Having problem on prince difficulty

I know, many of you probably thinking so lame, but after about 3 or 4 cities no matter what I do, I just cannot keep my citizens happy.

I always try and choose faith options to counteract this, then after a certain time it just seems that my empire will not grow because of the unhappiness.(can grow with new cities using settler, but existing cities take forever because of growth hit)

I snag all the lux I can, build happiness buildings, but everytime I plop down a new city, my happiness goes further and further down.

Also not to mention Im having trouble keeping my gold up as well, I improve all tiles, connect cities and yet it seems there is nothing I can do to keep from being unhappy and getting more money.

I always seem to have an advantage over my competition and have been winning a few categories in some, but always quit bbecause im not satisfied with gold or happiness.

Try trading for more luxury items from CS. That is how I finally got me happiness up. If you are still struggling, use the advance setting and start with abundent or higher resources. Good luck!

Post a screen shot of your 4 cities, polices taken, religious beliefs and city state summary screen, the one that shows all the available quests. You'll get some solid advice in no time.

How many cities are you plopping down.

well my save the topic was about is gone.

but idk maybe i was plopping down too many cities.

Right now I have a game going as Huns, it was going pretty good until celts and songhia both dow'd me.
Before the war I was +3 gold and 6 happiness. With 3 cities(i a capped CS) and another one cooking.

Then celts took one of my cities and my money went to about -17 gpt.(bolstered large military to fight 2 front war) I then recapped about 12 turns later, but since the pop is low still have a major hit on my gpt.

With my large army, I may be able to steamroll through celtia, also have a few rams which just rape cities.

I'd try to start with 2 cities...your capitol and another one to grap necessary luxory/strategic ressources...then build up your military and conquer the next cities...leave them as puppets...don't have more than 2 cities until you have got your finaces in order...the puppets will be set on max cash anyway...make sure that at least on of your main cities focuses on production...get world wonders to boost happyness....set specialists to GE production...use GE to secure the important wonders (Notre Dame etc)...once your money flows all ally with CS for recourses...trade with other civs...

If you have unhappiness problem, taking additional cities by force will not resolve the situation at all, if not making it worse. In your current case, its better to smash enemy forces ASAP (maybe destroying, not puppeting, few cities as well to halt their production, forcing them to sign peace treaty with gpt.

Many AIs, if they are strong enough to DoW you, have enough gold and gtp, so I would assume they would sign peace treaty with tributes when they have near 0 standing army.

You may also want to go and ask for tributes from CS's, if you have that much military force.

Prince is really the first level where you have to start paying attention to happiness. Some relatively simple tips:

-Don't grow your initial cities too fast. Every population point increases unhappiness by 1, so in many instances you're better off stunting your secondary cities until you've built up the happiness to let them grow...and you're generally much better off growing just the capital until that point.
-Consider your city sites carefully. Especially in the early game, you don't want to add cities that aren't going to net you additional luxury resources, or at least duplicates that you can trade/sell to AI civs. Unless the strategic value of a particular location is huge, you generally want to pass if it won't pay for itself in happiness.
-Give yourself time to develop the luxuries around your capital before you go settling your 4 cities. You're generally okay founding your second city pretty quickly, but beyond that you don't want to go far into the unhappy realms, and you certainly don't want to if you don't have something coming up very quickly to fix that (a luxury tile your worker is already on, colliseum under construction, etc).

It really helps if you go in and micromanage the tiles your citizens are working inside the city view. This allows you to do things like stunt a city's growth for the time being, or amp up its gold output to support your expenditures, or max out production if you're working on a wonder or other crucial build, etc. It can be a tough balance to strike, especially if you're playing as Attila and going for early conquests, but you'll get the hang of it fairly quickly. Plus, if you're razing cities you can afford to have a small negative income, as the gold you get for taking each city will make up for it...although you also have to pace yourself to avoid the empire getting too unhappy.

Each city has an innate -3 Happiness (except India) upon settling (2 for the city, 1 for the citizen). As such, settling a new city on a unique luxury affords you an additional 4 happiness, meaning you can get the city to Size 2 before experiencing happiness problems.

There are SP's that reduce happiness, buildings, (as far as I know, circuses increase happiness for free, provided you have horses or Ivory.) and wonders (Notre Dame, etc.)

Note that as long as you have 0 happy, you're great. -1 to -9 you can live by (since only city growth is stunted.) You can probably tactically to build Settlers in the mean time. -10 and below you have to be careful. You get combat penalties and your citizens might revolt!

yea it sucks and worst the AI has a lot of happy citizens on prince, aztec only had 2 cities and he had like 30 happiness how is that possible as well as other civilizations they had like 40 50

Syntax Error said:

Each city has an innate -3 Happiness (except India) upon settling (2 for the city, 1 for the citizen). As such, settling a new city on a unique luxury affords you an additional 4 happiness, meaning you can get the city to Size 2 before experiencing happiness problems.

Click to expand...

2 from city? I've been getting 3 per city plus 1 from pop. I've seen a -4 dip every time I've founded a city. India also seems to be getting +6 (Which is double a standard +3) when I settle with him.

You sure that +2 is not lower than Prince?

Peacemongerer said:

2 from city? I've been getting 3 per city plus 1 from pop. I've seen a -4 dip every time I've founded a city. India also seems to be getting +6 (Which is double a standard +3) when I settle with him.

You sure that +2 is not lower than Prince?

Click to expand...

I believe the per city penalty depends on the map size as well as difficulty setting.

Harv72b said:

Prince is really the first level where you have to start paying attention to happiness. Some relatively simple tips:

-Don't grow your initial cities too fast. Every population point increases unhappiness by 1, so in many instances you're better off stunting your secondary cities until you've built up the happiness to let them grow...and you're generally much better off growing just the capital until that point.
-Consider your city sites carefully. Especially in the early game, you don't want to add cities that aren't going to net you additional luxury resources, or at least duplicates that you can trade/sell to AI civs. Unless the strategic value of a particular location is huge, you generally want to pass if it won't pay for itself in happiness.
-Give yourself time to develop the luxuries around your capital before you go settling your 4 cities. You're generally okay founding your second city pretty quickly, but beyond that you don't want to go far into the unhappy realms, and you certainly don't want to if you don't have something coming up very quickly to fix that (a luxury tile your worker is already on, colliseum under construction, etc).

It really helps if you go in and micromanage the tiles your citizens are working inside the city view. This allows you to do things like stunt a city's growth for the time being, or amp up its gold output to support your expenditures, or max out production if you're working on a wonder or other crucial build, etc. It can be a tough balance to strike, especially if you're playing as Attila and going for early conquests, but you'll get the hang of it fairly quickly. Plus, if you're razing cities you can afford to have a small negative income, as the gold you get for taking each city will make up for it...although you also have to pace yourself to avoid the empire getting too unhappy.

Click to expand...

This is all good advice, except this last point. When happiness is between 0 and -10, the penalty you receive is a reduction in growth. You don't get the penalties to production and military strength until you reach -10. In the early game, I often let my happiness fall to negative single digits while I get my initial 3-4 cities rolling. Indeed, allowing a slight unhappiness will correct the first point about excessive early growth.

Really, the best thing you can do is forcing your cities to work more mines in the early game.

This way, your cities don't grow as much and you get the most important buildings up and running a lot faster.

Also try to settle your first two additional cities on spots with new luxuries you don't already have in your capital. Rushbuy a worker in your second city to hook up the luxury immediately and always make it the highest priority to improve luxuries and sell stuff you don't need to the AI.

Syntax Error said:

-10 and below you have to be careful. You get combat penalties and your citizens might revolt!

Click to expand...

Revolt? Has that actually happend to anyone? I had -30 at one point because I accepted a peace offer without checking all of it and ended up with 5 new cities and it took me quite a while to get above -10 and nothing happend (apart from no growth)

Janne said:

Revolt? Has that actually happend to anyone? I had -30 at one point because I accepted a peace offer without checking all of it and ended up with 5 new cities and it took me quite a while to get above -10 and nothing happend (apart from no growth)

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In that case I'd gift the cities to some other civs. The AI is often too dumb to see the problems with it.

Janne said:

Revolt? Has that actually happend to anyone? I had -30 at one point because I accepted a peace offer without checking all of it and ended up with 5 new cities and it took me quite a while to get above -10 and nothing happend (apart from no growth)

Click to expand...

Yes, it's happened to me frequently, when I rapidly take out a large empire. By rapidly, I mean I'm adding unhappy people still in resistance faster than I can build courthouses. If I'm cash-strapped at the time, it gets a lot worse- my record (at Immortal) is -86 happiness. It's OK, I recovered to single-digit unhappiness after about 30 turns of peace and courthouse & happiness-enhancing buildings. That was in vanilla, it would be tougher in G&K because courthouses aren't as effective.

Anytime you're at -20 or worse, you run the risk of having a revolt break out every few turns near one of your cities. Good news is that it's usually not that hard to take out the rebels, and you get culture points for terminating them just like barbarians (assuming you've opened the Honor policy).

Mesix said:

This is all good advice, except this last point. When happiness is between 0 and -10, the penalty you receive is a reduction in growth. You don't get the penalties to production and military strength until you reach -10. In the early game, I often let my happiness fall to negative single digits while I get my initial 3-4 cities rolling. Indeed, allowing a slight unhappiness will correct the first point about excessive early growth.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess it's personal preference. You get the slight science boost of having your other cities up & running + a head start on getting buildings into place, but you do so by further stunting your capital & second city (usually a big production city for me). I'd rather comfortably get my capital up to a solid 6 or 7 pop & the second city at 4 or 5 before I go settling the third & fourth...of course, I'm usually playing on small or standard maps, so that will also vary by map size.

EDIT: I'm also generally building early wonders in my capital during Prince games, which means that I usually don't have the settlers to go beyond 2 for a good while anyway.