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I love the stability concept: Sure, there should be individual dissent modifiers in the various provinces (as there already is in EU2) but the idea of an overall "stability level" is pure genius.

Keep it.
 
If a limited percentage-based pops system were in (or similar) I would welcome removing 'stability'. At the moment it's so easily manipulated as to have almost no impact on a game. Not for a human player at least...
 
Stability is currently a modifier affecting everything, when it really should be a function of everything.
 
I at least want a "stability rating", even if it IS just an average based on POP militancy.
 
SirGrotius said:
Stability is great for gameplay and it's a principal historical concept.
Don't drop it.

I Agree, but the current stability model ( -3 , +3 ) directly comes from the original boardgame.

First a percentage system could be more accurate.

Second, every country should have a "default" stability which tends to be achieved if the ruler doesn't do anything.

A value that is not 0="a complete chaos" neither 100="solid as a rock" but something in between, perhaps depending on other internal policies.

Events can cause jumps up or down and "investment in stability" could correct a negative trand to stabilize or even improve over time.

It quite absurd that, if I achieve +3 stability, I can completely forget that aspect until some (bad) event drop it.
 
Kliwarrior said:
Second, every country should have a "default" stability which tends to be achieved if the ruler doesn't do anything.

This I agree with. I always sort of felt it should be "easy" to keep myself at 0 stab in EU2, but it should be hard to be positive and hard to get negative.
 
Gaute65 said:
I would like a more hidden stability system. I never liked that you knew exactly your stability and what stability hits you would get from an event.
That would probably confused newbies unless they were made well aware of the affects of this hidden statistic :)
 
The stability concept is okayish, but I would prefer a continous value to the discrete values we have in EU2.
 
Gaute65 said:
I would like a more hidden stability system. I never liked that you knew exactly your stability and what stability hits you would get from an event.
Boo! It's never a good idea to hide a game mechanic from a player unless its workings are totally obvious. Stability has WAY too much influence on a lot of things to make it invisible. Unless you can make sure that it is totally obvious to the player how much stability he has by secondary observable variables, don't hide it. Same with badboy. We know it is there, so why hide it?
 
Stability is the most interesting aspect of the game, to me, from a historical point of view. I certainly hope that it does not go away nor drift into something that I, as the leader, cannot affect in some way and know that I am doing it (negatively or positively). Some of the suggestions sound like fun (percentage, maybe even within province or region), but just make sure you keep around!
 
I agree with the people who think stability is an important concept for the game.

I also agree with the people who think that it should be modelled in a better and more interesting and fun way than is the case in EU1 and EU2.

Some balance between local factors and a general national stability measure is needed, in my opinion.

It should still be tough to combat instability, but I think it needs to be made more interesting/complex than just placing a huge investement of money in one slider.
 
Duuk said:
It wouldn't be EU without stability.

Windows wouldn't be windows without crashes.

I know I'm a nEUbie, but can you explain why it's so good? (and indeed what it is!)

The other Paradox games have a mixture of local and global factors that affect how much your own people fck you over...

Crusader Kings: Vassals revolt (local and global factors); plague spreads (the same kind of event-based system as technology).
Victoria: Provinces develop bad things, POPs develop consciousness and militancy
HOI2: Global Dissent, local partisan uprisings.

How di EUII work?
 
TheLand said:
How di EUII work?
Stability governed exactly what it says, your kingdom's overall stability.
Negative stability is bad, because it increases the revoltrisk of your provinces, reduces your trade income etc. Positive stability is obviously a Good Thing, and to build it from negative to positive, you need to invest cash.

The larger, and more religiously diverse, your kingdom, the more expensive it gets to buy your stability up to positive levels after a "stability hit" (due to e.g. declarations of war you make, bad event decisions, dishonoring alliances etc.)

It was a beautiful design, which simulated the difficulty of holding together a large, diverse empire in a simple, but elegant way.
It was also stolen as a concept and implemented in Black Sea Studio's Knights of Honor.

Personally, however, I would have liked it to be more tied to the size of one's empire, and less to religious diversity, since this practically killed any attempt to maintain a policy of religious tolerance, and favored the Conversion Crazy Zealot over other playing styles.
 
Zanza said:
Boo! It's never a good idea to hide a game mechanic from a player unless its workings are totally obvious. Stability has WAY too much influence on a lot of things to make it invisible. Unless you can make sure that it is totally obvious to the player how much stability he has by secondary observable variables, don't hide it. Same with badboy. We know it is there, so why hide it?


By hidden I mean that you don't know exactly how low stability you have or how big stability hit you get. you should know that you have a low stability, but if it's -3,-4 or -3.4 you shouldn't know. The same goes for stability hit. Maybe stability should be described in text, something like how the diplomatic relations are described?

With EU2 you know that you can afford a -2 but not an -4 stability hit. Thats a little to gamey for me.

I also think that the stability scale should go from -4 to 2. It will make the game tougher. Also that if you are at -4 and get a new stability hit that could mean a civil war.
 
Tambourmajor said:
Personally, however, I would have liked it to be more tied to the size of one's empire, and less to religious diversity, since this practically killed any attempt to maintain a policy of religious tolerance, and favored the Conversion Crazy Zealot over other playing styles.
At the very least, having your religious tolerance level affecting your stability costs for multiple religions would have been a good idea.
 
Yes, drop stability.

Replace stability with a system that is based on the state of the relationship with CK style characters that make up the court and vassals in addition to various POP factors.

As the game progresses the CK style characters become less important and the POP factors more so. (although the rate and level at which this happens is of course up for debate.

However, the key element would be that technical and social change has a negative effect on the characters and POPs in different ways. Thus placing a restraint on how quickly a modern state can be formed.