Empire Wide Happiness.

[Schuesseled]

On the 1st Civ podcast Jon shafer mentions that Happiness will not be per-city but accounted for the whole Empire, meaning an Empire with a total of 30 total Happiness can have 15x2 pop cities, or it can have 2x15 pop cities or any mix you can think of.

Did anyone else notice that this was mentioned. Quite different from what we are used too, lets see how it plays out. Less Micro Management needed as we don't have to keep each individual city happy I guess.

He also mentioned something at the same time about gold, "We've tried to make gold more important in the game, you can do a lot more things with it." Doesn't go into detail on that point but that sounds promising also.

Is this new's to anyone as I haven't read it anywhere on the forum, or am I just massively behind the times .

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, it sounds like happiness is pooled - though I'm not sure if we yet know if its 100% fungible as you suggest (maybe it is).

Unclear how residual unhappiness would be allocated across cities, how luxury resources will work, and how empire happiness will interact with city-based happiness buildings.

On gold, they've said that purchasing units/buildings will be possible.

 

[Schuesseled]

you can also purcahse land and use gold for bribing civs and city states.

Seriosuly bro do some research!

 

[Schuesseled]

Had to look up the word fungible, yes I know, im a noob! , seriously, do people use that word where your from Ahirman. Never heard it in my life, but anyway,

Well I think it will be ... fungible, because of the words straight from Jon,

"What we wanted to do was give players a lot of flexibility when designing thier empires, er so happiness is a good example of that. Happiness is now Empire based instead of city based and what that lets players do is expand a lot and have a lot of small cities or a few really big cities."

This to me can only be interperated that Happiness will indeed be Fungible from one city to the next. Giving you flexibility, if you desired you could make many little cities or just have one huge one. But certainly, you will have to think about how big you want one city to be as it will have an effect on other cities.

As for if you still get additional happiness from certain resources/buildings or w,e, yes I dont see why they would take this out, its the only reason to have non-military resources pretty much .

It slipped my mind that Gold information had already been released for a minute there, but I hadn't heard of the Happiness changes so thats what the post was about really.

 

[Ahriman]

do people use that word where your from Ahirman

Hey, its the most succinct way of describing the concept.

[And yes very common, I'm an economist. Its used all the time to discuss money; suppose I give you $20, but restrict it so that you can only spend it on groceries. As long as you were going to spend at least $20 on groceries anyway, then my restriction has no impact, because money is fungible. You can just use the $20 I gave you for groceries freeing up the $20 you were going to spend on groceries for anything you like.]

I agree that happiness will be fungible; thats what empire-wide happiness means. Just not clear if its exactly 1:1, so 15 cities size 2 is the same as 2 cities size 15.
They might be, anything else probably gets complicated.

But even ignoring this, allocation of unhappiness is an open question. Suppose I have a size 3 city, a size 5 city, a size 7 city and a size 12 city (total population 27) but only happiness of 22.
How many unhappy people are there in each city? Is it 1 in each city, and an extra in the 12? Is it all 5 unhappy in the size 12 city?
Does it matter if the size 12 city has buildings in it that give +3 happy; are those allocated locally or globally?
Does it matter the order I build the cities in, or the timing of when I acquire the resources?
Eg: I build a new city. Will unhappiness be in that city, or will building a new city somehow make one of my citizens in an existing city unhappy?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

On a related note, I'm intrigued that we've still not heard anything about Health-is it still in? Will it be global the way everything else seems to be now (Culture, Gold, Science & Happiness all seem to have a Per City & Global value)? I'll also be intrigued to see how the details of global happiness work. It's going to take some getting used to, but it certainly doesn't sound like a *bad* change.


Aussie.

 

[Schuesseled]

I will look at an HD video of gameplay and see if I can spot a health cymbol in the city screens.

Edit:/ Okay I looked and the things listed right next to each other are Food/Production/Gold/Culture but no health, so either thier is health and its hidden till say you run your mouse over Food, or it has been taken out. Harbour which is the building being built in the city screen as a description, says "Adds trade route to capital, +25% Prod When Building Naval Units." So seeming as Harbour which would have clams/crabs give health is now gone, one can assume with some reasonable certainty that Health has infact been removed. But that is not gaurenteed.

The happiness spread probably will be 1:1 its make's the most sense, but we can't be sure of anything, cities might have extra happiness each so they only start using up your total empire happiness say after level 3, but thats just base less guessing

As for Unhappiness, no way to tell, we will see.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Jon
"What we wanted to do was give players a lot of flexibility when designing thier empires, er so happiness is a good example of that. Happiness is now Empire based instead of city based and what that lets players do is expand a lot and have a lot of small cities or a few really big cities."

I Really hate this idea of the "Happiness cap" where Happiness= # of productive citizens
(because that means the Penalty for Unhappiness is just unproductive citizens)

Although this 'Empire Cap' is interesting because it combines the ideas of Happiness and Maintenance.

Essentially Happiness could be the New maintenance.. it limits empire size

Because if I have 30 happiness, and found a new City.... that increases my unhappiness.

I wouldn't be surprised if Unhappiness was concentrated in distant cities.

The "Base Happiness" of a city could be based on how far away it was from the Capital.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I Really hate this idea of the "Happiness cap" where Happiness= # of productive citizens
(because that means the Penalty for Unhappiness is just unproductive citizens)

Although this 'Empire Cap' is interesting because it combines the ideas of Happiness and Maintenance.

Essentially Happiness could be the New maintenance.. it limits empire size

Because if I have 30 happiness, and found a new City.... that increases my unhappiness.

I wouldn't be surprised if Unhappiness was concentrated in distant cities.

The "Base Happiness" of a city could be based on how far away it was from the Capital.

I personally plan to hold off final judgment until I see more info on how it works, but I certainly hope it doesn't *replace* maintenance, merely supplements it-& health-in determining the total size of your empire.

Aussie.

 

[AriochIV]

Empire-wide happiness is going to make taking over multiple cities very problematic without losing production in your home cities due to unhappiness. I gather this is the reason for the addition of the "puppet government" option for newly captured cities, but this sounds pretty wonky. Given the fallibility of the city AI in CivIV (a newly-conquered 2-pop city should try to build a Cathedral, right?), I am not very confident about being forced to let a newly-captured city choose its own production. I smell a casualty in the name of "increased accessibility."

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry Arioch, but I simply see this as another attempt to further eliminate Infinite City Sleaze-a problem I've always *HATED* in earlier iterations of the game, but one which seemed largely contained in Civ4. If global happiness further curtails ICS without making non-core cities useless (as was the case in Civ1 to Civ3) then this is a goal I'll happily support.
What I don't understand, though, is why is every change in game-play is seen immediately as an attempt to simply "increase accessibility"?

Aussie.

 

[AriochIV]

I think it's a knee-jerk reaction because being dumbed-down is probably the greatest thing that the long-time hardcore fan fears. Particularly after seeing Civ Revolution.

That, and city happiness has been one of the core mechanics of the series since the beginning.

Of course, I'm just thinking out loud about the features I hear about. For all I know it might be a great change, but we won't know until we see it.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Personally, I always hated the purely city-based approach to happiness, because it *encouraged*-nay REWARDED-excessive micromanagement! This sounds more like a mix of the old happiness system & a global approach, which makes more sense to me-from both a game-play & realism sense. Of course, I could be completely wrong, & it could be a turn for the worse. However, given what they gave us in Civ4, I'm prepared to extend them a bit of trust!

Aussie.

 

[AriochIV]

Well, I'll be the first to agree that I welcomed the happiness change in CivIV - that unhappiness simply reduced the effectiveness of the city (rather than plunging the city into disorder). That way small happiness problems could be safely ignored in the short term, but the obessive micro-manager could still babysit each city if he so desired. In this case I suspect that if unhappiness affects the whole of your empire, it's not something that can be ignored even for a short term.

Anyhow, I think you said it best: "It's going to take some getting used to."

 

[cccv]

haha, you guys have the same avatar and names starting with A, it took me like three minutes to realize Aussie hadn't just quintuple-posted.

Anyway, I doubt very much that this is an issue of "less micromanagement." You'll still need to build temples and crap in your cities to keep the individual people in them happy. It's just that the effect is cumulative now.

The good: it's more realistic overall, I'd say.
The bad: that whole "your entire empire takes a huge happiness hit if you take over a city" thing. That.... that kinda sucks. The puppet government thing does not appease me. I want full control of all my cities. I'm not thrilled with the idea that I'm going to be forced to use the puppet gov't option rather than throw my entire empire into anarchy because I just won a war. It may make realistic sense in the late game (still don't like it though), but it makes even less sense in the early game.

 

[star_gazer]

Sounds to me like part of properly planning for expansion by conquest will be happiness management - which in an empire wide happiness system would be no different than planning for expansion by settling. The tradeoff is having one or two extra happiness is easy, while having 5 for more is not. But the payoff for capturing a size 5 city is much higher than founding a size 1, not only do you get more population sooner, you might get buildings and you are taking a city from your opponent at the same time.

 

[Schuesseled]

i'd be willing to bet the unhappines is only temporary, so what ill probably do is annex them one or two at the time, from being puppet states. That way they can be slowly incorporated into my empire without too much of a fuss.

 

[dra]

I guess if you plan an invasion you will try to acquire new happines resources anyway. Makes planning war a bit more interesting.

 

[12agnar0k]

1. I doubt that Puppet States will not be included in Empire Happiness. After all they are still a part of your empire, you simply trade off control of production for reduced maintanence I believe. Let me know if this is not correct.

2. Empire Happiness will have some affect on expansion plans / war plans. If you has 29/30 of your current Happiness filled and you wished to wage war and take a few 5 pop cities off an enemy, this would have consequences on your Empires happiness. Where as before in cIV when you considered whether or not you wanted more cities you need only look at how much gold you will lose in maintanence, now you have to take into consideration happiness. It should add in a few strategic elements.
Say for example, if eventually when you gained significant military advantage you planned on invading a neighbour and adding thier cities to your own, and currently you had 20/30 happiness used up, you would have all your cities stop growth so you could save this 10 happiness for the few cities you have plans on capturing.
Happiness becomes more of a long term consideration, where as in cIV if your cities were unhappy in the short term it was not a problem because eventually with buildings in the long term it would be solved, now however things may be different. You might lower early population efforts to allow you to quickly advance your population via military conquest.

I'm sure with all the changes made for this new ciV we will have to get used to a lot of new mechanics, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ofcourse it may turn out that we hate some of the new mechanics, where as we may also love them. Only time will tell, but one thing we can tell for sure, ciV is going to be CIVILIZATION 5!!! and not cIV.5,

 

[Ahriman]

Let me know if this is not correct.

This is not correct. They specifically stated that happiness was the main benefit from using puppet states (you don't have to support the PS citizens).