Chiyochan
King
Is there a mod around that makes every facet of stability visible to the player, I've tried the stability guide and it is essentially worthless for the actual game.
Visible stability mod?
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AnotherPacifist
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Why is it worthless? It contains every piece of info that can show up on the screen. (The part about other espionage buildings giving stability is missing though) What people really need is a "mental" picture of how much instability you have accumulated so far: where you have expanded and "shouldn't," how many times you have anarchy, the number of cities compared to your current civics, how many wonders you've built, what religions you have in your cities, etc. Yes, it can all be spelled out for you, but where's the challenge then?
Chiyochan
King
without the real numbers i cant see what I'm doing wrong, it isn't transparency to the player, it says that X is bad for stability and Y is good for it but they seem to have no relation to improving it whenever i play, in all honesty it was a stupid idea to keep this invisible from the player in the first place, no one pops open civpedia and suddenly finds that information on all the wonders and buildings are approximated, so stability should be likewise, but i take it no one has? and no one probably will,
I'm looking at the Interior Advisor and the code that generates the screen. The question presents itself - what else could you need? 
Like a breakdown of all the things affecting your stability at a certain turn? Because that would just be long list of values and calculations that would probably mean even less to you than the stability guide.
I'm thinking that you need a mod that takes out stability altogether, as you apparently can't handle it.
It shouldn't be too hard to mod the scenario so that the human player always has, say, zero stability (no positive stability and no negative stability). Try this:
Add this code between line #245 and #246 in \Mods\Rhye's and Fall of Civilization\Assets\Python\Stability.py
And you won't have to bother with stability anymore, as it would be reset to zero every turn. (The AI would still be affected, though.) Note that you have to include the above code exactly as it says above, with all the blankspaces and all. The code should then look like this:
Like a breakdown of all the things affecting your stability at a certain turn? Because that would just be long list of values and calculations that would probably mean even less to you than the stability guide.
I'm thinking that you need a mod that takes out stability altogether, as you apparently can't handle it.
It shouldn't be too hard to mod the scenario so that the human player always has, say, zero stability (no positive stability and no negative stability). Try this:Add this code between line #245 and #246 in \Mods\Rhye's and Fall of Civilization\Assets\Python\Stability.py
Code:
if gc.getPlayer(iPlayer).isHuman():
self.setStability(iPlayer, 0)
continueSpoiler :
AnotherPacifist
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Sigh, just mod out the major contribution of this mod to game play so you can enjoy it.
It's only common sense that anarchy is bad for you, that unless you plan ahead you shouldn't send Japanese colonists to SE Asia or America, that Police State and Free Speech don't go well together, that whipping is bad for city happiness, etc...
The only exception to this rule is the built-in biases against Mali, Egypt, Khmer and Maya and I think Rhye did it just to ensure these civs collapse or are significantly nerfed, like in real life.
It's only common sense that anarchy is bad for you, that unless you plan ahead you shouldn't send Japanese colonists to SE Asia or America, that Police State and Free Speech don't go well together, that whipping is bad for city happiness, etc...
The only exception to this rule is the built-in biases against Mali, Egypt, Khmer and Maya and I think Rhye did it just to ensure these civs collapse or are significantly nerfed, like in real life.
Well, there are the historical starting dates also. I can't imagine playing a game where all Civs start in 4000BC ever again...Sigh, just mod out the major contribution of this mod to game play so you can enjoy it.
About stability, maybe it could be modded so that the easiest difficulty level has some added stability for the human player. Chances are that there already exists such a thing in the code, but that value could be elevated so that beginners could learn the mod without descending into civil war. Or there could be another difficulty level altogether that acts like another level, but has massive stability bonuses.
So there could be a stability for beginners type mod, with the addition of a Settler difficulty level.
Panopticon
Utilitarian
Difficulty levels do give the player different amounts of stability, yes.
Danger Bird
gravity's angel
IIRC, Rhye wanted stability to be less transparent because, to a ruler, it should be a somewhat fuzzy concept. (A ruler can't ask, 'Give me the stability figures please.')
However, if we apply that logic consistently, a lot of other things should be less transparent, but they are actually very transparent. For example, if I am about to build the Sistine Chapel, I can know that, if I whip a temple in this new city, it will have a cultural growth of +2 +3 = +5, and its borders will grow in 2 turns, and I'll be able to work that clam. (or whatever, not sure I have the numbers right)
Not very realistic that you can know this with such exact detail, but that is the way the game works. So I can understand those that want stability to be transparent in the same way.
Personally, though, I like not knowing exactly what's going to happen. (The only thing I don't like about stability is the hard-coded deterministic features. Like, Rome, if it survives and emerges as the major European civ, can't colonise the new world without major penalties. Why shouldn't it be able to?)
Lone Wolf
Deity
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Some of the stability features are either not that obvious or just gamey (like penalties for running representation with many cities, or the Golden Age decline that requires tiring micro like timing Courthouses etc. to be completed just after the Age ends, or that giving up cities after a certain threshold is good for stability).
And yes, stability is inconsistent with the main BTS features. When you conduct diplomacy, you are given numbers and explanations (even through there're a lot of hidden modifiers), yoo aren't just told that the leader is Cautious with you and you must figure out for yourself why is it so.
And yes, stability is inconsistent with the main BTS features. When you conduct diplomacy, you are given numbers and explanations (even through there're a lot of hidden modifiers), yoo aren't just told that the leader is Cautious with you and you must figure out for yourself why is it so.
NerfCothons
Warlord
One of the more vague concepts is the difference between permanent stability and temporary stability. I as the player can gain up to +20 temporary stability (stability that will disappear once the conditions are no longer met) if I run viceroyalty and have a bunch of vassals. If I run occupation I gain 2 permanent stability for every city I capture, and don't lose 3 for a razed city. With commonwealth I avoid losing permanent stability points that I otherwise would due to my economy. Despite the fact that viceroyalty is the weakest (non-subjugation) civic over the course of a long term game, many still use it because 20 is a bigger number than 2.
As to Lone Wolf's gamey comment. I don't really think that the representation penalty nor the liberation for stability mechanics are gamey. An empire ruled by representation over a large area (and when I say large I mean large by RFC standards, not real life standards) is going to incorporate so much diversity that tension and conflict is inevitable within a representative government. For example, the modern Indian democracy is one where a coalition government is a necessity and at the moment an unusually strong party is dominant with only 1/3 of the seats in their legislature. And this is an area most players cover (along with Bangladesh and Pakistan, another 300 million people) with only 3 or 4 cities!
Similarly liberating a city when you've grown unstable (aka you're afraid parts of your own empire might rise to independence) seems very intuitive. Again I point to India under British dominance. Even considering Gandhi's protests, it was ultimately a British decree that liberated the region partially motivated by a fear of escalating resistance, sound familiar?
As to the timing courthouses, jails, and other stability generating buildings after a golden age, that I'll give to you. Once I learned that courthouses etc. built when my stability is too high yield no stability, it changed the way I played the game for the worse in my opinion. All I thought about during the following few play-throughs seemed to be timing my buildings. Thus a fix I would suggest is to simply remove the cap on current stability required to gain stability from courthouses, jails, intelligence agencies, and security bureaus. It's easy enough to implement as a player, just open the stability python file and find where courthouses etc. are discussed. Then increase the statements like "<0" or "<-20" (can't remember the exact values that are in there atm) to "<500" or whatever. I'm sure deleting the code altogether would be more elegant but I don't trust myself enough to remove entire lines of code.
As to Lone Wolf's gamey comment. I don't really think that the representation penalty nor the liberation for stability mechanics are gamey. An empire ruled by representation over a large area (and when I say large I mean large by RFC standards, not real life standards) is going to incorporate so much diversity that tension and conflict is inevitable within a representative government. For example, the modern Indian democracy is one where a coalition government is a necessity and at the moment an unusually strong party is dominant with only 1/3 of the seats in their legislature. And this is an area most players cover (along with Bangladesh and Pakistan, another 300 million people) with only 3 or 4 cities!
Similarly liberating a city when you've grown unstable (aka you're afraid parts of your own empire might rise to independence) seems very intuitive. Again I point to India under British dominance. Even considering Gandhi's protests, it was ultimately a British decree that liberated the region partially motivated by a fear of escalating resistance, sound familiar?
As to the timing courthouses, jails, and other stability generating buildings after a golden age, that I'll give to you. Once I learned that courthouses etc. built when my stability is too high yield no stability, it changed the way I played the game for the worse in my opinion. All I thought about during the following few play-throughs seemed to be timing my buildings. Thus a fix I would suggest is to simply remove the cap on current stability required to gain stability from courthouses, jails, intelligence agencies, and security bureaus. It's easy enough to implement as a player, just open the stability python file and find where courthouses etc. are discussed. Then increase the statements like "<0" or "<-20" (can't remember the exact values that are in there atm) to "<500" or whatever. I'm sure deleting the code altogether would be more elegant but I don't trust myself enough to remove entire lines of code.
The problem with liberating cities = stability gain is that RFC doesn't differenciate between causes of instability. When my empire is overexpanding, liberating seems like a good idea, because I get rid of a difficult-to-control part of my empire (see Britain liberating its (her?) colonies). When my stability is low because I'm losing a war ... in reality it would look like the state is falling apart even further to the public when I'm giving up another city - and that would obviously hurt my stability.
To the representation issue: NerfCothons, your argument is sound, but then the same should apply even more to Universal Suffrage. At least to how I interpret Firaxis' blurry civic names: in that Representation represents (haha!) an early form of democracy with thing like census-suffrage and only veto rights for the parliament and so on, while Universal Suffrage means a strong parliamentary system where the parliament is the prime legislature.
To the representation issue: NerfCothons, your argument is sound, but then the same should apply even more to Universal Suffrage. At least to how I interpret Firaxis' blurry civic names: in that Representation represents (haha!) an early form of democracy with thing like census-suffrage and only veto rights for the parliament and so on, while Universal Suffrage means a strong parliamentary system where the parliament is the prime legislature.
AnotherPacifist
Deity
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Um, US is probably a little more "representative" than a Parliament which makes me think more of Representation. The problem of taxation without representation is what drove the 13 colonies to revolt. If the British had Universal Suffrage in the late 1700's the US probably wouldn't have formed.
True US is probably impractical in real life, I would really like Virtual Democracy to be available as an option (if anybody ever played Call to Power II).
True US is probably impractical in real life, I would really like Virtual Democracy to be available as an option (if anybody ever played Call to Power II).
NerfCothons
Warlord
I always consider representation in Civ to be a government dominated by a wide spectrum of the upper class, rotten burrows and all. Meanwhile I consider US to be a democracy dominated by the voting masses (however influenced by other forces they may be).
Similar principles probably should be applied to US as well, but I'm glad it isn't 'cause I like the civic too much
Similar principles probably should be applied to US as well, but I'm glad it isn't 'cause I like the civic too much
i always consider representation in civ to be a government dominated by a wide spectrum of the upper class, rotten burrows and all. Meanwhile i consider us to be a democracy dominated by the voting masses (however influenced by other forces they may be).
Similar principles probably should be applied to us as well, but i'm glad it isn't 'cause i like the civic too much
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS A REPUBLIC!!!
seriously!
NerfCothons
Warlord
US meaning Universal Suffrage in that statement *sigh*
That was also my impression. The parliamentary system used by most western democracies is of course also kind of a "representation", but the best way of achieving universal suffrage in history.
Being a republic and a democracy in the classical sense is not mutually exclusive.
There are democracies which are no republics (The United Kingdom, for example).
There also have been republics which are no democracies (the Lombard city states in the renaissance).
But in the case of the USA, they are both a republic AND a democracy.
Panopticon
Utilitarian
You know that no-one outside the United States gets agitated about democracies versus republics?
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20c-govt.htm
As for the reasoning behind the difference between Rep and US, I honestly believe that Firaxis is saying that the American presidential system is the highest form of democratic government, compared to all the backward parliamentary states of Europe.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/20c-govt.htm
As for the reasoning behind the difference between Rep and US, I honestly believe that Firaxis is saying that the American presidential system is the highest form of democratic government, compared to all the backward parliamentary states of Europe.
Rhye
's and Fall creator
I did that because otherwise they NEVER collapse
