How does destabilization work?

Lower their morale and helps you to flip their planets to you, but takes a lot of time.

It is supposed to bring their morale down. I never saw the effects of this or espionage until the AP BETA. It works GREAT in AP. I use it all the time now. I end up stealing a lot techs.

In most of my games the planets would flip to the I-Leage.

Lowers morale, and has a (very) slight chance of fragmenting an empire, if it already has an extremely low morale (on the order of c. 15% over a large number of systems...with fewer systems, they will tend to defect to the I-League before this has any chance of happening).

~SDC~

I once ran across a thread where a few players were using destabilization to force a (potential?) enemy to counter by funding propaganda at their planets. If your economy is stronger than theirs, this could be an effective money trap - run them into the red (and thus kill their production) by forcing them to keep up with you on morale spending. Neat trick, IF it works...

I'm more interested in the actual way that destabilization works. Is it a kind of negative propaganda thing. The minors seem very keen on destabilization.

Well, I seem to recall the morale of every planet a race had drop by about 15% per turn when I was spending 4500 bc/turn destabilizing them. (I had nothing left to build but warships, and this turned out to be more effective, since they all flipped to me or the I-League.)

Whoa thats a lot of money, what race was it that required such spending?

I'm pretty sure it was the Torians. It didn't really "require" such spending, since I could have built warships and taken their planets. But it was a Huge map, and moving all those ships across it is a pain, so I decided to put all of my money into destabilization and see if I could wipe them out that way.

Someone mentioned stealing Techs. I do not think Destabilization will get you any Techs. I have however spent my Espionage up to max. Now I have seen others say that they stop the spending there but I continue spending in Esp... and I am continuously getting any Techs they have.

later,
a sneaky olgamster

The galactic civ's espionage system leaves a lot to be desired really. When you get to a certain point and you can just turn it off. If you don't keep funding up then espionage should quickly disintergrate.

According to Brad (Frogboy), if you stop funding espionage the effects do wear off.

Thanks for clearing that one up for me Theoden!!!!

I wish their was more detail to espoinage including for example the ability to place spies on a specific planet to give you detailed information on alien planets and what they're getting up to aswell as details about alien political parties and senates aswell as details about they're relations. Pretty much advanced espionage should mean you can find out pretty much everything about that civ. They should also make it possible to spend on counter-espionage to foil enemy spies, not that I'm sure aliens spy at all.

I believe that he said the reason it wears off is because espionage level is based on your total spending vs. their population, and population tends to increase. So it isn't really the quick disintegration that you would expect.

I believe both espionage and destabilization depend on total spending. In one of my recent games, I spent a modest amount of destabilization for several years on the most power AI, the Yor. I forgot to turn it off, and beat everyone else up. Just when I was feeling ready to turn on the Yor, they had a diplomatic event which turned them to war.



I believe all the stored destabilization funds came out in Corvettes. There were purple dots all over the entire Medium sized map, usually within 3 parsecs of each other! Hundreds of 'em. All small ships and SBs got annoyed to death.

So just remember to BEWARE the PURPLE triangles of DOOM! LOL

~SDC~

The Yor probably got that event where you get like 40 or 50 corvettes late in the game. Nothing like having dozens of useless ships to kill your economy.

i thought that event was random and yea it does get annoying...but i usually get that from the Altarians...

but for some reason in previous games before 1.13 i never got a tech from espionage, but now with 1.13, i am thinking about running a game where i won't research at all because the last game i played i was stealing techs every few turns towards the end of the game (i don't use espionage at the beginning)

Yeah, the finally got the espionage working right in the latest version. I love it when I steal something really useful like Dreadnaught Tech.

I hate precursor corvettes!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[Message Edited]

Nah, this was one of the diplomatic events which cause "Die Humans!" Corvettes to appear. I love those cute little Die Humans! corvettes, but this is the only time I ever saw such a vast horde. Dang, I shoulda taken a screenie! LOL

~SDC~

Look at http://wam.umd.edu/~jcd/Destabilization.bmp

It's a picture of the money spent on the Yor to be destabilized, and for both espionage and destabilization, the values are more than double what I'm spending on them! Whoever was wondering whether the alien races ever spend on destab/diplomacy, THEY DO. In the particular game I'm playing, the following background choices would compel the Torians to spend extensively on Yor destabilization (and I guess espionage too):

1. The Yor somehow cut a huge deal with the minor races or something to get an incredible amount of money in the middle of the game. They got rich and started to produce a monsterous military of Dreadnoughts. So monsterous, in fact, that their military is the strongest in the Galaxy.

2. Their economy, influence and morale are terrible.

3. The Torians are Friendly with me, I'm at war with the Yor, and the Torians have been at war with the Yor in the past.

4. The Torians have the second highest influence in the galaxy (except mine) and their systems reside physically closer to the Yor's than any of the other races' systems.

5. The Torians fear the Yor military, preventing them from declaring war (I tried to give them all kinds of stuff and they just wouldn't do it!) The Torians are technologically advanced, but I permanently eliminated their military might and their top 3 military-producing planets with Terror Stars during a previous Torian-Terran war. So they WANT to help me beat the Yor, but they have so few ships that they must seek alternative methods to overcome the Yor, rather than declaring war and getting themselves conquered.

The Drengins are the only other civilization left, and both of the minor races left are insanely in debt because they cut tech trade deals they couldn't handle LOL

I don't think the Drengins would dare destabilize the Yor, since they are ALLIED with the Yor. I still find it odd that the Drengins never declared war on me even though I fought their allies, the Yor, for about 7 years. Must be because I have a few powerful ships and they are afraid of me. I have like 14 Avatars and 3 high-rank Overlords and the Yor have 120+ Battleships/Dreadnoughts/Combat Transports that are giving them a negative income but their treasury, like I said, is still enormous. I suspect they traded techs to one of the lagging minor races, because one time I tried to trade techs to a minor race and he had them all!, but I had been trading techs to the Yor early in the game.

Long post, but the screenshot, for me, is revealing of the AI's behavior.

Strange, I was always under the impression that the numbers were correspondin to the total BC you have put into destibilization/espionnage for the WHOLE game and not by turn on this race.

The last time I tried esponiage, I spent a lot of money for a while, then cut it to zero. Only then did I start getting stolen techs.
Never had any luck with destabilising. At Maso, they tend to be at 100% morale all the time.

~SDC~

That is my way of doing it. But instead of going gangbusters and dumping a lot of money on a short term investment, I spend years upon years building slow, crushing pressure. Start with a token investment at the bare minimum when you first meet the race, then over the course of the game slowly increase the spending notches on the bar as your economy gets bigger. If you run into hard times, go back down to the minimum, but never cut it off. This keeps the pressure up. When the good times roll, slowly ramp up a bit. They start spending so much money on improving morale it hampers them. Or, better yet, the alien gets desperate for money and starts making deals to earn enough money to fight it. Best case scenario is when the alien pushes another race into war by trying to extort needed funds, further pushing them in the hole from the loss of trade routes and potential deal money from that race. Beautiful tactic, if done right.

I just wish the game would give a little more evidence that all the money I spend on destabilization is actually working. Even if it was just something like an occasional report, ("Our operatives have incited a riot on the Altarian homeworld, blah, blah, blah...") it would add to the feeling of realism.