At least the American system is more democratic in that people seem to be more involved emotionally, at least judging from the last presidential campaigns. Whether this is a good thing is open to question though.
Theres already a mod for such a thing and I have it,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.
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:Code:if gc.getPlayer(iPlayer).isHuman(): self.setStability(iPlayer, 0) continue
Spoiler :
I believe there's a simpler way: In RFC RAND every tile shows its stability ("Stabile", "Unstable", and so on) on mouse-over. That would be very handy in regular RFC also!
What would really mirror the real world better would be a much more rapid rise and fall. We all know that between some of the Chinese dynasties there were hundreds of years of instability and division which is only represented by several turns in RFC. And the Persian empire was completely destroyed by Alexander in less then 1 turn in RFC, but rose again fairly quickly as the Parthian empire which fell almost as quickly as the Sassanids came up, then got absorbed by the Arabs quickly. Of course, unless you're playing Marathon speed, none of this could be mirrored satisfactorily in RFC without the player wringing his hands every move.
Look, I'm with you on the core issue here. A modmod that reveales more of the inner workings of stability in-game would be great!
The thing is, though - and I believe others have already pointed this out - that stability isn't near as straight forward an game feature than say the budget shown in the same advisor screen. Sure, the concept of "inflation" is usually getting the best of new players, but stability still isn't near as straight forward as simply a function of elapsed game turns (which inflation basically is).
The stability guide demonstrates how there are temporary and long term stability, and the equations involved in counting some of these values aren't simple arithmetics (like addition and subtraction - as is the stuff shown in the City Screen for example). There are also quite a few "tweaks" in the code for "historical accuracy", I guess, and those would be hidden for a reason, as they pretty much "break the rules".
So it all comes down to Rhye's original design, then. I don't personally believe that he is hiding the parameters involved as much as failing to display them in a clear fashion. Also, I'm not seeing any obvious way of implementing what was proposed in the OP. As I still believe more should, or could, be revealed to the player, the only way to do it would probably be to add more little arrows and plus/minus signs to the advisor screen, as to give you a hint of what is going downhill and why. I'm not sure if that would be very "clear" though.
Another approach would be to redo the entire stability system from scratch, and make it as simple as the other game concepts (like Espionage or Commerce). Chances are that a system that was simple enough to be explained in full in a few values and symbols wouldn't be near as good as what Rhye has achieved - for the purpose of simulating actual world history.
Personally I'm looking into tweaking the stability system to make things more unstable, so that secessions and collapses are commonplace. So empires would rise and fall more frequently, and as the human player you would have to deal with civil wars on a more regular basis. Call it more "dynamic" stability then, if you like.
The problem, AFAIK, is that none of the building or technology bonuses or penalties affect stability directly, only indirectly. This is where the math comes in and the numbers are calculated and "normalized" every turn (or every 3 turns, or every 6 turns). So the information displayed would still be misleading since you wouldn't necessarily see the effects advertised in your actual stability rating, leading you to believe that the scenario is broken or that its a bug. When its not.
I believe this would be the reason why Rhye didn't reveal the actual values in earlier versions, simply because these values aren't added as is. They only serves to confuse.
Yeah, I'm all for that. The trick would be to present them i an clear and non-ambiguous way. Otherwise the values shown will still only serve to confuse.
