Prince difficulty : Tons of happiness problems

Im not sure why but i keep having tons of happiness issues early-mid game...

For example now i in the Renaissance ag and i am up to -117 happiness and 5 cities. I have all the + happiness buildings built in every city, 6 luxury resources, one mercantile CS ally and full tradition/piety trees.

I also have 8 happiness from ceremonial burial, not that it helps much.

I was trading pearls for a ton of other luxuries but England just banned it and auto won the world congress vote as they was the first host + had 2 votes from some world wonder, so 4 votes while everyone else had 1 vote = auto win.

I think the tradition policy "Monarchy" is bugged because i have 36 pop in my capital but i am only getting +9 happiness from social policies...whereas monarchy is supposed to be -1 unhapiness for every 2 citizens.

I dont see how im supposed to get more happiness at this point? I dont have the money to buy out all the other mercantile CS because they are on other continents and have been claimed by other civs...

1 pop = 1 unhappiness
So out of 36, you are getting 36 unhappiness

so you should be getting 13 unhappiness if I am doing the math correctly

but -117 sounds.. weird... unless you meant -17, even that is weird.

You might want to consider downsizing your empire by starving your people (I'm not kidding).

Could you perhaps hover your mouse over the happiness symbol and take a screenshot of the resulting popup? It should tell us a bit more about how your happiness is composed.

Yea most of that 117 unhappiness is from pop. Im still confused as to why monarchy isnt giving me 18 happiness though, as its supposed to give -1 unhappiness for every 2 pop in the capital.

Edit : Cant take a screenshot as the game wont let me (it just comes out as a black screen).

Had a look in the xml files, and monarchy is :

<Type>POLICY_MONARCHY</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_POLICY_MONARCHY</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_POLICY_MONARCHY_TEXT</Civilopedia>
<Help>TXT_KEY_POLICY_MONARCHY_HELP</Help>
<PolicyBranchType>POLICY_BRANCH_TRADITION</PolicyBranchType>
<CultureCost>10</CultureCost>
<GridX>4</GridX>
<GridY>2</GridY>
<CapitalUnhappinessMod>-50</CapitalUnhappinessMod>
<PortraitIndex>59</PortraitIndex>
<IconAtlas>POLICY_ATLAS</IconAtlas>
<IconAtlasAchieved>POLICY_A_ATLAS</IconAtlasAchieved>

Can anyone tell me what this means? Capitalunhappinessmod -50? That does not seem to follow what the tooltip says...

Please post a save file.

Question said:

Can anyone tell me what this means? Capitalunhappinessmod -50? That does not seem to follow what the tooltip says...

Click to expand...

That it's a percentage is implicit.

Meanwhile, -117 sounds impossible. Surely you're only listing total unhappiness, without any consideration for happiness.

As for a screenshot, just use the print screen button and then use some photo editor, such as the freeware IrfanView, to convert the image to a jpeg.

Alternatively, you can attach a save file directly to a post on these forums; the primary obstacle in this is that if you're using any mods for that particular game, anyone trying to open the save would need to use the same mods, so it would be helpful if you list any mods you're actively using in the save you provide.

Nares said:

As for a screenshot, just use the print screen button and then use some photo editor, such as the freeware IrfanView, to convert the image to a jpeg.

Click to expand...

Or F12 which results in the steam overlay taking the print screen which is already in jpeg format.

In addition, MS Word, MS Excel, and Outlook can also directly take a shot of any active window.

You can take a screenshot with print screen if you run the game in windowed mode. Worked for me.

Then you can edit it in MS Paint or something.

The last game I played on Prince level was as Indonesia. I made a religion and got Pagodas, but not Peace Gardens (so my Candis didn't give happiness) nor Religious Center (so my Temples also didn't).

I had a good amount of luxuries of my own, plus some others from city-states of exchanges with the AI, but not all of them, maybe 80% of all the world had to offer (I remember I didn't have gold, because the single gold mine of the world belonged to Pocahontas).

I chose the Freedom ideology, but got no happiness tenets. So, aside from pagodas, all my happiness was standard, no fancy extra stuff.

Still, I planted around 15 cities across southern Asia and Oceania, and most of them had above 15 population. The first 4 cities had around 26 population.

My overall happiness? Between 20 and 35, depending on the moment (luxes from CS and AIs come and go).


So seriously, I can't understand how people manage to get so many happiness problems. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be condescending (is this the right word?) or flame, I'm not even a great player (just moved from Prince to King). I just don't understand how it happens so often to people, maybe it is something related to ideologies?

If one doesn't get enough culture to resist foreign tourism, nor produce enough domestic turism to influence other nations, it is likely to become an issue. I say that because in most my games, I get ideology first, and despite of victory condition I always produce a good amount of great works of art, preferably with theming bonuses. When the AI gets ideology and it is different than mine, they rarely change it, but suffer a lot from unhapiness.

If the problem is prior to ideologies, I have absolutely no idea how it can happen so often. In the beggining of games, I often get on the edge of happiness, even get -1 or -2 unhappiness for a few turns (then I buy a lux, or pop a collosseum/circus/pagoda and it is all good again), but never I had such massive problems as I see related here.

Yea i meant total unhappiness not unhappiness after happiness modifiers.

Also my game keeps crashing after i vote at the world congress for some reason?

Question said:

Yea i meant total unhappiness not unhappiness after happiness modifiers.

Click to expand...

Besides the size 36 city, what are the sizes of your other cities? It's -1 per population, plus another -3 or so per each city itself (I'm not sure if it's less on prince).

With regards to happiness from social policies, monarchy removes unhappiness rather than supplying happiness, so it's only appearance in the tooltip would be a reduction in unhappiness from population, which you may have to calculate yourself.

If you're otherwise full tradition, without any other source of happiness from social policies, I can easily see the +9 happiness from social policies you cite as being from aristocracy.

That would imply you have at least 90 population, which makes the -117 total unhappiness sound reasonable.

Your huge pop is definitely a part of the issue, but you can still patch up your empire without starving them to death.

Firstly, you forgot to mention that you had 3 cities currently razing. That's where a decent chunk of your problem is stemming from. Not only do you get the base unhappiness from the cities and pop, but it's amplified since they count as occupied.

Your other problem is that you're not getting the most out of diplomacy. Sejong has a spare wine he'll give you for 5 horses. Harold has 2 spare luxes (gems and ivory IIRC) that I was able to get for I think 5 horses and 14 GPT (didn't try for a better deal, but you can afford it either way). Genghis has a spare gold that he'll swap for your salt. If you wait a few turns, Genghis will get back a spare sugar, and you'll wanna renew incense from William obviously. Both are willing to give good deals. Lizzy has extra truffles that she's a little stingier with, but hey, you might as well put your gold to some use, right? So you can basically get 6 luxes/24 happiness for all your horses (which you don't seem to be using anyway), salt, and 30ish GPT, or maybe some open borders deals if you wanna save some cash. That's nearly enough to completely fix things even before your razing is finished.

Don't ignore city-states either. Getting that gold from Genghis fulfills a quest for Malacca that'll make them your friend (+3 happiness), then you can throw some gold at them from your massive treasury to become their ally (+3 more happy). Also, don't forget that one of the perks of allying CS's is that they share their resources with you, so even if they're not mercantile, they can still boost your happiness as long as they have a new lux.

Attached is a screenshot of your Resources & Happiness tab. As you can see, Monarchy is working fine. You have 127 total citizens (excluding the 9 in the cities you are razing) who are generating 109 unhappiness. 127-109 is 18, which is 50% of your capital's population (as the tooltip shows).

Your entire net unhappiness (25 unhappy) will go away when the 3 cities that Lanijon notes are being razed complete the razing process (15 unhappy for being occupied, plus 12.06 unhappy from the 9 population in those occupied cities). Your Social Policy happiness (9) comes from the Tradition opener and Naval Tradition.

More importantly, as Lonijon notes, you are leaving a lot of potential happiness on the table. Harold will sell you gems and ivory for 9 gpt each. Sejong will sell you wine for 240 gold and Elizabeth will sell you truffles for 12 gpt (expensive, but ...). Drop enough gold on Malacca to displace Sejong as their ally and pick up 7 happiness (3 from mercantile friendship and 4 from gold as ally). Those will eliminate 23 of your net 25 unhappiness. Since Kukia and Kimbi Saleh (1 pop each) will be razed in one more turn, you will be back to net happiness in one turn.

Also, why have you spammed roads over nearly every tile near Porto?

Thanks for the advice guys, that helps a lot. Didnt really think civs would be interested in horses, i thought value of horses/iron fades as you get up in eras?

The roads are probably because i was using them to launch an invasion.

The biggest problem is that the game keeps crashing the turn right after i vote at the world congress so i cant continue the game at all. Is it doing that for you guys?

Question said:

Thanks for the advice guys, that helps a lot. Didnt really think civs would be interested in horses, i thought value of horses/iron fades as you get up in eras?

Click to expand...

That's NOT a gradual drop off as eras move up. Instead it's when that AI hits specific era, they go from the turn before wanting it at full value and the very next not wanting it at all.

Horses and iron become worthless closer to the Modern era. In the Renaissance and Industrial eras they're still useful for frigates and cavalry.

And no, I didn't have any trouble with the game crashing. I went through about 10 turns just fine. I don't know what the problem would be.

Question said:

Thanks for the advice guys, that helps a lot. Didnt really think civs would be interested in horses, i thought value of horses/iron fades as you get up in eras?

The roads are probably because i was using them to launch an invasion.

The biggest problem is that the game keeps crashing the turn right after i vote at the world congress so i cant continue the game at all. Is it doing that for you guys?

Click to expand...

Nah it works like this, if iron and horses is no longer necessary for units then they becomes worthless. But for civs that still use iron/horses for their units, its still valuable.

How do i find out whats causing my game to crash? It keeps crashing in another of my games now...sigh....

Try validating game cache and see if that helps.