Civ-5 Insufficient Happiness for Long-Term Game

So... I like to play at Historic game speed, with approximately 18 players, and a realistic Earth map. The idea is that the game can and does go on for months. The problem is that at about turn 400, there just is not enough happiness to further sustain the game. Both my popluation and conquest simply generate too much unhappiness. All the luxuries are added to the trade network. All wonders are discovered, and all structures are built.

The IGE does not allow for changing the happiness value. The mod to remove happiness seems to prevent the spread of religion, and what's the point, if I can't spread the One True Faith? I am hoping that there's some way to augment happiness, to make the game continue to be playable. I tried editing the happiness value of structures, using an xml editor, but no luck with that either. The program doesn't respond to the changes in the values.

Help!

In any setting though, there will come a point where there is not enough happiness to go around. In order for there to happiness to scale with population, for example, there must be a mechanism in which 100% of the unhappiness generated from population will be prevented. Forbidden palace removes 10%. Meritocracy removes 5%. So simply, at large enough population, your empire will be unhappy (assuming finite luxury resources).

Just wondering though, did you adopt all the social policies that give you happiness? Ideologies give you bunch of happiness. Meritocracy and military caste are excellent happiness generator in a large empire (they often give me +30 happiness when I get them). Protectionism and naval tradition are also superb. There are also religious beliefs (you know, like temples giving you +2 happiness or buying pagodas). If you have 30 cities, each one of these will give you extra 60 happiness. Incidentally, you can get both of these benefits from each city. In fact, if you manipulate religion well enough, over the course of the game, a city may have adopted multiple religions, and could acquire many happiness benefits.

I think the very obvious answer here is to stop growing your population. You don't magically gain unhappiness as the game goes on.

What is: India.

Actually the most powerful happiness tools don't start into late game. (All three ideologies have things with major happiness bonuses) I only have to monitor happiness in early to mid game.

KillerChick said:

I tried editing the happiness value of structures, using an xml editor, but no luck with that either. The program doesn't respond to the changes in the values.

Help!

Click to expand...

Make a post uin the Creation & Customization forum and I could help you editing a simple mod to update some hapiness values.

XML values are loaded when the game is created. Why not just use IGE to create a bunch of Fountains of Youths?

Are you allying with city states? A few merchantile cs allies can be a nice boost.

Are you using the happiness boosting social policies? Protectionism or naval tradition (on a water map) can be quite useful.

Are you making it to an ideology? Order especially has a number of happiness boosting policies.

Are you going for Notre Dame and The Forbidden Palace - key happiness boosting wonders?

If you really want to edit the xml, it might be simpler to boost the <HappinessDefault> in the CIV5HandicapInfos.xml for your preferred level. However, editing the buildings should work too, though I believe it won't change buildings you've already built in your cities. Also note that, if you have any DLC (i.e. you're playing BNW), you'd want to edit the building (and other) xml in its folder (i.e. DLC > expansion2), not in the main folder - which would only affect vanilla.

You are probably not maximizing your happiness properly. There is happiness out there you just have to find it.

KillerChick said:

The IGE does not allow for changing the happiness value.

Click to expand...

Just plant few fountains of youth..

To all who answered me, thanks so much for your suggestions! Ninakoru, will do on the post in Creation and Customization.

Posted in Civ5 - SDK / LUA. Thanks again!

I gave up for a while, but I'm back at it. In answer to other suggestions, I tried farming Fountains of Youth. Did not effect the happiness. As for policies and structures, take this for an example. If I conquer the capital city of India, with population 40, I'm going to pick up +40 unhappiness. That's at turn 400. The question is partly theoretical, to determine if the game is worth the continued time investment! What am I going to do at turn 800, when such a city will have a population of 80??

Thanks!

OK, so in my population challenge, I am running out of happiness in the 400s like you at population 950,000,000 or so unless I am India.

But the solution I think, believe it or not is to run Freedom because the specialist from so many high pop cites bring you down way too much.

Culture helps out happiness. This is so similar to the basic Civ 1 where artists used to generate happiness for cities when unhappy citizens arose. There's happiness buildings, coliseums, which are known to provide happiness. Luxuries and CS-made luxuries also contribute to happiness.

Go the Commerce policy tree because if you adopt Protectionism you get extra 2 happiness per luxury resource. For me this is the most game changing policy as it allows me to expand considerably.

Hoplite191 said:

Go the Commerce policy tree because if you adopt Protectionism you get extra 2 happiness per luxury resource. For me this is the most game changing policy as it allows me to expand considerably.

Click to expand...

Can be trumped on many maps with a wide empire by Exploration right half. +3 happiness per coastal city with all coastal structures. (These are buildings puppets will build)

But the most powerful ones are found in ideological tenets. Order has a lot of them for buildings. Freedom has a massive one for specialists.