Happiness system as funspoiler

[spironline]

How do you cope? Expanding, mili or peacefully, all but impossible I think. Any thoughts?

[DaveGold]

At various stages of the game you find extra happiness through a mass coliseum building program, traded luxuries, policies, city state luxuries, etc. This gives you the happiness to expand.

[forty2j]

I'm currently playing France on King level with +50 happiness, with 3 owned cities and 4 puppets, and an avg. pop of 15. I'm honestly not sure how people end up with happiness issues, unless they get terribly unlucky with luxury resources.

[spironline]

Problems start when u have say four own cities and four or more puppets. No one will trade because u went to war, but attacking them is severly hampered by happiness

[forty2j]

Originally Posted by spironline

Problems start when u have say four own cities and four or more puppets. No one will trade because u went to war, but attacking them is severly hampered by happiness

Try not going to war with EVERYONE.. unless you're going for Domination?

I declared an early war on Siam (within 10 turns of getting horses), because they were in my way. I left them with 1 city to avoid the warmonger diplo hit.

Germany & Siam declared an industrial-era war on me, I think due to the perception of a weak military. Siam smashed against my borders for a few turns and gave up; I still refused to eliminate them. Germany never got to my borders; I went and puppeted a couple of their cities and they threw in the towel. Something like a 90-turn war. Meanwhile, everyone else likes me, and happily renews my luxury+open border trades.

[War_Pig]

Originally Posted by forty2j

I'm currently playing France on King level with +50 happiness, with 3 owned cities and 4 puppets, and an avg. pop of 15. I'm honestly not sure how people end up with happiness issues, unless they get terribly unlucky with luxury resources.

This!!! Well other then the France game tho my last game i got my Bollywood Ach. and had at highest 88 happiness. Out of all my games i have played i have yet to be in any big unhappiness hole.

[Bibor]

Originally Posted by spironline

How do you cope? Expanding, mili or peacefully, all but impossible I think. Any thoughts?

Lets say you have 10 cities

Base unhappy per city: 2, so thats 20 unhappy.
Unhappy per population: +1, so that's 80 unhappy.

Colosseum: 4 happy
Theatre: 5 happy
Circus: 2 happy

With only 4 happiness resources and no policies, no wonders and say every other city with a Circus (from Elephants or Horses), you can grow 10 cities to pop 8.

Add 1 more pop per city if you have Planned Economy.
Add 1 more pop per city per 2 extra happiness resources (so 2 if you have 4).
Add 2 more pop per city for Theocracy (scales with city size, this is for pop 8).
etc.

So yes, it's quite possible to have a lot of cities and a still happy empire.

Base unhappiness scales with map size, so at t huge size it's 1.2 (down from 2) base unhappy per city. At 5 cities it is 6 unhappy on huge, 10 unhappy on normal map. I don't know how well it balances out the lack of extra happiness resources though.

[Creepy Old Man]

The big thing is to limit population growth in most of your cities until you can build theatres. You can have a handful of large cities, but the rest have to be capped at size four (six if the city can build a circus). Your luxuries and whatnot will allow your good cities to grow, but only if you don't use up all your happiness supporting 30+ other sprawling cities.

[cavilier210]

Any advice on huge maps?


I run out of happiness before I even cover half of my region. The AI just eats up all the land.

[Creepy Old Man]

Originally Posted by cavilier210

Any advice on huge maps?


I run out of happiness before I even cover half of my region. The AI just eats up all the land.

Theocracy.

Size four city on a huge map is 1.1 unhappiness (base) plus 3.0 for citizens (75% due to theocracy). That's a net of 0.1 unhappiness per size four city.

Add any of: meritocracy, forbidden palace, freedom, occasional circuses, etc., and size four cities become happiness producers.

At size nine with a colisseum, theatre, and theocracy (and nothing else), a city on a huge map is costing 7.85 and generating 9.0 for a profit of 1.15 happiness per size nine city.

I've been up to +228 happiness on huge maps.

[lschnarch]

Originally Posted by Creepy Old Man

At size nine with a colisseum, theatre, and theocracy (and nothing else), a city on a huge map is costing 7.85 and generating 9.0 for a profit of 1.15 happiness per size nine city.

I've been up to +228 happiness on huge maps.

Shouldn't this have changed with the 1.135 patch?
Happiness buildings should only give as much happiness as needed to reach the limit defined by population.
Therefore, I don't see how cities any longer should be "happiness producers"?

They could "produce happiness" in the past, though.

After all, that is one of the key components of a "global happiness" system: you can collect unhappiness from everywhere, but can only fight it locally up to the local limit.

[vexing]

the reduction from theocracy comes after the happiness from buildings. so for one city you can have -16 happiness from population, +16 happiness from buildings, but with theocracy the -16 gets reduced to -12 in the totals

[Creepy Old Man]

Except that the Theocracy policy bypasses the new rule. Each citizen produces 0.75 unhappiness, but counts as a full citizen for determining if the happiness buildings work. You also get the same effect if you play Ghandi - four citizens allow full use of the colisseum, (granting four happiness), but only cost two unhappiness. Of course, with Ghandi you've got the base four unhappiness per city for existing. At size nine, though, an Indian city is worth 4.5 unhappiness for citizens plus 4.0 unhappiness for existing, but can fully utilize a colisseum and a theatre, producing 9.0 happiness, for a net profit of 0.5 happiness, with no policies or wonders at all.

Edit: vexen beat me to it.

[lschnarch]

You never stop learning something new.

Looks pretty much like they have messed up even with that part.
Anyway, I agree then that being Indian and/or running Theocracy you may have net happiness from cities.

[spironline]

Originally Posted by forty2j

Try not going to war with EVERYONE.. unless you're going for Domination?

I declared an early war on Siam (within 10 turns of getting horses), because they were in my way. I left them with 1 city to avoid the warmonger diplo hit.

Germany & Siam declared an industrial-era war on me, I think due to the perception of a weak military. Siam smashed against my borders for a few turns and gave up; I still refused to eliminate them. Germany never got to my borders; I went and puppeted a couple of their cities and they threw in the towel. Something like a 90-turn war. Meanwhile, everyone else likes me, and happily renews my luxury+open border trades.

Well did Not know the trick is to avoid elimination of opponent. Still feels like u can have big empty continent ripe for settling but unhappiness and SP cost makes it pointless to do so. That is a spoiler to me

[sharkles]

Happiness has only hampered my empire a few times here and there, but I still look forward to seeing it changed a bit in the future.

[forty2j]

Originally Posted by spironline

Well did Not know the trick is to avoid elimination of opponent. Still feels like u can have big empty continent ripe for settling but unhappiness and SP cost makes it pointless to do so. That is a spoiler to me

My French empire is now at +75 happy.. I don't think a few more cities would have a significant impact.

Also, a valid strategy until a recent patch was to simply ignore happiness. You end up with lots of small-medium size cities. (Now, you also get weak barbarian/rebels attacking you. You might continue to not care.)

A little bit of careful planning should let you keep your happiness up and continue to add cities. Probably the most I've done is a 12-city Japanese empire, that still ran around +5 happiness. Not great for golden ages, but not crippled. Just try not to settle a new city until you're ready to support it with happiness.

(One technique I use is to try to make my 2nd city be in the furthest reach I plan to settle, to claim the property, and then backfill cities in the empty space if I need them.)

[zomg]

You have to embrace the happiness concept to enjoy the game, its critical to plan all your moves with it in mind.

Expansion - Expand toward happiness resources whereever possible, these are like free cities.
Conquests - look at the unique resources you gain, vs how much unhappiness, this will point you toward certain cities and path to victory. If you do it right you can often get a net gain (buy courthouse for 600 pls).
Research - account for buildings you may need to build for your planned happiness deficit. Also calender asap if you have the goods nearby.
Builds - keep those colleseums, circuses, etc. coming, you'll need to build around how many of these you need.
Policies - There are some nice ones there that will change how you build your empire, there are some big decisions to be made here to suit your style/geography/neighbors.


Fighting happiness will only make you... sad.

[Smote]

Originally Posted by zomg

You have to embrace the happiness concept to enjoy the game, its critical to plan all your moves with it in mind.

Yup. Try OCC or Settler difficulty if you don't want to worry about happiness.

[code9]

I just don't like how the happiness system is against huge maps. The number of happy resources stays the same, while the number of cities we can have increases on huge maps. How are we supposed to make up, other than having less population and preventing growth?