New strategy: Ignore happiness

I agree with OP about France's ability. At first, I worried about building too many cities that would effect me getting policies, but realized that the 30% is wayyyyy over blown.

First, its addictive, so its 30% of the base cost, 5 cities would increase cost by 150%, not 371%. So that last city increases cost from 220% to 250%, an increase of only 13.6%. Second, its not 30% in most games! In my game, on a huge map, it was only 15%. I heard it ranges from 10-30%, so 30% that most people tout is really just for tiny 2 player maps, which no one plays on.

Early on, building cities as France actually INCREASES the rate at which I get policies. Even at 5 cities, my 5th city would increase my culture cost by less than 10%, but boost my culture from +21 to +23, so building it would not affect cost. If I built a monument or something, I would actually gain at the rate I got policies.

This idea is very creative, and probably works. I know that science goes crazy when you have a large empire, and newer units tend to have 50-75% more combat strength than the previous generation, so the 33% penalty isn't big in comparison. I'll have to try it.

I played a game like that, with something close to -50 unhappiness. Map wasn't large enough for it to go lower.

Also noticed, that domination based victories are only happening by massive razing of cities. You can't puppet them because gold income will take a nosedive as puppets build every expensive and useless structure there is. Annexing them lead to the unhappiness without the massive gold influx if you dont plan it from the start.

Civ 5, it's mainly a razing game, often taking cities (if they dont hold happiness resource you happen to miss), causes massive problems. Basicly, map wont be ever fully your color in this game. When you start to raze and ignore the empty land mass, it gets easy and you win your games. It feels goofy and looks ******ed ingame, no more "build empires", but thats how it is.

I played a version of this in my first game, with China. The Arabs gave me five cities for peace (though I've that that's already targetted for patching), and my happiness went to about -30. An interesting wrinkle: I was in Representation -- or whatever they named it, under Rationalism, that gives each specialist +2 science -- and I had more than enough food thanks to Maritime allies and probably-unnecessary Granaries. With food worthless, and production cut in half, tiles weren't looking so good. So I used most of my pop as Unemployed Citizens. Half a hammer plus two science seems better than a trading post.

I did this with England. I played normal, built 3 cities, and made friends with on military city state. When I reached longbows I upgraded my regular bows and conquered the whole continent. I had pretty high unhappiness, but the negative bonus didn't really matter because I had 3 great generals, my upgraded bows already had a bunch of promotions before my "real" wars started, and the fact that during all this I got a few horsman/cats and built some swords then upgraded them to longswords. I popped a GG for a golden age, switched everything over to gold, except for one city that built a few units. I would sometimes let a civ give me a peace treaty for ten turns, getting their city state allies resources for 45 turns, then I'd hit another civ. This is only on prince, but I had every civs cities/capital, and there where two more on another continent but I hadn't got the tech to get there yet. I ended up razing the bad cities, and when it was all said an done I had a core force of 4 longbows, 2GG, and two longswords. I only lost my cat/horseman. Also my happiness recovered quite quickly, and I was at +15, then it evened out to +6 or so, but the whole time I was warring it was very unhappy.

ashmizen said:

This idea is very creative, and probably works. I know that science goes crazy when you have a large empire, and newer units tend to have 50-75% more combat strength than the previous generation, so the 33% penalty isn't big in comparison. I'll have to try it.

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The secret to this, from what I've theory'd, is that when you go for all gold to make your units you actually end up with maximizing your science too. If you go out of your way to make more gold, you do it in two ways: trade posts and merchants. Both of these gain +2 science with social policies.

Secondly, the way golden ages are set up is it's easier for smaller empires to obtain them (more happiness), but give bigger benefits to larger empires. However, if you were to make a 30-40 city empire then pop a great person, policy or wonder for a golden age, the effects would be massive.


The big problem in this game is the happiness effects happen at stupid levels. -10 happiness is something that comes and goes SO easily mid to late game with any sizable empire. One deal with one com stops, and all of a sudden you are very unhappy. The reason this happens is because your empire is more volatile the bigger it gets. If I were to redesign it, I would take out the unhappy and very unhappy penalties all together and make it a smoother system. Give -2 production and gold (the production taken away from the largest cities first) for each unhappy face. Taking away the food penalty would actually make people stop growth themselves rather than have the entire damn thing computerized.

Nice strategy, but to me it demonstrates an unbalance in the rules of the game that needs to be fixed. Happiness is a core concept so for one to just be able to ignore it and dominate the game seems inconsistent. The solution is to do as other posters have suggested and drastically increase the penalty for unhappiness once it reaches a certain level.

You do that and you might as well not bother fixing the game because warfare will have zero point...

ashmizen said:

I agree with OP about France's ability. At first, I worried about building too many cities that would effect me getting policies, but realized that the 30% is wayyyyy over blown.

First, its addictive, so its 30% of the base cost, 5 cities would increase cost by 150%, not 371%. So that last city increases cost from 220% to 250%, an increase of only 13.6%. Second, its not 30% in most games! In my game, on a huge map, it was only 15%. I heard it ranges from 10-30%, so 30% that most people tout is really just for tiny 2 player maps, which no one plays on.

Early on, building cities as France actually INCREASES the rate at which I get policies. Even at 5 cities, my 5th city would increase my culture cost by less than 10%, but boost my culture from +21 to +23, so building it would not affect cost. If I built a monument or something, I would actually gain at the rate I got policies.

This idea is very creative, and probably works. I know that science goes crazy when you have a large empire, and newer units tend to have 50-75% more combat strength than the previous generation, so the 33% penalty isn't big in comparison. I'll have to try it.

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This just made me think of something I'll need to test later. Take France. Get this massive, unhappy empire. Build up a TON of culture towards your next SP. Then gift all those cities you took back to the AIs. If it works the way I think it will, you'll keep all the points you've built up, but your SP cost will be cut down dramatically. You might be able to pop out multiple SPs in a turn. Additionally, you're happiness will skyrocket, and your troops will gain back their strength. Time to reload for another war.

lilnev said:

Half a hammer plus two science seems better than a trading post.

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In principle, 1/2 hammer is roughly worth 2 to 2.5 gold. (See the rush buy screen and convert.) In practice, the gold is much better. The upgrade mechanic is horribly broken, and you can buy culture and units for cheap from city-states, then upgrade for cheap.

Hrm ... So far I've started out slow with Civ5 (beat it at Chieftain then Warlord, I'm moving to Prince next). I found both levels quite easy, and finished both with domination victories and ended up with Augustus Caesar ratings. Both times I just expanded my empire, annexed most of the cities I took (and puppeted a few). For the majority of the game my happiness was tanked - and while I continually did things to try and correct it, it didn't stop me steamrolling my opponents. But as the OP said, the key was to build an army first that is capable of overpowering at least 2 cities at once, and then just upgrade it as the game went on, and make sure you don't LOSE any.

I played chieftain as Catherine and warlord as Oda (I liked Oda, because of the Bushido bonus - I literally had a unit with 1 HP kill a full strength unit that was only slightly less powerful). In both games my strategy revolved around getting to musketmen/cannons or riflemen/artillery as fast as possible. This meant I ignored most of the tech tree unless it got me closer to those units (with Catherine I did get some techs that allowed for more science output, with Oda I didn't even bother). So in the end, I just had better units than the other guys.

For some reason, money has not been an issue when I've played - I make sure I have plenty of workers around improving land to get me more money, and all my cities are connected via. trade routes (the SP that gives +1 happiness for each connected city is good when you have a bunch of cities ... but nowhere near enough).

By the time I had steamrolled over a few civs, and the last civ (which took me a while to find) was catching up tech military wise (though still behind), my happiness stabilized anyway and so I was only unhappy after I had just annexed a few new cities. Maybe this strat will fall apart on Prince though

I think I only barely (and incidentally) got into the modern era on my Oda game ... I could have stopped research altogether at that point though, I was already halfway through annihilating my last opponent.

Incredible strategy! I like the total focussing.
I'm interested in the score you get after succeeding with this strategy. Do you get a malus score of negative happiness? Do you get a higher score of annexing many cities (vs. razing them)?
Has anybody a score comparison of this as a domination vs. i.e. culture victory.

If you can't get a high score with this strategy, maybe this is the way of balancing the developers implemented. Just an assumption.

Tried this on a standard earth map, monarch dificulty, starting in Africa as Babylon.
The grear scientists allowed me to slingshot rifling and by 800 AD only the two civs that started in americahad any cities left.
Imo it takes the fun out of the game, after steamrolling a few civs, i only wanted to start a new game that didn't feel like cheating.

focusing on grabbing luxuries isn't ignoring happiness...

Spatzimaus said:

Now, for sheer irony value, you need to try winning a Cultural victory with this strategy; once you've got a large empire, start churning out more culture buildings. The idea that millenia of unhappiness can lead to Utopia is just too funny to ignore.

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Karl Marx would agree

What sad I had the AI do this to me. I had large tech lead most of the game and so I was going a science victory, however as game progress One of the AI just started killing off all opposition. By the time modern times hit, he had 90% of map control and our tech levels were the same. I didnt finish the game, with his massive empire I knew he was gonna out tech me. I was gonna go for the cheesy conquest victory and just sack his capital, but at some point in the game I signed a defensive aggrement with me so I couldnt attack him. Culture was out too because my empire was too big too, about 10 cities. I quit the game and went to bed. Came here this morning for some help and read this thread.

I couldnt figure out how he was dealing with the massive unhappiness. Well now I know, he wasnt. He was generating about 400 gold per turn (from the diplomacy screen). Attached my save if you dont beleive. I just hope I learn form this, next time the AI goes on the war patch, make sure to take him down.

I wonder what will happen if you try this coupled with getting acess to the Freedom SPs in 900 BC ... world conquest in 300 AD ?

The big part about the strategy, from my angle, is to switch everything to trade posts and grab the Rationalism crucial techs. Ignore production entirely. It's more than just the "last steamroll".

shadin said:

Culture was out too because my empire was too big too, about 10 cities.

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This is why I consider France OP. I have 20 cities and still a good policy unlock rate.

shadin said:

I couldnt figure out how he was dealing with the massive unhappiness. Well now I know, he wasnt. He was generating about 400 gold per turn (from the diplomacy screen). Attached my save if you dont beleive. I just hope I learn form this, next time the AI goes on the war patch, make sure to take him down.

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I've seen this on Prince level in my Large/Fractal map. The Iroquois have probably 3x the number of cities that I do and are rolling in gold (last trade screen was that he had 90 gold/turn available).

The penalties and bonuses for happiness are not balanced. Right now, if you go "unhappy", your cities grow at 1/4 rate. If you go "very unhappy", cities stop growing completely and you get the -33% combat modifier. As shown in this thread, that's nothing more then a mild annoyance and speed bump rather then a real impact.

It needs to be a much larger sliding scale - and possibly percentage based for the cut-off values.

Assuming that you need 100 happiness to break even (so about a 6-7 city empire at a guess):

> +10 = +10% to combat, -5% to support costs, +5% city growth
> +5 = +5% to combat, -2% to support costs, +2% city growth
>= 0 = no bonuses, no negatives
< 0 = -10% to combat, -25% city growth, +5% support costs
< -5 = -20% to combat, -50% city growth, +10% support costs
< -10 = -40% to combat, -100% city growth, +25% support costs
< -15 = -80% to combat, +50% support costs

Or something along those lines. As you go from being short by 5% to being 10% short of what you needed, impact should double. Getting more then 10% under what you need will pretty much halt your expansion and you'll be dead in the water if your happiness deficit is more then 15% of your baseline needs.

But you can still run a slight deficit and not worry. And on bigger empires where your baseline is 200 happiness, you have a bigger margin of error.

I agree with the above - Luxury ressources allow you to expand nicely in the beginning without worrying about the rest and build 2 small combat groups that will take over the world.

Once unhappiness starts hitting, you ve a large enough empire to generate enough money and science to sustain upgrading your units and beating everyone in science without having to worry - Just use your 2 combat groups, upgrade them continously, rushbuy if you loose one and win the game.

I think unhappiness should bring a malus not only to production but also to research rate and gold output to make the game balanced. Education and Public Service working on under unhappiness feels somewhat wrong.

Penalties to large empire are just too little so that they become systematicaly absolutely unstoppable. AI also should have a different research mechanism that allow them to keep with a specific research rate no matter their unhappiness or reserarch output.

I'm not sure if this can even be balanced right. If you grip the player too hard on happiness, you end up with more games that go like this:

* 4-6 cities
* couple units to fend of attacks
* 200+ next turns until enough policies are unlocked doing literally nothing

pick a winning condition you want, go to war, go tech or go diplo, etc.

This translates into extremely boring game and we are allready with this system suffering from "next turn" syndrome where nothing happens. This is teh moast winning tactic because AI is incompetent in warfare and declarations mean nothing to your bunkered cities with the generated combat bonus of great generals + "next to another unit" + fortify bonuses, and your artillery units behind it. Simple formation of couple units can stop AI on its tracks.

I always saw and want civ to be a game where you build an empire and its busy. I never liked the civ IV's, get 6 good cities and you can win the game, because there was not that much to do. Granted it was alot better because you had things building and completing all the time, keeping you busy and interested. CIV V core problem in everything is that you need less than 6 good cities to win the game AND nothing happens as buildings take eons to build and you don't want more than your core units -> nothing happens. Next turn, next turn, next turn.

Anyone else noticed the same or am I alone here?