Perhaps the most important consideration in geopolitics is the internal political and stability situation in each country - minor deviations in course here can drastically impact how countries operate on the world stage. In Twilight of Modernity, this is represented by the political system, which is the primary economy for the resource stability. Politics is controlled by two elements: Factions and Reforms, and one currency: Stability. [h2]Stability[/h2] Stability is the most important currency in the game. It controls a lot of what you do and how your country operates. You gain stability from keeping your factions happy, as well as being in alignment with their goals. Sometimes, you can gain stability from modifiers or other areas, but those are generally secondary to factions or dependent on faction approval. Stability is spent on Reforms, Faction Privileges, Research, Diplomacy, and War Exhaustion, all of which are important factors for determining your success against other countries. War exhaustion, in particular, in many ways defines how war ready you are, as wars will often become meat grinders where the winner is the last man standing. Running low on stability is not advisable, as low stability enables disloyal factions to revolt against your rule. When your stability is below a certain threshold (the combined power of all disloyal factions), a revolt timer will begin, and if that timer reaches zero, every disloyal faction will rally against you and you will enter a civil war. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43760976/f155d1c172a7716370e836affe5a7cd732af4855.png[/img] [i]I appear to be in a bit of a predicament.[/i] Rebellions are sometimes easy to quash in these games, however in Twilight of Modernity they are very dangerous. As mentioned last week, Regions are controlled by factional interests, and each region and unit controlled by a disloyal faction will rise up against you. If it happens that your military is largely controlled by rebel interests, you are essentially out of the game, although you can see ahead of time what interests control the pieces of your empire, so this can, and should, be avoided. [h2]Reforms[/h2] Reforms represent the characteristics of your country's government. They are choices that you make in regards to which factions you want to be empowered, as well as which population types you want to be in abundance in your regions (although economics is more effective in the latter). The idea is that your choices of reforms determine two things: your [b]Alignment[/b], as well as the general power distribution of factions in your country. [b]Alignment [/b]is a summary of where you stand on political issues in comparison to the other nations of the world. Your alignment is a vector of three axes, liberal (blue), marxist (red), and traditional (green). Each of these combines to represent your politics as a neat color, which you can see using the alignment mapmode. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43760976/16cce36d466fde2922f8b807472f2a951f22b6af.png[/img] [i]Reforms and choices.[/i] You can see that the American Dominate is an Imperial system which has a variety of reforms, all of which combine to give it a conservative alignment (cyan). Another may have a different set of reforms giving it a fascist or communist alignment, and this would greatly impact how that country plays. You can also see formable nations in this image, but that is something I will get to in the future.