Destabilization in practice?

i think it lowers the alien civ's morale, so they are more likely to defect - but whether or not they defect to YOUR side is a whole different story

In practice it doesn't give much result IMHO.. Last game I play I maxed out Destab on Drengin, after maybe 50 turns their morale had dropped from 68 to 54, big deal, but relations went from Warm to Cool ...
It was a small galaxy, mid game, I put >100 bc/turn on this destab out of maybe 3-400 total revenue, and I was 1st in Economy (and tech too ). Looks like a waste of resources...

Last time I engaged in destabilization, I had a Fundamentalist event and two I-League events. None of my worlds were affected, but I was careful with morale *and* good, so.

Anyway, I'd like to know what kind of spending is necessary to trigger a revolt (and I know it probably varies).

~SDC~

AFAIK, destabilization indeed affects ennemy morale. But that does not mean that their morale should be lower. It means that the AI might lose money in keeping the same morale level (by decreasing tax rate/building resistance improvement/using propaganda)...

Herve

~SDC~

Moral also effects population growth, I have found destabalization fairly useful to keep down a civs pop if I dont want to/cant atack them

In my experience, it does work, but not in a spectacular way. Do not expect anything drastic like break-away planets all the time. What destabilizing will do is lower morale, which forces propaganda spending or morale improvements to be built. It is mostly economic attrition warfare, where your bc spending forces the enemy to rewire his spending and possibly tax policies to compensate. In one case, I think a war started because of destabilizing so that the enemy could build and launch a hoard of transports at a minor civ to shed people, thus fixing the morale problem. I cannot prove that, as I was not watching closely enough to be sure, but it seemed like it.

I always figured this would be a way in the late game when you are sitting on tons of b.c.'s (O.K. 'if') that you could effectively hose an AI without having to go to battle just then. It would take time, of course, but it would be a way to further your goals without (or in addition to) declaring war.

I was pumping upwards of 1000bc into destablizing the Yor who were dominant in one of my galaxies and it SEEMS to have really hurt their economy as they dropped from #1 to #3 and became an even match for the rest of the civs. However this may be due to something else entirely..just my expierence with using it.. Would like to know and see a more detailed report of what exactly its doing.

That's a good point. Seems to me that if you've got a good spy network on the civ, you should be able to see almost down to the b.c. what effect your destabalization is having.

I maxed destab and espionage against the Arcaens and the Yor (both were at war with me). Once I was able get a high-enough level espionage, I checked their stats every turn. In both cases, their morale would *eventually* go down. They're worlds went from 60-80% morale range to 50%-54%... and stayed there. Unfortunately, both the Yor and Arcaens had plenty of cash... the morale levels went up 4-10% every 5 or 6 turns, then dropped, then rose, etc. I was forcing them to continuously maintain a higher level of morale, but they had, seemingly, unlimited money. I had to lower my destabilization on both after nearly 5 years (and none of their planets ever became rebellious or unhappy).

That was at Sub-Normal intelligence... when I tried a similar tactic at Fool, I could have several planets in my possession within a couple years, or less. I'm not sure how effective destabilization would be at Intelligent or higher levels.


~SDC~

So far I've been skipping it on the higher levels figuring that for the cost of *maybe* getting a planet or three to defect somewhere, I could maintain a pretty large stack of dreads to come knocking with.
T
the civs I need to be able to destablize are too strong for it to have any significant effect, and the "punch bag" civs are so weak I don't need any extra effects beyond my influence.

I'm an utter newb so apologise if this is a silly comment... but on a reasonable intelligence level, would you really expect it to have a huge impact on morale? Surely, if you spend enough on destabilisation to make their morale drop, they would spend lots of money on morale boosting stuff to keep their planets from defecting.

So, your destablilisation may have a big effect on them, but the effect may be to force them to divert resources to shoring up morale (at the expense of military/research) rather than to have a crippling effect on morale.

Thus, you can't really rule out destabilisation being effective simply by looking at morale alone.

|Zero|

In my current game, I am managing to use destabilization to wreck havoc on the Yor and the Arcean. In my case, I didn't jack up the amount since like others, I never saw any results in the first few turns of doing it.

However, in this game, I had a situation where some subtle destabilization was needed. The galaxy was gigantic and the levels for the AIs were set to normal. During the course of the game, the Yor got an event that raised all uninhabited planets in sectors near one of the planets to 12. The Yors had so many planets ranging from mid 20s to 30s. I thought that I was going to get clobbered.

Instead, when it came time to fight, the Yor made the mistake of fighting multiple opponents, so I elected to raise the heat on the Yor by getting the Arceans, the Torians and the Altarians in on the act. As it happens, the Yor were also fighting the Dregins, too. Still, we were really no match for the Yor due to the planets with PQ of 20+.

So, during the early part of the war, I elected to do some destabilizing of the Yor Empire. At first, nothing seemed to occur. Finally, several turns later, the Yors began to slowly lose planets as pops were rebelling and joining the Altairans or the I-Leagues. Suddenly, I get a message from the Yor saying that due to a hostile galaxy, they were surrendering to the Terrans. When I went to check the individual planets, it seems that I was more effective than I thought. Incidentally, I'm doing the same to the Arceans who are, in turn, doing it to others.