How do you manage to even play for 5 mins?

I think the civ IV mechanic worked better. It did localize your empire to an extent, but it made sense. For ciV to improve I think we need an overall production bar and overall food and possibly health bar for your empire along with happiness. I think you should be able to transfer those overall resources directly to cities where it is most needed, as opposed to containing everything in a city's tiles, or purchasing through gold only. Don't know why it is relegated to just happiness.
 
At least it is a significant part of the game. I find the happiness+health system of IV more realistic, yes, but unfitting. It is just too easy to manage.

Although I completely agree with your first sentence I find your second sentence incredibly odd. It's as if you're implying that managing happines in civ5 is difficult. Is that what you're saying?

If that is what you're saying then I disagree completely. If that's not what you're saying I would hope that you would prefer a more realistic system over an unrealistic one.
 
I think the civ IV mechanic worked better. It did localize your empire to an extent, but it made sense. For ciV to improve I think we need an overall production bar and overall food and possibly health bar for your empire along with happiness. I think you should be able to transfer those overall resources directly to cities where it is most needed, as opposed to containing everything in a city's tiles, or purchasing through gold only. Don't know why it is relegated to just happiness.
Am I hearing sarcasm or are you serious?
 
No sarcasm, haven't played enough of V to judge it fairly, but I prefered all those mechanics being localized to cities in Civ IV. I don't mind that we have overall happiness now, but why not overall hammer output, overall food, things of that nature?
 
I don't think it is a competency issue for me at least. I just prefer the Civ IV mechanics to Civ V. I like the social policies aspect, but I don't think the civics in IV are that much a downgrade from that. It is just tough going back to Civ IV after all this time and the hope of a better game in the future for civ V.
 
The thing is, happiness is a different thing than production or food. It is much more logical for it to be in a overall-scale system than production or food.

No, in fact quite the opposite. Production of course I'll give you, but food definitely needs to be more global especially in the modern era, at least for realism purposes. It might be one of those things where the realistic feature makes gameplay unfun, in this case making it way too easy to manage starvation in the modern era.

But global happiness makes absolutely no sense.

Example 1: America conquers two chinese cities. These cities are understandably angry, so the entire empire riots. See the problem?

Example 2: To alleviate the empire-wide riots caused by these conquests, America builds a Colosseum in Washington. The entire empire is now peaceful and joyful, even in those Chinese cities. See the problem?

Now, an argument could be made for the Chinese conquests causing limited unhappiness in other cities, just due to protests against the government's imperialism. But this mechanic would be logically limited to the modern era; people in medieval times didn't really care that there was a war on somewhere else, as long as they weren't personally affected. Civ 4's War Weariness mechanic handles this quite well, though it is unrealistic that the entire empire would be affected before modern times, it still does a decent job of simulating huge unrest in the areas just conquered but small protests empire-wide.
 
Good point. Don't quite understand how conquering an enemy city stagnates your growth in a productive city since your overall unhappiness skyrocketed after conquering such a city.

That's pretty much the first problem I had with my first and only complete game. I simply could not sign a peace treaty because the people of the enemy empire never revolted due to the war and it went on and on. Was pretty lame being stuck in a war for a 1000 years.

The Civ IV mechanic led for better game play. Unhappy citizens meant no production on your city tiles. Now unhappy citizens stop your growth overall, but not your production/income output (unless I am mistaken about that)? I remember producing just as well when my empire was in the red face, which makes no sense. I think it should be the complete opposite in that matter. Unhappy citizens should shut down hammer/gold production but not growth. What I didn't like about Civ 4 was that you lose an entire tile. How about keep the food but not the hammer and gold? The health mechanic can be added to subtract from your food.

That's where Civ IV could have been improved upon. Unhappiness and unhealthiness was a double whammy on your food count, which was too harsh a penalty and made it impossible to grow in the late game. However... corporation bonuses helped counteract some of that, and it balanced out for the most part. Going to Civ V, I guess overall hammer production is translated to your empire's treasury, so you don't need to add overall hammer I agree. But overall happiness is a broken mechanic because it affects you in the most illogical aspects as the last poster pointed out. If you are going to tally your unhappiness, make it affect another global mechanic... your treasury. Drive that into the red and your empire will collapse as it should. As far as checking your growth, you need the health mechanic, so you have an overall health bar for your empire like we did in Civ IV for every city. As your population grows, you need health bonuses. If you really want that double whammy effect, let unhappiness stop shut down both gold revenue AND hammer production.

I don't mind that unhappiness is a global mechanic, but it simply doesn't make sense in what it and how it penalizes you. I think the global health mechanic can penalize growth better. I just prefer Civ IV's mechanic of localizing that to individual cities.
 
Unhappiness cuts % across the board... mostly everything grinds to a slower pace.
But, there's a good reason; it's a Major_AIs (Not CS, btw) modifier that's tied directly with difficulty levels *AND* their ability to maintain individually managed "play-to-win" factors.
In other words, balance against the extremely more potent human mind.
 
Must not have noticed it considering I was playing at a modest difficulty for me. I just thought it shut down growth. If unhappiness slashes your revenue and hammer significantly, then yeah it wouldn't make sense to add a health mechanic for the sake of it. I just prefer a little more detail as opposed to the broad generalization of unhappiness.

So what becomes of essential resources like fish and crops? Now these are relegated to just food bonuses, but it there a reason to acquire them if you are getting enough food from your other raw food resources? They don't add to your happiness I'm sure. I believe some buildings yield extra benefits if you have this food source as opposed to another, but is it important to acquire other food resources to sustain yourself without the health mechanic? Ie) would I need sheep when I have plenty of cattle, or wheat when I have plenty of rice and what not?
 
According to Sid Meier himself he claimed that players dont want an AI that is smarter than yourself.

I wouldn't mind, if the AI were smarter than me, as long I can turn on a commentary mode, where I get AIs decisions explained. There's nothing worse than losing and not knowing why.

But overall Sid is surely right.
 
Must not have noticed it considering I was playing at a modest difficulty for me. I just thought it shut down growth. If unhappiness slashes your revenue and hammer significantly, then yeah it wouldn't make sense to add a health mechanic for the sake of it. I just prefer a little more detail as opposed to the broad generalization of unhappiness.
Up to -10:mad: there's 75% penalty to growth only, after that there's -33% combat penalty to your troops and 50% production penalty. Also rebel barb units are showing up in your teritory.

Initially being in red was nothing scary - put a GG with your troops and -33% become -8% (Chinese GG made it +2%, once playing China due to vanishing luxuries bug I got to -79:mad: on Immortal and yet I've won the game), as for the production you could still buy buildings and units without any problems.

Now that GG and trade posts got nerfed it's not that easy to roflstomp beyond -10:mad: treshold and rebels can be pain.

Yeah, I'm on a fence with global happiness myself, also with no palace distance maintenance you can have five cities spread all over the world - I'm more of a fan of consolidated territory.

So what becomes of essential resources like fish and crops? Now these are relegated to just food bonuses, but it there a reason to acquire them if you are getting enough food from your other raw food resources? They don't add to your happiness I'm sure. I believe some buildings yield extra benefits if you have this food source as opposed to another, but is it important to acquire other food resources to sustain yourself without the health mechanic? Ie) would I need sheep when I have plenty of cattle, or wheat when I have plenty of rice and what not?
Before the patch some food resources were really bad (sheep I'm talking to you), and people were complaining that it would be better to put a trade post on that tile instead of pasture.

Thankfully now there are food-related buildings to put in your cities and that makes food resources interesting, sheep-heavy city get a nifty production bonus with Stables, while wheat, deer and bananas with granary make your city explode with growth.
But yeah, no more trading food resources, no more health :(
 
I just prefer a little more detail as opposed to the broad generalization of unhappiness.

Then, simply click City Overview in DiploCorner and go to the specific tab of Happiness ratios to get plenty of details & a thorough summary of such "values & numbers". If the Hover hints box found in TopPanel isn't enough.
 
The happiness model of Civ 5 is one of the biggest design flaws of the game. Virtually anything you do to grow your empire will result in this happiness penalty. Civilization games never had that mechanic of penalizing but more of planned expansion.

Why should you get penalized for expanding and growing, for leading successful wars? I don't know for sure what drove the design team here, but the successful formula of local health/happiness has be badly broken by a lousy new system.
 
The happiness model of Civ 5 is one of the biggest design flaws of the game. Virtually anything you do to grow your empire will result in this happiness penalty. Civilization games never had that mechanic of penalizing but more of planned expansion.

Why should you get penalized for expanding and growing, for leading successful wars? I don't know for sure what drove the design team here, but the successful formula of local health/happiness has be badly broken by a lousy new system.

Thank you...

But I'm not completely opposed to having a nationwide mechanic of some sort that regulates your empire. I just thought treasury handled that role, since that money can be used on anything, except food I guess (although you could purchase resources per turn in IV so even that is not accurate). Everything was compounded into how much revenue your empire was producing, and then you can fill your needs as such. This is a case of fixing something that wasn't broken.
 
The problem with local health/happiness is, that there really isn't much to manage.

This is illogical. Two variables to address in each of a dozen or more cities are easier to manage than one single variable shared across the empire?

:crazyeye:
 
It only makes sense for something to be global if you can actually control it directly. This is why money is global, so you can use it where you need it, when you need it. Thus the financial management system is sensefull!

The only thing to be ''managed'' about global happiness is keeping it above zero. The obvious exception being golden ages and some policies, but in those cases you're still not directly in control. Global happiness is as weak, gameplaywise, as global production.
 
It sounds like you don't have a good understanding of game mechanics. There are many ways to maintain happiness even with expansion. It takes PLANNING and careful consideration. You should know early on what type of a game you will play and begin making the appropriate plans - research, policies, wonders (both world and national), etc. Even conquerers often have to take a breather to improve happiness, but they've planned for it and are prepared for the break. If you want to spend the time to learn how to play, you may be able to become a successful player. Simply complaining about the happiness and quitting because it doesn't do what you want it to do doesn't accomplish anything except a waste of your generous donation to Firaxis.

Knowing what sort of GAME you want to play early on destroys the Civ experience for me. I don't play so I can "try a culture vistory this time!" I play so I can simulate being the leader of a civlization.

Besides, the poster you were commenting on had built ALL THE HAPPINESS BUILDINGS AVAILABLE. Unless he had incredible amount of cash lying around (not always easy) then all he could do is wait the 20-40 turns for a courthouse to be built. Even then, it means annexing a city thus further exacerbating the unhappiness in the short term and crippling his productivity....all illogically.

It's not just that the game mechanic is broken...its that it isn't even justifiable logically or historically.
 
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