hapiness and warfare

I'm trying out a keshik-driven domination on a small (6 civ) plains map. Interestingly, my biggest problem is happiness: my mongol hordes seem to be closet pacifists, and with every conquest they grow more restless.

As an observation, I think it is really strange that a warring kingdom would become unhappy when the war goes well. I don't think there were any protests in Ceasar's Rome, Napoleon's France, or Hitler's Germany when they were conquering large parts of Europe... quite the contrary. I can imagine resource shortage due to wartime production needs and/or a pillaged countryside would upset people, but victory...?

As a gaming related question, how do you manage wartime hapiness in a mid-game domination rush? I will probably keep only capitals and some good cities that I can immediately buy a courthouse in, but even so if I capture and raze a city it gives something like 8 unhappiness for 3-6 turns. The whole world has now declared war on me, including 5 city states that cannot be razed but are a pain to leave intact in the middle of my (new) territory, and my 20 or so keshik are capturing almost a city per turn. I captured Notre Dame at the beginning of the latest round, but even so I am now at -14 unhappy and my conquest is stalled because I need to wait for cities to be razed so I can capture more. All my luxuries are connected, not AI will trade with me anymore, and all cities have colloseum and (where possible) a circus.

Is there anything I can do besides buying or building ghastly expensive zoos anywhere I can?

I think it's logical. It's the conquered parts of your civilization that's sad and have to be repaired over time. Happiness in your self founded cities remains the same.

To manage happiness is a big part during domination. Always look for new luxuries, burn conqured cities without happiness-sources, try to ally mercentile city-states, use religion for happiness and off course build happiness buildings.

you should become friends with some AIs before going to war. friendly AIs wont blame you for warmongering, especially if you've bribed them into a war with the pray civ. Start with conquering of the civs nobody seems to love, finish with your "friends". dont take all the territory, capital and a couple of the best cities is enough, this would virtually destroy a civ. Or just make it so you take a couple of the best cities and the rest is conquered by your allies so they would get most of the warmonger penalty. Later you can liberate those cities for diplo bonuses and a new ally - he wont mind much you captured his original capital as you've resurrected him.

The best way it to keep up a steady tech rate and a steady culture out put so that over time you have access to more policies that give happiness.

It depends on what difficulty level you're playing on, but on Deity the best way to manage happiness is to raze and capital snipe. Only Annex a captured city if it has a REALLY good wonder. Most Wonders are not that great for Warmongers.

OP, keep in mind that when you are -10 unhappy that barbs will start spawning. I think with only three or four civs left and as score of highly promoted keshiks that you might be able to pull through.

killmeplease said:

you should become friends with some AIs before going to war. friendly AIs wont blame you for warmongering, especially if you've bribed them into a war with the pray civ.

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Very good advice for your next run! Note that you won’t be able to keep any friends once you kill more than one CS or a kill a second AI. Even if all the AI civs hate you, you might be able to stay friendly with one or two CS, but that is not an option after your second CS dow.

If you want to attack somebody anyway, ask around first and see who is willing to give you stuff to do it.

I ALWAYS forget to do this.

Getting the right wonders (by conquest or hammers) is pretty important before Ideology.
Happiness from religion is also a must, and its does not matter at all if you found a religion or not, but you NEED the smiles from this source. Pagodas, mosques are fantastic because they stay in the city regardless of changes to religion after they are build.

After ideology (sometimes before!), build courthouses. then build happy in each city. Its incredible.
I have done DOM with autocracy OR order, and so long as there are happy buildings to build, you wont run out. Even with ~20 cities and 16 courthouses, you can still be +20 happy because you have the right policies, buildings, wonders.

In fact, when I finally unlocked the "Soma tablets for everyone" achievement I was in an Order->Domination run with 15 cities and counting.

Higher difficulties:
Ideological pressure is a BIG concern. You need to stay on top of tourism and culture or face dire happiness woes. Sometimes you need to choose an already chosen ideology and sacrifice the extra policy. Sometimes you need to switch. Its painful, but in the long run you will still win.

you shouldn't be building or buying zoos at any point in the domination run imo
get pagodas/mosques, and make barracks/armory+ autocracy if you need to, and then throw in castles with Neuschwanstein. I admit the happiness hit from taking cities is pretty high, but you can tactically pillage tiles to starve it first or give a turnover to kill some harmless citizens (they'll understand, it's for the greater good of the empire).

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions!

I'm playing at immortal.

One things that complicates hapiness I think is the fact that I would like to get the job done with Keshik, which I think militarily should be fine. I am slicing through my opponents (mostly pikemen, knights and crossbowmen with some musketmen thrown in) without any casualties, and have a good number of range+logistics+march keshik running around now.

However, that means (1) no access to ideology or neuschwanstein until the Keshik era is about over, and (2) a general need for speed that conflicts with waiting around starving cities or waiting till a city is burned before taking the next one.

I think my main problem is diplo, although I find it very hard to manage in Civ5 after the first couple of conquests. CS start from -20, which makes it more painful/expensive to ally them (although I should have just bought at least the one or two that are in strategically awkward places, I guess). Other nations that I was DOF with just start getting pissed of and one (who I fought Shaka with and for whom I even liberated a city - though not their capital) declared on me in the general pileup.

I really dislike Civ5 warmonger penalties, even in the new patch. Strategically it makes sense to pile up on a runaway, so that is fine esp. at higher levels. But I think it is just silly that they really hate you for killing you neighbour a thousand years ago...

(I also think that the happiness hit for razing cities is an unfortunate consequence of the global happiness mechanics. In a way it is nicer than Civ4 by being less micromanag-y, but I did really like the specific difficulties e.g. if you're attacking someone of their faith etc. I also liked how religion dominated the diplo field in Civ4, I think that pre-ideology religion should fulfill a similar role)

vanatteveldt said:

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions!

I really dislike Civ5 warmonger penalties, even in the new patch. Strategically it makes sense to pile up on a runaway, so that is fine esp. at higher levels. But I think it is just silly that they really hate you for killing you neighbour a thousand years ago...

(I also think that the happiness hit for razing cities is an unfortunate consequence of the global happiness mechanics. In a way it is nicer than Civ4 by being less micromanag-y, but I did really like the specific difficulties e.g. if you're attacking someone of their faith etc. I also liked how religion dominated the diplo field in Civ4, I think that pre-ideology religion should fulfill a similar role)

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(IMO) Civ 4 is by far the better game for micromanagement and just an all around better game. However, I still rather have 1 unit per hex instead of stack attack. Civ 5 is sort of a mix between Civ 4 and Civ Rev. Everything in Civ 5 is more player friendly compared to all the other Civs but Id have to say that it is more of a dumbed down or watered down version of Civ. Perhaps if they make another Civ game they will try to get back to its roots but I doubt it since they are targeting to have more players/buyers instead of us dedicated players who want a lot of micro.

Fluphen Azine said:

to have more players/buyers instead of us dedicated players who want a lot of micro.

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it seems you imply here most of dedicated players love micro what i think is wrong

killmeplease said:

it seems you imply here most of dedicated players love micro what i think is wrong

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Perhaps I am wrong. I often am. I would say that the first 4 Civ games were heavy on micro and the 5th is not. Most players who played many hours seemed to enjoy all the micro and that is why they were able to make civ after civ after civ. The core players wanted more and more micro in the game but the general public player who is only going to play every once in awhile wanted the game to be easier and less complicated/tedious.

I am pretty sure that it is wide known that Civ 5 tore the community in half. Players who wanted more micro and complications stayed with Civ 4. Other players who wanted less went with Civ 5. Yes we have players who actually play both but I think you will find that most players either choose one or the other. I made the switch because of the graphics and I found the warfare more easy in Civ 5 but I still liked the idea of 1 unit per hex. Recently I have been thinking about going back to Civ 4 after years of playing Civ 5 since it came out and I am starting to miss all the options from Civ 4.

It is almost the same as playing on Deity. I think the last number I saw was only 3% of the total steam community actually plays on this level.

vanatteveldt said:

CS start from -20, which makes it more painful/expensive to ally them

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Yeah, but that is only after your 2nd (or is it 3rd now) DOW against a CS? Just because you are the Mongols or Huns doesn't mean you have to play stupid against the CS. The CS react to you DOWing CS, but not conquering CS. The AIs don’t really care much about DOWs, but they hate the player for conquering a CS or the last city of an AI.

So after the first CS you use for farming xp, only conquer CS that are allied with AI that you are at war with (that hurts AI relations, but not CS relations, because you have not DOWed a CS). And if you can safely leave an AI alive with one or more trash cities, do that too.

beetle said:

Yeah, but that is only after your 2nd (or is it 3rd now) DOW against a CS? Just because you are the Mongols or Huns doesn't mean you have to play stupid against the CS. The CS react to you DOWing CS, but not conquering CS. The AIs don’t really care much about DOWs, but they hate the player for conquering a CS or the last city of an AI.

So after the first CS you use for farming xp, only conquer CS that are allied with AI that you are at war with (that hurts AI relations, but not CS relations, because you have not DOWed a CS). And if you can safely leave an AI alive with one or more trash cities, do that too.

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Hmm, I never knew about that distinction. I probably also messed up by repeatedly DOW'ing the same CS, first stealing a worker and later XP farming on the same CS but with peace in between to make it easier to get the worker out. So a good rule is: only one CS DOW allowed per game.

I've made peace with each AI after conquering 1 or 2 cities. What I dislike about leaving the AI with trash cities however is that they will probably DOW/be bribed at some later point, leaving your back exposed. They won't pose a real threat, but it does reduce momentum if you need to leave a couple Keshik at the back to deal with them.

killmeplease said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fluphen Azine View Post
to have more players/buyers instead of us dedicated players who want a lot of micro.
it seems you imply here most of dedicated players love micro what i think is wrong

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It's not the micro per se, I would much rather never touch the city tiles worked (so I tend not to do the whole maximize production with locked tiles routine in civ5 even if it costs me hammers) and I really disliked the whole optimizing game with timing growth, granaries, when to whip etc etc. I think Gaslamp games in one of their blogs (probably commenting on Dwarf Fortress) had it right when they said (strategy) gaming is about making interesting choices. Ideally, everything you do as a player is an interesting choice (what to do, how to do it etc) and not the result of a deterministic optimization.

So while I like the speed of playing in civ5 and I think the fewer bigger cities approach is more interesting and I do indeed like the 1-unit-per-hex combat (which makes warfare actually have more micro), but I miss some of the older mechanics such as the per-population nationality and religion. And in the case of warfare global happiness just makes less sense than per-city effects... I mean, I understand that the people in my newly conquered city are upset because I am burning them to the ground, and I can understand it if their former compatriots don't like it, but why would the people in my capital care?

vanatteveldt said:

So while I like the speed of playing in civ5 and I think the fewer bigger cities approach is more interesting and I do indeed like the 1-unit-per-hex combat (which makes warfare actually have more micro), but I miss some of the older mechanics such as the per-population nationality and religion. And in the case of warfare global happiness just makes less sense than per-city effects... I mean, I understand that the people in my newly conquered city are upset because I am burning them to the ground, and I can understand it if their former compatriots don't like it, but why would the people in my capital care?

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i feel pretty same about this.. the problem was - cities falling into disorder, so either you was getting unrest from time to time what was annoying, or had to inspect all the cities before pressing next turn what was tedious. global happiness has kinda solved this problem but it isnt very logical and thus hurts immersion. so i think they need some new mechanic to replace this.

beetle said:

So after the first CS you use for farming xp, only conquer CS that are allied with AI that you are at war with (that hurts AI relations, but not CS relations, because you have not DOWed a CS). And if you can safely leave an AI alive with one or more trash cities, do that too.

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Unless you absolutely HAVE to go through them, there is no point capturing CS that are allied with an AI you at war at. In fact, to manage happiness and gold, only capture if you REALLY need it, CS or AI city.

I completely agree that not needing to micro is good thing, and that it is better when choices are interesting.

vanatteveldt said:

So a good rule is: only one CS DOW allowed per game.

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After the Halloween Patch, I am pretty sure you can get away with two CS DOWs per game. In all this time, I have not had good cause to try it myself.

but why would the people in my capital care?

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killmeplease said:

global happiness ... isnt very logical and thus hurts immersion

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I rationalize it as citizens hating having inhumane leadership, even if the war crimes are happening far away. The global happiness mechanism feels logical enough to me, and does not break my sense of immersion at all.

consentient said:

Unless you absolutely HAVE to go through them, there is no point capturing CS that are allied with an AI you at war at.

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I absolutely agree. If left alive, CS soon enough become friends or allies. And a friendly CS is more valuable than a puppet city. My comment was in the context of how the OP was already playing.

I would disagree that global happiness breaks immersion. One can quibble with the terms "happiness" and "unhappiness" (Civ BE uses health and unhealthy, which are equally clumsy), but in the context of Civ they reflect real issues in large countries.

For example, when East Germany acceded to the FRG, Germans were pretty uniformly pleased about reunification in general, but there were strong pockets of discontent in the west about diversion of resources to bring the east up to speed and in the east about the pace of integration. It was, of course, much more complicated than that, but modeling that as a CiV happiness problem should not be immersion breaking.

Some also express irritation that conquering other cities should affect global happiness (shouldn't my citizens be ecstatic? -they're on the winning team and our empire is expanding). Ask yourself this -- if the U.S. had decided to permanently puppet or annex Iraq (to use CiV terms), with many turns of revolt, would the US citizenry have been happy or angry?

The mechanic has its flaws, but immersion breaking isn't (IMO) one of them.

Buy religious buildings, build happiness buildings in cities, even conquered ones, raze small useless cities, use gold to ally mercantile CS.