Happiness

I have now got to the point where I can usually be the dominant civ at prince level.

I am scared to go to the next level because I know I will lose some happiness bonus and happiness is my biggest problem.

I never start wars. I trade a lot. I am good at making money - by 1800 or so I often have masses of gold and nothing to spend it on. But I am constantly struggling to stay in positive happiness.

I always try, and usually succeed, in building the happiness-giving wonders. And of course I build all the happiness buildings. And when I configure my religion I take at least some options that give happiness.

In Civ 2 I seem to remember being able to buy happiness - is there some way to do this in Civ 5?

The only way to buy happiness is to buy the buildings that give it. Or trading gold to people for their luxes. Unless there's some crazy mechanic I don't know about, those are the only methods to buy happiness.

Do you focus on befriending and allying mercantile CSs (both dumping gold on them and performing quests)? Are you selecting ideology tenets that provide happiness?

What's your usual expansion strategy? I find with 4 or fewer cities and reasonable luxes, you shouldn't have any issues on hapiness at emperor or below (I'[m still working on mastering Emp). I generally go for 6+ and I haven't had any issues with happiness yet, but I always make happiness buildings, and spend any extra gold I've got (ALWAYS have a strong economy for some reason) on allying CS. Mercantile are best for happiness

pinkishkittny said:

I have now got to the point where I can usually be the dominant civ at prince level.

I am scared to go to the next level because I know I will lose some happiness bonus and happiness is my biggest problem.

I never start wars. I trade a lot. I am good at making money - by 1800 or so I often have masses of gold and nothing to spend it on. But I am constantly struggling to stay in positive happiness.

I always try, and usually succeed, in building the happiness-giving wonders. And of course I build all the happiness buildings. And when I configure my religion I take at least some options that give happiness.

In Civ 2 I seem to remember being able to buy happiness - is there some way to do this in Civ 5?

Click to expand...

I'm unaware of any happiness bonus that the player gets. The only bonuses that are received or taken away is what the A.I. receives, but not you.

The only happiness issue may come from ideologies, if the A.I. forces their tourism on you, which can cause you to gain dissidence.

Uzael36 said:

I'm unaware of any happiness bonus that the player gets. The only bonuses that are received or taken away is what the A.I. receives, but not you.

The only happiness issue may come from ideologies, if the A.I. forces their tourism on you, which can cause you to gain dissidence.

Click to expand...

Err, player gets a bonus under king I think. on the 2nd level (where I played my first game), I think you get +6 happiness per lux, and new cities have less unhappiness for founding.

I remeber that I was playing russia on maximal big earth map on marathon, and I settled most of North America (think I had like 20 cities). It was a sick game )) Later on founded a few more in europe, so I have a base for invasion

Uzael36 said:

I'm unaware of any happiness bonus that the player gets. The only bonuses that are received or taken away is what the A.I. receives, but not you.

The only happiness issue may come from ideologies, if the A.I. forces their tourism on you, which can cause you to gain dissidence.

Click to expand...

On King you get a static +9 happiness throughout the game I believe.

Was that added in BNW? I do not recall that in G&K and before. I also thought Prince was supposed to be bonus free on either side.

There are happiness bonuses for the human player at lower levels. In BNW:

Settler gets 15 default happiness, +1 happiness per luxury, and 40% of regular per-city and per-population unhappiness

Chieftain gets 12 default happiness, +1 happiness per luxury, and 60% of regular per-city and per-population unhappiness

Warlord gets 9 default happiness and 75% of regular per-city and per-population unhappiness

All those bonuses are phased out on Prince (9 default happiness and 100% per-city and per-population unhappiness at Prince and higher levels).

^ thanks. I was not aware.

So basically there wouldn't be a change when going up from Prince level, which the OP is doing. So that shouldn't be a problem.

I checked and found the savegame
It was prince actually, and not earth but huge continents on Marathon
Just watch and learn

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6sAjpZkHc9NWDFDOVZNUnJxbkU/edit?usp=sharing


P.S. Thats on BNW before the fall patch, I have never played GNK.

pinkishkittny said:

I have now got to the point where I can usually be the dominant civ at prince level.

I am scared to go to the next level because I know I will lose some happiness bonus and happiness is my biggest problem.

I never start wars. I trade a lot. I am good at making money - by 1800 or so I often have masses of gold and nothing to spend it on. But I am constantly struggling to stay in positive happiness.

I always try, and usually succeed, in building the happiness-giving wonders. And of course I build all the happiness buildings. And when I configure my religion I take at least some options that give happiness.

In Civ 2 I seem to remember being able to buy happiness - is there some way to do this in Civ 5?

Click to expand...

Actually, for the human, happiness is exactly the same on Deity as it is on Prince. It's only the AI that gets more happiness bonuses. However I note that AI already had a happiness bonus on Prince. If this is BNW, AI has 90% of normal unhappiness (between Warlord & Prince) plus a flat constant of 6 more happiness (AI gets the Settler level starting happiness). For vanilla and G&K, AI plays on Chieftain.

To solve all happiness problems that weren't induced by a successful war:

1. Build all Circuses, Stone Works, and Colosums everywhere and Circus Maximus.

2. If this is Tradition start, then you'll have close to all the happiness you need between Monarchy's large happiness bonus and trading spare copies of luxuries for ones you don't have. If not, add Zoos to the build everywhere list.

3. The other fairly early sources are religion / dip into top right of Exploration (if most of your cities are coastal) / dip into Consulates (if planning on doing a lot of quests)

On King, it's still easy to build Notre Dame. It's Emperor where you'd have to beeline to it.

Civ II: Had a luxury slider and you were expected to set it to 20% after becoming a representative type of government.

SMAC: Had a Pysch slider, and for a large portion of the game you were expected to have it at 10%.

Civ III: Also had a luxury slider, if you didn't have enough types of luxuries then you would need it but if you had 6+ types you could keep it locked to 0% no matter how big your cities got.

Civ IV: Relabeled the luxury slider the culture slider. It was rare to actually use this for happiness. The main reason it would be above 0% was for cultural reasons, such as going for cultural victory.

Civ V: All sliders were abolished.

Thanks guys, I shall definitely pay more attention to those Mercantile CS.