Visible stability mod?

I did not know this - that Occupation benefits are permanent and Viceroy only temporary. Is this documented somewhere, or is it only learned from reading the code? Anyway, I'll have to start using Occupation more.

Thanks. I'll apply this fix. I think that a courthouse should help in times of low stability even if was built long ago.

 

Bingo.
Great Britain in 1776: Representational indirect democracy without universal suffrage for election of representatives
USA and Britain: Representational, indirect democracies in practice, but representatives are elected via universal suffrage
Greece: Direct MALE democracy (no representation needed since citizens represented themselves and took care of gov't business directly, but women/slaves not eligible to vote so therefore not universal suffrage)

The gov't civic has more to do with the method of choosing gov't personnel. Little choice with HR/despotism/police state, more with representation, most with US. It says very little about how gov't business is actually carried out practically.

 

Germans want to invade Greece or at least buy its islands

 

Theres already a mod for such a thing and I have it,
if you wherent so full of your self you might realize that other people have fun differently than you do, but no, continue with your ******** close minded opinion, that anyone who has a problem with the way stability works is some how an inferior gamer, I play rhyes just fine, its just simply not fun to be able to do less.

The courthouse/stability building BS seems like its probably the issue here, I read the stability guide, was told they provide stability, so whats the first thing I do in my next game? build them all early, when they will do me no good at all.

Good job rhyes.

 

Or you could accept that mods have different rules to the base game, so you can't apply the same strategies, like "always grow"?

 

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 calculating 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.

 

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!

 

In my current game as Ethiopia, I once had -18 stability. Next turn, I collapse, so I must've passed the -40 mark.

Nothing happened to my empire in the interturn, besides an Ottoman revolt in Sur. Russia respawned far away.

I reloaded the save. That time, Babylon respawned, I gained some Middle Eastern tiles from my Palestinian holdings, and my stability became only -32.

What's going on here?

And yeah, seeing maths like that:



Is not likely to inspire warm feelings towards the mod in the player. It's worse then WarmongerRespect and PeaceWeights in diplomacy.

 

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.

The fall of the classical world was devastating in terms of knowledge, but the subsequent European civs had a fairly rapid advance in science after the Middle Ages. Maybe stability and your current era should affect your science rate, and certain techs (like paper, astronomy, scientific method) should make techs cheaper (so you can't hold on to the Colossus/GL and the monasteries as crutches for good science rates).

 

as someone slightly used to paradox games, I dont find the idea of complex math oppressive as long as it shows the results
as for how to display the information, quite easy, each tech would show you ahead of time what discovering/trading for it would cost in stability, what building a city would cost, and how bonuses and such are applied, something as simple as a mouse over could do it, I know BUG has a mod that lists all the various ways you can improve your resource tiles in a city, even to listing every single wonder for increasing Great people, youre right that it wouldnt be simple mod, as doing this would be alot of busy work, but then, even lazy fraxis didn't sit there and think, oh well the players ought to know what a freaking library does, to hell with a description.

to leorith, I dont think that would help me very much although its a good start, without a way to isolate changes in stability its practically guess work whats going on when you plant a new city in the middle of a light green area, the core game limits you to 10 (or 7?, the number spoken seems inconsistent) but its never enough to cover the historical area of the larger civs like russia, which you need to expand or suffer expansion penalties anyway.

conclusively, I doubt something like this will ever be made, but it really should have been part of the core game from the beginning. stability really acts like an after thought in the game compared to historically programmed AI and starting scenarios that reward historical game play paths, which is pretty much what I play for these days. I've always liked rev DMC's revolutions much better.

 

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.

As it stands right now, Stability is a feature you pretty much have to develop a feel for by playing. A lot. Not everyone view it as totally incomprehensible and unpredictable. And the Stability guide really does give you all the facts you need to know, and if you want to see the exact numbers (relative for different buildings, techs and so on) just peek at the code in Stability.py for the specifics.

 

Personally, I'm still waiting for an explanation of how 15-9+4-9+6 = -35.

Seriously, if the difference between numbers in these stability categories and the total number is so huge, why include the categories at all?

 

The numbers are not just added. They have weights, not counting hidden stuffs.

 

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.

 

The hidden modifiers should be revealed, at least.

 

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.

 

Honestly I'd suggest opening up the code and reading through it. Even for a non-programmer like myself I was able to understand a lot of what was going on.

Let me give you another example of bizarre stability impacts:

When you are in anarchy, if your current stability is over 24, then 1/8 of your current stability is subtracted. So let's say I go into anarchy with +40 stability, 5 points will be subtracted. Now let's say I pop a golden age immediately before, that will increase my stability to 60, and 7 points will be subtracted. After the duration of my golden age I'll lose the 20 points again resulting in a stability of 2 less than without the golden age (all things being equal). If your stability is hurting, popping a golden age before a revolution may be the only way to survive the anarchy. If you're doing well though, a golden age does actual damage to your stability.

Oh, and there's a stability cap at 80.