Stability should be inverse of Eu4

[Eruth]

TT #5 mentioned that peasant estate happiness affects 'stability costs'. This makes me think that stability will function similarly to Eu4-- you pay to influence it and it significantly affects the strength/risk of destabilizing forces in your country. I think it makes more sense it reverse: it moves based on destabilizing forces in your country and primarily affects how 'safe' folks in your country feel, thus affects things like development growth, how much estates are willing to spend on investment, and some effect on destabilizing forces (countries with rebellions are more likely to have more problems). I think that focusing state resources on improving stability makes less sense than stability naturally increasing over time when your country is at peace & prosperity and taking big hits when coups, monarch changes, rebellions, devastating wars, etc, happen. The player could have some way to directly influence it, but I don't think it should be the main way.

 

[Gurtannon]

Yes stabiliry should be something in the background it should depend on balance of power, happiness, wars and devastation and religious distribution etc

 

[RMS Oceanic]

I wouldn't mind applying the "war taxes" style to stability. In EU4 you can pay a constant cost to maintain the benefits of war taxes, it would make sense to me that you can similarly pay a continuing cost to help bolster stability, even if other issues like war exhaustion would make keeping stability up harder or more expensive.

 

[Nerexa]

I wouldn't mind applying the "war taxes" style to stability. In EU4 you can pay a constant cost to maintain the benefits of war taxes, it would make sense to me that you can similarly pay a continuing cost to help bolster stability, even if other issues like war exhaustion would make keeping stability up harder or more expensive.

I think the "Rooting out Corruption" mechanic would be a better fit for comparison?

 

[ero_sk]

I've never been a fan of the stability mechanic in general. You can have rebels running all over your country, negative income and be badly indebted, 0 manpower, yet you somehow can still have max stability. It's just a detached mechanic that provides arbitrary bonuses or penalties. The stability mechanic could very well be gone, and thus the stability of a country would be more organic, defined by the real state that a country is in.

 

[theJalden]

Stability is something I prefer to be an emergent property of other game mechanics. Imbalance of power, strong estates, weak ruler. Unhappy peasants revolting across the country, that sort of thing.

 

[Nerexa]

Stability is something I prefer to be an emergent property of other game mechanics. Imbalance of power, strong estates, weak ruler. Unhappy peasants revolting across the country, that sort of thing.

I kinda like the idea of stability as some game mechanic, metric, value, call it what you want, as it is a simple enabler for negative feedback loops that spiral a country completely out of control. Collapse coming in gradual and slowly has issues with arriving at all and thus being a no-mechanic.

In that sense stability is more a metric for the near future perspectives of the country or the trust in the ruling, rather than the destinctive lack of disruptive elements.

Still the EU4 implementation, where you can just buy it with magic is very lackluster.

 

[theJalden]

I kinda like the idea of stability as some game mechanic, metric, value, call it what you want, as it is a simple enabler for negative feedback loops that spiral a country completely out of control. Collapse coming in gradual and slowly has issues with arriving at all and thus being a no-mechanic.

In that sense stability is more a metric for the near future perspectives of the country or the trust in the ruling, rather than the destinctive lack of disruptive elements.

Still the EU4 implementation, where you can just buy it with magic is very lackluster.

"Mandate of Heaven"

 

[GenericType]

Imperator's stability system is great. It naturally gravitates to 50% over time, so states would not get stuck in the positive or negative for too long. It can be affected as always, so modifiers that affect stability gain would eventually offset the natural deviation to the middle, though I can't remember if you can truly offset it in a way that you are always near 100%.

I hope that not-EU5's stability system is something like that.

 

[HansFlammenwerfer]

If the player does impact stability, they should largely be able to impact its equilibrium rate, rather than just summoning stability instantly

 

[InvisibleBison]

I've never been a fan of the stability mechanic in general. You can have rebels running all over your country, negative income and be badly indebted, 0 manpower, yet you somehow can still have max stability. It's just a detached mechanic that provides arbitrary bonuses or penalties. The stability mechanic could very well be gone, and thus the stability of a country would be more organic, defined by the real state that a country is in.

I think stability as a discrete thing can work if there's feedback between it and bad events. If low stability causes bad events (or at least, makes them more likely), and bad events lower stability, then stability does in fact function as an overall indicator of the state of your nation, avoiding the incongruity you're describing.

 

[Linbot#6018]

I think stability as a discrete thing can work if there's feedback between it and bad events. If low stability causes bad events (or at least, makes them more likely), and bad events lower stability, then stability does in fact function as an overall indicator of the state of your nation, avoiding the incongruity you're describing.

That just seems like an attempt to treat the symptoms without addressing the disease. The stability mechanic in eu4 just needs to go, because it creates the fundamental problem that you can just "boost" stability, which is absurd. Stability should just be absorbed into unrest in particular provinces, and unrest should have more causes (if your nobility is satisfied and strong it would suppress unrest for example), do more things (like create devastation and reduce food output) and have more interactability.

 

[theJalden]

I could see stability as a kind of "inertia". The way it works in EU4 where it can swing wildly from -1 to +3 with the click of a few buttons is meaningless. So you weren't stable yesterday but you're extra stable today?

Instead it should be a measure of consistency, if you invest in having something today, can you count on it being there in tomorrow or in 5 years? That's a kind of trust which needs to be built up over time, but could be knocked down in an instant, like with a messy succession, reshuffling the cabinet, losing a war, having a brand new technology or religious movement spread through the country.

 

[Nerexa]

That just seems like an attempt to treat the symptoms without addressing the disease. The stability mechanic in eu4 just needs to go, because it creates the fundamental problem that you can just "boost" stability, which is absurd. Stability should just be absorbed into unrest in particular provinces, and unrest should have more causes (if your nobility is satisfied and strong it would suppress unrest for example), do more things (like create devastation and reduce food output) and have more interactability.

I don't think the nationwide stability is a problem per se, just how it changes and the very few discrete values it can have.
By only having 7 distinct states you allow only very big things to interact with it, whereas is should have a myriad of influece factors.
Thus EU4 stability is largely static, which causes this de-connection from the rest of the game.
If you were on a scale of -100 to +100 every little thing you can imagine could throw in a little +/-1 and then accumulate to something.

Also boosting it isn't weird per se, I think. Just throwing resources at a problem of unrest is a very pragmatic, simple and commonly used strategy. That the resources are somehow abstracted into magic in EU4 is a different story^^
But being able to boost it, when stability loss has no actual root causes besides from bad events and very few other catastrophies is causing this weird feeling.
As you actually fix the problem and not counter-boost against the symptoms.

 

[ero_sk]

I think stability as a discrete thing can work if there's feedback between it and bad events. If low stability causes bad events (or at least, makes them more likely), and bad events lower stability, then stability does in fact function as an overall indicator of the state of your nation, avoiding the incongruity you're describing.

I know what you are saying but I still don't really agree. I think that it all stems from different perspective and mixing up cause and effects. Let me try explaining.

The events that you described are already what means that the country's stability is low. If there's a revolt, then that's an intrinsic change from positive to negative in country's stability. On the contrary, if- for example- estate's loyalty/happiness changes from negative to positive, then it's an intrinsic increase in country's stability. Changing some stability value on top of that, even if as the result of some event, is nothing more but an arbitrary penalty (or bonus) applied to the country, on top of bad (or good) things that are already happening. Hence, stability should be perceived as a current representation of past and ongoing events, and nothing more. If the events on their own are not enough, and an additional modifier in the form of stability mechanic is seemingly needed, then "seemingly" is the key here. That stability mechanic is not needed, if anything, events' effects (both positive and negative) should be magnified.

Another example would be inflation figure in real world (which EU4 also gets wrong). People often have wrong perspective, and see inflation figure as the cause, rather than effect. Inflation is a figure (an index of sorts) representing past changes to prices, not the current or future changes. In other words, prices don't change because of inflation, inflation changes because of prices. (Note that here I'm focusing on the figure representation inflation, e.g. 5%, not the inflation phenomenon itself which is an increase in prices over time, just like stability is a result of changing situation in the country over time).

I see inflation and stability in the same category really. So if "stability" exists in the game in any explicit form, then the best place for it would be the ledger IMO. The game could calculate the stability index for each country based on may factors such as devastation, internal turmoil, ongoing wars or lack thereof, etc. But stability figure would remain just that- a figure representing the internal stability of the country, and not an arbitrary scale for positive and negative modifiers.

EDIT: Added some clarity about the inflation to avoid confusion between the inflation figure and the inflation phenomenon.

 

[Linbot#6018]

I don't think the nationwide stability is a problem per se, just how it changes and the very few discrete values it can have.
By only having 7 distinct states you allow only very big things to interact with it, whereas is should have a myriad of influece factors.
Thus EU4 stability is largely static, which causes this de-connection from the rest of the game.
If you were on a scale of -100 to +100 every little thing you can imagine could throw in a little +/-1 and then accumulate to something.

Also boosting it isn't weird per se, I think. Just throwing resources at a problem of unrest is a very pragmatic, simple and commonly used strategy. That the resources are somehow abstracted into magic in EU4 is a different story^^
But being able to boost it, when stability loss has no actual root causes besides from bad events and very few other catastrophies is causing this weird feeling.
As you actually fix the problem and not counter-boost against the symptoms.

I think the way you throw resources at countering unrest should be to throw resources at countering unrest rather than boosting an abstact "stability value". I would much prefer if it worked something like expending resources to organise militias, or deploying troops to a region, or arresting dissident leaders. The harsh treatment mechanic in eu4 is bad design but mostly because spending military power interacts with the wrong other mechanics, it shouldn't affect your tech progress it should interact with your actual military, finances, and state capacity.

I genuinely just do not think that stability being an overhead modifer for your entire country is an idea that makes sense. Of course, it should be possible for unrest in part of your country to lead to unrest in other parts, because you have to expend resources to counter unrest which reduces the resources you have to address unrest elsewhere and maintain a functioning state. The only thing like the eu4 mechanic that I think might make sense to have is if you had some sort of "fearsomeness" value for your country, where if you suffer a lot of rebellions or lose a war or your ruler dies then dissidents will be more encouraged to try and start a revolt. But other than that, can't think of much.

 

[Nerexa]

I think the way you throw resources at countering unrest should be to throw resources at countering unrest rather than boosting an abstact "stability value". I would much prefer if it worked something like expending resources to organise militias, or deploying troops to a region, or arresting dissident leaders. The harsh treatment mechanic in eu4 is bad design but mostly because spending military power interacts with the wrong other mechanics, it shouldn't affect your tech progress it should interact with your actual military, finances, and state capacity.

I genuinely just do not think that stability being an overhead modifer for your entire country is an idea that makes sense. Of course, it should be possible for unrest in part of your country to lead to unrest in other parts, because you have to expend resources to counter unrest which reduces the resources you have to address unrest elsewhere and maintain a functioning state. The only thing like the eu4 mechanic that I think might make sense to have is if you had some sort of "fearsomeness" value for your country, where if you suffer a lot of rebellions or lose a war or your ruler dies then dissidents will be more encouraged to try and start a revolt. But other than that, can't think of much.

I think this "fearsomeness" you describe is exactly what Stability is meant to represent.
It is just hard to find good names for things, as often things get more interpreted on the name alone, than what it is meant to represent.