Fight Club

[IsaacCAT]

Preface​

I have been playing a tribe and experimenting the stability dead spiral when your tribal chief dies (-25 stability) and your next tribal chief is that old that after two years he dies too (-25 stability), and the next chief, too (-25 stability).

Tribes should be very unstable, but this is frustrating for the player as he cannot do much to avoid this situation.

Observation​

When the tribal chief dies. there is a -25 stability hit and the next tribal chief is decided by the succession support. In the following example the successor is Britomaris Calbus of the Galbi Clan:

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This will be great news for the player, as Britomaris is 35 years old and the other pretenders are 74, 57, and 72 years old respectively. However, Britomaris is in very poor health, being an epileptic all his life. The player would want to promote the 57 years old candidate, Duratius Audaxus of the Audaxii clan, but he is near death as well. The best option being Elitovious Galanus of the Galanii clan with 72 years old, ailing with leper because Togodumnus Epatticus of 74 years old is ailing with gout (much worse than leper).

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However, the player cannot do much because the most important factor for succession support is not explained for tribes and it is a vague 'from modifiers':

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Suggestion​

Each time the tribal chief dies, the game will make all the clan chiefs fight for the title. In this fight, they will loose health, thus most of the older or near death chiefs will die. The winner will be the surviving clan chief with more succession support. If there is no winner because all die, a new fight will ensue between the new clan chiefs (without stability hit) until the tribal chief is elected.

The health lost is function of the health traits and health itself:

• Negative Health traits => -20% Health in the Clan Chief Fight
• Near Death or very poor health => -20% health in the Clan Chief Fight
• Other health status and no negative health traits => -5% health in the Clan Chief Fight

 

[DukeLeto42]

That's not really how it worked, though - the whole "fight each other for the throne" thing isn't terribly realistic (it's a bad idea for a group to have its best warriors kill each other, and skill on the battlefield isn't the only criterion for choosing a new leader).

Perhaps a better move would be to have the stab. hit be based on relative succession support - the more clear-cut it is as to who should lead next, the less of a stab. hit we take. As a "final numbers not final" example:

-Stab. hit is a max of 25, and is calculated by: 25 - 25 x (succession support winner - succession support 2nd place) / succession support second place, min. 0
-To put it simply, the stab. hit is reduced by the percentage the 1st place candidate beats out the 2nd by - if they are neck-and-neck, it's almost 25, but if the next candidate is at least twice as good there is no stab. hit at all
-In your example: 25 - 25 x (344 - 240) / 240 = 14.17


This would help reduce the stab. hit, but you're also still right that the "from modifiers" section is completely useless to help understand succession support.

 

[IsaacCAT]

But you still have the problem with old tribal chiefs dying in cascade and provoking a dead spiral of stability.

The fight club is a catchy name for the post. The game can present the succession not as a fight between clan leaders but a struggle for power, where the weakest and near death candidates could not make it. You do not have to kill everyone as this is one time health decrease and then the election process happens. Is not the Immortals movie, you can have all candidates survive the succession struggle as all are in better shape than very poor health.