Civ 5 happiness - mods, fix or suggestion

One thing I've learned is that if you can see yourself heading towards unhappiness - say you have a few cities ready to grow in size and only a couple happiness then you need to micromanage your cities a bit more closely. For a wide civ it's generally better to the let the capital grow than an expo.
As much as a wide civ gets its strength from more cities you still need a big capital to get the advantage from National College and for City Connection Gold.

Keep your early expos at a size of about 2-3 enough to work above average yield tiles like luxury resources/bonus tiles/Natural Wonders etc. Over time you can let these cities grow in size.

One of the main disadvantages of the Civ5-BNW-Happiness-System is its complexity caused by unclear differentiation between local and global (un-)happiness and the lack of useful info in the game, e.g. in the city-screen. It is in many cases impossible for the average player to predict happiness-change when population of a city grows by one, when a new happiness-building/wonder is built, a happiness-SP is chosen or a city is conquered/puppet/annexed.

- Cities in Civ5 cause (global or local?) unhappiness which varies with map size and civ UA (India).
- Conquered cities (puppet, occupied, annexed) cause (global or local?) unhappiness.
- Population causes local unhappiness.
- Local unhappiness can be reduced by civ UA (India), wonders and SPs.
- Local unhappiness can be compensated by local buildings and some wonders.
- Wonders like Circus Maximus, Notre Dame or EiffelTower provide global happiness, but Chichen-Itza provides local happiness.
- Buidlings like colosseum or circus provide local happiness to compensate local unhappiness.
- Luxuries provide global happiness.
- SPs add (global or local?) happiness to buildings, garrissons, connected cities, etc.
...
- Puppet cities can cause a lot of global/local unhappiness which the player in worst case can only counter by razing or annexing the city.

If Civ5 is meant as a strategy game, the rules for happiness should be clear but they are not ... they are diffuse because for half of the happiness items the player does not know if they count as local or global (un-)happiness, unless he goes really deep into the xml-files to check item-definitions (e.g. CIV5Buildings.xml, CIV5Policies.xml, etc.) and maybe analyses the happiness-count-algorithm in source-code.

Another problem is the unrealistic unhappiness-penalty :
If you have one city and the global (overall) happiness drops into negative. it is reasonable to have a small negative effect in the city. (e.g. 9 of 10 happy = 90% happiness)
If you have 100 cities and you are short by 1 happiness (overall), it is probably only 1 citizen in one of the 100 cities who is unhappy but it effects all citizens in all cities. (e.g. 999 of 1000 happy = 99,9% happiness) Even cities who max out local happiness and maybe overcompensate local unhappiness are effected by the overall unhappiness. In Civ1-3 the player would have turned this one unhappy citizen into an entertainer and the problem would be solved for the moment. In Civ4 unhappiness was no problem.

historix69 said:

In Civ1-3 the player would have turned this one unhappy citizen into an entertainer and the problem would be solved for the moment. In Civ4 unhappiness was no problem.

Click to expand...

Well you can do this on Freedom with the policy that halves the unhappiness from Specialists. If you civ dips into unhappiness you can just keep turning more people into specialists. With Secularism, Civil Society & Statue of Liberty those specialists are better than almost all workers.

But I know what you mean. Its not really that relative for a say an outpost city to have so much effect on the happiness of a capital.

If I can give a historical example. When Rome conquered their long hated enemy Carthage the happiness of the Roman Republic probably tripled! But in Civ 5 conquering a civ the size of Carthage you'd have your whole civ in revolt!

But then there have also been examples in history where general discontent on the frontiers of large empires has manifested itself into a full revolt and political coup. An interesting example of this was the murder of the Roman Emperor Maurice in 602- he actually did quite a remarkable job in holding the Empire together despite the immense financial difficulties, lack of resources and multiple wars but after he was murdered the late classical society of the Eastern Mediterranean collapsed very quickly so it can work both ways.

With buildings providing global happiness, it's pretty easy to shell out for happiness unless you're going full on Manifest Destiny mode. Even if you don't particularly care for religion, founding/enhancing one can be a massive boon to happiness if done right.

Social policies also help immensely. Professional Army can provide a large amount of happiness for each city late game, Protectionism and Cultural diplomacy further increase the effectiveness of luxury resources, and Humanism is a nice bonus to science oriented Civs.

And if you've got the tech/production edge, Circus Maximus, Notre Dame, Chichen Itza, Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower, and Prora all provide a good amount of happiness.

That's not to mention the basic buildings that can be built in every (or at least most) cities like Stone Works, Circuses, Colosseums, Zoos, and Stadiums.

Happiness really is just a matter of expending hammers, gold, or social policies when you need to. Be mindful of the cities you're capturing, and make sure to limit growth if it gets out of control.

With buildings providing global happiness, it's pretty easy to shell out for happiness unless you're going full on Manifest Destiny mode.

Click to expand...

Civ5 uses 2 kinds of Growth-Limiters : Empire-Growth-Limiter (Global Un/Happiness) and City-Growth-Limiter (Local Un/Happiness). Local happiness allows to grow bigger cities while global happiness allows to have more cities or grow even bigger cities. This is a valid concept. The big design mistake is to call both types simply Un/Happiness in most of the in-game descriptions for buildings, National Wonders, Wonders, Social Policies, Religious Traits, etc. It would have been better to use a name like "Empire Stability Points" instead of global happiness to avoid the confusion.

Buildings can have the following happiness-attributes :
Happiness (= local happiness, e.g. CIRCUS, COLOSSEUM),
UnmoddedHappiness (= global happiness, e.g. NOTRE_DAME)
UnhappinessModifier (FORBIDDEN_PALACE)
HappinessPerCity (CN_TOWER),
HappinessPerXPolicies (PRORA_RESORT),
CityCountUnhappinessMod (??? unused),
NoOccupiedUnhappiness (COURTHOUSE)
Building_BuildingClassHappiness (NEUSCHWANSTEIN - CASTLE)

Social Policies can have the following happiness-attributes :
ExtraHappiness
ExtraHappinessPerCity
UnhappinessMod (MERITOCRACY)
CityCountUnhappinessMod
OccupiedPopulationUnhappinessMod
CapitalUnhappinessMod (MONARCHY)
HappinessPerGarrisonedUnit (MILITARY_CASTE)
HappinessPerTradeRoute (MERITOCRACY)
HappinessPerXPopulation (ARISTOCRACY)
ExtraHappinessPerLuxury (PROTECTIONISM)
UnhappinessFromUnitsMod
HappinessToCulture (FINE_ARTS)
HappinessToScience (RATIONALISM)
HalfSpecialistUnhappiness (UNIVERSAL_SUFFRAGE)
Policy_BuildingClassHappiness (e.g. NAVAL_TRADITION - HARBOR)

How can the player know which of these attributes provide local or global happiness if they are simply called Un/Happiness in most descriptions? And if the player does not know this, how can the player develop a strategy to counter happiness-problems which automatically arise when going to war, conquering cities, expanding the empire? The player is forced to simply react to happiness-issues and to trial-and-error/experience ...

(Note : Tall-Players who choose the simple path of a 3-4 cities Tradition game without conquering cities usually do not need to differentiate between local and global happiness since their tiny empire causes only a small amount of global unhappiness and all the global excess-happiness is used to allow bigger cities, generate golden ages and culture. Lack of Global Happiness is a problem experienced more in wide and ultra-wide empires.)