Aww, seriously man ? :/ Of course I'm doing all that. But there's something wrong with me & happiness, it fluctuates seemingly without logic and I hate that. No, it fluctuates with others, but it only reduces and reduces again with me. With me, it seems plain logic indeed, but looking at Marbozir's LPs, I'm really constantly asking myself where the heck his happiness comes from.
I'm very selective in where I settle, I often end up with only 3 cities before building the NC because there are no other luxuries. And even, I'm thinking to settle only 2 cities by that time now, but one thing is sure : often a 4th city would make my happiness drop too badly, becoming dangerously low (0 or negative) from pretty much comfortable. So I don't like conquering or expanding more, because then I'm in happiness big troubles.
Marbozir : he is setting all his cities on full growth basically (with some exceptions), and grows, expands, conquers, it's like unhappiness didn't existed for him, he is playing most of his Deity games without a single happiness problem or even ANY CONCERN about it. I just don't get it.
I could understand that it's because most of the time I let the cities managed by default governors, but in that case it uses more hills than Marbozir usually does, so I keep not understanding.
And I'm playing Egypt, with all Burial Tombs built as soon as possible, taking one of the only two happiness pantheon (usually the one with +1 happiness with cities of 6), Pagodas that I buy as much as I can, etc... while Marbozir ? NOOOOO, taking another pantheon, not even building every hapiness ASAP, not having Egypt nor another happiness helper, Pagodas only when he is lucky (because well, DEITY), Etc...
SO HECK ! WHAT'S GOING ON WITH THIS FREACKING GAME ???
More, it's not how I like to play Civ. I like the race to land, having to decide when to build new settlers that stop your growth, and more importantly : having the feeling to PROGRESS. I'm even to a point where I regret the science slider, when it allowed you to put some nitro in your game, when I'm pretty much the only one to my knowledge who suggested to completely remove it (to make gold more important and valuable)...