danaphanous
religious fanatic
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2013
- Messages
- 1,501
This is an old topic, often hashed out by the community, but after learning about the local happiness cap (I knew the numbers didn't add up on my wide games!) I'm annoyed again and wanted to talk about this.
I'm aware that the devs wanted civ V to be a game where focusing small or expanding rapidly both work but as many others have commented I fear that going wide is now actively punished in an arbitrary way and a result civ V is less fun in some ways for me. Playing small and building loads of buildings and growing tall was fun for a few games, but NOT as fun as my expansion, religious, and warring games. It's basically just a click to the end sort of game with little excitement for me.
But, the actions that result in more uncertainty and fun: (war and expansion) are both punished terribly in civ V. I have to wonder what their goal was in making two of the most fun facets of the civ series so much harder to do effectively. I love Civ V and a lot of the changes it introduced (religion, ideologies, social policy, tourism, 1 UPT) but this continues to annoy me and I've played countless hours with weird experimental games to find strategies that got around the penalties so I could REX like the old days. If they had even allowed a slider in setup that allowed you to set the penalties that would have been great and allowed players to play as they wished, but they locked it behind the scenes so the only recourse is mods. As a result the most boring way to play: (Tall/Tradition) is the most competitive.
Here is a list of my top most annoying/arbitrary features and why I think they just detract from the fun of this game and how I think they could've been done better.
1. Global Happiness: Civ V moved to a global happiness system. As a result many nonintuitive things happen. Now settling/acquiring a new city can suddenly lurch your entire empire into unhappiness, esp. on small maps.
Warring can only be done with a big buffer of happiness as a result because not only does conquering a city add the extra city penalty but also an occupation penalty and a resistance penalty in the beginning. We've played the game for so long we've gotten used to this but I see new players complain about it all the time. It's nonintuitive and unexpected, and it's bad game design. Why should dissenters over in a city I just conquered make my entire prosperous empire unhappy? Civ IV's system was far superior in my opinion with happiness for each city independent, the game desperately needs to return to this if warfare is ever going to be fun/fair/intuitive again. Because of these problems the new domination victory requires only capitals because you'd get too unhappy otherwise and many players burn all but the capitals to keep happy. Forcing players to burn nice cities is sad and unrealistic in my opinion, but worse is the capital rule for domination. it means on small maps I can snipe 3 capitals in a few turns and win without really taking someone down. It creates a cheap way to win without really winning, esp. with nukes and planes. I really think puppeted cities should not add to the global unhappiness pool but just affect themselves as they aren't really a part of the empire. The question is: well what limits players from conquering the whole world then? Something should I guess, but tanking -15 unhappiness every city I take is not an acceptable substitute. As annoying as they were I liked war weariness and corruption far better. What really is supposed to stop a warmonger is other nations banding together and the subjugated populations resisting. As you conquer more and more you have to leave troops behind to keep rebellion from happening meaning less on the front lines and more maintenance costs. Also, ideally the AI's war skills need to be improved and they need to unite against an aggressor that is clearly taking them out one by one and actually go offensive rather then defending. It is hard to protect a sprawling empire so I think this should work well in forcing a warmonger to sue for peace, at least for a time.
2. Local Happiness Cap: As if the above wasn't enough they had to complicate it even further by making it so that a local city can't produce more happiness then it's population creates unhappiness. This is called the local happiness cap. So the devs are saying they want a global happiness system, but then making it local for the purposes of happiness generation (a few sources are global like luxes/wonders). This sounds fair until your realize this means no city can EVER overcome the happiness it produces. Because cities generate unhappiness based off population AND by increasing the "number of cities" and you can't undo the number of cities unhappiness.
So every city you found adds more and more unhappiness that it's buildings can't undo. Exception to this is India, however they nerfed the happiness cap with them too to 67% of a citizen, so you only break even at super-high population so hardly helpful. So going wide can't happen without more and more outside happiness sources like luxuries or mercantile CS which are finite. The result is on a large map you have to leave vast amounts of land unsettled purely for the abitrary reason that there is not another luxury over there. This is what they wanted I guess, but it's both arbitrary and not that fun to play. Settling, expanding, and war are some of the most fun parts of the games for many players and they have been made very formulaic and short by this system. Conquering the world is hardly as fun in Civ V when you had to burn 2/3 of it to pull it off. I personally think the local happiness cap should offset both the population and the settling penalty. Only then will it be fair. There is still a penalty that way but at least it isn't permanently limiting expansion. It would make it so if you keep on top of your happiness buildings you can keep growing. As it is now you can build every happiness building and have enough to stay positive but you'll still be negative due to that unhappiness from number of cities.
3. The city number penalties to science and culture and national wonders. If the above 2 were the only penalties there'd still be a few competitive edges to goign wide. You'd be struggling with happiness and growth but at least you'd have the option to generate more culture, grow a bigger/stronger religion, have a greater total production capacity, and generate a lot of science and innovation from the many people in your empire. This is realistic to history. The large empires did well at all these things. But the devs though this was unfair too so they introduced the science and culture penalties for going wide. Every city beyond your capital makes every tech cost 5% more and every social policy cost 10% more after the next one is reached. And you can't undo it by selling/burning cities (the ratchet system). Also national wonders get more expensive to make, as if building them wasn't hard enough in a wide ever-expanding empire
The effect is that you can actually make less social progress and do WORSE in science by having more people and a bigger empire. It can be overcome but it requires you to get your buildings up VERY quick and grow very fast, which is not very feasible being nerfed already by happiness and having less money. Many games if there was just more happiness to be got somewhere I could grow my new cities rapidly enough to overcome these penalties but I find there is absolutely no happiness left anywhere to acquire in the entire world. I think these penalties would be ok to work around and be balanced if either 1 or 2 was not a factor but with all 3, just as they wanted I guess, you cannot expand smoothly in civ V. You will eventually hit a wall of pain and have to stop regardless of if there is more land to settle nearby.
A few changes would have made this more balanced. If they had:
1. made local city happiness include the number of city happiness so cities could offset that with their buildings.
2. provided more global happiness sources beyond wonders, CS, and luxuries
3. made puppeted cities not add to the global unhappiness but only affect themselves like they do for the science/culture penalties
Civ V, would be way, way more fun for me.
We've lived with these rules so long with civ V we've gotten used to them but I posit that they are not only making civ V less fun than previous iterations but limiting player creativity as well. I try my best to mix up my games and try alternate strategies and it's enough to win on immortal level with semi-large empires (10-13 cities) but one I can never try is a very large empire due to these rules. There is a finite amount of global happiness sources in the world and when I get all I can I cannot make more cities. I'm aware the penalties are a bit less on low levels of play but the AI is just so bad at those levels I really can't play below emperor without it being a disappointing game. It doesn't help also that one of the major sources of global happiness: Mercantile City States, is unstable and is constantly being fought over with the AI. It's a bit naive to expect to keep all the city states or rely on them in your plans for a Deity game for instance, hence I really think there needs to be another source of permanent global happiness.
Does anyone agree with me? If so what do you do now that you're bored of tall games and yearning for a truly wide game like we could play in Civ IV? I can get up to around 13 cities usually but that is the max and it requires frequent periods where I have to stop growth all over my empire. I play this on immortal and it usually wins me the game but it is a bit tedious with the 3 rules limited wide play. Are there any mods you can recommend because I am sick of above three vanilla BNW rules that are severely hampering my creativity.
UDPATE AND EDITS!!!
Thanks so much everyone for your feedback/opinions and strategies on this thread! Talking with you guys and researching I've learned a lot. I still think the above 3 things at the same time are a little over the top but I now know how to better REX and expand systematically. I'll share some of what I know now for future players summarized here:
I think I've found settings/playstyle that are quite competitive in the REX way I wish to play regardless of difficulty level. Here's what I've discovered, correct me if any of this is wrong:
1. Play on Huge for the best REX game: Not only does the world have every luxury available the penalties per city are much smaller and the AI runs out of steam giving you space to expand for a long time. Reduced penalties are: Culture: 7% penalty per city (means your policy costs double after 14 cities and triple after 29) I find early game with one RB and fast monuments there is almost no slowdown if timed right, Science: 3% (science costs double after 33 cities - easy to manage), unhappiness: 1.8 added per new city.
2. Get a religion with happiness buffs: On immortal RB's may be hard to score but usually something is left like +2 happiness from gardens or temples. Both are very nice and passive way to get earlier local happiness and grow your cities 2 population taller. If a neighbor has even more happiness/culture options in their religion it may be advantageous to let it spread through your empire a while but nothing gets you the benifits faster than founding your own. Also the ceremonial burial and peace-loving founder beliefs are GLOBAL happiness. (This is BIG!) So though it looks weak it bypasses the local happiness cap in cities and directly combats things like city settling penalties allowing every extra smiley to mean more cities!
3. Go liberty and get to meritocracy as quick as possible: Happiness from city connections is a seperate category and I believe from my observations it is AGAIN one of the rare sources of GLOBAL happiness, bypassing the local city cap. You can think of it as transforming that 1.8 unhappiness per founded city to 0.8! That means every unique luxury supports the settling penalty of 5 cities! That's a lot! The -5% unhappiness from citizens in non-occupied is small but it does add up as it is also global and across the board. The effect makes it so that after 20 population a city + city connection bonus a city can actually overcome its settling cost and be purely happiness neutral! (India can do it earlier) Also, make sure to get the early Pyramids. The free workers and faster working will much more quickly connect your empire activating the city connection bonuses and meritocracy. And the GE point often translates into a free Renaissance wonder that may have even more happiness effects!
4. Now that you've minimized the global settling penalties, limit growth and only let cities grow as much as they can support locally in happiness : Exception maybe the capital to keep it competitive and generate good science/trade routes. You can consume the base happiness and a few luxes to keep it growing. Now that every city only has a base unhappiness of 0.8 plus global -5% reduction for population that local happiness cap is not so bad. Production-focus them and avoid growth until you build the circus, a religious building, colosseum, etc. and let it grow by the amount of new happiness each time you finish it. This means you are never wasting happiness with the local cap. This is where different civs or a religion really shine. Any with extra early happiness buildings means every city can grow that much taller. Celts for instance, I find can keep growing very, very well and get taller cities quite quickly that stay neutral.
5. Find and at least befriend mercantile CS (usually pretty easy): Focus on friending all the ones you know as priority. Each one gives +3 happiness to your GLOBAL happiness meaning an additional 4 cities almost. And keeping friend status is a lot easier and more certain then ally status. But, if they ask for a lucky quest being friends can easily mean you jump up to ally and mercantile CS contain 1 unique luxury and often a 2nd as well. It can make a HUGE difference, though don't rely on keeping more than 1 mercantile ally in the beginning as it is an uncertain source of happiness.
6. Forget rationalism, make commerce your second priority: Commerce fixes the lack of early gold problem that the liberty tree has and gets you a lot more gold for your wide empire. This means cash-buying loads of infrastructure, keeping CS allies, etc! It will help a lot in science by giving science from trading posts and allowing you to instantly cash-buy many science buildings to keep up so it makes a nice 2nd choice for science behind rationalism as well. If you get to the end it also transforms every unique lux you have into 6 happiness (50% more) meaning your empire can grow even wider or start to grow tall at this point.
7. Hit or miss, but finding the Natural wonders early means an extra 1 global happiness each which covers the settling penalties of 1 new city each time. If you can score them in-borders several generate happiness just by being in your territory. I never really prioritized exploring or finding them as the effect seemed small but on huge/wide it can make a difference finding them early and there are a LOT in the world!
8. It can be hard to ensure you take them on high difficulties but certain wonders are very nice. Any that provide happiness are global sources, which directly support more cities. A favorite of many wide players is Notre Dame with the highest bonus happiness in the game. AI beeline it on immortal and higher but if timed properly your Great Engineer from the pyramids might take it for free. Another amazing wonder for wide is the Forbidden Palace. It can be huge, reducing unhappiness -10% across the board. With meritocracy you're now talking a global -15% reduction which means cities can overcome the settling penalties and be happiness neutral and supporting yourself in happiness in every city by population 6-7. If you get both I imagine you could literally ICS forever like the old days but I've never managed it on immortal yet. Will try next game! If you get through liberty fast and are not yet medieval opening patronage to build this wonder and get a reduced -25% decay in CS friends/allies can really help. If nothing else that reduced rate gives you the edge in keeping allies and friends.
9. Ideologies hit after this meaning loads of local happiness sources: After commerce the timing should be just about perfect to open ideologies. All of them immediately give a lot more local happiness meaning your entire empire can start to grow tall. Order has many local happiness sources and is my choice for a peaceful commercial wide empire. Go autocracy if you are warring frequently at this point as it has the same, if not more sources if you are capturing cities. Either way your wide, powerful empire is now free to grow into a monster of production, science, and culture. Have not tested, but the 1/2 unhappiness from specialists may beat the local happiness cap. I'm not sure. If it does, this means every specialist needs only 0.5 happiness meaning you can again, possibly generate more happiness then could otherwise be supported locally and export it to other cities. As in wide empires the cities are more crowded they are often running specialists by pop 10 or so so it could work. It all depends on if that happiness beats the local cap. If it doesn't it will still help your empire grow tall though.
Civs good at this strategy:
Rome: going wide with Rome is very nice. They don't directly help with happiness but legions can duel as defense/deterrance, early warring, and road-build to take the pressure off your workers. Due to the 25% reduction in cost for buildings in Rome the nation is perfect for easily getting every happiness building along the way quickly without distracting from other infrastructure. All in all you can build a strong wide empire much faster with them and it is even better if they have ivory/horses/stone near the capital as you'll get the circus/stone-works/stable discounts forever after.
India: A fairly well-known fact. India doubles city founding penalties but halves population penalty. On huge map this means 3.6 unhappiness base (2.6 after meritocracy). It may seem bad, but every city you make will grow nearly twice as tall. They are able to competitively keep up in science as a result. On huge they do very, very well as a result. They would be even more OP but their local city happiness cap is adjusted to 66% per citizen meaning that 1 local happiness doesn't directly translate into 2 citizens. However, I find their ability still enables some interesting things. The math says that due to their ability they can produce more happiness locally than population (16% more). As a result only they can produce enough happiness locally to overcome their higher settling penalty and eventually be happiness-neutral. Late-game this means they can have super-tall cities with no happiness hit at all meaning they can literally ICS forever.
Celts: One of my favorites. Their unique abilities ensure their pick of any religious beliefs. This means they can get RB's at any difficulty which enable them to grow taller. Their opera house also gives an extra +3 happiness meaning their cities will be growing at least 3 taller midgame (more if supported by religion).
There are probably more but those are my 3 favorite. Any religious civ or civ that gives extra happiness to early buildings is good at this.
I'm aware that the devs wanted civ V to be a game where focusing small or expanding rapidly both work but as many others have commented I fear that going wide is now actively punished in an arbitrary way and a result civ V is less fun in some ways for me. Playing small and building loads of buildings and growing tall was fun for a few games, but NOT as fun as my expansion, religious, and warring games. It's basically just a click to the end sort of game with little excitement for me.
But, the actions that result in more uncertainty and fun: (war and expansion) are both punished terribly in civ V. I have to wonder what their goal was in making two of the most fun facets of the civ series so much harder to do effectively. I love Civ V and a lot of the changes it introduced (religion, ideologies, social policy, tourism, 1 UPT) but this continues to annoy me and I've played countless hours with weird experimental games to find strategies that got around the penalties so I could REX like the old days. If they had even allowed a slider in setup that allowed you to set the penalties that would have been great and allowed players to play as they wished, but they locked it behind the scenes so the only recourse is mods. As a result the most boring way to play: (Tall/Tradition) is the most competitive.
Here is a list of my top most annoying/arbitrary features and why I think they just detract from the fun of this game and how I think they could've been done better.
1. Global Happiness: Civ V moved to a global happiness system. As a result many nonintuitive things happen. Now settling/acquiring a new city can suddenly lurch your entire empire into unhappiness, esp. on small maps.
Spoiler :
Warring can only be done with a big buffer of happiness as a result because not only does conquering a city add the extra city penalty but also an occupation penalty and a resistance penalty in the beginning. We've played the game for so long we've gotten used to this but I see new players complain about it all the time. It's nonintuitive and unexpected, and it's bad game design. Why should dissenters over in a city I just conquered make my entire prosperous empire unhappy? Civ IV's system was far superior in my opinion with happiness for each city independent, the game desperately needs to return to this if warfare is ever going to be fun/fair/intuitive again. Because of these problems the new domination victory requires only capitals because you'd get too unhappy otherwise and many players burn all but the capitals to keep happy. Forcing players to burn nice cities is sad and unrealistic in my opinion, but worse is the capital rule for domination. it means on small maps I can snipe 3 capitals in a few turns and win without really taking someone down. It creates a cheap way to win without really winning, esp. with nukes and planes. I really think puppeted cities should not add to the global unhappiness pool but just affect themselves as they aren't really a part of the empire. The question is: well what limits players from conquering the whole world then? Something should I guess, but tanking -15 unhappiness every city I take is not an acceptable substitute. As annoying as they were I liked war weariness and corruption far better. What really is supposed to stop a warmonger is other nations banding together and the subjugated populations resisting. As you conquer more and more you have to leave troops behind to keep rebellion from happening meaning less on the front lines and more maintenance costs. Also, ideally the AI's war skills need to be improved and they need to unite against an aggressor that is clearly taking them out one by one and actually go offensive rather then defending. It is hard to protect a sprawling empire so I think this should work well in forcing a warmonger to sue for peace, at least for a time.
2. Local Happiness Cap: As if the above wasn't enough they had to complicate it even further by making it so that a local city can't produce more happiness then it's population creates unhappiness. This is called the local happiness cap. So the devs are saying they want a global happiness system, but then making it local for the purposes of happiness generation (a few sources are global like luxes/wonders). This sounds fair until your realize this means no city can EVER overcome the happiness it produces. Because cities generate unhappiness based off population AND by increasing the "number of cities" and you can't undo the number of cities unhappiness.
Spoiler :
So every city you found adds more and more unhappiness that it's buildings can't undo. Exception to this is India, however they nerfed the happiness cap with them too to 67% of a citizen, so you only break even at super-high population so hardly helpful. So going wide can't happen without more and more outside happiness sources like luxuries or mercantile CS which are finite. The result is on a large map you have to leave vast amounts of land unsettled purely for the abitrary reason that there is not another luxury over there. This is what they wanted I guess, but it's both arbitrary and not that fun to play. Settling, expanding, and war are some of the most fun parts of the games for many players and they have been made very formulaic and short by this system. Conquering the world is hardly as fun in Civ V when you had to burn 2/3 of it to pull it off. I personally think the local happiness cap should offset both the population and the settling penalty. Only then will it be fair. There is still a penalty that way but at least it isn't permanently limiting expansion. It would make it so if you keep on top of your happiness buildings you can keep growing. As it is now you can build every happiness building and have enough to stay positive but you'll still be negative due to that unhappiness from number of cities.
3. The city number penalties to science and culture and national wonders. If the above 2 were the only penalties there'd still be a few competitive edges to goign wide. You'd be struggling with happiness and growth but at least you'd have the option to generate more culture, grow a bigger/stronger religion, have a greater total production capacity, and generate a lot of science and innovation from the many people in your empire. This is realistic to history. The large empires did well at all these things. But the devs though this was unfair too so they introduced the science and culture penalties for going wide. Every city beyond your capital makes every tech cost 5% more and every social policy cost 10% more after the next one is reached. And you can't undo it by selling/burning cities (the ratchet system). Also national wonders get more expensive to make, as if building them wasn't hard enough in a wide ever-expanding empire
Spoiler :
The effect is that you can actually make less social progress and do WORSE in science by having more people and a bigger empire. It can be overcome but it requires you to get your buildings up VERY quick and grow very fast, which is not very feasible being nerfed already by happiness and having less money. Many games if there was just more happiness to be got somewhere I could grow my new cities rapidly enough to overcome these penalties but I find there is absolutely no happiness left anywhere to acquire in the entire world. I think these penalties would be ok to work around and be balanced if either 1 or 2 was not a factor but with all 3, just as they wanted I guess, you cannot expand smoothly in civ V. You will eventually hit a wall of pain and have to stop regardless of if there is more land to settle nearby.
A few changes would have made this more balanced. If they had:
1. made local city happiness include the number of city happiness so cities could offset that with their buildings.
2. provided more global happiness sources beyond wonders, CS, and luxuries
3. made puppeted cities not add to the global unhappiness but only affect themselves like they do for the science/culture penalties
Civ V, would be way, way more fun for me.
We've lived with these rules so long with civ V we've gotten used to them but I posit that they are not only making civ V less fun than previous iterations but limiting player creativity as well. I try my best to mix up my games and try alternate strategies and it's enough to win on immortal level with semi-large empires (10-13 cities) but one I can never try is a very large empire due to these rules. There is a finite amount of global happiness sources in the world and when I get all I can I cannot make more cities. I'm aware the penalties are a bit less on low levels of play but the AI is just so bad at those levels I really can't play below emperor without it being a disappointing game. It doesn't help also that one of the major sources of global happiness: Mercantile City States, is unstable and is constantly being fought over with the AI. It's a bit naive to expect to keep all the city states or rely on them in your plans for a Deity game for instance, hence I really think there needs to be another source of permanent global happiness.
Does anyone agree with me? If so what do you do now that you're bored of tall games and yearning for a truly wide game like we could play in Civ IV? I can get up to around 13 cities usually but that is the max and it requires frequent periods where I have to stop growth all over my empire. I play this on immortal and it usually wins me the game but it is a bit tedious with the 3 rules limited wide play. Are there any mods you can recommend because I am sick of above three vanilla BNW rules that are severely hampering my creativity.
UDPATE AND EDITS!!!
Thanks so much everyone for your feedback/opinions and strategies on this thread! Talking with you guys and researching I've learned a lot. I still think the above 3 things at the same time are a little over the top but I now know how to better REX and expand systematically. I'll share some of what I know now for future players summarized here:
I think I've found settings/playstyle that are quite competitive in the REX way I wish to play regardless of difficulty level. Here's what I've discovered, correct me if any of this is wrong:
1. Play on Huge for the best REX game: Not only does the world have every luxury available the penalties per city are much smaller and the AI runs out of steam giving you space to expand for a long time. Reduced penalties are: Culture: 7% penalty per city (means your policy costs double after 14 cities and triple after 29) I find early game with one RB and fast monuments there is almost no slowdown if timed right, Science: 3% (science costs double after 33 cities - easy to manage), unhappiness: 1.8 added per new city.
2. Get a religion with happiness buffs: On immortal RB's may be hard to score but usually something is left like +2 happiness from gardens or temples. Both are very nice and passive way to get earlier local happiness and grow your cities 2 population taller. If a neighbor has even more happiness/culture options in their religion it may be advantageous to let it spread through your empire a while but nothing gets you the benifits faster than founding your own. Also the ceremonial burial and peace-loving founder beliefs are GLOBAL happiness. (This is BIG!) So though it looks weak it bypasses the local happiness cap in cities and directly combats things like city settling penalties allowing every extra smiley to mean more cities!
3. Go liberty and get to meritocracy as quick as possible: Happiness from city connections is a seperate category and I believe from my observations it is AGAIN one of the rare sources of GLOBAL happiness, bypassing the local city cap. You can think of it as transforming that 1.8 unhappiness per founded city to 0.8! That means every unique luxury supports the settling penalty of 5 cities! That's a lot! The -5% unhappiness from citizens in non-occupied is small but it does add up as it is also global and across the board. The effect makes it so that after 20 population a city + city connection bonus a city can actually overcome its settling cost and be purely happiness neutral! (India can do it earlier) Also, make sure to get the early Pyramids. The free workers and faster working will much more quickly connect your empire activating the city connection bonuses and meritocracy. And the GE point often translates into a free Renaissance wonder that may have even more happiness effects!
4. Now that you've minimized the global settling penalties, limit growth and only let cities grow as much as they can support locally in happiness : Exception maybe the capital to keep it competitive and generate good science/trade routes. You can consume the base happiness and a few luxes to keep it growing. Now that every city only has a base unhappiness of 0.8 plus global -5% reduction for population that local happiness cap is not so bad. Production-focus them and avoid growth until you build the circus, a religious building, colosseum, etc. and let it grow by the amount of new happiness each time you finish it. This means you are never wasting happiness with the local cap. This is where different civs or a religion really shine. Any with extra early happiness buildings means every city can grow that much taller. Celts for instance, I find can keep growing very, very well and get taller cities quite quickly that stay neutral.
5. Find and at least befriend mercantile CS (usually pretty easy): Focus on friending all the ones you know as priority. Each one gives +3 happiness to your GLOBAL happiness meaning an additional 4 cities almost. And keeping friend status is a lot easier and more certain then ally status. But, if they ask for a lucky quest being friends can easily mean you jump up to ally and mercantile CS contain 1 unique luxury and often a 2nd as well. It can make a HUGE difference, though don't rely on keeping more than 1 mercantile ally in the beginning as it is an uncertain source of happiness.
6. Forget rationalism, make commerce your second priority: Commerce fixes the lack of early gold problem that the liberty tree has and gets you a lot more gold for your wide empire. This means cash-buying loads of infrastructure, keeping CS allies, etc! It will help a lot in science by giving science from trading posts and allowing you to instantly cash-buy many science buildings to keep up so it makes a nice 2nd choice for science behind rationalism as well. If you get to the end it also transforms every unique lux you have into 6 happiness (50% more) meaning your empire can grow even wider or start to grow tall at this point.
7. Hit or miss, but finding the Natural wonders early means an extra 1 global happiness each which covers the settling penalties of 1 new city each time. If you can score them in-borders several generate happiness just by being in your territory. I never really prioritized exploring or finding them as the effect seemed small but on huge/wide it can make a difference finding them early and there are a LOT in the world!
8. It can be hard to ensure you take them on high difficulties but certain wonders are very nice. Any that provide happiness are global sources, which directly support more cities. A favorite of many wide players is Notre Dame with the highest bonus happiness in the game. AI beeline it on immortal and higher but if timed properly your Great Engineer from the pyramids might take it for free. Another amazing wonder for wide is the Forbidden Palace. It can be huge, reducing unhappiness -10% across the board. With meritocracy you're now talking a global -15% reduction which means cities can overcome the settling penalties and be happiness neutral and supporting yourself in happiness in every city by population 6-7. If you get both I imagine you could literally ICS forever like the old days but I've never managed it on immortal yet. Will try next game! If you get through liberty fast and are not yet medieval opening patronage to build this wonder and get a reduced -25% decay in CS friends/allies can really help. If nothing else that reduced rate gives you the edge in keeping allies and friends.
9. Ideologies hit after this meaning loads of local happiness sources: After commerce the timing should be just about perfect to open ideologies. All of them immediately give a lot more local happiness meaning your entire empire can start to grow tall. Order has many local happiness sources and is my choice for a peaceful commercial wide empire. Go autocracy if you are warring frequently at this point as it has the same, if not more sources if you are capturing cities. Either way your wide, powerful empire is now free to grow into a monster of production, science, and culture. Have not tested, but the 1/2 unhappiness from specialists may beat the local happiness cap. I'm not sure. If it does, this means every specialist needs only 0.5 happiness meaning you can again, possibly generate more happiness then could otherwise be supported locally and export it to other cities. As in wide empires the cities are more crowded they are often running specialists by pop 10 or so so it could work. It all depends on if that happiness beats the local cap. If it doesn't it will still help your empire grow tall though.
Civs good at this strategy:
Rome: going wide with Rome is very nice. They don't directly help with happiness but legions can duel as defense/deterrance, early warring, and road-build to take the pressure off your workers. Due to the 25% reduction in cost for buildings in Rome the nation is perfect for easily getting every happiness building along the way quickly without distracting from other infrastructure. All in all you can build a strong wide empire much faster with them and it is even better if they have ivory/horses/stone near the capital as you'll get the circus/stone-works/stable discounts forever after.
India: A fairly well-known fact. India doubles city founding penalties but halves population penalty. On huge map this means 3.6 unhappiness base (2.6 after meritocracy). It may seem bad, but every city you make will grow nearly twice as tall. They are able to competitively keep up in science as a result. On huge they do very, very well as a result. They would be even more OP but their local city happiness cap is adjusted to 66% per citizen meaning that 1 local happiness doesn't directly translate into 2 citizens. However, I find their ability still enables some interesting things. The math says that due to their ability they can produce more happiness locally than population (16% more). As a result only they can produce enough happiness locally to overcome their higher settling penalty and eventually be happiness-neutral. Late-game this means they can have super-tall cities with no happiness hit at all meaning they can literally ICS forever.
Celts: One of my favorites. Their unique abilities ensure their pick of any religious beliefs. This means they can get RB's at any difficulty which enable them to grow taller. Their opera house also gives an extra +3 happiness meaning their cities will be growing at least 3 taller midgame (more if supported by religion).
There are probably more but those are my 3 favorite. Any religious civ or civ that gives extra happiness to early buildings is good at this.