City stability is a determining factor in the success of your Age Of Wonders 4 empire, especially the growth of your cities. There are multiple decisions, buildings, and events that can impact City Stability, and if your city stability falls too low, it can have drastic consequences for your growth, draft, and gold production.
There are lots of ways to deal with and increase city stability - we cover them all in this guide.
City Stability Overview
- High city stability improves Growth and Production
- Low stability decreases your gold income
- If you reach very low stability, your city might lose some of its annexed provinces and tile placements
- City stability works on a scale of -100 to +100, with 100 being Harmony and -100 at Rioting, the different levels have an impact on your city's performance
What Impacts City Stability?
Pretty much everything. Here's an example of potential multipliers below.
- We've got +33 from Recent Events which can be story events or other events
- An Ascended Champion as Governer, which offers +20 Stability (that's your hero)
- Each building and multiple of said building is reducing overall city stability
- Other Affinity-related multipliers might also impact your stability, such as having unfavorable terrain in your city (lava chasms, desolate lands, etc) while of the Good affinity
- Unclaimed Ancient Caves nearby can also impact city stability
- Every province expansion will cost -5 city stability
Overall, there is so much that can impact city stability that the best advice we can offer is to closely monitor the stability yourself. This can be accessed via the city menu - just hover over the Mask next to the name of the city.
How To Improve City Stability
City stability can be improved in a variety of ways, from building construction to using Heroes as governors (if they have the correct trait) to improve stability.
- Town Halls and other Civic Buildings can improve city stability - this will depend on your culture and buildings available
- Some City Spells can be activated on the World Map to provide stability to cities
- As you can see in the image below, buildings like the Bath House, Tavern, Artisan Workshop, etc all improve city stability
- You will also find Tome buildings (buildings made available by unlocking certain tomes) that can help with stability, such as:
- The Temple Of The Exalted in the Tome Of Exaltation
- The Blessing Of Paradise in the Tome Of Paradise
- The Baron's Palace in the Tome Of Subjugation
- The Monument Of Supremacy in the Tome Of Supremacy
- The Tribunal in the Tome Of The Inquisition
Some Tome spells can inflict negative city stability on the World Map, such as the Harvest Population spell in the Tome of the Reaper. Keep an eye out for this via your own city stability menu if you fear an enemy player has used this against you, as it can cause havoc.
- On a more fundamental level, it's important to provide enough food for your city - if, for some reason, you drop in food production below the amount required for your population, this can also negatively impact stability