Complete Guide to Happiness (vanilla)

Introduction

Happiness is a measure of your citizens' contentment. In Civilization V, the happiness system is used as a primary growth and expansion limiter. The empire's happiness level is displayed on the status line at the top of the screen, with a varying face icon as a general barometer with either a green number indicating overall happiness or red unhappiness. Understanding sources of happiness and unhappiness is critical to advanced play, as maintaining a happy empire is unsurprisingly beneficial.

• Effects of happiness level
• Sources of Unhappiness
• Sources of Happiness
  • General
  • Buildings
• General Empire Management
  • Tall Empires
  • Wide Empires
  • Puppet Empires
  • Recovering from Unhappiness

Effects of Happiness Level

There are four different possible states for happiness: Happy, Unhappy, Very Unhappy and Revolt.

• Happy
  0 or greater happiness. Everything behaves as normal.
• Unhappy
  1 to 9 unhappiness. All positive growth modifiers are eliminated and replaced with a -75% excess food modifier. A city producing 4 excess food will be reduced to 1.
• Very Unhappy
  10 to 19 unhappiness. Growth in all cities is stopped, settlers may neither settle nor be built, all cities gain a -50% production penalty, all units receive a -33% combat penalty.
• Revolt
  
  

  Rebels appearing due to revolt happiness level
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  20 or greater unhappiness. In addition to all the ill effects of Very Unhappy, rebels appear every few turns. Rebels consist of three barbarian units that spawn in a group and will cause mischief as barbarians are wont to do.

Additionally, positive amounts of happiness are accumulated toward creating a Golden Age. Excess unhappiness is counted against any previous progress. This accumulation occurs only when not already in a golden age. The amount of excess happiness needed to create a golden age on standard speed starts at 500, and increases by 250 for each previous happiness golden age that has occurred and 1 percent per extra city founded. When in a golden age, every tile in the empire that produces at least one gold produces an additional gold, and cities gain a 20% production bonus.

Sources of Unhappiness

There are two sources of unhappiness: cities and citizens. In a standard game, each city produces 3 unhappiness and each citizen produces 1 unhappiness. Occupied cities (annexed without a courthouse) produce 5 unhappiness with each citizen producing 1.34. Large and huge maps have an 80% and 60% per city modifier, and the lowest three difficulties have a 40%, 60% and 75% modifier for both cities and citizens.

Sources of Happiness

Happiness can be gained and unhappiness reduced through a variety of means. Percentage unhappiness reductions are generally multiplied together, so for example each specialist in a democratic monarchic Delhi will produce only 0.125 unhappiness (0.5 * 0.5 * 0.5).

General

Starting Happiness

• Settler: +15 happiness
• Chieftain and Warlord: +12 happiness
• Prince and above: +9 happiness

Luxury Resources

+4 happiness each (+5 on settler and chieftain difficulty). There are 15 possible luxuries on standard size and larger maps, whereas some get excluded on smaller maps:

• Cotton
• Dyes
• Furs
• Gems
• Gold
• Incense
• Ivory
• Marble
• Pearls
• Silk
• Silver
• Spices
• Sugar
• Whales
• Wine

Natural Wonders

+1 happiness for each Natural Wonder found. Additionally the following two natural wonders provide happiness for being within the empire's borders:

• Old Faithful +3 happiness
• The Fountain of Youth +10 happiness

Wonders

• Circus Maximus (National Wonder): +5 happiness
• Eiffel Tower: +5 happiness and +1 happiness for every 2 Social Policies
• Notre Dame: +10 happiness
• Forbidden Palace: -10% unhappiness for citizens in non-occupied cities
• Taj Mahal: +4 happiness (local)
• Chichen Itza: +4 happiness (local)

Social Policies

• Tradition
  Aristocracy +1 happiness for every 10 citizens in a city.
  Monarchy -50% unhappiness for citizens in the capital.
• Liberty
  Meritocracy +1 happiness for each city you own connected to the capital (ie trade route) and -5% unhappiness from citizens in non-occupied cities.
• Honor
  Military Caste +1 happiness for each city with a garrison.
  Professional Army +1 happiness for each defensive building, specifically walls, castle, arsenal and military base.
• Piety
  Organized Religion +1 happiness from culture buildings, specifically monument, temple and monastery (which requires improved incense or wine around the city).
• Patronage
  Cultural Diplomacy happiness from gifted luxuries increased by 50% (+2 per gift)
• Commerce
  Protectionism +1 happiness from each Luxury resource.
• Rationalism
  Humanism +1 happiness from select science buildings, specifically university, public school and observatory (which requires city to be adjacent to a mountain).
• Freedom
  Democracy -50% unhappiness per specialist population.
• Order
  Opener +1 happiness per city.
• Autocracy
  Police State +3 happiness per Courthouse (which can only be built in an annexed city).

Unique Abilities

• India - Population Growth: 50% happiness from citizens, and 200% unhappiness from cities.

Buildings

The happiness provided by standard buildings cannot exceed the base unhappiness the citizens in a city produce. This happiness is referred to as local. For example, a city with population 4 with a colosseum and circus will produce no additional happiness by building a stone works or theatre. Because only the base unhappiness is considered, if all four citizens are assigned as specialists under democracy or if the leader is Gandhi, the 50% reduction will cause the citizens to only produce 2 unhappiness but the buildings will still produce their +4 happiness. The +4 happiness from both Chichen Itza and the Taj Mahal fall under the local restriction as well.

• Colosseum: +2 happiness
• Theatre: +3 happiness
• Stadium: +4 happiness
• Stone works: +1 happiness - Requires Stone or Marble and city not built on a plains tile
• Circus: +2 happiness - Requires Horse or Ivory
• Courthouse: removes occupied status from an annexed city reducing per population happiness and occupied city penalty - there is a longstanding bug which additionally makes courthouses permanently remove the standard per city penalty.
• Burial Tomb: +2 happiness - Unique Building for Egypt; replaces temple
• Satrap's Court: +2 happiness - Unique Building for Persia; replaces bank

Thus through local buildings a city can typically combat the unhappiness from 9 citizens base, with an additional 1 population if stone works is available and an additional 2 if a circus is available, for a max of 12 local happiness. Egypt and Persia each have another 2 local happiness possible for a max of 14. All other unhappiness must be covered through other (global) means.

General Empire Management

In any empire maintaining happiness involves balancing happiness gains against population and city unhappiness, with the goal of maximizing citizen efficiency. Given the multiplier advantages present in established cities, it's generally advantageous to only plant new cities when positive happiness can be maintained or easily restored. To this end, city placement is a key factor; planting a city in the middle of a snowfield and growing it to the point of empire unhappiness is wasteful compared to letting established cities with useable tiles grow. To cover the base city + one citizen unhappiness, a new city needs only be planted near a new luxury. Planting cities near stone or marble allows for the highly efficient stone works to be built, and planting near horses allows for the efficient circus to be built. Aside from proper city placement, occasionally the best way to avoid unhappiness is to avoid growth; a city may be working an optimal amount of tiles, and a new citizen there may not be worth causing a growth hit in other cities.

In addition to happiness gained through luxuries and proper city placement, social policies choices to provide happiness are a prime consideration. The optimal choices vary significantly with empire and play style, and are covered below.

Managing a tall (a few cities with a high populations) empire

Managing a tall empire requires aiming for raw happiness boosts and large per citizen reductions. Tall empires benefit from a limited number of raw city unhappiness hits, but also are not improved much by per city boosts. In addition, tall empires will generally have a lower total population and city unhappiness than a wide counterpart, and thus gain relatively more happiness via wonders such as Notre Dame.

Key social policy choices are:

• Monarchy - A tall empire usually involves a national college start in the capital, and thus each population in the capital will produce more science than elsewhere. Monarchy makes growing your capital even more efficient, with its massive 50% reduction to unhappiness there. If one third of your population is in the capital, this reduces your total unhappiness from citizens by one-sixth.
  
  
• Democracy - Each city in a tall empire should have specialist slots filled, so this will generally net 2 to 3 happiness per city. It also has the benefit of allowing for controlled happiness boosting via assigning more specialists, including unemployed citizens if necessary. The 50% happiness gets rounded down on a per city basis, so an odd number of specialists will maximize happiness gained: 1-2 specialists add +1 happiness, 3-4 add +2, etc.
  
  
• Cultural Diplomacy - If gaining four unique luxuries from city states, this can net a sizable +8 happiness boost. This policy has a large number of prerequisites, but can be worthwhile for city state focused games.
  
  
• Humanism - In a non cultural game, rationalism is a strong choice for tall empires. Universities and public schools will generally be built regardless, so this policy will can be a readily available 2 happiness per city.

Managing a wide (many cities with low population) empire

Wide empires need to cover the raw city 3 unhappiness for up to an infinite number of cities, and generally do this through per city social policy boosts. Raw happiness boosts provide less of a relative benefit. To continue sprawling, some cities may be best stuck avoiding growth at small sizes. Additionally, with their overall large populations wide empires may see a large benefit from completing the forbidden palace for -10% population unhappiness.

Key social policy choices are:

• Meritocracy - The liberty tree is a strong choice for a wide empire for many reasons, and maintaining a trade network should be standard operating procedure, so this nets 1 happiness per extra city in addition to the 1 happiness per 20 total population reduction.
  
  
• Organized Religion - Two deep in the piety tree, this turns monuments and temples both into efficient happiness producers, netting 2 happiness per city.
  
  
• Order - While this is only one happiness per city, the benefits for a wide empire through the rest of the order tree make it a decent choice.

Managing a puppet (a few owned cities with many puppets) empire

A puppet empire is a type of wide empire, lacking the benefit of direct control. The same social policies as a wide empire apply with the addition of these:

• Military Caste - Given that puppets are gained through conquest, going through the honor tree is less burdensome than in a normal game. Military caste can provide 1 happiness per city for the low price of having an archer or scout built that can be garrisoned in the city.
  
  
• Professional Army - Puppets have a strong preference for building defensive buildings. While these are generally inefficient purely for happiness purposes, the fact that puppets will be building them anyway make this policy a decent choice that can eventually provide up to four happiness per city.
  
  
• Democracy - Puppets will generally assign specialists to markets and banks when able, so this can provide 1-2 happiness per puppet.

Managing Puppet Size

Since puppet growth can't be controlled directly and puppets should never be grown at the expense of controlled cities, puppet growth should be controlled indirectly via exploiting tile improvements and the puppet governor's gold focus.

• Pillage farms before taking the city - If workers are going to be unable to improve tiles around the city for a while, growth can be hamstrung by pillaging farms.
  
  
• Decide how many tiles the puppet should work - As puppets will put some priority into building colosseums and circuses when able, keeping a puppet at size one is generally suboptimal. Figure out how many tiles the puppet should work and set up the gold tiles provide such that they can grow into however many tiles. For example, with two maritime allies a size four puppet needs to work tiles for +4 food tiles, and thus one riverside farm will be enough to sustain working 3 hill trading posts or luxury mines.
  
  
• Build trading posts - The primary mode of controlling which tiles a puppet will work is building trading posts. A puppet will work raw food tiles over raw production tiles and thus continue to grow, however putting a trading post on a hill will shift the focus to that tile, reducing growth.
  
  
• Build other riverside improvements - Aside from trading posts and luxury improvements, occasionally a riverside tiles natural +1 gold can be capitalized upon for other improvements, such as a pasture on a riverside cow or a mine on a riverside hill. Pay attention to the governor's worked tiles in the city viewing screen to make sure these improvements are getting used.

Managing Puppet Production

Puppet production choices are based somewhat on the general state of an empire; if unhappy, puppets will choose to build happiness buildings. This can be controlled via micro using democracy and/or military caste. If the empire will briefly be falling into unhappiness anyway, temporarily forcing unhappiness (by removing garrisons or specialists) the turn before a puppet will complete a building can result in the puppet choosing to build a colosseum or theatre.

Recovering from Unhappiness

A major consideration when conquering is how to handle all the unhappiness newly conquered cities bring. The quick options for gaining a quick happiness boost are as follows:

• Acquire more luxuries. Buy an alliance with a city state containing a unique luxury, or trade with another civilization.
  
  
• Sell/Gift cities to the AI. On higher difficulties the AI will normally have the gold to buy cities, and will pay a hefty price for cities near their borders. Even if no gold can be gained, getting out of the very unhappy penalties can make this a bargain.
  
  
• Buy/build happiness buildings. In a pinch happiness buildings can be rush bought. They are generally more expensive than acquiring a new luxury would be, however the bonus is permanent. Generally focus should be placed upon building the low production happiness buildings while buying the more expensive ones; with two cities where only one contains a colosseum, it is generally more efficient to build another colosseum and buy a theatre than the other way around.
  
  
• Rush build a wonder. Requires having a great engineer available, but Notre Dame or the Forbidden Palace can each provide significant happiness boosts.
  
  
• Reduce population in existing cities. Although it's preferable to have previously avoided growth where necessary, starving an unimportant citizen can occasionally be helpful. In an annexed city, one citizen can be starved per turn using the raze feature followed by stopping when the target population is reached.
  
  
• Raze Cities. This will permanently remove the city, and is an excellent choice for poor location cities gained in war. There are caveats to consider:
  • Only captured cities may be razed.
    
    
  • The number of turns it takes to raze is equal to the population at time of razing.
    
    
  • To raze a city it must first be annexed, causing +2 city unhappiness and +34% local citizen unhappiness until it is gone.
    
    
  • If the city is razed directly upon capture it does not contribute to social policy cost increases.
    
    
  • If razing multiple puppets, raze one at a time to avoid extra social policy cost increases.
    
    
  • Razing kills 1 population per turn, increasing happiness by at least one per turn.
    
    
  • One building can be sold per turn from a city being razed.

Tips for picking cities to dump

When deciding which cities to Sell/Gift/Raze here are a few tips for picking which cities to keep; cities that don't meet any of these criteria are probably good choices for getting rid of:

• Check the city view to see what buildings have been constructed; the city may already have happiness buildings and not be a major contributor to unhappiness.
  
  
• A highly developed city may be more valuable than immediately getting out of unhappiness.
  
  
• Keep cities with new luxury resources.
  
  
• Keep cities with Wonders.
  
  
• Keep cities that are strategically located

Patch version of this article: 1.0.1.383