New strategy: Ignore happiness

Remarkably well, I'd bet. The person you were quoting didn't have quite the correct math; the number of road segments for N cities does not go as N^2, it's closer to going as N. Often you'll have a single transportation trunk line going through your main cities, with only short spurs going off to the side cities. But regardless, think of it this way: if you're packing your cities in, then regardless of geometry, each city would be about 4-5 hexes away from its neighbors; less means overlap, more means unused tiles. So no matter how many cities you had, connecting a new city to the network would cost 4-5 tiles' worth of upkeep.

The only question would be how well the AI would do this, but it seems to be doing a pretty good job so far.

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I wasn't talking about the road analysis (didn't really read it), I meant how would humans react to AIs being asshats and ganking all of their food? As well as the question of making the AI competent enough to actually do that.

But again, I think the underlying problem with the happiness system is that it isn't adjustable. If you know there's going to be a 5-turn period of extreme unhappiness before your new Colosseum is built, you often have no choice but to just wait it out. There's not an easy way to temporarily boost happiness at the cost of science or production. That's why I'd like to see the Entertainer/Empath type specialists implemented.

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You are getting dangerously close to slider territory, here. The massive reduction in short-term fungibility of resources from previous games is a good thing, IMO.

Just skimmed through this thread and it's interesting. If unhappiness is the only detriment to expansion then it has to work better than it does currently.

My thoughts are:

Unhappiness could lead to loss of labor, which causes loss of gold, leading to unsupported units, which either disband or become immobilized when outside of your own territory (lack of supply lines).

By loss of labor I mean cities would become overall less productive. Imagine somewhere between 10% - 90% decreased production/gold/science depending on how unhappy they are.

Overall though there are several design and "numbers-based" problems with this game and any changes to one means changes to others become necessary. It's a mess and we are currently in the $50 entry paid beta phase for 6 months of fixes and re-balancing.

skywalker said:

I wasn't talking about the road analysis (didn't really read it), I meant how would humans react to AIs being asshats and ganking all of their food? As well as the question of making the AI competent enough to actually do that.



You are getting dangerously close to slider territory, here. The massive reduction in short-term fungibility of resources from previous games is a good thing, IMO.

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Okay Kuci.

WeaselSlapper said:

What i'm saying is the puppets wouldn't be a drain so all the gold and production in your original cities would still allow the buying of units and having puppets just be territory wouldn't hurt a steamrolling military engine at all. In fact the extra land would be a boost because you would gain access or more resources.

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This might be better Bolded changes I would make


If the city is in Resistance, OR being Razed
Gold, Science=0
GPP=0
Hammers=0
Culture=0
Social Policy Cost=0
Excess Food, UnHappiness, Happiness, Trade Route Gold, Building Maintenance=0
Territory= Original Owner.... yes as long as the city is in resistance, the original owner of the city controls its territory (so its not friendly for you)
Control=None.. city will not defend itself, any more than a Fort will.

If the City is a Puppet
Gold, Science=50%
GPP=0
Hammers=Buildings only...None that require resources, because the Puppet does not have access to resources, they are independent
Culture=Local only
Social Policy Cost=0
Excess Food, UnHappiness, Happiness, Trade Route Gold, Building Maintenance=Normal
Territory= You.. full control of territory including resources, etc.
Control=Combat only

If the city is Annexed
Gold, Science=Normal
GPP=Normal
Hammers=Normal
Culture=Normal
Social Policy Cost=Normal
Excess Food, UnHappiness, Happiness, Trade Route Gold, Building Maintenance=Normal (With "Annexed" unhappiness)
Territory= You.. full control of territory including resources, etc.
Control=Complete

Then make the Rule... a city cannot come out of Resistance while you are at 10 or more Unhappiness

So an territorial conqueror will eventually just a bunch of cities in perpetual resistance... unless he razes some of the Cities (and loses their Territory)

So if you are at -10 unhappy...
Your productive pop cannot expand (no new growth, no new settlers, no new Puppets/Annexes)
Your Territory Cannot expand through war (cities stay in resistance... all you are doing is denying that city to your enemy)

Allow the Puppet to build "useless" buildings..... but allow Buildings to be Sold (from an Annexed City.... Just make some of them better, ie Stables give a benefit when Cavalry go obsolete+Military Bases give Airlift)

Yeah ignoring happiness really isn't that detrimental. I was playing as Japan on a continents map and it was just me and India on our large island. I intially tried balancing happiness but after a while I just ignored it as my empire expanded rapidly and it worked really well. I could concentrate more on raking in money and ended up with 120+ gold per turn and -40 happiness .

Agree with Krikkitone.