As many people have noted, it looks like the civ-wide happiness system is going to be the primary limitation on expanding your civilization. Each new city will add unhappiness in its own right, in addition to the unhappiness from the new city's population. This will take some time to get used to, but seems like a perfectly workable mechanism.

What concerns me is that apparently there will be "transition points" where small changes in the happy/unhappy balance will create large effects. In Civ IV an incremental change in happy/unhappy caused an incremental effect -- if a city was exactly at the happy cap, then one additional population point created one net unhappiness, resulting in that one city having one unhappy citizen. Small change, small effect.

If I am understanding the new happiness system correctly, there will be two transition points -- from happy to "unhappy" and from unhappy to "very unhappy" -- where a small change will instantly create a major civilization-wide effect. One city on my western border grows, and suddenly my entire civilization loses the ability to create settlers, stops all population growth, and all military gets a huge penalty. :confused: All that from one pop growth?

Happy/unhappy balance = X, everything is just great
Happy/unhappy balance = X - 1, BOOM! your entire civ gets penalized?

This really concerns me -- why not have a smoother, more graduated transition? Small changes should have small effects, so you can manage your empire at a high level and not be frantically micro managing to eke out that one happiness that is the difference for the tipping point.

Yeah, I was a bit concerned about this. It seems like it will encourage lots of careful MM balancing to remain just under the threshold, which isn't much fun.

We'll have to see how it plays.

1. Since bonus happiness provide Golden Age points, low happiness even above zero is not good.
2. There are 2 levels of unhappiness and the first one just decreases population growth. So it should be much easier than previous civ revolts.

Let me address your points in reverse order, as the second one is most relevant to my concern about the abrupt transitions.


2. There are 2 levels of unhappiness and the first one just decreases population growth. So it should be much easier than previous civ revolts.

"Just" decreases population growth? A civiliation-wide reduction in population growth is not exactly a small penalty. Compared to one city losing one citizen to unhappiness, slowing that one city's growth rate, this is a big deal. That a change of one net happy/unhappy balance suddenly impacts my entire civ...micro-managing for that one happiness is going to be crucially important. As Ahriman said, this is not likely to be much fun.

1. Since bonus happiness provide Golden Age points, low happiness even above zero is not good.


I have to disagree with this, because we have also been told that each successive golden age gets shorter. (Or is that only for GP-triggered golden ages?) Since golden ages are more powerful/more useful later in the game when your civ is larger, why would you want to spend your longer golden ages early? I think there will be a sizable benefit to managing your excess happiness carefully, avoiding triggering golden ages until later in the game when the total impact will be larger.

Running your empire with a large happiness surplus may not be automatically positive. Again, this points to lots of careful micro-management of the happy/unhappy balance...which is not fun.

This really concerns me -- why not have a smoother, more graduated transition? Small changes should have small effects, so you can manage your empire at a high level and not be frantically micro managing to eke out that one happiness that is the difference for the tipping point.

You DO have a Smoother more graduated transition

Take an empire that has Unhappiness 5 and happiness 10
Net=+5 Happy... this empire will get a golden age in X turns (5 per turn)

if the population grows by 3->unhappy 8
Net=+2 Happy... this empire will get a golden age in 2.5 X turns (2 per turn)

if the population grows by 3->unhappy 11
Net=-1 Happy... This empire is
1) Growing slowly... so that less unhappiness will be added
2) losing its progress towards a golden age (at a rate of 1 per turn)

But the population keeps growing (slowly) by another 3->unhappy 14

Net=-4 happy..this empire is
1)Growing slowly (just like before)
2) Rapidly losing its progress towards a golden age (at a rate of 4 per turn)


So EVERY extra happiness/unhappiness helps/hurt your whole empire... it moves you faster towards/away from a Golden Age

(and if your unhappiness>Happiness the game decides to HELP you by slowing population growth, because population growth causes more unhappiness)

Side note: If you get the Mandate of Heaven SP, extra happiness also gives you culture



Also, I believe that the GP-induced Golden Ages are the ones that get shorter and shorter, the Happiness ones get more and more expensive.

And it might be possible that Golden Ages are 'purchasable' like Social Policies... You don't have to buy new Social Policies ASAP, you can store up and buy them as you want.

Who says that is not the case with Golden Ages as well? Buy Golden Ages with your accumulated Happiness points. That would solve any need to MM the Happiness balance.

"Just" decreases population growth? A civiliation-wide reduction in population growth is not exactly a small penalty. Compared to one city losing one citizen to unhappiness, slowing that one city's growth rate, this is a big deal. That a change of one net happy/unhappy balance suddenly impacts my entire civ...micro-managing for that one happiness is going to be crucially important. As Ahriman said, this is not likely to be much fun.

The idea is what you gain unhappiness for population. And once you gain enough unhappiness, your population starts growing slower. In other words - instead of soft recommendations to slow your growth, harder ones appear :)

I doubt it's micromanagement. There's only one parameter to look at and you could fix it by building happiness building in any city.

I have to disagree with this, because we have also been told that each successive golden age gets shorter. (Or is that only for GP-triggered golden ages?) Since golden ages are more powerful/more useful later in the game when your civ is larger, why would you want to spend your longer golden ages early? I think there will be a sizable benefit to managing your excess happiness carefully, avoiding triggering golden ages until later in the game when the total impact will be larger.

Running your empire with a large happiness surplus may not be automatically positive. Again, this points to lots of careful micro-management of the happy/unhappy balance...which is not fun.

Interesting. Yes, I hope only GP-powered golden ages will be shorter. At least we know what one SP could run a golden age not affected by this. So the mechanic could be different for different types of golden ages.

Its not like we wont see this coming, I mean becoming unhappy, then very unhappy. We will know our cap, then reach unhappy. Then we will have to go even more above the cap to reach very unhappy, I believe one previewer said it was 10 above your max to become very unhappy. Its not like one turn your happy, the next your unhappy, and then the next your very unhappy, that is unless you have let a lot of things go wrong/out of control.

If there was some way to "save" the golden ages until later, then most of my worries would disappear. But I am very doubtful that will be the case -- I have not seen any mention of such a mechanism.

Even if the excess happiness golden ages do not get shorter, if they become more and more expensive (in terms of how much excess happiness is needed) then there is still reason to consider delaying them until later in the game.

As for planning around unhappiness...of course you can plan around it. You can plan around anything if you have to. But micro-managing the balance is apparently going to be a constant necessity. And if I am right, you will be micro-managing to avoid both too little happiness and too much happiness.

If the difference between "happy, everything is peachy" and "very unhappy, no settlers and military weakness for you" is only ten points...wow. Annex a single large-ish city and instant crushing penalties. :( Talk about discouraging wars of conquest.

Happy/unhappy balance = X, everything is just great
Happy/unhappy balance = X - 1, BOOM! your entire civ gets penalized?



Sounds fairly realistic to me. In a lot of historical scenarios things suddenly went boom, and you got a revolution or a civil war.

If there was some way to "save" the golden ages until later, then most of my worries would disappear. But I am very doubtful that will be the case -- I have not seen any mention of such a mechanism.

Even if the excess happiness golden ages do not get shorter, if they become more and more expensive (in terms of how much excess happiness is needed) then there is still reason to consider delaying them until later in the game.

As for planning around unhappiness...of course you can plan around it. You can plan around anything if you have to. But micro-managing the balance is apparently going to be a constant necessity. And if I am right, you will be micro-managing to avoid both too little happiness and too much happiness.

If the difference between "happy, everything is peachy" and "very unhappy, no settlers and military weakness for you" is only ten points...wow. Annex a single large-ish city and instant crushing penalties. :( Talk about discouraging wars of conquest.

That's because you are supposed to stay in that 'happy' territory.

As for Golden Ages costing more... well perhaps the cost is more based on your # of cities.


Also an early golden age is better, not in raw output, but in when you get it. 100 gold in 2000 BC is much better than 100 gold in 2000 AD.

While your concern(unlike much of the silly crap that is being spewed forth at the moment) is valid in this case, it really depends on where the threshold is. It is possible that it is a sort of "straw that broke the camels back" scenario. You are assuming that it will be normal or desirable to ride the upper limit of the unhappiness at all times.

It is possible that an empire being run so poorly is already in such a state that this merely represents the torches and pitchforks being broken out in earnest.

Still, this is not an entirely invalid concern. It really depends on how "normal" it will be to ride that close to the edge.

/yawn

I look forward to playing this game and seeing how things work first hand. Amazingly, I have faith in Firaxis to create a great game, and Shafer seems pretty bright and on the ball - I further think this will be a great version of civ.

The only happiness transition I'm worried about is me obtaining the game - and being very happy about it.

Obviously we do not have the game in hand, so we do not know the details yet. But does that make speculation invalid? Sorry to draw yawns from those who have zero worries and already "know" that Civ V will be wonderful.

I'm in the camp of people who hope that Civ V will be wonderful, but are worried that with all the changes to core game systems maybe everything will not be as well balanced and smoothly functioning as they might be. Most specifically, I am worried that there will too many factors pushing you to play the game "the right way": not riding the edge of the happiness balance (big penalties for missing the balance by one), not conquering lots of cities (tons of unhappiness), not eliminating city states (razing not allowed), etc. I am hoping for a great game, but I keep seeing things that appear to be the developers deciding ahead of time how you should play the game, and adding rules to make other approaches not viable.

Hopefully I am worrying needlessly. But I think it is valid to ask questions and speculate on how the changes in Civ V will affect game play.

developers deciding ahead of time how you should play the game, and adding rules to make other approaches not viable.

This is a necessary evil to overcome the "default" 4X playstyle. In the absence of these types of mechanical cattle-prods every 4X degenerates into endless rapid expansion and massive wars of annihilation.

I, personally, got tired of this type of raw 4X about a decade ago. The "approaches" you are referring to are basically code for REX and Super-Warmonger.

Any modern and quality 4X will have rules that penalize exponential expansion. It's not as if Civ4 didn't have these as well.

Even if there is some micro involved, IMO managing happiness and health in each individual city as in Civ4 was much more micro intensive.

The new happiness system, in my opinion, is just another example of revamping and simplification that didn't need to happen and that will have a negative effect on gameplay. It's not fear of change. It's fear of poorly implemented systems that destroy immersion and make gameplay clunky.

Obviously we do not have the game in hand, so we do not know the details yet. But does that make speculation invalid? Sorry to draw yawns from those who have zero worries and already "know" that Civ V will be wonderful.

I'm in the camp of people who hope that Civ V will be wonderful, but are worried that with all the changes to core game systems maybe everything will not be as well balanced and smoothly functioning as they might be. Most specifically, I am worried that there will too many factors pushing you to play the game "the right way": not riding the edge of the happiness balance (big penalties for missing the balance by one), not conquering lots of cities (tons of unhappiness), not eliminating city states (razing not allowed), etc. I am hoping for a great game, but I keep seeing things that appear to be the developers deciding ahead of time how you should play the game, and adding rules to make other approaches not viable.

Hopefully I am worrying needlessly. But I think it is valid to ask questions and speculate on how the changes in Civ V will affect game play.

There are a few people who could give you advice about the problems with riding the edge of the happiness balance. Charles I of England, Louis XVI of France and Nicholas II of Russia are some of the ones that come to mind.

But I think it is valid to ask questions and speculate on how the changes in Civ V will affect game play.
Is it? If nobody knows the answer, what good is the speculation? Will you be satisfied if enough people speculate that you have little or nothing to worry about?

I've seen screenshots with pictures of little smiley faces but I have no clue how it's going to work in practice. I haven't read a single comment from anybody who has tried the game (including fans at the recent conference, not just reviewers) that have gievn me a reason to worry about how the empire wide happines works.

I'm not concerned, going into unhappiness only results in loss of growth, about 75% I think, not trivial but you didn't have the hapiness to grow more anyway, so you aren't loosing anything.

Its when you go very unhappy that things are problematic, which is like -10 unhappyfaces, which isn't that easy to get to on growth if only getting 25% of full growth, at which point you get 0 growth and a 50% penalty to all military units, and can't build settlers.

Its not like "omg suddenly I'm at -10" no, you would have to work hard to get there :P.

Most specifically, I am worried that there will too many factors pushing you to play the game "the right way": not riding the edge of the happiness balance (big penalties for missing the balance by one), not conquering lots of cities (tons of unhappiness), not eliminating city states (razing not allowed), etc.You are looking at it the wrong way - they are trying to prevent having only one "right way". without these checks, you end up with the same problem every other civ has struggled with: aggressive expansion/conquest can be used (or may even be required) to achieve any of the other victory conditions - even the so called "peaceful" ones.

I am actually looking forward to Civ V because it looks like aggressive play will actually hinder your ability to achieve at least one victory condition - Diplomatic, and maybe culture as well, but we will have to see the exact mechanics before we can make that determination. That is, we know that the more cities you have, the more culture is required to purchase successive Social Policies, but not by how much.

AlpsStranger,

Of course we need to have mechanisms to control growth. Otherwise you get some variant of ICS where every new city is purely positive and the only valid tactic is to expand as fast as you can. Any game where there is only one valid tactic is not a fun game. As I said in my original post, I think the new happiness system is a prefectly valid way to limit growth and force you to build up your civ internally as well as externally.

But why have the abrupt transitions where a small change causes a huge effect? Instead of one more point making you "very unhappy" and suddenly you have zero pop growth, no settlers, and big military penalties, why not something more graduated? Each extra unhappiness past some threshold reduces pop growth (maybe 10%), makes new settlers more expensive (10% or 20%), reduces military strength a bit (5% or 10%). The effects could be progressively bigger as the excess unhappiness grew, rather than being all or nothing. There would be lots of extra calculations to do, but computers are made for that sort of thing.

Seek,

I do not think the comparison to managing each city in Civ IV is really valid. You could easily see if a city was unhappy or unhealthy from the icons on the city bar, right on the main map, or by a quick look at the F1 city advisor screen. If no icon was there, you knew you were OK -- at least for the moment, longer term planning obviously was necessary over greater periods. And even if you were busy with a war or chasing a wonder or whatever, and missed a city having problems for a few turns -- it was a local effect, not your entire empire, and small changes like one pop growth produced small effects. You missed an unhappy face for a few turns, well, it was sub-optimal but hardly a huge deal.

I think a lot will depend on how "tight" the civ-wide happiness cap is. My expectation is that it will be very tight, a constant struggle to avoid the civ-wide penalties. More population means more tiles worked and/or more specialists run for more production, science, culture, gold, great people points. Plus raw population now generates science. Why wouldn't you run your empire to the very edge of the happiness limit? And that means micro-managing to stay exactly at the "sweet spot" on the balance will be a continual task.

As many people have noted, it looks like the civ-wide happiness system is going to be the primary limitation on expanding your civilization. Each new city will add unhappiness in its own right, in addition to the unhappiness from the new city's population. This will take some time to get used to, but seems like a perfectly workable mechanism.

What concerns me is that apparently there will be "transition points" where small changes in the happy/unhappy balance will create large effects. In Civ IV an incremental change in happy/unhappy caused an incremental effect -- if a city was exactly at the happy cap, then one additional population point created one net unhappiness, resulting in that one city having one unhappy citizen. Small change, small effect.

If I am understanding the new happiness system correctly, there will be two transition points -- from happy to "unhappy" and from unhappy to "very unhappy" -- where a small change will instantly create a major civilization-wide effect. One city on my western border grows, and suddenly my entire civilization loses the ability to create settlers, stops all population growth, and all military gets a huge penalty. :confused: All that from one pop growth?

Happy/unhappy balance = X, everything is just great
Happy/unhappy balance = X - 1, BOOM! your entire civ gets penalized?

This really concerns me -- why not have a smoother, more graduated transition? Small changes should have small effects, so you can manage your empire at a high level and not be frantically micro managing to eke out that one happiness that is the difference for the tipping point.

I think this is a good thing, as it will allow for booms and slumps in population growth, which is an excellent gameplay mechanic to have. And of course if you get into trouble your slump can turn into a pit, which is awesome.

AlpsStranger,

Of course we need to have mechanisms to control growth. Otherwise you get some variant of ICS where every new city is purely positive and the only valid tactic is to expand as fast as you can. Any game where there is only one valid tactic is not a fun game. As I said in my original post, I think the new happiness system is a prefectly valid way to limit growth and force you to build up your civ internally as well as externally.

But why have the abrupt transitions where a small change causes a huge effect? Instead of one more point making you "very unhappy" and suddenly you have zero pop growth, no settlers, and big military penalties, why not something more graduated? Each extra unhappiness past some threshold reduces pop growth (maybe 10%), makes new settlers more expensive (10% or 20%), reduces military strength a bit (5% or 10%). The effects could be progressively bigger as the excess unhappiness grew, rather than being all or nothing. There would be lots of extra calculations to do, but computers are made for that sort of thing.

Seek,

I do not think the comparison to managing each city in Civ IV is really valid. You could easily see if a city was unhappy or unhealthy from the icons on the city bar, right on the main map, or by a quick look at the F1 city advisor screen. If no icon was there, you knew you were OK -- at least for the moment, longer term planning obviously was necessary over greater periods. And even if you were busy with a war or chasing a wonder or whatever, and missed a city having problems for a few turns -- it was a local effect, not your entire empire, and small changes like one pop growth produced small effects. You missed an unhappy face for a few turns, well, it was sub-optimal but hardly a huge deal.

I think a lot will depend on how "tight" the civ-wide happiness cap is. My expectation is that it will be very tight, a constant struggle to avoid the civ-wide penalties. More population means more tiles worked and/or more specialists run for more production, science, culture, gold, great people points. Plus raw population now generates science. Why wouldn't you run your empire to the very edge of the happiness limit? And that means micro-managing to stay exactly at the "sweet spot" on the balance will be a continual task.

As I have already posted twice in this thread, the sudden effect of increased unhappiness mimics revolutions and civil wars that happen when you drive the population too far. But that doesn't seem to be something you want to hear.

Why wouldn't you run your empire to the very edge of the happiness limit? And that means micro-managing to stay exactly at the "sweet spot" on the balance will be a continual task.

I could be mistaken, but I believe that excess happiness has something to do with generating great people and golden ages. Therefore, running at the edge of happiness may very well mean that your empire is doing very poorly.

The new happiness system, in my opinion, is just another example of revamping and simplification that didn't need to happen and that will have a negative effect on gameplay. It's not fear of change. It's fear of poorly implemented systems that destroy immersion and make gameplay clunky.

I am not sure that city wide happiness was any more realistic/immersive than empire wide happiness. I am not sure I am convinced that I have any reason to accept your assertion that it will make gameplay clunky. As above, I believe that running surplus happiness in large amounts is a core part of Civ5. I am not sure you will *want* to micro right to the line as everyone assumes.

From what we know so far I like what I am hearing about empire wide happiness. It replaces a handful of systems with a really tidy and hopefully interesting single system. Here's hoping it is still rich in strategic decision making.

Plus raw population now generates science. Why wouldn't you run your empire to the very edge of the happiness limit? And that means micro-managing to stay exactly at the "sweet spot" on the balance will be a continual task.

Because as you pointed out having more citizens is a good thing, the only bad thing that comes from the unhappy state is a large penalty to population growth. You don't lose access to citizens or suffer production penalties, so its actually in your best interest to let your civ go unhappy (as a result of a population increase) and build more happiness buildings so that you can get more population when your happy again. (also to stop yourself going to the very unhappy state which incurs more penalties which aren't desirable)

Edit - Forgot about golden ages and great people, so it might not be completley in your best interest to maximise population, but its hard to tell.

I agree with you: keeping your empire happy (or at least moderately unhappy) is going to be a key concept of Civ 5.


This really concerns me -- why not have a smoother, more graduated transition? Small changes should have small effects, so you can manage your empire at a high level and not be frantically micro managing to eke out that one happiness that is the difference for the tipping point.

Well, I am not really concerned about this. Instead of that, it will be a good topic for one of the first War Academy articles :D

Managing this issue correctly, could be deciding for higher difficulty levels. To exploit these transition at maximum can differentiate a good player from a mediocre one.

@OP:

I don't think "micro management" is the right word for the civ 5 system. It's more like macro management. You have to worry about your whole empire's happiness, not each individual city. In previous civs, vicotry would go to the player who painstaikingly micromanaged the production capacity for every one of several dozen cities. The new system encourages you to look at the big picture. In civ V you will have fewer cities it seems, and more focus on the state of your empire as a whole.

Yes there are some big tipping points, and managing these will be crucial. I would disagree with the assertion that this is "less realistic." Isn't there a book called The Tipping Point about exactly this reality? Real life and history are full of "tipping points," especially as relating to a nation's happiness and civil unrest. The typical story of a revolutionary event is that as things get worse and worse for the population, malcontent is bubbling just under the surface, yet business continues much as usual. Then suddenly, the proverbial "last straw" drops and protests, strikes, or revolutions spread like wildfire across an entire nation, often taking the world by complete surprise. I would cite the French revolution, the Iranian Revolution, and the more recent election protests in Iran as archetypal examples.

I think Krikkitone and Thyrwyn have it right - whether the new happiness system is more fun than the one in Civ 4 or not, I don't think it will require more micromanagement. Having to build happiness structures, acquire luxuries, and slow population growth for each individual city by definition requires more micromanagement than having to look at one number and, as it gets closer to even and then goes negative, do one thing to keep it from dipping under. It is, as Thyrwyn says (and Stefanskantine), more about macromanagement. You have to keep from conquering too many cities and driving your unhappiness up so fast you can't build improvements or acquire luxuries fast enough to keep up.
In many ways, as other people have said, global happiness is like maintenance in Civ 4. If you conquered too many cities, your economy tanked and you had to cut way back on research to keep from going in the red. Now the penalty for over expansion is not reduced research but reduced population growth and eventually a penalty on your military.

The "unhappy" stage looks to be a definite negative for your empire, but not devastating. You will simply experience slower city growth, which is perfectly sustainable for short periods (i.e. during wartime). The "very unhappy" stage, however, is the "can't build settlers" penalty, and adding the combat penalty (which I heard was something like 30% for all your military units) makes this a place you don't want to be. So in peaceful times you will want to always keep your empire happy, to get this golden eras, but during war I don't think it will be too awful to slide into "unhappy", especially if your in the midst of massive expansion of your empire. I like this change, it really lets you experience the consequences of overstepping your empires ability to handle more citizens (especially ones who are pissed that you torn them away from their beloved leader).

I think Krikkitone and Thyrwyn have it right - whether the new happiness system is more fun than the one in Civ 4 or not, I don't think it will require more micromanagement. Having to build happiness structures, acquire luxuries, and slow population growth for each individual city by definition requires more micromanagement than having to look at one number and, as it gets closer to even and then goes negative, do one thing to keep it from dipping under. It is, as Thyrwyn says (and Stefanskantine), more about macromanagement. You have to keep from conquering too many cities and driving your unhappiness up so fast you can't build improvements or acquire luxuries fast enough to keep up.
In many ways, as other people have said, global happiness is like maintenance in Civ 4. If you conquered too many cities, your economy tanked and you had to cut way back on research to keep from going in the red. Now the penalty for over expansion is not reduced research but reduced population growth and eventually a penalty on your military.

I think this is an excellent example of how Civilization V will be just simply different at times, and whether the change is good or bad is really a preference issue, not a fundamental issue. I think I will miss the sliders, but at the same time I like the idea that research is tied very specifically to city-size, and over-expansion affects that size. It's taking concepts that are in CivIV and just moving them around to different areas.

Meh, I'm not going to pay attention to my civ's :mad:. I'll just nerve-staple the bastards if they give me crap!

^^^ Damn straight!

If there was some way to "save" the golden ages until later, then most of my worries would disappear. But I am very doubtful that will be the case -- I have not seen any mention of such a mechanism.


I don't quite understand this reasoning. Yes the raw output from GA with more/larger cities is greater - but its all relative to where you are in the game. I would rather have 100 beakers early than 1000 later on, because it matters more. I'd love to play against you if you're saving up your golden ages like this. I'll get a couple of golden ages early, relative to you, jump ahead. Then when you get 20 cities in 1800 you can use your saved up Golden Ages. Oh hang on - no you can't because you'll be dead because I crushed you using the tech/production edge my early GA's gave me over you.

Edit: In Civ 4 the early Golden Age (generated by great people) was looked at as often being inferior but this made more sense. This is because they came at an "opportunity cost" (being the other abilities available to that GP, which of course started out very strong and got weaker as the game went on.)

Using this you could argue that having excess happiness in ciV to trigger early golden ages also comes at the opportunity cost of the extra gold/beaker/production that extra population would bring. I somewhat agree with this, however the concept you put across of seemingly having the GA points but saving them rather than triggering a GA when you can makes little sense unless you're very close to achieving something which will significantly improve the GA (example: 5 turns away from conquering 2 large enemy cities.) Even then, I don't think the scenario where you'd *really* want to delay the GA by a few turns would be that common because, if this game is anything like previous civs, getting stuff earlier is just so much better.

My issue is still with this idea that an amphitheater in City X will assist the happiness of your entire empire-& that capturing City Y will cause unhappiness in your entire empire. I've actually always supported the idea of having happiness impacting both at the individual city level & contributing to overall empire-wide happiness.

Aussie.

This is a necessary evil to overcome the "default" 4X playstyle. In the absence of these types of mechanical cattle-prods every 4X degenerates into endless rapid expansion and massive wars of annihilation.

I, personally, got tired of this type of raw 4X about a decade ago. The "approaches" you are referring to are basically code for REX and Super-Warmonger.

Any modern and quality 4X will have rules that penalize exponential expansion. It's not as if Civ4 didn't have these as well.

And Civ4 didn't completely succeed in that. There were progressive maintenance costs, but massive expansion, often via wars, was still usually the best strategy. This was true also and especially in higher levels, where massive land grabbing was the only way to overcome AI's production bonuses. For me it's ok if Civ5 restricts expansion even more.

If there was some way to "save" the golden ages until later, then most of my worries would disappear. But I am very doubtful that will be the case -- I have not seen any mention of such a mechanism.



A great person can start a golden age (although it apparently gets shorter each time you do it this way), so you could always fotrify him, somewhere until you really need a golden age.

--

Edit - @above post, the idea behind controlling expansion is not to ban it but to control it. You don't want people getting too many cities too quickly, but you certainly don't want to cap the number they can have.

My issue is still with this idea that an amphitheater in City X will assist the happiness of your entire empire-& that capturing City Y will cause unhappiness in your entire empire. I've actually always supported the idea of having happiness impacting both at the individual city level & contributing to overall empire-wide happiness.

Aussie.

Yes. I am however glad that the sliders are gone. Those seemed really silly to me. IF problems THEN increase HappyGas seems somewhat contrived.

Those seemed really silly to me.

I am taken aback Auncien. That was not an opinion I would have expected you to have.

Ironically, I am still not 100% sure that I am OK with removing the sliders. I'm willing to give it a chance, but when I first heard about it I was a little skeptical.

Auncien likes a Civ5 change more than I do. Wonders never cease :lol:

I am taken aback Auncien. That was not an opinion I would have expected you to have.

Ironically, I am still not 100% sure that I am OK with removing the sliders. I'm willing to give it a chance, but when I first heard about it I was a little skeptical.

Auncien likes a Civ5 change more than I do. Wonders never cease :lol:

It's probably a full moon or something... :lol:

In all seriuosness though, I love many of the changes in the game. :goodjob:

- One unit per tile seems like a step in the right direction.
- Hex grid is long overdue and is a great decision.
- New ranged mechanic is great.
- Social policies seem interesting and probably superior to civics.
- World is more alive and full of neat stuff to find (and conquer).
- City-states are going to do amazingly great things for gameplay and immersion.
- Unit resource mechanics, tech agreements, GP tile improvements and a whole lot of other little stuff I really, really love.
- Just looks pretty and you can tell a lot of work and love went into it.

The things that concern me are... :sad:

- Supposedly can't destroy city-states or capital cities :mad: YUCK YUCK YUCK guys.
- Happiness is (in my opinion) poorly modelled and is empire wide which makes no sense.
- Pollution (civ iv health mechanic, not civ III tile decay), corruption, war weariness seem to be gone which sort of cheapens the 'running an empire' experience and makes it a bit too toy-like for my tastes.
- Cottage system, which was really good for so many reasons, has been replaced with click a button > place a circus which isn't deep or interesting at all.

I am NOT a Civ IV die hard who refuses to embrace change. I just think they may have made some really poor choices about changing some things that shouldn't have been changed. I'm open to trying it. I'm looking forward to the demo.

- Supposedly can't destroy city-states or capital cities :mad: YUCK YUCK YUCK guys.
- Happiness is (in my opinion) poorly modelled and is empire wide which makes no sense.
- Pollution (civ iv health mechanic, not civ III tile decay), corruption, war weariness seem to be gone which sort of cheapens the 'running an empire' experience and makes it a bit too toy-like for my tastes.
- Cottage system, which was really good for so many reasons, has been replaced with click a button > place a circus which isn't deep or interesting at all.

I am NOT a Civ IV die hard who refuses to embrace change. I just think they may have made some really poor choices about changing some things that shouldn't have been changed. I'm open to trying it. I'm looking forward to the demo.

Well those I think are related to other changes in the game
Cottages->Science
in Civ V 'circuses'->Gold
Population->Science

and the Corruption/War Weariness/Pollution is all rolled into the Happiness Mechanic...which has been modified to give benefits to 'excess' happiness.

(I also would have liked a more advanced system in terms of Happiness, one that was NOT a population cap... ie population size independent of happiness/unhappiness, but the current system does well)

Theres no need for a slider if gold can't be turned into science.

The slider was wierd anyway, even at 100% research you still had gold coming in so you obviously weren't at 100%. The worst effect it had on players was the burning desire to keep it at 100% since tech was the most important commerce type most of the time (note the word 'most' before you freak out and argue every specific instance where gold or culture was better).

The only thing that I'd be especially annoyed at is if the happiness system changed in any way dependent on difficulty level (other than maybe extra bonuses to the player at low difficulties)

This is the type of thing that should be set in stone, and not change for the player or AI if you increase difficulty level. A few more things in civ4 could have used with being this way (and they actually did change happy/health in BtS to be consistent). When changing difficulty doesn't just change difficulty but really changes entire approaches to how you can play the game then you have problems.

I think it would have been interesting to have had a hybrid happiness system, where each city would get a growth penalty - and maybe a production penalty - if it went over its happy cap, but excess happiness went towards golden ages. I like the golden ages feature a lot - it's an interesting way to make you always want to increase your happiness. As many people have noted, in Civ 4, any extra happiness was wasted. If I remember correctly, didn't excess happiness in Civ 1-3 factor into the "We Love the King Day?"

From everything we know, the only difference for lower difficulty levels for happiness is a lower 'base'.
As to excess happiness: The reason early golden ages were rare in Civ 4 was because the only way to get them early was via great people, which generally was a bad investment because of the other possible uses for them. It also made later golden ages harder, so you were almost 'using' a golden age up. In Civ 5, there's not any indication that the golden-age happiness-meter increases after a golden age (we've seen it 25% lower, certainly due to organized religion, and I would expect it to change based on speed too). There's definitely an incentive to keep your people happy, as opposed to Civ 4's system which obviously only encouraged you to keep your cap at/above your pop.