The real stability maps

[BurnEmDown]

Japan's green stability in western America is to represent the large Japanese communities there, same for China.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Green stability in nonhistorical areas serves to encourage some alternative colonization, I guess.

 

[Arkaeyn]

Then what about, if a country COULD benefit from conquering an area, but didn't actually do it? That'll be pretty tough to do though, as we can't tell who would be more stable conquering or colonizing where they didn't.

I can't really think of any historic examples of a country conquering an area and increasing their stability. While some have used wars in order to stabilize internal disputes, the actual new territory tends to cause problems.

Conquest and colonization of the New World acted in such a way to a certain extent for some European powers (and the United States with the west, at least, so far) but virtually everywhere else has introduced as many or significantly more problems for the occupiers.

 

[dragodon64]

I'm guessing America has green in east Europe because of the large number of immigrants who came from there; Japan has the opposite reasoning for North American west coast, in that a large number of emigrants went there. I think Japan's reasoning is more valid than America's, though I do think America should have stability in select spots across to represent its various mililtary bases.

 

[civ_king]

Balkans Conflict...

 

[Stoklomolvi]

I can't really think of any historic examples of a country conquering an area and increasing their stability.

Hundred Years' War, France reconquered most of its former lands and grew more stable [sort of].

 

[Arkaeyn]

Hundred Years' War, France reconquered most of its former lands and grew more stable [sort of].

The "re" in "reconquering" is the important thing there, I think.

 

[BurnEmDown]

What about Spain's conquering of Iberia?

 

[Arkaeyn]

That's an interesting one, somewhat difficult to judge. For one thing, it was a reconquest, but over a significantly longer period of time than the French, I think. Second, once it finished, Spain immediately jumped onto a massive imperial expansion, and, like in RFC, they reaped lots of initial bonuses but collapsed a few hundred years later.

But that was a fairly slow expansion/conquest over hundreds of years, so I think that's exactly the kind of able-to-be-stabilized conquest that RFC encourages, as opposed to directly increasing Spain's stability as it occurred.

 

[JujuLautre]

I can't really think of any historic examples of a country conquering an area and increasing their stability. While some have used wars in order to stabilize internal disputes, the actual new territory tends to cause problems.

Well, the French king Louis XI, after the re-conquest from the 100 years war, did expand the territory of the country (through war and diplomacy) and ended up with a much more stable country than what he started with. Louis XIV, also, did the same (perhaps with more wars ), and even if the French revolution started 100 years after, he did expand the country approximately to what it is today.

Sorry I can't cite any other country

 

[ThurinEthir]

It's slightly different, but I suppose the rise and fall of China's dynasties is pretty similar. At the end of each dynasty, China was pretty unstable. Then a new dynasty would be established - Either by invaders, revolt, or whatever, and China would be restabilized.
(I don't know too much about it, but the Mongols weren't that stable - they weren't even really a civilization - before conquering China, were they? Then one could say that the Mongolian conquest of China and the establishment of the Yuan dynasty more or less improved the Mongol's stability.)

 

[Arkaeyn]

@juju - Louis XI, I think, is another good example of how the stability system works in RFC. Slow expansion which can be kept stable. On the other hand, yes, the French Revolution is a pretty stark demonstration of the problem with France's massive wars throughout the previous 150 years.

@Thurin - I think Mongolia is a perfect example of how NOT to expand. After Genghis Khan's death, at which point the Mongols had the largest land empire ever, the empire disintegrated into various occasionally warring factions. In another hundred years, there were only a few remnant khanates.

China is an interesting situation in rather different ways - only India is really comparable. Geographically, it's a consistent state, but the dozen of different dynasties which have controlled it, some foreign and some native, managed to so via the lack of stability in most cases. Civilization and RFC don't model this terribly well. That said, in terms of population centers, China has been fairly consistent over time. Geographical expansion has tended to be into lower populated areas.

 

[ThurinEthir]

@Thurin - I think Mongolia is a perfect example of how NOT to expand. After Genghis Khan's death, at which point the Mongols had the largest land empire ever, the empire disintegrated into various occasionally warring factions. In another hundred years, there were only a few remnant khanates.

True. But were they more stable during their empire (or at least in the Yuan dynasty), or beforehand, when they were wandering nomads?

China is an interesting situation in rather different ways - only India is really comparable. Geographically, it's a consistent state, but the dozen of different dynasties which have controlled it, some foreign and some native, managed to so via the lack of stability in most cases. Civilization and RFC don't model this terribly well. That said, in terms of population centers, China has been fairly consistent over time. Geographical expansion has tended to be into lower populated areas.

It's amazing how China has managed to survive, even with times of extremely unstability. I personally think a better UP would be some sort of stability boost, rather than the current military production boost. That could somewhat represent the infamous dynastic cycle.

 

[Arkaeyn]

True. But were they more stable during their empire (or at least in the Yuan dynasty), or beforehand, when they were wandering nomads?

I kind of dislike the Mongols in Civ4 because they're so different from every other civ. I don't know that it's really possible to answer that question - were they as a political entity more or less stable when they had nomadic battles of succession, or civil wars involving cities?

It's amazing how China has managed to survive, even with times of extremely unstability. I personally think a better UP would be some sort of stability boost, rather than the current military production boost. That could somewhat represent the infamous dynastic cycle.

Some of the macrohistories I've read theorize that China is geographically contiguous in such a way that it makes military and political sense for it to be unified, as opposed to Europe, which is divided into several different geographic regions (Iberia, France, Germany, Italy, etc). This has the effect of making China more stable, but less competitive with other nations. This is somewhat modeled in RFC, especially with the instability from foreign relations.

 

[dragodon64]

It's hard in a way to judge stability for India, China and Mongolia. The first two stayed significant centers of population, culture and commerce during and between dynasties and empires, in contrast to post-Roman Europe. The Mongols, on the other hand, had constant in fighting until the Universal Ruler unified them, but that warfare reinforced their cultural ties. In all three, the society persisted beyond any particular political institution.

 

[-Perceval-]

In warlods it was a scenario where the mongols had sort of camps in order to represent their nomad life.
Technically, the mongol is the more original civ and the civ4 system(big cities who grows up) can't represent this kind of system.
In fact the mongols was nomads when all the other civ was sedentary. The genghis khan's invasion is something extraordinary in the history because it show to us the superiority of nomads on the sedentary, it was the last, the final conflict between nomads and sedentary. If the nomads would have succed to invade the entire world, there would be no building, no cathedrals, no pyramid, no big cities, just the nature with some groups of human. The problem is that the civ in CIV4(and all the other civilization games i think) the typical civilization that we control(a civ who build big cities, buildings, agriculture, marvellous ect...) is the opposite of the mongol civilization(even if it was some big cities, the great part of the mongolians was nomads, the big cities was only made for financial reasons).

 

[Cethegus]

I suddenly began to understand why certain parts of Africa and Central/North Asia often stay so unoccupied - pay no mind to the bad city sites and the lack of resources.

 

[eris23]

so...in all this thread no one asks about how to fiddle with this? i for one would love to make some changes along the road (basically more stability for everyone)

 

[blizzrd]

It's not a simple area to fiddle with. There isn't just single values that you can edit easily for instance. There was a patch which gave your civ something like +100 permanent stability (as opposed to the stability component which is updated every 3 turns), but I don't recall where to find it now.

 

[eris23]

no, thats not what i meant, i was thinking more along the lines of turning some red areas into yellow ones for certain civs, like casablanca for spain and portugal or the whole of south america for inca (they are challenged enough as it is), netherlands for germany, poland for russia...the usual stuff i suppose

though i figured it wouldnt be easy, it should be possible somehow, right?