Late Era Unhappiness counter needed

[AlextheGr8]

I believe there should be a building in the late modern or future era that counters the massive unhappiness you get from large cities growing. Something after a stadium that can give you X number of happiness per city. I like playing elimination only games, and once you hit the modern era with large cities, your unhappiness skyrockets. Playing 400 turns to eliminate all the AI, it makes late game not fun at all.

[Zaldron]

Originally Posted by AlextheGr8

I believe there should be a building in the late modern or future era that counters the massive unhappiness you get from large cities growing. Something after a stadium that can give you X number of happiness per city. I like playing elimination only games, and once you hit the modern era with large cities, your unhappiness skyrockets. Playing 400 turns to eliminate all the AI, it makes late game not fun at all.

I have the exact opposite problem, anywhere from 50-80 spare happiness in my tall empires, and only really used for golden ages. I'm pretty sure that happiness is exactly as it is to prevent conquest empires from completely snowballing the game.

[AlextheGr8]

I don't build a lot of cities though, and don't play with city states.

[Seek]

Try picking Nationalism in your next game - there are massive unhappiness modifiers in that tree.

[Thalassicus]

Use the "avoid growth" checkbox in city screens to control population and happiness in conquest games. Check out these posts where I discuss it:

• post 1
• post 2
• post 3

[Pep]

And what about introducing hapiness again in the Freedom tree?. I'm thinking in something like:

• +1 when city has 10 or more.
• +3 when city has 20 or more.
• +6 when city has 30 or more.
• +10 when city has 40 or more.
• +(n²+n)/2 when city has nX10 or more.

The bigger the city, the greater the bonus (like in a Mathematical number sequence).

Of course, being the Freedom tree, this bonus should apply only on free cities (not puppets or occupied ones). Do you like the idea?

[Thalassicus]

Originally Posted by Pep

And what about introducing happiness again in the Freedom tree?

Freedom is the tall empire tree, and:

Originally Posted by Zaldron

I have the exact opposite problem, anywhere from 50-80 spare happiness in my tall empires, and only really used for golden ages.

[Pep]

Maybe I'm used to Vanilla's way of balancing the policy trees, but I missed some happiness from Freedom. What if in my late game I decide to go from tall to tall/wide by conquering?. Maybe I can't because I've chosen previously the Freedom tree and now I don't have enough happinness. So I can't change my style of play on the fly to adapt to a new game situation. I usually play Continent plus and I can compete going tall until another tall Civ on the other continent conquers it completely. In that case, I should change from tall to wide. My latest defeat was on Continent plus by Babylon on the other continent, that went from tall to wide and achieved a science victory (I near got a cultural one).

[Txurce]

Originally Posted by Pep

What if in my late game I decide to go from tall to tall/wide by conquering?

Take the Nationalism policies. No tree is supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades for any approach.

[Zaldron]

Originally Posted by Txurce

Take the Nationalism policies. No tree is supposed to be a jack-of-all-trades for any approach.

I assume he's asking about what to do if he already took Freedom. In that case I'd go deep enlightenment, or into order personally. You'll almost certainly need to get some buildings too.

[Txurce]

Originally Posted by Zaldron

I assume he's asking about what to do if he already took Freedom. In that case I'd go deep enlightenment, or into order personally. You'll almost certainly need to get some buildings too.

Yeah, but his problem was unhappiness, and he intended to go conquering. You don't think Nationalism is the way to go then?

[Sanguinus]

Originally Posted by Zaldron

I have the exact opposite problem, anywhere from 50-80 spare happiness in my tall empires, and only really used for golden ages. I'm pretty sure that happiness is exactly as it is to prevent conquest empires from completely snowballing the game.

I agree with Zaldron. Building all happiness-buildings and chosing the appropiate policies grants so much happiness.
When conquering other nations, I don't keep all the cities but rather burn most of them down and let the influence grow (or buy tiles) to keep the territory connected.

And: if factors like happiness would be too easy to achieve, there would be no challenge in the game.

[Pep]

Originally Posted by Txurce

Yeah, but his problem was unhappiness, and he intended to go conquering. You don't think Nationalism is the way to go then?

The main problem is that Nationalism is mutually exclusive with Freedom so picking up Nationalism would imply losing all of the Freedom buffs to my tall cities. At least Nationalism happiness policies are at the top of the tree, so I could pick them and then switch back to Freedom once puppets have built enough happinness buildings.

Anyway, I think it should exist one policy somewhere to benefit really tall cities (30+ population).

[Zaldron]

Originally Posted by Txurce

Yeah, but his problem was unhappiness, and he intended to go conquering. You don't think Nationalism is the way to go then?

No, if you intend to go conquering then I would absolutely say to skip freedom and go nationalism. I read it as "I was going tall but then an AI invaded and I took out his empire with my advanced tech" and needing to switch gears to reclaim happy.

[Zaldron]

Originally Posted by Pep

Anyway, I think it should exist one policy somewhere to benefit really tall cities (30+ population).

I just don't see the need for this. If you're growing tall cities naturally patronage and piety should take care of all your happiness needs.

If you're going on a conquest rampage you *shouldn't* be able to keep every single pop 30 city the AI has immediately and expect to stay positive happiness. There has to be a check on conquest.

[Seek]

Selling large conquered cities is a must (and often very profitable!) in that situation.