Happiness Issues As a Basic Prince Player

[vetox20]

Hello all, this is a copy from a post I made in the Quick Questions/Answers Thread:

Hello everyone, been playing for a while and a huge fan of the project and everything about it.
My first time posting.

My question is: I tried searching the forum and read the basic tutorial (the one pinned was from 08/20/2020, not sure from later patches if this is an outdated guide for unhappiness), but I am having a hard time figuring out the needs of a city.

I am a very very basic Prince player using stock VP with EUI ( I play on Epic speed as well) and understand growth can lead to unhappiness. I know that certain buildings will provide -1 to poverty, boredom, etc. I often find myself with a large amount of unhappiness due to Poverty. I typically have maximum trade routes, every related building I can to reduce it, positive cash flow and a decent amount in the bank. Is there a link or a resource (or a quick answer) that I could read up on to educate myself further on the happiness system?

It was also mentioned about using the Public Works project, multiple times. I do that as much as I can (when not creating units to defend, or construct additional buildings to mitigate other happiness factors.

I am playing the current beta version 5-27, but have generally had this issue even with the stable releases. I'm not blaming the betas.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bryan317]

The game is about choices. We may need some references to the choices you've made. For instance, how high you have allowed your populations to grow? Are you using specialists? It's nice to have high population and it's nice to use specialists, but as a consequence unhappiness will increase.

I do say Public works is the main thing that helps. They offer a direct +1 to happiness and also lower the needs of poverty by 15% each time you build one.

You can attempt to limit your growth as an option. However, I will say that it's totally possible to play this game while attempting to maximize growth and never using the "avoid growth" option. In fact high population is one of my favorite play styles. I'll even run internal food routes constantly. In the end it boils down to the public works...

I also need to start thinking of simple fixes. Are you doing your best to secure every luxury you can? Make deals, and spend a little gold if you have to. I'm sure you'll get a few more helpful comments here. As my playstyle tends to be aggressive. I'm invading and taking over luxuries by force

 

[Roche14]

Hi, take a look here https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...n-civ-5-vox-populi-explained-by-milae.665058/

 

[General_Drax]

Last version is quite harsh on unhappiness. If you are going wide you need Public works and a lot of them to keep things in check.

 

[amateurgamer88]

If you are referring to my tutorial guide, then the information there is still relevant. The happiness mechanics haven't changed drastically since I last made that guide. The difference might be what's needed to tackle the unhappiness. I have found that the recent version being pretty rough for happiness as well.

 

[tu_79]

What are your happiness values?

 

[azum4roll]

This version is especially harsh on Distress. You're guaranteed to have a lot of it.

Normally, if you can keep up with your infrastructure (most buildings built, all citizens working improved tiles) while not being too wide (more than 7 cities), you should always be fine with happiness.

 

[vetox20]

I have noticed that it starts becoming an issue when I am at around 5 or 6 cities with around 10-11 population. The mileage may vary, but that is the general average. I attempt to obtain as many luxuries as possible, either my punchin' and kickin' or through trades with other civs. I've included some screen shots of a game I played recently where I could not get my happiness under control.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

My city, Samsun is suffering the most from poverty. I see how it says there is a deficit, but I am not quite sure what that means.

Spoiler :

Ironically I am not suffering from distress, but that also confuses me. I have noticed if I change every city to food focus that seems to help lower the distress and increase my happiness by around 1% for each city. That has not been needed in this game so far.

 

[General_Drax]

@vetox20 Keep those specialists on manual. A 9 pop city cannot keep 3 specs active.

 

[vetox20]

@General_Drax If I understand correctly those become unassigned, urbanization unhappiness drops. Does this then remove/reduce the bonuses the buildings provide? Are those specialists also contributing to a higher poverty score? I assumed the -1 gold shown was the maintenance towards the building itself.

 

[andersw]

Basically 41 is fine, not optimal but its fine.
To help the situation ....

Lower specialists a bit, specialists add urbanization, depending on what they provide they can equal out (if you have poverty issues and use a merchant for example).
Engineers and Scientists are considered good to use, diplos depends what policys and merchants are considered a bit weak.

Trade for more lux and trade excess lux for gold.

What policy tree are you on? some trees get happiness starved at certain points before the happy policys kick in.
Ie you could be sitting at a point where it is expected to dip a bit in happiness.

 

[vetox20]

@andersw So poverty is directly linked to the amount of income a city is bringing in? Instanbul has no penalties for unhappiness for poverty and I see its bringing in 65 gold.
Where as Samsun is a third of that.

I believe at this stage of the game I am almost complete with Authority and moving on to statecraft. My culture progress is moving like a slug.

 

[Bryan317]

@andersw So poverty is directly linked to the amount of income a city is bringing in? Instanbul has no penalties for unhappiness for poverty and I see its bringing in 65 gold.
Where as Samsun is a third of that.

I believe at this stage of the game I am almost complete with Authority and moving on to statecraft. My culture progress is moving like a slug.

Authority is arguably one of the more difficult policy branches to pursue. It's a bit of a niche playthrough, because it's based on a aggressive play style. And culture is definitely not one of its strong points.

 

[vetox20]

My playstyle, for better or worse, usually ends up aggressive. I enjoy warring. Since I've noticed my unhappiness has been steadily getting worse with each game and civ I choose, I have shifted away from Authority but still select it from time to time.

 

[andersw]

Yes strong culture options for Authority are:
Killing units ie WAR
Terracotta army = more culture from killing units
Heavy Tribute of city states (conflicts if you want to go statecraft and build up cs relations).
T287 ... what speed?
You should be sieging up on Marrakesh a long time ago.

 

[Bryan317]

My playstyle, for better or worse, usually ends up aggressive. I enjoy warring. Since I've noticed my unhappiness has been steadily getting worse with each game and civ I choose, I have shifted away from Authority but still select it from time to time.

Yes and I say "arguably" It just has a few quirks to it that many people may find tedious. Or not understand how to capitalize on as a new player. For instance authority players are not necessarily interested in building up CS alliances as quickly as someone else. (However adopting Statecraft will change your dynamics for this) but usually authority adopters want to try to do a series of demanding tribute from as many city-states as you can.

 

[vetox20]

@andersw I always play on Epic speed. I ended up going to war with Marrakesh prior to this screen shot and suffered heavy losses. He continued to harass and DoW me but I played defensively and waited until he had exhausted a large amount of his units, and he lost his alliances with his CS buddies. Around turn ~330 I was able to take 70% of his cities and he capitulated. My happiness tanked quite considerably because I blitzed through his cities and should have razed more and annexed/puppeted far less.

@Bryan317 I find myself bullying early on if the map allows it (Communitas is definitely a mixed bag with starts) but as the other civs stack protections on top of them they get pretty miffed, go neutral --> hostile and cease trading luxuries with me. I did not think to continue bullying past the Medieval era.

 

[Bryan317]

@andersw I always play on Epic speed. I ended up going to war with Marrakesh prior to this screen shot and suffered heavy losses. He continued to harass and DoW me but I played defensively and waited until he had exhausted a large amount of his units, and he lost his alliances with his CS buddies. Around turn ~330 I was able to take 70% of his cities and he capitulated. My happiness tanked quite considerably because I blitzed through his cities and should have razed more and annexed/puppeted far less.

@Bryan317 I find myself bullying early on if the map allows it (Communitas is definitely a mixed bag with starts) but as the other civs stack protections on top of them they get pretty miffed, go neutral --> hostile and cease trading luxuries with me. I did not think to continue bullying past the Medieval era.

Now that you've adopted statecraft you'll definitely not want to be bullying somebody you can easily make your ally. Just keep an eye out as you are scanning the map for anybody that may give you tribute. If you're out warring with your units or even wandering by close to a city state check and see if your military nearby has opened up the heavy tribute option.

But these are choices. Demand tribute or build towards friendship and ally? You'll have to decide as you go.

 

[CrazyG]

@General_Drax If I understand correctly those become unassigned, urbanization unhappiness drops. Does this then remove/reduce the bonuses the buildings provide? Are those specialists also contributing to a higher poverty score? I assumed the -1 gold shown was the maintenance towards the building itself.

Gold maintenance does NOT contribute to unhappiness from poverty. Neither does extra to feed specialists. They are calculated based on output before considering any negatives.

Buildings always give a yield base, and the specialist gives more on top of that. For example a library starts at 2, you always get that 2 no matter what happens.

You do get some urbanization for 'free', for example gardens give you 1 free in that city, and a policy in Fealty gives a free urbanization to every city. I think it's generally a good idea to work specialists up to your free number if you can afford the . They can really help to get above the illiteracy or boredom thresholds. Distress is just tough on the version you're playing. Long term you want , not , since growing more will just cause unhappiness anyways.

Edit: added an important NOT

 

[vetox20]

@Bryan317 Assess whats happening in the world and make a call on how I want to be viewed by the civs that may get ticked off I'm bullying their little pals. So if I go State, be nice, make friends, crush mutual enemies with my friends.

@CrazyG Okay that was definitely one of the puzzle pieces I was missing in terms of specialists, I think that is a good jump off point is to teach myself how to manually assign specialists. I did not know about the gold maintenance affecting poverty, that will allow me to think more tactically about what buildings really need to be in a certain city and not click the icons the governor(?) recommends.