How much (local) happiness do I have?

I'm currently playing a game as Persia. Since their unique ability is related to Golden Ages, I'm trying to maximize the amount of happiness I have (since excess happiness counts as points toward a Golden Age). I understand that there is a difference between local happiness and global happiness, and that local happiness (from colloseums, zoos, etc.) does not grow beyond the city population.

Here's my issue. I'm trying not to waste happiness by building happiness buildings before they're needed. Currently, before I choose my next city production I'm mousing over every building and adding up all the smileys, and as I'm getting happiness from many places (coastal buildings from social policy, commerce buildings from freedom tenet, temple from religion, unique building, and standard happiness buildings) it takes a while to do.

Is there a place where local happiness of a city is displayed, similar to how the total science or production of a city are displaced in the city screen?

I'm not aware of a place on the screen in base game that does this. (This change was added during one of the early vanilla balance patches and only in response to some players that turned on avoid growth very low and built colosseums in the outlaying areas and used extra happiness to grow their capital bigger, that was also in the days that each colosseum produced a lot more happiness.)

As long as your not clicking "avoid growth" and mostly hand building happiness buildings as opposed to cash buying them you are very unlikely to have the happiness buildings in any city exceed population. (And when you need to cash buy happiness structures, doing it in one of your highest population cities instead of your lowest should ensure you get max benefit)

If you've gone Freedom all your cities should have more population than it's possible for local happiness buildings to add up to with the possible exception of new conquests.

The cheat sheet is Stone Works, Religious happiness belief to Shrines, most faith religious buildings, and most cultural policy & ideological building happiness bonuses: +1 each
Circuses, Colosseums, Zoos, Stadiums, Religious happiness belief to Temples, Pagodas, and Order tenet ideological bonus to Monuments: +2 each

Circus Maximus : +5 (this one is definitely local, build in your largest city which is usually your capital)
Notre Dame: +10 (this one may be global)

There's a few other scattered world wonders with happiness benefits attached, but those are normally built in the capital as well so its not going to be an issue.

If you don't mind using mods, see UI - City Happiness

Yes, a list of local happiness for each city has always been available, even in vanilla.

On your F2 (city screen) there is a tab on the upper right: Happiness and Resources Resources & Happiness, and in its left column is local happiness. Those '+'s indicate they are clickable: click Local City Happiness.

joncnunn said:

....Circus Maximus : +5 (this one is definitely local, build in your largest city which is usually your capital)
Notre Dame: +10 (this one may be global)...

Click to expand...

These are definitely global.

whoward69 said:

If you don't mind using mods, see UI - City Happiness

Spoiler :

Click to expand...

It looks like that mod actually increased the happiness sources of buildings as well.

The theater & stadium were both reduced to only 2 happiness during the vanilla balance patches. (Plus theater renamed to Zoo for G&K)

joncnunn said:

It looks like that mod actually increased the happiness sources of buildings as well.

Click to expand...

No changes to the database, purely UI. But it is an old screen shot (hence no zoos)

You can buy happiness, too. If you're making happiness a priority and have too much gpt or gold, then why not import luxury resources to get that extra happiness? Social policies can also help in gaining happiness such as protectionism in the last commerce social policy which doubles the happiness from each luxury resource..