Common Universalis Development Diary - Stability Rework

Hello all! Firstly I want to make a short conclusion to our work last month. After several weeks of testing and adjusting, the new research system introduced in 4.8 is finally stabalized and now I can say that Common Universalis provides a solid answer to the long debated question: "Should monarchy power be removed from EU4?" The answer is no - monarchy power is a good tool to simulate a government's executive capacity to control and influence its country, but should not determine a country's natural development. Players should not be forced to save most of monarchy power to tech up or core provinces, but freely spend it to affect the country's administration, diplomacy or military in their chosen ways. In later updates we will still follow this principle, and give players more way to spend their monarchy power.

Now, let's move on to the subject - stability.

Many other mods handle stability in EU3's way, which is, introducing a variable named "stability point" or such that increases or decreases naturally by time. Once stability reaches above a certain cap (like 100) or below zero, 1 stability level is gained or lost and stability point is reduced or increased by the cap. Truly, it is the simplest way to make stability a time-varing parameter reflecting how stable a country is, and we have no desire to make up a "better" design. In patch 4.9, stability will work exactly as mentioned above, with a cap fixed to 100 stability point.

The difference with other mods lies in how stability point rises and falls.

In patch 4.9, stability will be renamed as "Political Stability". This full name suggests the primary factor of stability point - your country's internal political situation. To understand the difference between political stability and a country's overall stability, think of France in 1936. France at that time is (namely) the strongest land military power in europe, the economy is recovering, the border looks unshakable and French colonial empire is still in control, overall everything looks fine - except for the government, which almost offset all these advantages and crippled the entire nation.

Now let's go straight to the point. In Common Universalis 4.9, every estate ( except Administration Centrale of course) has an opinion(from -10 to +10) for each government reform, just like the opinion between countries. For example, the nobles have -10 opinion to court absolutism, +8 to feudal realm governance and +5 to noble election, while the burghers have +0, -5 and -7 to these three. Let's apply these reforms, and ignore all other government reforms and estates here, we can see that the nobles have a sum of +3 opinion to the government, while the burghers have -12. Next, let's say the nobles have 50 loyalty and 50% influence, while the burghers have 70 loyalty( pleased by recent interactions maybe) and 30% influence. Nobles provide [(+3)*50% = +1.5] stability point each year, and the burghers provides [(-12)*(100%-2%*（70-50）* 30% = -2.16] stability point per year. Without other factors, the country's stability point growth is -0.66 per year. Let's say that each stability level gives -1 stability growth per year as negative feedback, we can get that the country's stability level will fluctuate between 0 and -1 - slightly instable.

Like in real world, political stability has many other factors, but most of them play a secondary role. For example, if you lose a province to the enemy in peace treaty, your country may get an instant stability point hit depending on how important the province is. When an old monarch dies, you lose stability point instead of stability level and the amount depends on how much power the monarch has on the country. There are decisions, interractions and other ways to temperally stabilize the country. But in general, a country cannot be stable if you play against the will of dominating political power.

When political stability is low, estates may assert their demands in different ways, from a humble request to a bloody revolution. When one estate rebels, other estates will also have a response based on their interest, be it loyal to government, allied to rebels, or just indifferently neutral. If two powerful estates collide with each other, your country may be splited into a three-side civil war.

At the start of the game, the dominating power for most countries are the nobles, and the nobles never like centralization. In order to pass more centralized reform while still keep the country stable, you need the support of other estates, like the burghers. However, burghers usually have poor influence at that time. To ensure they have the power to take on the nobles, you may need to urbanize your province and increase pop literacy. But be careful - the burghers themselves prefer constitution and republic to absolute monarchy, if they become too powerful, your majesty may end up on a guillotine instead of a marble throne. So in later stage, you may find the nobles a helping hand.

In one word, the key to reign is to balance the power and interests of different factions.

That's all for today's diary. All contents mentioned above are subject to change, but the thought is here. I hope you enjoy this dev diary, and expect your suggestions on this grand project. Thank you!