolutely is. I want to make a mod with it eventually, currently I'm working on mods for other games tho.

Whenever I suggest something, I am suggesting it assuming the creator has already though of it. I've always assumed suggestion threads/forums were more for gauging community interest to aid in evaluating where to go next than to find new ideas.

 

[Leoreth]

I think this is it. I should say there's nothing particularly unusual code-wise, but these sudden collapses are really irritating. I recall last time I played this mod, the player would collapse back to a few cities in his core area, instead of just losing every single city on the map and game-over.

How railroaded are 'Historical Areas' anyway? If I'm playing something like Korea or Harappa, should I just resign myself to never expanding?

Perhaps in the next iteration of the game the player could have option of how 'Historically Scripted' they want the game to be, like Geomodder (?) made for his Japan Warring-States mod.

Well let's see if anything unusual is happening code wise.

Looked into the Korea save, and I'm not sure what exactly you did to collapse.

Making contact with the Inca bumped me down to Collapsing. The game then said that at the current state, I would not have to worry about collapse. Forcing another stability check indeed kept me alive.

Your stability situation is clearly pretty bad, and it's not even from overexpansion. Bad economy, and all your neighbours dislike you. So it's not surprising that you're in a bad spot, clearly you did not manage this at all. I don't know if last second warnings can really turn things around at that point.

That said, I think an interface notification that stability has dropped to collapsing can easily be added. But your options for turning the ship around might be limited when you see it. Stability really has to be managed over the course of the game. I'm not sure what to do to make this information more evident and actionable.

I did spot a potential issue in the code that might allow you to drop from unstable into collapsing and die immediately, which is not intended. Dropping to collapsing IS the warning that you're in trouble. That's why it is collapsing. But that was not the case in this game. I will of course fix it regardless.

I have some ideas to improve consequences for negative stability long term with more varied and gradual consequences, but they tie into civil war implementations that require a free slot to represent your civil war opponent, to make this an actually challenging opponent.

Collapse to core does not apply in this situation at all. Overexpansion wasn't even the cause of the collapse or any problem at all in that game.

 

[Pavel Chichikov]

I could imagine more collapse to core if the expansion rules became a lot less lenient, and access to balancing positive stability became a lot less generous. Feels kinda boring though.

This reminds of another thing.. regarding the AI, collapses and rebirths seem to happen with ridiculous frequency in the current build. I had a China game where I saw Korea collapse and respawn not less than five (5) times, the final occurrence of which ruined my game because they respawned with all modern technologies and immediately declared war on me, who had been playing a peaceful tech-race game.
Actually, I don't get why Korea collapsed so many times in the first place, other than 1 Mongol invasion, they just relapsed to Indepenents every hundred years or so, seemingly without reason.

Similar things happening with Vikings, Iran, Russia.. perennial collapses in absence of war or barbarians. I mean, if this is a method of keeping Civs up-to-date in tech by constant respawns, its rather annoying.

That said, I think an interface notification that stability has dropped to collapsing can easily be added. But your options for turning the ship around might be limited when you see it. Stability really has to be managed over the course of the game. I'm not sure what to do to make this information more evident and actionable.

The 'Finance' advisor could use more specific tooltips, it would also be useful to see why other Civilisations collapse. But the way Civs collapse instantly and totally isn't fun imo, virtually not a single Civilisation in the game dies naturally to conquest by a foreign power.

 

[W|M]

Looked into the Korea save, and I'm not sure what exactly you did to collapse.

Making contact with the Inca bumped me down to Collapsing. The game then said that at the current state, I would not have to worry about collapse. Forcing another stability check indeed kept me alive.

Your stability situation is clearly pretty bad, and it's not even from overexpansion. Bad economy, and all your neighbours dislike you. So it's not surprising that you're in a bad spot, clearly you did not manage this at all. I don't know if last second warnings can really turn things around at that point.

That said, I think an interface notification that stability has dropped to collapsing can easily be added. But your options for turning the ship around might be limited when you see it. Stability really has to be managed over the course of the game. I'm not sure what to do to make this information more evident and actionable.

I did spot a potential issue in the code that might allow you to drop from unstable into collapsing and die immediately, which is not intended. Dropping to collapsing IS the warning that you're in trouble. That's why it is collapsing. But that was not the case in this game. I will of course fix it regardless.

I have some ideas to improve consequences for negative stability long term with more varied and gradual consequences, but they tie into civil war implementations that require a free slot to represent your civil war opponent, to make this an actually challenging opponent.

Collapse to core does not apply in this situation at all. Overexpansion wasn't even the cause of the collapse or any problem at all in that game.

Part of the problem is that non-expansion stability is even more opaque and arbitrary than expansion stability - It's entirely possible to have a terrible financial score despite making a profit every turn for hundreds of years. My Russia game is currently stuck in the mid-19th century because domestic stability dropped like a stone out of seemingly nowhere (presumably because of suddenly outdated civics?), while all other stability indicators are fine, and there was nothing in-game that gave me any sort of forewarning.

 

[TsarAndreas]

This is a difficult problem to solve.

On one hand, I can understand players who want to see a clear indication of what they need to do to stay stable or move up a stability level.

Specific quest-style messages like “gain 3 trade routes in the next 10 turns” or “work 3 cottages” might help some players.

Another approach might be to have something like an economic growth indicator, e.g. “GDP has grown 1% over XXX period” so that it’s easy to see if your current approach is working.

On the other hand, a big part of the fun of this mod is simply playing the game in an intuitive way and not having to micromanage each part. Learning by playing, or by reading through the Civilopedia from time to time, can be enough for other players.

What are people’s thoughts? Does the community think that they don’t have the information they need to understand what’s happening or to make decisions in-game easily? The Civilopedia does explain how stability works in great detail.