New strategy: Ignore happiness

Well currntly, low hapiness causes your empire to stop growing in 2 ways
1. no more city growth
2. no more settlers (so no new cities)

It Weakens the ability to take new cities but doesn't remove it.

Perhaps if it removed the ability to Annex cities then the strategy wouldn't work.


The way I would do it.

Revise the way golden ages work, so that the "Happiness Bucket" is more like experience... ie you don't lose the experience/happiness when a promotion/Golden Age is triggered, it just raises the threshold for the next one.

Then
+Happiness (like it is now)
-Happiness (like it is now)
-Happiness Bucket=Current "Very Unhappy" Penalties... With Dark Ages (at every ~1000)
A Dark Age would mean all cities with pop >1 lose 1 population.

Don't expect "dark ages" in a game so designed to "feel good"

It would defintely be a good mechanic, though.

A simpler mechanic would be disallowing Annexing when you are "very unhappy"

So your 'controlled population' can't grow. (you can only add puppet states)

To make it a more severe penalty, have the 50% production penalty apply to science as well as production.

Krikkitone said:

A simpler mechanic would be disallowing Annexing when you are "very unhappy"

So your 'controlled population' can't grow. (you can only add puppet states)

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As long as you are careful enough to keep your military stable in numbers this is not enough to stop you. Worse, puppets still add to your gold, research and culture points ( even worse in here, because SP culture costs are calculated with base on the cities you control, with exclusion of puppets ) ...

Krikkitone said:

To make it a more severe penalty, have the 50% production penalty apply to science as well as production.

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Now you're on to something If you add increased $rush penalties, it gets more like it

What I don't understand is why bother actually Annexing cities. Just make Puppets and only Annex the high production cities when happiness allows. You can have near continuos warfare, never going into unhappiness or effecting your social policy progression. What's the point in being in unhappiness and behind culturally when there is a perfectly good alternative: puppets.

Sure they suck up gold by building stuff. So what? Usually they build useful buildings that you would have wanted anyway, and the amount of gold, science and culture they provide surely negates any expenses that might occur with their liberal building habits. In fact this is probably the reason why we can't delete buildings or direct puppet city production, otherwise they would be just too powerful. I think they're ridiculously powerful already, and all this talk about how they suck up gold just isn't true, a puppet provides more gold than it drains.

Well

1. The puppet can also drain resources (Coal, Aluminum, and Uranium)
2. The gold provided is Not necessarily worth it

Also the puppets Do affect happiness., just not as much as annexed.


For a truly good 'penalty'

No Growth, Building Settlers, -33% combat, -50% Production

ADD
Conquered Cities stay in resistance.... conquered cities stay in resistance until you have reached 'slightly unhappy' (I don't think resisting cities contribute to your unhappiness do they?)

So if you are Very unhappy, your "productive population" cannot increase.... at all. (no city growth, and no new 'productive' cities)

and also if you a "Very Unhappy" your unhappiness cannot increase... at all (no new pop, and no new 'productive' cities)



Note: r-rolos was probably in response to me saying the -50% production should apply to science, culture, and GPP as well (which would also be good, but I edited out, in favor of a more stabilizing concept.

Like it Add a $rush penatly and you get my vote ( to avoid some exploit around $rushing units solely instead of making some of them. )

Celevin said:

1) The game's too young, and any imbalances I see might just be me being a newbie at it still. The game needs time to ripen. That's half the reason I post so much, I like it when people either prove me wrong or reinforce my ideas.

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Same reason that I post my thoughts in the balance-oriented threads. Because a month from now, when I know the mechanics inside and out, I may not remember what was opaque to me at the start.

So I try to record early frustrations where things aren't clear or aren't balanced or just simply aren't fun because your only choice on a given turn is to put everything to sleep and hit "next turn" a few times.

RobAnybody said:

If you decrease production AND gold/rushbuy with unhappiness, how do expect anyone to become happy again?

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Glad you asked.

1> Take an SP that adds to happiness (there are several)
2> Connect to a new luxury resource (or reestablish your connection to a pillaged/blockaded one)
3> Trade for a new luxury resource, either from another player or by making a city-state happy (which you can do through gifts of units or gold, neither of which is affected by this penalty).
4> Starve a city down so that it has less population, and hence less unhappiness. Obviously this won't help much, but every little bit helps.
5> Raze a recently-conquered city. Or, if you're already in the process of razing one, wait for it to finish dying.
6> Build a +happy building. Decreased production doesn't mean NO production. While this'd take a long time, a smart player would have started building one BEFORE he approached these thresholds.

See, the question really becomes, what exactly did you do to get to that horrible unhappiness level? Did someone pillage a luxury? Did they blockade your Whales? Did all of your cities grow at once? Did you go on a massive conquering spree without thinking about the unhappiness (the point of this thread)? Most of these are either temporary or fixable.

Also, it'll depend on which civ you are. Egypt, for instance, has a HUGE advantage (which is why I'd move it up from "tier 3" in Celevin's list): the Burial Tomb (replaces Temple) adds +2 happy and +2 culture, with no upkeep. Fantastic UB. The result is that even from the early eras, Egypt has far more happiness to work with than other civs. (Persia's Satrap Court is even better at +4 happy on a Bank, but it's a later-game building and can't be cheaply rushed.)

Egypt is going to graduate to the top tier if there is a serious Happiness rework.

If there is such a rework, then Happiness needs to affect all aspects of your empire. The exploit functions by maximizing the dimensions that Happiness does not affect - Culture, Gold and Science. This compensates for the growth and combat drawbacks of unhappiness.

Krill said:

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

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Wrong. The nature of warfare will change...perhaps undesirably. Players will invade, raze and resettle wherever feasible, since they can quickly regrow indigenous population with huge Maritime-fueled Food buckets. Only Wonders and capitals will be preserved.

It also might be worthwhile to reduce the costs and maintenance of Happiness buildings, and perhaps even modestly buff the effects, in order to enhance the desirability of capturing new territory. Players like to have huge empires.

Martin Alvito said:

Egypt is going to graduate to the top tier if there is a serious Happiness rework.

If there is such a rework, then Happiness needs to affect all aspects of your empire. The exploit functions by maximizing the dimensions that Happiness does not affect - Culture, Gold and Science. This compensates for the growth and combat drawbacks of unhappiness.
.

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Well if it Trully stopped ALL growth (Conquered cities did not move out of resistance) then it would be viable... once you hit "Very Unhappy" your empire would not get More productive.

ie the only point to taking cities would then be
1. Denial
2. Resource Access

Martin Alvito said:

Wrong. The nature of warfare will change...perhaps undesirably. Players will invade, raze and resettle wherever feasible, since they can quickly regrow indigenous population with huge Maritime-fueled Food buckets. Only Wonders and capitals will be preserved.

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Well Maritime needs to be fixed... too big of a benefit for large empires. (the food benefit should be fixed....like the culture benefit, +10 food for your empire... distributed equally, with the Capital taking the first 2 chunks.... biggest cities first)

and as you mentioned, a benefit to razing. Large cities should not be worth Razing. (although if you Don't want the populationof the large cities, just the territory, then raze+resettle should work, because you can found a city, stop growth and rush culture/buy tiles)

Also... cities being razed should have 0 production (hammers, culture, gold, science, GPP), and no ability to rush/defend themselves.

Krikkitone said:

Well Maritime needs to be fixed...

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This, and Food buildings need to not suck by comparison. Even at a 10 Food cap per ally, you'd still take the ally first.

Martin Alvito said:

This, and Food buildings need to not suck by comparison.

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One of the first things I plan on modding is the Granary. Remove the +2 food, and change it back to a toned-down version of its old effect: keep 25% of the food when you gain a new citizen. (The Hospital would be reduced to a stacking 25%, but I'm giving it the +2 food instead to compensate.) This is the biggest problem with these buldings; depending on your particular food resources (especially fish) and nearby city-states, you can get a tremendous amount of surplus food early on. In fact, you'll quickly outgrow your happiness limits if you're not careful, so the last thing we want is a flat +food bonus. Instead, it needs to be something that's still useful in later eras.

I realized part of the problem with happiness last night, as I was planning out a future-tech mod (three eras, ~45 techs) based on the old Alpha Centauri tech tree:
There is no tunability.
In earlier games, there would either be some sort of happiness specialist citizen, or a slider that would allow you to reduce income/research to gain happiness. So when unhappiness started to get a bit out of control, you could compensate for it temporarily without having to build a permanent structure.
Civ 5 doesn't have that. When unhappiness starts to get bad, you have to take what should be considered extreme actions. This makes the sort of strategy mentioned in the OP more likely; since it'd be so hard to pull out of the spiral, why bother?

So, one of my dream changes for my mod will be unlocking the Empath specialist in one of the first techs of the next era. An empath specialist would, simply, add +1 happiness. (Plus whatever other production and research bonuses your SPs and wonders give to all specialists.) Also, if possible, each should give 5 "great empath" GPPs, which'd lead to the Great Empath leader: can create a Monolith terrain improvement (when worked, +2 happy but no other tile bonuses), or can "Peace Bomb" (immediately ends all wars you're in and give a massive bonus to all diplomacy ratings).
It'd be easy enough to create a "Great Entertainer" to do something like this without needing a future setting, but that might overlap a bit too much with the Great Artist.

Spatzimaus said:

I realized part of the problem with happiness last night, as I was planning out a future-tech mod (three eras, ~45 techs) based on the old Alpha Centauri tech tree:
There is no tunability.
In earlier games, there would either be some sort of happiness specialist citizen, or a slider that would allow you to reduce income/research to gain happiness. So when unhappiness started to get a bit out of control, you could compensate for it temporarily without having to build a permanent structure.
Civ 5 doesn't have that. When unhappiness starts to get bad, you have to take what should be considered extreme actions. This makes the sort of strategy mentioned in the OP more likely; since it'd be so hard to pull out of the spiral, why bother?.

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It doesn't have tunability, but it is a Soft cap.

When you go negative happiness, what are the penalties
- golden Age points
-growth

Now what does growth give... it gives population, and population gives productivity, but also unhappiness.

So.... If you go Negative Happiness, that is the game telling you something needs to be done. AND giving you time to do it.

ie truly Bad stuff only happens at -10, so when you go into -1 to -9, you
1. will not get much MORE unhappiness (unless you annex/conquer cities) because you won't add more population.
2. Don't get any significant penalties


Basically Total Happy+10 = Total Population you are allowed to have
If you go over
1. 'Natural' pop growth slows (to give you time to raise the cap, or to have you manually stop growth)
2. 'Natural' pop growth stops


I think that if they
Changed the 'Very Unhappy' to

No natural growth, No Settlers, Conquered cities stay in resistance (eliminate the 50% hammers and the combat penalty, but add the resistance)

Then it would be fine, the Happy+10 would be a hard cap on total population.

I think that if they
Changed the 'Very Unhappy' to

No natural growth, No Settlers, Conquered cities stay in resistance (eliminate the 50% hammers and the combat penalty, but add the resistance)

Then it would be fine, the Happy+10 would be a hard cap on total population.

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So you would keep the ability of keep the fight until the AI out of the game ? Not good ...

r_rolo1 said:

So you would keep the ability of keep the fight until the AI out of the game ? Not good ...

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Well in this case, it is just as if you razed the cities (except you get the territory/resources, and the AI can recapture them)

I'm not sure if cities in resistance give you their unhappiness/maintenance costs, but they don't produce anything.

I tried keeping my happiness positive while expanding the last game and it was awfully hard. The best advice I found was to raze all of the non-capital cities and then place a settler on the city remains. That way you don't have to build any courthouses or deal with occupied city unhappiness. But when I think of all of the lost production due to building Colosseams in every city, I think you might be on to something.

@Krikkitone

You would still have the advantage of playing home inside the captured land, and the use of roads without paying for them. Not such a good bonus as the current situation , but substantial.

r_rolo1 said:

@Krikkitone

You would still have the advantage of playing home inside the captured land, and the use of roads without paying for them. Not such a good bonus as the current situation , but substantial.

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You do have to pay for the roads I believe if they are in your culture.

Maybe keep the combat penalty (since you really only reach that stage through combat)

But replace the -50% production with 'perma-resistance'. (and the inability to Annex)

Spatzimaus said:

RobAnybody said:

If you decrease production AND gold/rushbuy with unhappiness, how do expect anyone to become happy again?

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Glad you asked.

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Thanks. But you probably should've read the rest of my post first.

Spatzimaus said:

1> Take an SP that adds to happiness (there are several)

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RobAnybody said:

Barring trading for more resources, which would presumably have already been done as much as possible before hitting that point, if you make it so the player can't build anything & can't buy anything, they're just going to be stuck being unhappy forever, especially if the unhappiness was caused by a large empire (so they may never get another SP).

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see bolded, already addressed

Spatzimaus said:

2> Connect to a new luxury resource (or reestablish your connection to a pillaged/blockaded one)
3> Trade for a new luxury resource, either from another player or by making a city-state happy (which you can do through gifts of units or gold, neither of which is affected by this penalty).

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RobAnybody said:

Barring trading for more resources, which would presumably have already been done as much as possible before hitting that point, if you make it so the player can't build anything & can't buy anything, they're just going to be stuck being unhappy forever, especially if the unhappiness was caused by a large empire (so they may never get another SP).

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see bolded, already addressed

4> Starve a city down so that it has less population, and hence less unhappiness. Obviously this won't help much, but every little bit helps.

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Indeed. Will not help. When you're at -15-20 Unhappy, this will take forever to matter and/or may eternally cripple your cities.

5> Raze a recently-conquered city. Or, if you're already in the process of razing one, wait for it to finish dying.

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This is my preferred solution. See here where I suggested that last week. Raze every city that isn't a new-resource-grabber or a Capital. Not just raze a recently-conquered city. Raze 90% of cities upon conqering.

6> Build a +happy building. Decreased production doesn't mean NO production. While this'd take a long time, a smart player would have started building one BEFORE he approached these thresholds.

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If you are building stuff, you are not playing optimally. Again, see the post I linked to. You buy stuff. You buy Coliseums if you need them, but razing means you don't really need them as often. The OP's Ignore Happiness strategy (I know, not a "strategy", but a bug report) pales next to "don't ignore Happiness, but don't generate unnecessary Unhappiness by razing" strategy.

See, the question really becomes, what exactly did you do to get to that horrible unhappiness level? Did someone pillage a luxury? Did they blockade your Whales? Did all of your cities grow at once? Did you go on a massive conquering spree without thinking about the unhappiness (the point of this thread)? Most of these are either temporary or fixable.

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*I* never got "that horrible unhappiness level". The OP did, & proposed debilitaing production+gold+science+rushbuy changes (or, I guess, people in this thread did). But that's all really irrelevant. You should be *razing cities* instead of *keeping them & ignoring their Unhappiness*.

Also, it'll depend on which civ you are. Egypt, for instance, has a HUGE advantage (which is why I'd move it up from "tier 3" in Celevin's list): the Burial Tomb (replaces Temple) adds +2 happy and +2 culture, with no upkeep. Fantastic UB. The result is that even from the early eras, Egypt has far more happiness to work with than other civs. (Persia's Satrap Court is even better at +4 happy on a Bank, but it's a later-game building and can't be cheaply rushed.)

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No. Civilization doesn't matter. The mistake you're making (& the OP is making) is generating all that Unhappiness & either ignoring it or seeking greater penalties for having it. Raze. Raze. Raze. No unhappiness. No "solutions" needed.