How to transition to Representation - Happiness Problems

So basically I like to grow my cities as fast as possible to get one specialist food city producing great merchants to prop up my economy in my gold city. Problem is that I seem to never be able to change my civic out of hereditary rule. I want to run representation to take advantage of the bonus for specialists, but it kills happiness in alot of my cities to he point where it's just better to run hereditary rule for the entire game. Obviously this isn't the best way to play, so can you give me some tips to increase happiness so I can rn my main cities at full size?

Some more specific info about your game would be required to see where the happiness problem comes from. At what date are you trying to go Rep? How many cities do you have? How many of those do you want to keep big, and how big is "big"? Are you trading for all available happiness resources?

I've never experienced this to be a big problem, since Rep gives +3 to the 4-6 biggest cities, depending on map size. It's not often you have more cities than that which would be worth keeping large in the early game (assuming Rep through pyramids). If you have more, then you also have a bigger empire and should have access to more happiness resources.

Trying to grow your cities too large is a common beginner mistake that we see over here. Let the whip sing and turn this population into hammers instead.

Also, not sure what you mean about the Great Merchants propping up economy in your gold city. Are you settling them? Almost always it is much better to use them for a trade mission. Send them to an AI city on another landmass, preferably the one with Temple of Artemis. Otherwise a large AI city as far away from your own capital as possible is the best one.

I try to get to size 20 and above for my specialist city, for the rest I want to get them as large as possible without hitting happiness cap. I have 3 main cities one is specialist, one is science/gold and the last is production. The rest I capture from the AI. I have a problem with happiness all the time unless I run hereditary rule, even after I build all the happiness buildings I can and link all the happiness resources. For my specialist city it's not a problem because I can build globe theater there, but the other two suffer if I go out of hereditary rule. Also my captured cities suffer too, but i guess they are not worth as much as my main cities so I guess it's not so bad, but I usually run caste system so I can't really whip them down to size.

I guess saying my strat would be helpful, so basically I get agriculture and bronze working first, get 1 worker first, chop my 2nd worker, then get a warrior and chop a settler. I settle a good food city then chop the oracle to get monarchy tech, followed by chopping another settler to found a production city, I use my capital for science/gold (I add great merchants as specialists here). I run slavery and hereditary rule the moment I get monarchy and grow my cities till I get rifling tech then i invade the map, constantly teching up to stronger army tech till I vassal as many civs I can to get domination victory. I usually win by 1850s or something but I always need hereditary rule otherwise my cities suffer. I think the happieness problem is a combo of war weariness and lack of running emancipation (cause of caste system). Probably my strat is flawed... I've had good success with it, but would like to level up my game...

It would also be good to know what map size, game speed and difficulty you are playing.

On your early strategy, usually it's best to get a settler before 2nd worker. Settle the early cities nearby, overlap with capital BFC is good. Often the second city can then immediately start working some resource that was already improved for the capital. Short distance between cities makes workers more efficient as there is less need to move long distances.

Oracle Monarchy is a big waste. That's a tech the AI is always willing to trade. Unless you play at a very low difficulty, there should hardly ever be a need to tech it yourself.

Your capital should usually be your main science city. It has palace for extra commerce, and you can run Bureaucracy to boost capital commerce. Because of this boost, it is usually the only city where it is worth building an Academy with a Great Scientist. With Bureau and Academy, the capital can often handle most of your teching.

Overall it sounds like your main problem is trying to grow too much. Domination games dragging on to the 19th century is often a sign of building too much infra and too few units. If you put all those hammers you put into happiness buildings into units instead, you would reach domination a lot earlier.

About city size, you should ask yourself, what do you really gain from having so large cities? You say you need hereditary rule to grow them big and run specialists. Here's a pigs+ wet corn city, with library+observatory, at size 12 city running 4 scientists under representation:



Now we go Hereditary Rule to grow it up to pop 21 and run more scientists:



The larger city makes less beakers/turn (because of beakers lost from not running representation) and costs more maintenance. It makes more Great People points/turn, which is nice (but the pop 12 city could also run 6 scientists if 3 mines were switched to a grassland farm instead to get a lot closer in that area, and run away further in beakers). So, taking all that into account, was it worth it growing it to pop 21?

That's of course a very made up example, but still reflects the reality pretty well. Once you can work all the strong resources and whatever specialists those resources can feed, there's not much to gain by growing much larger.

If you play for total fun, your strategy is... how to say.. self-rewarding.
But if you aim for faster winning dates or higher levels (or both) learn to build less buildings, keep cities at happy cap without any additional buildings (forge is exception).
Only city that you want big is Capital - Bureau+Academy commerce->research city.
Any other city should have just 1 single unit for happiness. Units costs maintence. And that slow downs research. And with research player wants to hit "gamechanging technology" before any oponent gets it. And than you build/whip/draft units out of any non-capital cities fast (to decrease maintence for holding units and to make "oportunity window" longer). Rifles should be 2nd-4th war window most games not 1st (as effective they are with draft, there should be some chance before)
Thats the science of playing civ4 most effective.
You can forget about this and play for fun (I do that too ). But its very nice to know what is most effective way to achieve best result (difference is amazing).
Just my 5 cents from my view

Running Caste is the error if you play for Domination. Your cities don't need to grow big, what you need are units to capture cities. Waiting 'til Rifling is the strategy if the AI is horribly superior, Rifles are the strongest unit hammer-wise / STR when drafting. On all difficulties winning with Cuirrassiers is possible, if you have Ivory you can also attack with Elepults already, several players use Mace-Pult/Treb or Muske-Treb, all earlier than Rifling. Even Axe or HA-rushes can be successful all the way up towards Deity (included) , very good players make even Chariot-rushes effetive and conquer up to 10 cities 'til 2000BC with them (very extreme case but only to tell what is possible) .

The earlier you attack the weaker the units of the AIs are, if you attack Archers in a 20-40% cultural city with Elepults you'll have 90%+ winning odds. Reaching Construction and HBR before the AI gets Feudalism is possible if focussing a little on and if limiting onesself to 3-4 cities like you do, 10 Elephants + 5 Catapults are enough on Deity at 500BC, on lower difficulties there's a lot more time, so what I try to say with that is that you often only need a small army but you need that army early before the AIs get strong. Elepults are even able to beat Longbows at good rates, then it's only more important to focus on replacing the 1-2 Catapults that need to be sacrificed against each city.

The easiest way to learn using the whip is imo. learning which tiles are better than the whip which are basically only resources and FPs. A green hill i. e. doesn't give more when building units than simply not using it and whipping the whole time. A grassland Farm is slightly better but all tiles below are not even situational unless the city is a special city like the GP-Farm or the capital. Growing onto certain tiles is adviseable in peace-times but once you have that unit with which you can attack whip whip whip and build the army in a few turns and attack so early that the enemy just doesn't has that many defenses.

Vassaling civs I also see as a problem because then the cities have from WYTJOML. Most times I prefer completely conquering the first one or two opponents, vassaling imo. is mainly something for closing the game.

Seraiel said:

Vassaling civs I also see as a problem because then the cities have from WYTJOML. Most times I prefer completely conquering the first one or two opponents, vassaling imo. is mainly something for closing the game.

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For me it depends how much territory I have and how inconvenient it is. If I'm on a pangaea and I have to go island-hopping to wipe them out, I'll just take everything on the mainland and then vassal. Or if I have to cross the entire map to get that one barb city they took centuries back. Etc. You get the idea.

Lexicus said:

For me it depends how much territory I have and how inconvenient it is. If I'm on a pangaea and I have to go island-hopping to wipe them out, I'll just take everything on the mainland and then vassal. Or if I have to cross the entire map to get that one barb city they took centuries back. Etc. You get the idea.

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If they have island-cities I whip ships in their own cities. Vassaling gives the players combined diplomatic stance so having a weak Vassal gives nothing but makes diplo very complicated.

And I mostly play without Barbs but if the AI would have captured a Barb-city that is really far away I'd bribe another AI onto it and command it to capture that city.

This is interesting stuff. Running representation with great library works really well, my capital does crazy fast research with this combo, while I've been whipping my crappy cities to get units. So basically now, I didn't bother with monarchy at all. I rushed pyramids, got representation and ran 2 scientists in every city that could still grow while supporting them and it's worked pretty well.

I personally play pangea, standard map size and normal game speed on noble difficulty @elitetroops I didn't realize representation helped so much. I'm curious though, I've heard that building pyramids yourself isn't as good as stealing it from the AI. But I don't like to take cities unless they will connect my borders. Say for example the ai's pyramid city was smack bang in the centre of their empire, would it be worth avoiding the rest of their cities and just taking the pyrimid one then declaring peace, of capturing/razing the ones on the way before I declare peace? Problem with razing is that i'd have to spend alot more units to do it, but on the other hand the maintenance costs, cultural problems and defensive issues with capping a city in the middle of an empire could be more problematic than its worth.

Lastly is it worth running slavery for the entire game or is there a point where emancipation is the beter option? Thanks everyone for your help so far

Finding happiness without HR really depends a lot on map type and settings. I play large maps, and try to find the other AIs quickly. Doing so facilitates resource trades; get enough happiness resources and you can grow cities as big as you want without need for hereditary rule (at least, once you get to Calendar).

HR has an obvious cost: you have to build and pay maintenance on a bunch of semi-useless garrison units. But there’s also a hidden cost in worker turns, and city maintenance. If you have many massive cities under HR, one of two things is happening – you’re either working unimproved tiles and growing slowly, or working lots of farms and running specialists. If the former, you’re not getting much bang for your additional population and additional maintenance costs, and would be better off whipping away the excess population. If the latter, you’ve had to build extra workers that could have been settlers or military units. On top of that, unless you’re blessed with a lot of food specials or floodplains, you’ll have to work a lot of grassland farms to grow cities to the size 15+ range while running specialists. A grassland farm only produces net 1 food, or half of a specialist… which under HR amounts to 1.5 beakers and 1.5 GPP per turn. It’s a terrible tile until Biology. Outside of a dedicated GP farm, a riverside cottage (or, obviously, whipping) would have been better.

Frees0ul said:

I personally play pangea, standard map size and normal game speed on noble difficulty @elitetroops I didn't realize representation helped so much. I'm curious though, I've heard that building pyramids yourself isn't as good as stealing it from the AI.

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On noble I would build them if I want them. Takes too long for the AI to get them up. On higher levels, where they are often built by someone before 1000BC, it can sometimes be better to plan to capture them.

Frees0ul said:

But I don't like to take cities unless they will connect my borders. Say for example the ai's pyramid city was smack bang in the centre of their empire, would it be worth avoiding the rest of their cities and just taking the pyrimid one then declaring peace, of capturing/razing the ones on the way before I declare peace? Problem with razing is that i'd have to spend alot more units to do it, but on the other hand the maintenance costs, cultural problems and defensive issues with capping a city in the middle of an empire could be more problematic than its worth.

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Take them all. If you are afraid of taking too many cities, I can only assume you are afraid of lowering your slider. Don't worry about that, the slider is a ratio, it has nothing to do with how well you are actually doing. A large empire can produce more /turn with the slider far down than a small empire with the slider much higher. If you kill the AI completely there are no cultural issues, their culture disappears. Defensive units are not needed much. One unit/city to avoid "we fear for our safety" anger is enough. A warrior will do in most cities.

Frees0ul said:

Lastly is it worth running slavery for the entire game or is there a point where emancipation is the beter option? Thanks everyone for your help so far

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The best civic combo for teching is often Caste System+Pacifism. A common strategy is to combine this with a golden age, for free civic switches and another +100% GPP (Great People Point) production. If you also have the Parthenon, you'd get +250% GPP in pacifism during a golden age (+350% if you are Philosophical).

Typical strategy is to even starve some cities during the golden age to run as many scientists as possible. Let's say we have a strong food city with two 6 tiles at pop 10. Micro it so that the food bin is almost full (38/40 is close enough). You have built Parthenon and Mausoleum of Mausollos. Now you start a golden age, for example with the Great Artist you get for free from Music. The first 11 turns of the golden age, your pop 10 city can run 7 scientists, while working two 6f tiles and one 3f tile, losing 3f/turn from the bin, and still never lose a pop. On the 12th turn you switch back to slavery and can't run as many scientists anymore. So what does these 11 turns get you?

One scientist = 3 GPP/turn * 3.5 = 10.5 GPP/turn (you multiplied by 3.5 because of +250% bonus)
7 scientists = 7 * 10.5 GPP/turn = 73 GPP/turn (always rounds down)
11 * 73 = 803 GPP

Okay, 803 GPP, what can that give you? First Great Person produced nationwide costs 100GPP, 2nd 200GPP and so on (at some point after the 10th Great person the cost starts increasing faster). Maybe you got the first Great person passively from the Oracle and have produced another Great Scientist already for academy in capital. The next one costs 300, this city has it done in 5 turns. After this some other city might reach 400 GPP to produce the 4th one, then this city will have another 500 stored up before the end of the golden age for the 5th one. That's 3 Great scientists from 2 cities in one golden age. Use those for example to bulb Paper and Education (edu costs 2 bulbs). In the meantime you have researched Nationalism, then tech Gunpowder and Liberalism, grab Military Tradition as free tech. Assuming you've played somewhat efficiently until then, with your map settings on noble level, you can then stop teching and do nothing but build cuirassiers until the end of the game. It should be over pretty fast.

elitetroops said:

Now we go Hereditary Rule to grow it up to pop 21 and run more scientists:

Spoiler :

The larger city makes less beakers/turn (because of beakers lost from not running representation) and costs more maintenance.

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Bad example. Medieval (pre-bio, 3) farms + non-rep scientists are very inefficient combo. 2 farmers + 1 scientist produce only 3, 1.5/land tile, 1/pop. And actually much less or almost nothing at all, because extra pop + troops to keep happiness would cost more maintenance. On the other hand, grassland cottages produce 2-3 per land tile and per pop (and later 5 with PP and full development).
Let's look at city in your example:
- 4 rep scientists: +24, extra pop 4.
- 6 grassland farms + 7 scientists: +21, extra pop 13.
- 6 grassland cottages (let's assume, at 3) + 4 scientists: +30 , extra pop 10.
Yes, extra maintenance would reduce advantage in last situation, at 1/pop cottages+monarchy produce about the same commerce as rep scientists, but are slightly worse because they require extra investment (growing pop and cottages, building units), but not much worse, not as bad as monarchy+3farms+scientists. And they don't require representation.
Your example shows not "monarchy is very inefficient", but more "specialist economy without biology and/or representation is very inefficient".

Soviet elf said:

Bad example.

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Umm... OP said he wants to stay in HR to grow cities big and run specialists. This was exactly the example to show why this is not worth it.

As for your example, I pretty much never build cottages outside capital, except maybe if I'm financial. Growing cottages is too much of a drain on early expansion and conquest. The first 30 turns a cottage is only as good or worse than a grassland farm, and grassland farms I rather whip out than keep working. Spending 30 turns early on working a tile I'd rather whip out is not my thing.

In the late game there are other improvements available that are just as good or better than towns. By the time you get to the industrial era, if the empire is well managed, you should be able to keep slider at 100% by building wealth/failgold/selling techs and so on, and still have hammers to spare to build research. Since hammers are turned into beakers, one hammer equals one beaker at this point. I usually prefer State Property and workshops. A town is +5 while a SP workshop is +4. When you factor in multipliers, pretty much all your cities will have +110% hammers with forge, factory, power and SP. That turns 4 hammers into 8.8. A town comes out slightly ahead at 9.25, if we assume library, uni, observatory and Free Religion. But Free Religion is often a worse option than Pacifism and getting up uni and observatory while working cottages is a long and tedious process. In contrast, getting up factories and power plants with workshops is lightning fast. And the hammers are also more versatile as they can be used for hammers as well, if needed. For the cottages to come out ahead, you need Free Speech or at least US.

And let's not forget about SP watermills, which are even stronger than workshops.

However, the main difference comes with faster expansion. I'm currently in the industrial era in a space game and if I exclude capital, the remaining active cities make an average of 100/city, which will still rise as many are still getting up power plants and other infra. Most cities are equally improved to work max hammers with some rep scientists. If I slowed down early expansion to work cottages, I would have less cities. Having a few towns to replace workshops for a very marginal benefit could not possibly make up for the loss of even having 1 or 2 less cities at this stage of the game.

Set yourself a limit of three 'peacekeepers' per city. By all means mercilessly whip early on, but as the Renaissance (or capture of Mids) approaches, you've got to start letting your stabilise.

Organise your army in a stack or stacks and garrison them outside of cities. You can't rely on them as an infinite happiness creator, as their job is to fight off invaders and secure lands other people have mistaken for theirs.

Extra population->Draft/Whip->units->Happiness problem solved