Why am I collapsing??

[CladInShadows]

Hi all,

I've been playing an Emporer game as Greece - aiming for Space Race victory but could probably go for Cultural as well.

I've hit a point however at which no matter what I do my stability will drop to unstable over the next 10 - 15 turns and my civilization collapses. According to the interior advisor it's due to my economic stability decreasing, but that makes no sense. I'm ranked 1st in GNP, Mfg. Goods, and Crop Yield. I'm financially stable enough to maintain a research rate of 70%.

I'll admit, I'm not 100% certain exactly how each stability factor is determined, but it just doesn't make sense why I am suddenly becoming unstable at this point.

I'll attach the save game if anyone has time and is interested. Note though that I'm using the Varietes Delectat mod (which I understand is graphic only and has no effect on game play).

Thanks in advance to anyone who bothers reading though this, let alone responding.



CladInShadows

 

[Lone Wolf]

Financial stability is quite arcane.

Running a deficit hurts Financial stability, unless in Commonwealth. Personally, I think it's stupid.
Also, financial stability falls when there's no growth, no matter how good the situation is.

If I'm wrong, can someone more knowledgeable correct me on this?

 

[Barbuesque]

Financial stability is quite arcane.

Running a deficit hurts Financial stability, unless in Commonwealth. Personally, I think it's stupid.
Also, financial stability falls when there's no growth, no matter how good the situation is.

If I'm wrong, can someone more knowledgeable correct me on this?

Correct, among other things. Growth is the most important factor. If you check the "important link" sticky, there's a link to the wiki where you can read about stability.

Greece is inherently unstable, erspecially on emperor. Past a certain point in time, it's hard to maintain stability because you get -3 stability for every middle age and beyond civ with which you have contact, in addition to the normal -3 penalty per civ with which you're in contact.

 

[blizzrd]

I can't load your save game because I don't have the VD modmod. It would be helpful if you could post screenshots of your stability advisors and civic choices.

For economic stability, as others have said, you need to keep your overall output growing over time. Every three turns, there is a check on your current commerce output and a comparison made your your previous (three turns ago) output. If you are stagnant or falling in terms of total commerce, you attract an ecomonic stability penalty. Note that this is a measure of your worked and traded commerce and not your gold-per-turn.

There are two solutions to this. The first is to use cottages, where gradually over time these will mature into Towns and thus your commerce output will rise (to a cap when all cottages are towns of course). The second is to slowly expand your empire, which will achieve the same slow overall growth, as your cities work more tiles progressively.

There are other factors that could be at play in hurting your stability, that are not easily viewed via the stability advisor screen. These relate to your "permanent" stability and are adjusted due to certain events as soon as these events occur. One such event is when you raze a city. This gives your civ a (relatively small) permanent stability penalty. Another is turns of anarchy. These also attract a small permanent stability penalty. There are others.

The stability guide, pointed to by others also, is well worth a look to further understand stability.

In general, Rhye coded stability such that the ancient civs just weren't supposed to stick around long enough to reach the space age. It is possible to achieve a space race victory with Greece, but it is certainly not easy and requires a good understanding of the stability mechanics such that you can avoid those permanent penalties wherever possible along the way.

The difficulty levels are also harsher in terms of stability at Emperor than at Monarch. At easier difficulties, you are less susceptible to collapse at the same Overall Stability than at harder difficulty levels.

 

[Soda]

Financial stability is quite arcane.

Running a deficit hurts Financial stability, unless in Commonwealth. Personally, I think it's stupid.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true. The stability guide is mostly accurate, but some of the terminology it uses is a bit ambiguous. "Gold" usually means commerce minus upkeep, not treasury.

As for growth, I've done enough tests to be comfortable saying that, as long as you're using the latest version, it's pretty hard to have problems here in the long run no matter what you do. Commerce actually has very little effect in this calculation - again, the guide uses some ambiguous term like "GNP", but it isn't the GNP that is displayed in-game.

The main reason why your economy stability is about to go down is that it's currently being inflated by being in a golden age. Going in and out of a golden age actually ends up costing some permanent stability points because of how certain things are calculated. Without going into too many details, one thing that helps is to time the golden age so that the first turn number after the golden age is divisible by 3. In your case, assuming you have two turns left, you might want go back and start your golden age a turn earlier or two turns later.

(This is only true for 3000 BC start. For AD 600, you'll need to figure out what the real turn number is by seeing what you get in the save file name.)

 

[Barbuesque]

I'm pretty sure this isn't true. The stability guide is mostly accurate, but some of the terminology it uses is a bit ambiguous. "Gold" usually means commerce minus upkeep, not treasury.

As for growth, I've done enough tests to be comfortable saying that, as long as you're using the latest version, it's pretty hard to have problems here in the long run no matter what you do. Commerce actually has very little effect in this calculation - again, the guide uses some ambiguous term like "GNP", but it isn't the GNP that is displayed in-game.

The main reason why your economy stability is about to go down is that it's currently being inflated by being in a golden age. Going in and out of a golden age actually ends up costing some permanent stability points because of how certain things are calculated. Without going into too many details, one thing that helps is to time the golden age so that the first turn number after the golden age is divisible by 3. In your case, assuming you have two turns left, you might want go back and start your golden age a turn earlier or two turns later.

(This is only true for 3000 BC start. For AD 600, you'll need to figure out what the real turn number is by seeing what you get in the save file name.)

Very interesting stuff. I guess this is so it doesn't compare golden age commerce vs post GA commerce?

 

[Soda]

Very interesting stuff. I guess this is so it doesn't compare golden age commerce vs post GA commerce?

Basically. You'll have to have one period of downward economy, but you can avoid having two consecutive periods.

[3 turns, all in GA] => [3 turns, 1 or 2 in GA] => [3 turns, none in GA]

is worse than

[3 turns, all in GA] => [3 turns, none in GA]

since all of those declines are normally far beyond the level which results in the maximum penalty.

 

[SeekTruthFromFacts]

Without going into too many details, one thing that helps is to time the golden age so that the first turn number after the golden age is divisible by 3. In your case, assuming you have two turns left, you might want go back and start your golden age a turn earlier or two turns later.

(This is only true for 3000 BC start. For AD 600, you'll need to figure out what the real turn number is by seeing what you get in the save file name.)

So Oedo years are back..... as Soda years?!

 

[CladInShadows]

That is really interesting. Thanks for the tips guys. I had a feeling that coming out of the golden age was doing something to me.

Is it all of the ancient civs that have the -3 penalty for contacts or only Greece? If that's how it works I'm tempted to try again but this time wipe out a few of the other Europeans to keep the crowd down...

 

[Barbuesque]

That is really interesting. Thanks for the tips guys. I had a feeling that coming out of the golden age was doing something to me.

Is it all of the ancient civs that have the -3 penalty for contacts or only Greece? If that's how it works I'm tempted to try again but this time wipe out a few of the other Europeans to keep the crowd down...

Every civ has the base penalty, with some of the ancient world civs having an extra -3 for some specific civs, in the case of Rome and Greece, the medieval/renaissance euro civs, so yes it might help as far as I understand the mechanics.

 

[blizzrd]

I believe that is true. Egypt has the worst of it from my recollection.

 

[CladInShadows]

Does anyone know which xml file these are set in? I'd like to have a look at exactly how each civ is affected.

 

[HallBregg]

Does anyone know which xml file these are set in? I'd like to have a look at exactly how each civ is affected.

I think it is the pyton file that deals with stability, in the RFC folder.

 

[thadian]

try conquering cities and building them slower - stagger out your growth to account for stability loss, because no matter what happens - you will eventually collapse unless you win the game before you do.

a. you will run out of room to expand in your settler zone, and stop growing upon which you become unstable.

b. you will settle or conquest somewhere else and get instability for that as well.

c. you will eventually run out of trade deals to make - leading to instability.

No matter what, you will collapse - try to win before you do by staggering your growth. Greece has a nice, large settler map zone - start by settling greece slowly, conquer egypt - then sell it to arabia. do this before you get too much instability for the loss of growth.

Go into arabia and conquer their cities in your settler zone - leave the other ones alone. Arabia will collapse. Thus the story goes - selling a few cities will cause your stability to go down a bit, but as long as you don't collapse your ok - when you re-conquer it, it will think you grew again and give you a bonus. you can do this up-down, up-down game as long as you need to, greece can survive a time victory if you do it right.

Another component is the plague - don't heal up so fast, let your city sizes diminish. You will get some instability but when it ends, your growth will give you stability again. Because growing is the only way to stay stable, look at cues in the game for an opportunity to grow within your own territory - if you need to let 4 cities flip or sell them - then do so, because re-conquest is worth it in terms of stability.

And not egypt - but carthage has the worst of it. However once i saw them settle the US west coast. I love some of the funny things that can happen in RFC!

 

[manio curio]

I wish the original RFC had the same approach to stability as RFC Europe which I think is better explained and allows the user to actually do something to increase it. On RFC I played with the Romans and surviving past 1400 is really a matter of luck