I think stability was a bit to hard to gain in this beta. I actually started to pay attention to my ideology axis and tried to keep it centered for the stability bonus as a result of this. My primary source of stability was fort/garrison tiles this time around. I think it outshines commons quarters when it comes to gaining flat stability. Commons quarters only give plus two stability per adjacent district, and each district subtracts 10 stability. So even when surrounded by districts, the commons quarter doesn't give a stability profit. Its not worth building in my eyes, especially since a resource district could be placed there to get huge adjacency bonuses. Fort tiles on the other hand give plus five stability initially, but can easily be upgraded with the city guard infrastructure to get an additional plus five stability for a total of plus ten. Plus they can be build anywhere and provide defensive bonuses. Basically this beta made me realize that garrison tiles are actually really good! 

Still despite this, I found I would constantly hit a wall when it came to city expanding. My cities would enter cycles of building one fort, then one district, and then one fort and so on. It got to the point where I started to make infrastructures rather than districts since this cycle of building took too long. 

In conclusion, I think that instead of a minus 10 stability caused by districts, the value could be lowered to minus 8 stability instead. That might make it more balanced.

In Victor opendev it was too easy to keep stability on high level, now it's a challenge with balancing civics, attaching outposts, trading etc., and I like it. But I find it a bit too hard now, because I have to spam garrisons and common quaters, increasing industry cost of the buildings which I really want to build but I can't when stability is low :/

Common quaters need a buff in my opinion.

Overall, I enjoyed the concept of stability.

The cost for districts seemed too high, but only, I think, because the production times for everything in the game seemed to high (especially troops, 5000 year game over 300 turns = 16 years per turn // which is why all troops should appear instantaneously and be limited by the pops they consume & their upkeep and *not* by production cost)

If you got rid of troop production entirely & got rid of district cost scaling (so that they can eventually be built in 1 turn (16 years), *then* I think you can leave stability alone, as it would be a good challenge.

However, if you leave troops production where it takes over 50 years (3 turns) to create 1 army unit while bringing an empire's construction abilities to a halt that whole 50 years (ridiculous), then I strongly think you should cut the stability cost of districts in half, to -5 instead of -10.

The main source of stability in my empire came from holy sites (+Raising Monuments), the stability infrastructure, and then garrisons. I spent 15 turns building garrisons in my capital city.
I never built a single commons district; they are not worth building, mainly because construction is so dang slow, that it's not even possible to get them surrounded by districts, as I could barely build my era specific buildings before moving on to the next era.

The stability penalty on civics made me almost completely ignore them. The ideology benefits are worthless compared to the stability, and the only civics I took were the ones I absolutely had to, such as +1 city cap.

It's a shame, as the civics are a great idea, and I like that they offer real strategic choices. You should completely separate civics from stability. The opportunity cost of 6 turns per district (3 for the one you want + 3 for a garrison) is simply too high. A loss of 40 stability due to ideology shift is 10 garrisons per city during the ancient era. So, by the time I can upgrade garrisons to be worth 10 stability, I would needed to have spent 24 turns *per city* building garrisons to make up for the stability loss from ideologies. This is just ruining the whole civic system. It's a shame.

I really think you should make ideologies offer 2 things while balanced (e.g. +5% gold & +5% science), and then as  they shift (+10% & -5%), and at the extremes (+15% & -10%).
This would make a balanced ideology still beneficial, but give some strategic heft to fanatic ideologies.

I think Civics & Ideologies would benefit greatly from being decoupled from Stability. And then just give cities a starting +40 stability, allowing them to build their first 4 districts for free. This would make the early city building a lot more fun, and would help create cities large enough to where a commons district might actually be worth placing.

Stability seems too easy to lose and too hard to regain. It´s a too punishing mechanic. Especially when you made a mistake, it´s hard to get out of low stability once you get there.

workswithdragons wrote:

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 can't agree more. I also was trying to keep my ideological neutral and was building wonders in two biggest cities. In addition i found buying luxuries good way to boost stability little more and choosing tenets that help with that aspect well. All exept building commons district. Commons quarter suks.

But, if all you're doing on the civics tree is keeping each line equal, that isn't really a choice. And, it's easier to just not pick any civics at all. The stability thing makes an already weak civics tree into a non-entity. Almost none of the civics are really something a player is aiming for. With the stability thing added on top, the civics tree may as well not even be there.

one problem was before the city stop doing anything and every constructing becomes infinity (because of the low stability), i didnt get any reminder about that.

sometimes only after there are rebels, i realize i need to improve the stability.

AOM wrote:

But, if all you're doing on the civics tree is keeping each line equal, that isn't really a choice. And, it's easier to just not pick any civics at all. The stability thing makes an already weak civics tree into a non-entity. Almost none of the civics are really something a player is aiming for. With the stability thing added on top, the civics tree may as well not even be there.

Although I am not a fan of the current balancing, I think that this is not entirely true. At least it gives you options on how to approach different numbers (because that is the end goal - reaching a certain stability or science, etc.). Example given, it allows you to trade of Influence to switch from stability to science. Or vice versa (don't forget you can un-select a decision for influence). So it gives you the option to react on empire-wide events. If your trade partner suddenly gets attacked and all your cities lose around 10 stability just because of this, you can pay a bit of influence to revert 1-2 civics and therefore generate more stability by balancing out the ideologies. Don't get me wrong, I don't like this approach, because it feels clumsy and weirdly integrated, but on the other hand it IS an option, a decision that you can make, after all.

How does stability work? In one of my playthroughs I had total 436 stability in one city from different sources but had -190 from buildings and -80 from territories (happened after I merged two cities with 3 and 2 territories each). Both cities had around 80 stability when I merged them and the resulting megacity had 0 stability for many turns and continued to be 0 (without even saying it would move to a higher number) after I built more than 4 or 5 commons quarters. Was this a bug? Because in theory my stability should net positive since I had 436 stability and only -270. I guess the formula to calculate stability is not that simple, but I coulnd't find it explained anywhere in the game.

RaisinBrandon wrote:

fahnseN13 wrote:

• A pet peeve of mine is that the game currently rewards building snaky cities because of the way exploitation works. So here's a crazy idea: Give every quarter a toned-down version of the Commons Quarter mechanic. For example, each quarter might have a base stability cost of -12, but gains +1 stability for each adjacent quarter. This means that a fully enveloped quarter would have a stability cost of only -6, but if you're building a snaky city each quarter costs -9 or -10. Might be interesting to balance exploitation and stability this way. And it kind of makes sense roleplaying-wise, too. If your city is blocky, everyone is feeling safer and you can keep your population in check. If your city is snaky, the external border is longer and it's harder to keep track of everything.

I like this idea. I was thinking alternatively that the district stabilty penalty could somehow scale up with number of hexes away from admin centers/garrisons. Solutions like these would make stability a bit more dynamic to manage while building districts instead of mostly trying to spam counter measures afterwards while simultaneously incentivizing players not to build spaghetti cities.

+1 on these ideas. It makes total sense that garrisons provide more stability the more infrastructure they defend. An actual city garrison should provide more stability than a standalone fort in the middle of nowhere. I'd also like to complement this with the suggestion of adding a steep money upkeep to garrisons and/or related infrastructures to avoid players spamming them (after all, military and defense were one of the primary drains on empires' treasuries and you have to pay the city watch).

(I have two games under my belt: the first on nation difficulty, the second on empire, both are with the closed beta.)

"Did you find Stability easy or difficult to manage?"

It is a very good mechanic overall. "Difficulty" is down to your playstyle, culture choice and tech advancement. If you understand the mechanics, it is not difficult nor easy but rather a fun gameplay element which you should constantly keep an eye on.

One caviat however: there is some oscillation on a turn by turn bases which root cause sometimes eluded me. I would appreciate to see the stability breakdown in the city screen from the previous turn as well in order to be able to compare them.

"What were your primary sources of Stability?"

I used all the sources. (Improvements, projects, civics, luxury resources, garrisoned armies, temporary effects, districts, tanets, city projects etc.)

"What were your primary drains on it?"

Building districts.

"Did the difficulty of managing it change over the course of the game?"

Yes and no. Later in the game you have more tools to use so you have more wiggle room. But it is not about "difficulty". The only challenging thing however in the beginning is to be able to build your special districts. Actually i would love to see that in those cities which were founded or conquered before or during the age with a special district, you should be able to build those districts later in the game as well.

I'm not sure this is the right forum category but here is some feedback about Wonders:

In the Victor Open Dev it was fairly easy to claim and build wonders, which add a lot of flavor to a civilization. In the June Closed Beta (on empire difficulty) I haven't managed to claim any wonders before the medieval / early modern eras and, even then, building them felt more like a chore than a reward.

Since influence can be hard to get and expansion feels like it should be a priority, spending it on wonders or even collecting enough to claim a wonder seems quite difficult. In addition it feels like their building costs have been exponentially increased.

All in all I think their costs in influence and industry should be slightly toned down. Another thing that could also make wonders more interesting is giving them some form of adjacency bonuses.

Doing that would do two things:

1. Make placing them a little more interesting (we could still place them almost anywhere but if we have a sweet spot in our empire it will be rewarding to use it)
2. Motivate players/AIs to actually get a particular wonder. ex. If a wonder has some mountains or forest adjacency bonuses you will want to get it if it fits with your empire's terrain.

I’ve said it in the Economy and Pace Feedback, but I felt stability to be more difficult to manage in this build, which is good though to counterbalance city’s over expansion. Specifically because of the reduced stability bonus provided by commons quarters. But I feel that’s also a good incentive to build stability infrastructures as soon as possible once they are available.

I’m a little more hesitant on the use of garrison as a way to counter instability. Several AIs would build a lot of them in their territories. I also tested it, but it felt a bit weird and not really interesting (realistic ?) in terms of city management and city building. 

After several games on the higher difficulties, I came to the conclusion that Stability forced me into specific playstyles for cities:

1. Since every city gets a seperate stability slider, to which all empire bonuses apply, it quickly became clear that having several small cities is much stronger than multiple bigger ones. That is ignoring the economy parts on district cost and population growth, which also encourages this.
2. Building cities to about 40% stability seemed to be the sweet spot. Going to 30% was risky, as it left a smaller buffer in case an event or other happening would redice it (loosing a luxury, forced ideological change etc.)
3. The value of having a stability booster in a city (natural wonder, world wonder or holy site, some EQs) was very high. This meant I could build more districts before hitting the stability wall, permitting the employment of more population.

i think that would be more advantageous if high stability cities have some bonus towards of positives benefits from events or even more occurances of them or something like that.

Goodluck wrote:

I agree that theatre infrastructure should make the commons quarter give more stability, right now they are useless. The description of theatre even say it is about order:

Supported by investment from adjacent districts, carefully crafted theatrical performances can promote order in the city.

And so do also playhouse:

Provided the funds can be channeled from wealthy neighbors, plays offer a subtle means of political control via the powerful upper classes.

I like that idea as well. Though I think commons quarters came a bit later in the tech tree IIRC.

But in that case the playhouse could give the stability bonus on commons quarters.

Commons quarters are the only kind of district that can't be be leveled up with buildings, which feels a bit odd. And their infrastructure buildings are by far the weakest anyway. So that change would be cool