My game is tuck at turn 86 and saying turn pending what to do please tell

I found it fair. The problem was from the early modern period on (I'm just about to enter contemporary), it was becoming a problem because I finally had enough influence to start absorbing outposts and wanting to build the unique districts. However, the problem quickly disappeared when I realized the community(?) districts add stability. I just spammed those - in fact I wasn't building any other districts, just spamming sability districts if I needed them and I was able to keep up just fine. It would have been nice to build other districts, but stability is more important.

In other words, I didn't find it too hard or too easy, but not sure if I can say it's just right :)

I have no problem maintaining stability, but I find that doing so requires a focus on stability that makes it difficult to enjoy other aspects of the game. Early on, AIs try to grab lots of territory. The only way to avoid being squeezed out is to grab territory. By the Industrial era, I occupied most of my continent at my city cap of 5 given my many attached territories. Ofc, this caused stability issues. To get around that, I eschewed Civics that would tilt me too far, put an Artisan's quarter on every luxury I had, avoided building districts except for barracks & holy sites, and retained a troop in each city as needed. Later, I added to this strategy by building wonders in shaky cities and spamming Commons districts to the exception of just about everything else. The result was that, while I could retain control of my area, I couldn't really advance very well on the science tree. This, ofc, means that even though I'm in the Industrial era, I am unable to go over deep water and explore the map, and I am still running around with my Classic era special unit and crossbows unable to upgrade them (they're still kicking a** too, btw). It's a bit ridiculous, IMO. While not all of the issues with science are because of stability, the effect of building science districts on stability certainly plays a role.

Just from a common sense perspective, it makes no sense to me that farms that provide life-sustaining food cause instability, while Commons districts (politics and art studios?) cause stability. I can have a city that is losing a person to starvation every turn and has substantial unemployment be as stable as a rock as long as it has a bunch of Commons districts. Meanwhile, a well-fed city with full employment is close to rebellion because it has a few farm districts. Similarly, it makes no sense that my emblematic district causes city instability, but being forced to help build a national wonder or holy site on the other side of the continent does not; one would think that the former would lead to civic pride and stability and the latter some resentment and potential instability.

From a game perspective, the stability thing is a little over the top for me. Not because it makes it difficult to stave off rebellion. But, because the steps required to maintain stability make it so I can't play the rest of the game. Either I have to forego building districts (slowing science down substantially), growing my city territory, expanding my nation, or some combo of the above. It's like the stability thing punishes you if you try to play the game and build a civilization. Meanwhile, you're rewarded for building fifty copies of the same pink district. I've never had a city rebel, but, I'm still stuck with old units unable to explore the map. So, dealing with the overwhelming emphasis on stability is easily doable but dull, and my cities end up looking ridiculous with this huge pink clump of Commons districts.

This time stability management was a lot of fun. I've actually seen the rebellion warning pop up twice and had to utilise the games ceremony (didn't even bother previously). It didn't stop me from building a metropolis, but it made me rethink if it was really that useful (that's a great sign!).

However, I wanted to talk about the commons quarter. It's just bad. The garrison + upgrade = 10 stability and can be placed anywhere in the region, while the commons quarter is only 2 per nearby quarter. To surpass the metal gear garrison you either need to place it somewhere in the middle of the city (and lose A LOT of production) or build them in bulk next to each other (creating a repeating pattern that doesn't look that nice. A minor thing, but it annoys me). The comms need a buff, maybe doubling their efficiency? Even though the fact that I had to build an ungodly amount of garrisons to keep the cities functional looked like a clever message that I wasn't getting, I really want a more civil way of approach.

Or another stability infrastructure could be introduced somewhere in early modern/medieval era?

Stability seems like an arbitrary wall to prevent you from progressing and building up.
If you go for Trade it can totally ruin your game, since the AI can just drop all Trade at once in a single turn and you are suddenly in a mutiny.
It doesn't cost the AI anything either to do that it seems, so all that investment is gone without a way to get it back,

AOM wrote:

From a game perspective, the stability thing is a little over the top for me. Not because it makes it difficult to stave off rebellion. But, because the steps required to maintain stability make it so I can't play the rest of the game. Either I have to forego building districts (slowing science down substantially), growing my city territory, expanding my nation, or some combo of the above. It's like the stability thing punishes you if you try to play the game and build a civilization. Meanwhile, you're rewarded for building fifty copies of the same pink district. I've never had a city rebel, but, I'm still stuck with old units unable to explore the map. So, dealing with the overwhelming emphasis on stability is easily doable but dull, and my cities end up looking ridiculous with this huge pink clump of Commons districts.

I agree with AOM and had a similar experience, even though I held what sounds like much less land than they did. I didn't have an issue maintaining stability, but it required stability being my main decision-making factor in wonders, civics, events, districts, etc., instead of considering the unique bonuses. I don't mind needing to keep an eye on stability and avoid expanding too fast to control it; I actually like that aspect of it and I certainly don't think the system should be removed. But since stability has become the driving force behind most decisions instead of one of many equally important factors, maybe pull back on its significance.

However, I don't have any complaints on which districts provide vs detract from stability. Farms don't need to provide stability, because they already help avoid issues by avoiding starvation. Garrisons make sense for providing stability, and wonders and holy sites make sense since they would probably inspire that same "civic pride" that AOM mentioned re: emblematic districts. The only district I don't quite understand is the commons district, though I can respect that might just be more of a gameplay balance choice than a thematic one. That said, I also never built a commons district because it didn't seem to provide enough stability to be worth it, so most of my stability was provided by +40 stability wonders all stacked on my main capital city (so I could expand without needing to juggle stability in multiple big cities) and keeping most of my ideologies neutral. I had a few small cities later in the game, but those just got a garrison or two if necessary and they built almost no districts, maybe one or two emblematic ones. I do think that the commons district needs to be tweaked since by the time I had those smaller cities that might benefit from the small +2 per adjacent district stability bonus I didn't need the extra influence.

Honestly, I think the biggest issue might be that it's hard to know how much excess stability you have left that you can spend on districts before you need to built another wonder lol

All in all, Dayvit78 said it with:

Dayvit78 wrote:

In other words, I didn't find it too hard or too easy, but not sure if I can say it's just right :)

I like stability, it is mainly a way to prevent overexpansion and makes tall civilizations competitive with wide civilizations (civ 5 vs civ 6).

As others have mentioned:

1. Stability over 100% is not showing, so I need to highlight the number to get an estimate on how high above 100 I am currently at.
2. Missing the Endless days when I can plop 4 districts to surround a level 2 district and gain stability bonus :P That may be a better option than "common quarter"
3. Why 20% to 90% does not have intermediary bonuses anymore? In Endless Legend, your productivity is multiplied by your stability, so it feels important at ALL percentage. 
4. Dependence on wonders to prop up a few cities.
5. City cap on stability is weird. I think it is a way to promote outposts, but outposts cost only slightly less influence cost and linking to cities also cost stability, so not sure what's the goal here.

I fell Stability is at a good point now. I had many options for managing it, the strongest if which was simply spamming Garrisons on some far off area of my land. I only went for that once though, and otherwise managed fine with combining luxuries, religion and wonders. Those options came into play at about the time I needed them. The bonus from luxuries feels a bit incidental more than anything in my opinion however.

Once the game hits industrial/early modern stability more or less stops being a problem, which felt intentional. Except for one time where I combined three cities in one turn "because I could" I never really struggled with having to fix stability. Playing stratigically with my ideology and events became necessary once or twice.

I agree that stability as a limiting factor to overexpansion whether punishing territorial overexpansion or district overexpansion. It prevents snowballing since rapid expansion will lead to a deficit if not adressed early.

I like that there is leeway given as stability adjusts over time, so even if you plunge a city into rebellion you have a few turns to stabilize before the serious consequences occur. (I had to boost some approval builds out with population once or twice.

It might be helpfull to display the total equilibrium for a city even if approaching above 100% or below 0%, adding it all up form the mousehover screen is a pain.

overall I had a positive experience with the influence so far:

I started with Zhou as my first culture, giving me some leeway to district-expansion (20% offset to the penalty for each district or a +2 bonus on each approval-neutral or -positive district.

Early on I covered my stability with military districts (about 1 per territory [not city!]) and city improvements, added holy sites and wonders later as well until reaching common quarters.

by that point most of my cities had several territories attached making it relatively easy and intuitive to dedicate an area as commons/residential.

magilzeal wrote:

If possible, perhaps add in ways to increase stability using Theaters (which otherwise I have no reason to build), or market buildings to increase stability from luxury resources. On top of that I feel like there should be more resources on the map to make claiming and owning territory interesting, especially in the New World continent.

I really like the idea of having ways for market buildings to increase stability from luxury resources!

And, I know the map will be random in the full game so this might not be the most applicable feedback, but there are a bunch of territories that didn't have any resources. These territories weren't priorities for expansion, not even for attaching outposts because I never built enough districts to need the empty space nor had enough stability to spare on expanding into a territory without resources. If you don't want to change the number of resources available in general, I'd rather the resources be spread out with at least 1 per territory than have most territories have either 2 or none at all. Or, you know, consider it being a map-generation setting that players can choose :D

AOM wrote:Just from a common sense perspective, it makes no sense to me that farms that provide life-sustaining food cause instability, while Commons districts (politics and art studios?) cause stability. 

It makes perfect sense to me.  As a city grows it requires more oversight in order to prevent crime/corruption.  So every additional district reduces stability naturally.

Commons Quarters maybe represent governmental functions (bureaucrats?).  The more places they are near, the more stability they can inject.  I don't see how spamming them can help, as they give very little stability unless you make sure they are surrounded by at least 3 other quarters.  Perhaps they need a ramping cost though?

After another game I can to the realization that stability is pretty bad in the current stage of the game.
It forces you to build units, since nothing else can be produced once you hit the stability wall. Which forces an offensive playstyle, the only valid playstyle it seems in this build.

Making vassals doesn't cost stability or influence after all + it weakens the AI.

The last build felt way more open to other playstyles.

workswithdragons wrote:
If you don't want to change the number of resources available in general, I'd rather the resources be spread out with at least 1 per territory than have most territories have either 2 or none at all. Or, you know, consider it being a map-generation setting that players can choose :D

This would be a nice option to add. In Civilization I would always set resources to "abundant", because I like the idea of there being high stakes in the land race, along with more incentive to take lands from your enemies.

Bridger wrote:

AOM wrote:Just from a common sense perspective, it makes no sense to me that farms that provide life-sustaining food cause instability, while Commons districts (politics and art studios?) cause stability. 

It makes perfect sense to me.  As a city grows it requires more oversight in order to prevent crime/corruption.  So every additional district reduces stability naturally.

Commons Quarters maybe represent governmental functions (bureaucrats?).  The more places they are near, the more stability they can inject.  I don't see how spamming them can help, as they give very little stability unless you make sure they are surrounded by at least 3 other quarters.  Perhaps they need a ramping cost though?

A farm is not a city district in the real world or historically. They are rural elements. Farms provide food. Food is a stabilizing commodity. History tells us that. Common sense tells us that. Starving populations rebel to get food, as food is a necessity of life. If you don't get that, I don't know how to help you. Starving people rebel. This isn't rocket science. 

If you actually play the game, which from your comment, I'm guessing you haven't, spamming the pink Common Quarters provides substantial stability. You cluster them up, and it forms this large, ugly pink cluster in your city. Even if you think politicians somehow equal stability, it's difficult to imagine how having politicians covering 10 tiles all clustered together is beneficial. Especially at the same time your city is starving and can't place a farm district without the game deciding a farm district is the city's tipping point for rebellion. No, this is just silly, and it makes for really ugly looking cities. Not to mention the fact that it's boring always building the same district at the expense of every other type. It makes it so you can't build money or science districts. So you have a bunch of poor cities with lots of politicians and no food, science, or money. Not what I'm looking for in a game.

whartanto wrote:

Bridger wrote:

AOM wrote:Just from a common sense perspective, it makes no sense to me that farms that provide life-sustaining food cause instability, while Commons districts (politics and art studios?) cause stability. 

It makes perfect sense to me.  As a city grows it requires more oversight in order to prevent crime/corruption.  So every additional district reduces stability naturally.

Commons Quarters maybe represent governmental functions (bureaucrats?).  The more places they are near, the more stability they can inject.  I don't see how spamming them can help, as they give very little stability unless you make sure they are surrounded by at least 3 other quarters.  Perhaps they need a ramping cost though?

Nah, common quarter is just a copy from Endless Legend's Borough system. It even has the same effects. Basically if you plop it and surround it with other districts, it adds stability instead of reducing it (it's called Level 2/3/4 districts in Endless Legend).

https://endlesslegend.fandom.com/wiki/Borough_Streets

In Endless Legend, the best way to maximize it is to create either "Line" or "Pyramid" of boroughs (i.e. common quarters), that way most districts are surrounded by 4 or more districts.

Ty for letting me know where this game mechanic came from. Your insight is leading me to think this isn't a game I want to buy. Basically, what you showed there is what I did in this game. It's stupid and ahistorical. Maybe it works in Endless Legends. But it doesn't work in a civ game that's supposedly based on history.

I prefer the stability mechanics in this version more; it's now actually challenging to maintain it if I want to build a lot of districts. I sometimes found myself putting off some Civic picks so that I could stay near the center of some ideologies and preserve their +20 stability bonus - a welcome tradeoff! I also started recruiting a few military units just to garrison them for an extra stability bonus.

I avoided going for commons quarters since they seemed a bit weak stability-wise, and I had more than enough influence. I instead went for fortifications and stability infrastructures, and sometimes chose my next culture based on whatever stability bonuses they could help with (e.g. Zhou and Romans).