Happiness crash

Mhh. I can't think of a single "smooth" game where I did NOT run into happiness problems in the midgame after building all available happiness buildings. I think as long as the start is not horribly food starved you pretty much have to buy some happiness (Luxes or City States) or stagnate your empire. And being able to grow further is totally worth the gold imho. Although the fact that being unhappy give me an 11% Science penalty once I've opened Rationalism is surely something to take into consideration if I get my happiness from shaky sources.

unrendered said:

Technically -20 is +20 ...heh...

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Not when you're saying it's a negative delta, as I did.

beetle said:

They are 6 free units with a unique promotion that you cannot get elsewhere. Also, most of the world are usually only just at Rifling, so the timing for popping 6 GW Infantry is great!

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Though with 0 XP the free promotion comes at a cost. So it really comes down to an instant speed build of 6 units vs the switching costs.

Oxford for Radio, an OP tip that I learned from this board, is just as fast as hard building 3 factories.

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I don't think that's OP. You have to delay building Oxford for 100-200 turns which delays your tech along the way. That's a pretty huge negative all to save some hammers late in the game.

IMHO the single best benefit from Order is the half price factories

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You put way more emphasis on than I do, seems like. Either that or maybe your playstyle does things such as clearcut forests which I rarely do, and means most of your cities will be hammer deficient in the mid and late game.

IMO the best benefit of Order is not a single policy... it's that it has FOUR policies available. That plus and policies make it the best of the three ideologies IMO.

As it is, switching means all you loose is a couple turns

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Doesn't that negate the that got you cheap factories?

You probably have things tuned much better than I do.

Wodan said:

Though with 0 XP the free promotion comes at a cost. So it really comes down to an instant speed build of 6 units vs the switching costs.

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Agreed, the 0 xp aspect really stinks.

I don't think that's OP. You have to delay building Oxford for 100-200 turns which delays your tech along the way. That's a pretty huge negative all to save some hammers late in the game.

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I always seem to be late to Oxford, so for me its only like 20 turns. And if I go wide, it is not a delay at all.

You put way more emphasis on than I do, seems like. Either that or maybe your playstyle does things such as clearcut forests which I rarely do, and means most of your cities will be hammer deficient in the mid and late game.

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Yes to both things.

IMO the best benefit of Order is not a single policy... it's that it has FOUR policies available. That plus and policies make it the best of the three ideologies IMO.

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I think I agree that it is the best of the three most games. But the half-price factories is the best aspect of the four very good policies. So if I have to switch out of order, but after I have factories, it hurts much less.

Doesn't that negate the that got you cheap factories?

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Not once the factories are built. Even when I go wide, my cities are strong, so under that SP the factories are typically built in 6-8 turns. Call it 8-10 turns for losing the two turns of anarchy and it is still a very strong net plus.

beetle said:

I always seem to be late to Oxford, so for me its only like 20 turns. And if I go wide, it is not a delay at all.

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All depends on what's important to you. One of the great things about this game is that there are multiple paths and none of them are wrong.

Even if you go wide, I daresay you aren't going that wide that early. If you got Oxford as soon as you could, even going wide you'd probably only have 5-6 cities by then. But if you put it on the backburner, yeah, you'll have more cities and it'll be a while before you could get it. In any event, my point is that that's a pretty big opportunity cost. Seems like in your case you don't know what you're missing; try it sometime, decide for yourself.

Bottom line the fact we're having this conversation probably indicates that using Oxford to pop Radio isn't really OP. A good strategy though, if are your goal.

Not once the factories are built. Even when I go wide, my cities are strong, so under that SP the factories are typically built in 6-8 turns. Call it 8-10 turns for losing the two turns of anarchy and it is still a very strong net plus.

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Using your numbers, half price factories in 6-8 turns means 12-16 without the policy. So subtracting 2 turns of anarchy losing not just but and , mean the real benefit is just 4-6 turns of . So, when you switch out of Order, you lose 2 turns of plus the 25% the rest of the game plus your free early-adopter policies. Just seems pretty steep to me.

Anyway maybe I'll try it sometime. But with BE coming I doubt it.

Ryika said:

Mhh. I can't think of a single "smooth" game where I did NOT run into happiness problems in the midgame after building all available happiness buildings.

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You are founding cities too quickly. Try not founding any cities and concentrate on maximizing the size of your capitol, you can hit multiple happiness triggered golden ages in that time period. Then try founding only one city, but pour resources into it to develop it as fast as possible. Then try a game where you add a late third city, and fourth one after astronomy.

You will learn how to balance growth in your existing cities versus founding new cities and the way founding a city impacts happiness.

Yes the AI will take the good spots, you might have to raze an AI city to make room for your third or fourth.

Wodan said:

One of the great things about this game is that there are multiple paths and none of them are wrong.

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Agree completely!

Using your numbers, half price factories in 6-8 turns means 12-16 without the policy. So subtracting 2 turns of anarchy losing not just but and , mean the real benefit is just 4-6 turns of .

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Well, thats 4-6 turns of x2 hammers, so I think it is a little better than that.

So, when you switch out of Order, you lose 2 turns of plus the 25% the rest of the game plus your free early-adopter policies. Just seems pretty steep to me.

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Again, I would rather stick to Order, but the half price factories is a great consolation price.

Xiao Xiong said:

You are founding cities too quickly. Try not founding any cities and concentrate on maximizing the size of your capitol, you can hit multiple happiness triggered golden ages in that time period. Then try founding only one city, but pour resources into it to develop it as fast as possible. Then try a game where you add a late third city, and fourth one after astronomy.

You will learn how to balance growth in your existing cities versus founding new cities and the way founding a city impacts happiness.

Yes the AI will take the good spots, you might have to raze an AI city to make room for your third or fourth.

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The main reason I can see for NOT having to rely on additional happiness from external sources would be if my whole area is food starved. (But then I'd rather go wide anyway) Other than that, I think it would be quite a waste to not go for the maximum possible city growth, because buying happiness from external sources is one of the few ways to turn redundant gold into more science. And actually rather inexpensive when you think about it - sustaining 4 additional pop for 7/9 gpt? When a pop gives you.. 4-6 science or something? +tile yields.. so no, I strongly disagree. I think as long as there's happiness to import (and keep) I'm doing just fine.

Xiao Xiong said:

I just find if I concentrate on my own long term development instead of buying short term happy drugs from the AI it eventually takes care of itself... I do sometimes buy happy drugs from the AI, better than going negative happy, but I avoid it when I can stay positive without buying the AI's drugs.

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You are trying to spin a failure like it's a virtue. Your strategy is like someone who avoids dating because they don't want to have a bad date. Cutting off your nose to spite your face kind of strategy.

I don't know, I win most of my games on immortal. Have not played deity much, so I can't speak to that level. But on immortal there is a real risk of being dogpiled by multiple AI DoW's, and with happiness coming from AI trades you can find yourself at -20 happy with rebels appearing in your capitol your economy crashed, trade routes all pillaged, and a massive number of enemy units pouring into your borders while you have a -20 combat modifier. It can quickly end your game.

I find it much better to focus on developing my cities, grow by acquiring policies, technologies, buildings. As long as you maintain positive happiness your cities will grow and if you are only positive because of AI trades you are skating on a knife edge.

The real question is whether it is better to put cash into buildings and border expansions, versus amass excess happiness towards a golden age. If you can time the golden age with winning the world fair I can see the point but otherwise I would rather have aggressive city building.

And there is ALWAYS stuff to cash buy. If my capitol had no more buildings left to build certainty my second it third city will. I often do things like save gold to cash buy public schools and universities in my top science city the same turn I get the tech, and then for awhile I am forced to hard build archeologists during which time I cash buy buildings. Ditto while I am building a wonder.

For these reasons I prefer getting cash from the AI vs luxuries and cash buying happy and culture buildings to get real long term rather then temporary happiness.

Xiao Xiong said:

I don't know, I win most of my games on immortal. Have not played deity much, so I can't speak to that level. But on immortal there is a real risk of being dogpiled by multiple AI DoW's, and with happiness coming from AI trades you can find yourself at -20 happy with rebels appearing in your capitol your economy crashed, trade routes all pillaged, and a massive number of enemy units pouring into your borders while you have a -20 combat modifier. It can quickly end your game.

I find it much better to focus on developing my cities, grow by acquiring policies, technologies, buildings. As long as you maintain positive happiness your cities will grow and if you are only positive because of AI trades you are skating on a knife edge.

The real question is whether it is better to put cash into buildings and border expansions, versus amass excess happiness towards a golden age. If you can time the golden age with winning the world fair I can see the point but otherwise I would rather have aggressive city building.

And there is ALWAYS stuff to cash buy. If my capitol had no more buildings left to build certainty my second it third city will. I often do things like save gold to cash buy public schools and universities in my top science city the same turn I get the tech, and then for awhile I am forced to hard build archeologists during which time I cash buy buildings. Ditto while I am building a wonder.

For these reasons I prefer getting cash from the AI vs luxuries and cash buying happy and culture buildings to get real long term rather then temporary happiness.

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Well that comes down to what your goals are. If you just want a leisurely win, then your way sounds fine. If you want to win in a certain amount of turns, you are holding yourself back a lot. You may also note that if you win faster, there is less chance of ideology pressure, which can make things easier in that regard.

Sorry for cutting this post in so many differnt pieces, I just found that there are many different topics that should be approached separately.

Xiao Xiong said:

I don't know, I win most of my games on immortal. Have not played deity much, so I can't speak to that level.

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Well, I win most of my games on deity. 8) And I'm still SO far away from being as good as some of the guys who manage to get some insanely fast victories. So winning the game and having a "flawless" victory are really two different things - by being somewhat experienced in following the popular strategies anyone can beat deity.

Xiao Xiong said:

But on immortal there is a real risk of being dogpiled by multiple AI DoW's, and with happiness coming from AI trades you can find yourself at -20 happy with rebels appearing in your capitol your economy crashed, trade routes all pillaged, and a massive number of enemy units pouring into your borders while you have a -20 combat modifier. It can quickly end your game.

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That's actually rather a sign of you not using diplomacy correctly - which luxury trades are a part of... but also buying DoWs, etc. -with very few (predictable) exceptions you should always be able to avoid wars after the Renaissance by just keeping the AIs busy with each other and becoming buddies with them. That said, generally buying stuff and "buying 20 happiness from that backstab-warmonger neighbor who's going to turn against you" are two different things. You do of course need to be somewhat reasonable at buying that stuff, but that's a skill to learn - and not something that you should avoid entirely.

Xiao Xiong said:

I find it much better to focus on developing my cities, grow by acquiring policies, technologies, buildings. As long as you maintain positive happiness your cities will grow and if you are only positive because of AI trades you are skating on a knife edge.

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Just to make that clear: I'm speaking of BNW here. In Vanilla... sure. Very high risk. In G+K ... weeeeell. Predictable. In BNW? Nope. That's not really a risk anymore as long as you know what you're doing.

Xiao Xiong said:

The real question is whether it is better to put cash into buildings and border expansions, versus amass excess happiness towards a golden age. If you can time the golden age with winning the world fair I can see the point but otherwise I would rather have aggressive city building.

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What does border expansion give you? Your growth is still limited by the amount of happiness. What do buildings give you? The amout of growth is still limited by the amount of happiness. Growth is the factor that influences science the most. And science is the most important thing in the game.

Xiao Xiong said:

And there is ALWAYS stuff to cash buy. If my capitol had no more buildings left to build certainty my second it third city will. I often do things like save gold to cash buy public schools and universities in my top science city the same turn I get the tech, and then for awhile I am forced to hard build archeologists during which time I cash buy buildings. Ditto while I am building a wonder.

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Buying universities, schools and laboratories is something that you can do even if you buy luxuries. Buying most of the other stuff is just a waste - buying stuff with gold is nice because you can do it in any city, even if it's underdeveloped... but it's also very ineffective and wasteful. Think of it that way: If you had spent a part of that gold in getting more happiness to grow further, then you'd not even NEED to buy stuff because your cities would just be more productive and able to build stuff faster. And you'd get science from them. Science! Cashbuying infrastructure that's not a science building (or in some cases a factory) is something that you'd usually do if you play wide, but it should in generally not be needed if you play tall.

@golden ages: If you think you need one to win a world project (again: Bigger cities = more production = you might not even need to), then holding back an great artist to do that job is just fine. Golden ages get more costly the more you had, so it's actually quite useful to NOT get them early and instead get 1-2 more later on when your empire is in full-productive mode.

Xiao Xiong said:

For these reasons I prefer getting cash from the AI vs luxuries and cash buying happy and culture buildings to get real long term rather then temporary happiness.

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Again, everyone gets these buildings and policies. You're just missing out on happiness that "everyone else" gets. Learning how to do this "Properly" - including all the diplomacy that goes with it - might even be what catapults you on deity-level.

Xiao Xiong said:

I win most of my games on immortal.

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That's not much of metric for telling if your play habits are good or not. Don't get me wrong, I have very much to improve, but passing on easy lux trades is a needless handicap that even I can spot!

But on immortal there is a real risk of being dogpiled by multiple AI DoW's, and with happiness coming from AI trades you can find yourself at -20 happy with rebels appearing in your capitol your economy crashed, trade routes all pillaged, and a massive number of enemy units pouring into your borders while you have a -20 combat modifier. It can quickly end your game.

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I play at immortal, and I have seen this for sure. Multiple AI DoW's have made me reload back 50 turns or more (because they were game ending), or start a new game. The rebels/happiness crash per se have been speed bumps though, not game ending.

For these reasons I prefer getting cash from the AI vs luxuries and cash buying happy and culture buildings to get real long term rather then temporary happiness.

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The trades can go on for most of the game, so calling them temporary is misleading. You are passing on golden ages, WLTKD, and happiness towards culture (if you unlock that SP). The 6-8 gpt you are getting instead is a meager trade.

Just for clarity: I pretty much never have negative happiness so my city growth rate is not being held back. What I am delaying is founding additional cities.

I don't found a new city until I can afford not only the happy cost from founding it, bit also the ability to develop the city rapidly, by a combination of internal trade routes and cash buying core infrastructure (granary, watermill, workshop, lighthouse, library, university, stone works). Only once the new city is built up to universities do I found another city.

As for border expansion, that gets me happiness, and gold, and production. If 50 to 100 gold puts my citizen on a 4 or 5 output tile instead of a 2 output tile, I buy the expansion as soon as the otherwise underutilized citizen is born. I will also cash buy tiles to prevent AI cities from taking them.

If you rush foods buildings and cash buy luxury tiles it dramatically speeds up city growth, by a lot more than excess happiness.

And the comment about the world fair wasn't that you need a golden age to win it, the point is to have a golden age kick off around the same turn you win it so that the culture from the fair stacks with the golden age bonus. THAT is a valid reason to rush a golden age by buying oodles of happy drugs from the AI's.

Xiao Xiong said:

If you rush foods buildings and cash buy luxury tiles it dramatically speeds up city growth, by a lot more than excess happiness.

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I can still cash-buy tiles that have very high yield. And also anything that is really useful. there's still enough money left for, even if you buy happiness. I just can't be as wasteful on less important stuff, that's all. So, what am I really missing out? A few less important buildings probably. What do I get? 1-2 cities.

I mean just think of it... as long as a new city has at 1(!) additional Luxury in its tiles it basically pays for itself (trade-wise). The gold from the road connection comes on top of that. All the tile yields. You get the potential of sending an additional food trade route into your city... it can build happiness buildings and net you even more population... strategic resources, more great work-slots, production... there's so much stuff you're missing by ignoring happiness that you could easily get.

So no, it's not a virtue. It's holding you back.

Xiao Xiong said:

I don't found a new city until I can afford not only the happy cost from founding it, bit also the ability to develop the city rapidly, by a combination of internal trade routes and cash buying core infrastructure (granary, watermill, workshop, lighthouse, library, university, stone works). Only once the new city is built up to universities do I found another city.

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Wow, this jumped out at me. Do you play on huge maps without increase #s of AIs? I generally always increase them so, for example, standard with 15 AIs (I think it's standard I usually do, maybe it's large, don't remember). This keeps the pressure up and makes for IMO a much more enjoyable, interactive game.

As a result, primo city spots are first-come, first-serve. So there's no luxury of being able to wait until convenient... you have to go grab them by settling early, or else plan on being a warmonger.

Xiao Xiong said:

Just for clarity: I pretty much never have negative happiness so my city growth rate is not being held back. What I am delaying is founding additional cities.

I don't found a new city until I can afford not only the happy cost from founding it, bit also the ability to develop the city rapidly, by a combination of internal trade routes and cash buying core infrastructure (granary, watermill, workshop, lighthouse, library, university, stone works). Only once the new city is built up to universities do I found another city.

As for border expansion, that gets me happiness, and gold, and production. If 50 to 100 gold puts my citizen on a 4 or 5 output tile instead of a 2 output tile, I buy the expansion as soon as the otherwise underutilized citizen is born. I will also cash buy tiles to prevent AI cities from taking them.

If you rush foods buildings and cash buy luxury tiles it dramatically speeds up city growth, by a lot more than excess happiness.

And the comment about the world fair wasn't that you need a golden age to win it, the point is to have a golden age kick off around the same turn you win it so that the culture from the fair stacks with the golden age bonus. THAT is a valid reason to rush a golden age by buying oodles of happy drugs from the AI's.

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That sounds like you are holding back growth a lot. I do consider building new cities a part of growth. I typically, or should I say, ALWAYS have every city I'm going to make before universities are even available. This gives those cities more time to grow tall. If I wait until after universities, those cities will never be large, which holds back science production.

The reason you never run into happiness issues, is you don't have enough cities. If you want optimal, or rather, the fastest win times, you want as many cities as you can handle while they are as tall as possible. That includes trading for as many luxury resources and gaining as many city state allies as you can. The more you have, the taller and more cities you can found and the sooner they can be found. For me, this means 4-5 cities built before turn 100.

But like I said, if you just want a leisurely victory, then that may not apply. If super quick victories is your deal, then you are holding yourself back.

Wodan said:

Wow, this jumped out at me. Do you play on huge maps without increase #s of AIs?

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No, but I do raze AI cities to claim a good spot.

I would usually never buy luxes for gpt. For some reason the AIs always seem to charge high prices for it, not sure why. What I do do is almost always seek out lux for lux trades, if that costs me 1-2 gpt on top then fine. Another way of converting gold to happy is through allying city states. But it's less efficient (1 lux can be sold for 240g, it costs 750-1000g to ally a CS for 1 lux)

If the AI is your friend I always find a good use for 240 gold, even fairly late game.