Am I right to understand that by underextended and overextended you mean being outside the historical area for that civ? If so, then civs whose UHV includes conquering large areas outside their historic boundaries are pretty much destined to have stability problems and that's an intended challenge of trying to win that way?
Stability driving me nuts
- Thread starter Pilotis
- Start date
romelus
NUCULAR!
if historical area indeed is important for the expansion rating, aren't civs which were historically small at an inherent disadvantage? russia, china, and american can get to a huge size without penalties, while a small civ like babylon would become unstable quickly if it goes on the warpath
Territory UHVs were taken into acount.
Yes, they are. Large civs like Russia, Mongolia, Turkey, Spain and England can wield large amounts of land. The thing is, stability is tied to size in an indirect way. So the civs with large historic empires can also hold more tiles outside of that area than others.
You are.
it's true they are advantaged in overexpansion, but it's a double-edged sword. It will be easier to suffer instability due to other civs owning a part of one's homeland.
And don't worry about balancement: modifiers do their job very well.
And don't worry about balancement: modifiers do their job very well.
romelus
NUCULAR!
well i guess my style of play is not encouraged 
i kill. regardless of what civ i am.
i kill. regardless of what civ i am.
Ok, just wondering...
In my last game as Byzantium (fine, Greece....) I was doing great. The only European powers that have spawned are me and Rome, and life is good. I own from mid-Germany down into Turkey and am crushing the Persians. Now, my economy is alright (781 gold, 70% research, -5 gold per turn), and I have no unhappiness or unhealthiness... So why am I unstable? My current civics are Hereditary Rule and Slavery, and I havn't whipped in the last 10 turns.
In my last game as Byzantium (fine, Greece....) I was doing great. The only European powers that have spawned are me and Rome, and life is good. I own from mid-Germany down into Turkey and am crushing the Persians. Now, my economy is alright (781 gold, 70% research, -5 gold per turn), and I have no unhappiness or unhealthiness... So why am I unstable? My current civics are Hereditary Rule and Slavery, and I havn't whipped in the last 10 turns.
Running a deficit causes a large amount of instability. Never do it unless you are running the Commonwealth civic.
thanks again 
problemo solved
blackheart
unenlightened
I've read over this thread and I still don't have a clear picture of how to influence my stability rating. One game I had a large Japanese empire that was finishing conquering Asia when out of the blue my ENTIRE empire collapses, leaving me with control of only my capital, not even the home island of Honshu remained under my control. Now I would have really appreciated some indication that this was about to happen, because I had my happiness bar at 40% and none of my cities had unrest. It isn't fun to play a game then suddenly lose most everything in a single turn without knowing why.
For Japan, you ran into what we refer to as Historic or Natural Empires. Every tile has been given a stability modifier for every civ. This makes expansion difficult for isolated or small empires. Japan, which only controled Honshu and Korea/Manchuria at times. Expanding into the mainland beyond Manchuria will rack up major instability points. You can, however, expand into pacific islands with little hit to stability from expansion, however those cities will tank your GDP and cause instability from a different route.
blackheart
unenlightened
So I can't have a large empire as Japan? What's the point of that?
EDIT: But why did my ENTIRE country fall apart?
EDIT: But why did my ENTIRE country fall apart?
Eh? I never said that. You can control most of the Pacific with Japan, just not much of China.
Because you dropped to collapsing stability. There are different degrees to which your empire will fall apart. At Shaky, you can lose a city or two if they become unhappy. At Unstable, whole sections of your empire will "Rhyes" and become a new AI civ. At Collapsing, you will be left with only your capital.
blackheart
unenlightened
Yep, so I can't have the empire that "I" want.
Whitefire said:
Well I was at Unstable the turn previous to my entire empire revolting, then Shaky the next turn. I had no indication that it would go to collapsing.
Oh Jeepers guys. THIS is just ridiculous !!! We must have some kind of commentary or set of clues that gives us SOME idea of do's and don'ts re stability in general and stability traits of particular empires.
I really do feel as though we're being given 'crumbs at the table of those who know'. I'm managing all of the traits I know about (from the crumbs I've picked up) - doing O.K. then WHAM ! it all starts going downhill. So then we get in one of the threads - 'Ah well you see......'.
Naaah. This won't do.....
Reading this and other comments, am I right in assuming that the only victory condition you can achieve is the UHV for each civ? And possibly SpaceRace and Culture.
Going for domination or conquest it seems is not possible because of the stability modifier given to each tile per civ. This stops you from capturing and keeping land not owned orriginally by the civ.
If that is the case it is a pity because as a player I would like to try and do better than a Civ did in RL. Playing against AI civs that try to behave realistically but react to my moves.
Wilhelm II
Warlord
The main problem is that people have (nearly) achieved conquest or domination victory in earlier versions. Just read the Imperial Japan Challenge thread a few pages back. Once you have captured Europe or the Chinese/Japanese/Mongolian core, you become insanely powerful in all respects: GNP, production, population, technology. You are so powerful that the game is just no fun anymore. Therefore Rhye tweaked the tech modifiers, so that many cities slow down your research rate instead of indefinitely speeding it up. Yet experienced players like Whitefire could still conquer the world, by razing useless cities, etc, etc. When stability was introduced, it was a real killer, at the time of the Imperial Japan Challenge it was nothing to worry about anymore for the experienced player.
This means a few versions back almost nothing could stop the experienced player from conquering one the two mega-cores (European or Sino-Japanese), and once (s)he had one, difficulty went increasingly downhill.
However no civ ever succeded in capturing all of the world (or dominating HUGE parts of it) without stability problems or other real-life problems that are much harder to represent in Civ4, that would eventually put the expansion to an end and allow the other civs to keep up. There is nothing in standard Civ4 to reflect this, so Rhye introduced the tech modifier, the plague (although the main reason for introducing the plague was to get rid of fun-killing massive stacks of OLD units and - of course - to reflect this important aspect of history) and stability. Since this was obviously not preventing the player from overexpanding dramatically, Rhye re-tweaked the stability system in a way that makes stability a real challenge for expansive civs again rendering domination and conquest (almost) impossible as it proved to be in real life.
Don't forget that real life politicians/rulers mostly react, whereas you as the palyer can control almost all of your internal affairs, know and control technological progress in advance ("let's get guilds to build knights before the other civs research engineering"), etc.
To cut a long story short: in real life your "fiercest foe" may be your own people and human inabilaties not necessarily your neighbours. To reflect this stability was introduced amongst other things. You can still build respectable empires with many civs (Russia, America, Germany, France, Spain, England, China,...) and if you really want to go for domination/conquest victory just try to get one of the older (pre stability re-tweaking) versions and have fun.
This means a few versions back almost nothing could stop the experienced player from conquering one the two mega-cores (European or Sino-Japanese), and once (s)he had one, difficulty went increasingly downhill.
However no civ ever succeded in capturing all of the world (or dominating HUGE parts of it) without stability problems or other real-life problems that are much harder to represent in Civ4, that would eventually put the expansion to an end and allow the other civs to keep up. There is nothing in standard Civ4 to reflect this, so Rhye introduced the tech modifier, the plague (although the main reason for introducing the plague was to get rid of fun-killing massive stacks of OLD units and - of course - to reflect this important aspect of history) and stability. Since this was obviously not preventing the player from overexpanding dramatically, Rhye re-tweaked the stability system in a way that makes stability a real challenge for expansive civs again rendering domination and conquest (almost) impossible as it proved to be in real life.
Don't forget that real life politicians/rulers mostly react, whereas you as the palyer can control almost all of your internal affairs, know and control technological progress in advance ("let's get guilds to build knights before the other civs research engineering"), etc.
To cut a long story short: in real life your "fiercest foe" may be your own people and human inabilaties not necessarily your neighbours. To reflect this stability was introduced amongst other things. You can still build respectable empires with many civs (Russia, America, Germany, France, Spain, England, China,...) and if you really want to go for domination/conquest victory just try to get one of the older (pre stability re-tweaking) versions and have fun.
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