How to deal with pop unhealthiness?

BlackArc said:

Actually, spamming military units to deal with unhappiness is a very inefficient and costly way of dealing with unhappiness.
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Unless you are actively attacking someone, you will have to keep your army somewhere. Stationing it in a few cities, ideally with a high food output, will save you the hammers from having to build happiness buildings and cost you literally nothing, because everyone's got an army right?

There's nothing wrong with relying on Hereditary Rule for a good while, as long as you're not planning on a war. Just make sure you've got the buildings in place for when you switch out.

I usually just let them wallow in their own filth, since the problem takes cares of itself: more green faces means less food means slower population growth.

ringwraith18 said:

Unless you are actively attacking someone, you will have to keep your army somewhere. Stationing it in a few cities, ideally with a high food output, will save you the hammers from having to build happiness buildings and cost you literally nothing, because everyone's got an army right?

There's nothing wrong with relying on Hereditary Rule for a good while, as long as you're not planning on a war. Just make sure you've got the buildings in place for when you switch out.

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On the latest immortal game I just played, it cost me 4 gold per turn to have a warrior in every city + 1 chariot to kill barbs (and workers). On high difficulties, it is prohibitively costly to have excess units in every city. Thankfully, the unhappiness cap is solved by whipping

traius said:

On the latest immortal game I just played, it cost me 4 gold per turn to have a warrior in every city + 1 chariot to kill barbs (and workers). On high difficulties, it is prohibitively costly to have excess units in every city. Thankfully, the unhappiness cap is solved by whipping

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Didn't you read my post? You need to have an army anyway, may as well spread it out a bit for some free unhappiness.

ringwraith18 said:

Didn't you read my post? You need to have an army anyway, may as well spread it out a bit for some free unhappiness.

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I did read your post. Did you read mine? I am all but saying you can't afford an army on imm+ without an explicitly interest-making purpose for it. My army was a single chariot and it cost me 4 gold per turn (before inflation!).

ringwraith18 said:

Didn't you read my post? You need to have an army anyway, may as well spread it out a bit for some free unhappiness.

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Every unit adds to the cost of keeping that army around. The more units you have = the more money you're burning on that military, and that gets really expensive in the highest difficulties. You only need one unit per city to ward away anger from a lack of a city garrison, after that, you can't justify keeping extra units around just for the happiness because you're bleeding money.

If you play the diplomacy game right, you'll never need extra military units, and the unhappiness issue gets fixed from trading resources/spreading your religion in your cities/ 2-pop whipping/ using specialists to slow or stop growth. I can easily get 10+ happiness from trading and religion spread alone. Aside from that the only buildings I make exclusively for the happiness are theaters, which are great for war weariness and drafting anger.

The only reason I might have multiple units per city is if I already have an army left over from an early rush, the number of which is usually limited anyway.

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There have been some stunning games posted with monster capitals in the BCs that were made possible thanks to HR and a pile of warriors. It can be profitable.

My understanding is that it's usually just the CS-capitol that gets the HR MPs. If you can spend 1-gpt on a unit so that a citizen can work a village or town (esp. if boosted by CS), you'll come out ahead. If you're spending 10-gpt for 10 citizens in various cities to work grassland farms, you're probably not coming out ahead.

This might belong in the unpopular opinions thread but sometimes it might be useful to delay chopping a forest to retain the health bonus until more health resources can be obtained.

But, as others have said, your problem is not wanting to overlap cities. Overlapping has many benefits but, for me, its sharing the big food tiles between cities which makes it essential. And as a consequence lower pop cities which don't have as many health/happy issues and are more efficient to whip (don't underestimate this either).

I do understand the appeal of wanting to maximize every city in the late game, it's how I liked to play originally but it's the early game which matters more - much more. Now I find working out how to place cities so as to *best* overlap the good tiles a much more interesting strategic challenge than how to place cities to not overlap tiles. You can still have big, maximized cities in the end game but some of your other cities might have to become small towns, not doing much anymore having served their purpose early.

Get on board the overlap train. After that, granaries and prioritizing grains over other health resources in trades will most likely solve your healthiness issues. Have fun, play lots of games, remember to keep having fun, you will work it all out.

Is it possible to have no wars through diplo if you're playing no tech trading and no vassals?
On a Pangaea map with multiple religions and a few of the more aggressive civs, I don't think it's possible. You will be Dowed on at some point. It's harder to bribe someone to go to war to keep others busy elsewhere.