So...we Texans are "unhappy"?

[AfterShafter]

True. But when you think about the unhappiness caused by number of cities, doesn't that mean that the bigger your territory is the unhappier your people are. I don't think that its very reasonable. It's like people in New York are unhappy because Washington D.C, Los Angeles, Atlanta and all the other American cities exist.

I think for Texas this might actually be the case

 

[kivanc]

this thread should be moved.
what is it about largeness of texas or US, how does it matter?

 

[Ahriman]

's like people in New York are unhappy because Washington D.C, Los Angeles, Atlanta and all the other American cities exist.

No its not. Its that people in New York are unhappy because they're governed by the same set of policies that suit people in Dallas.

Its harder to run a big country than it is to run a bunch of small countries.

And, more importantly of course, its a gameplay mechanic designed to make expansion costly.
Just like maintenance costs from number of cities in Civ4.

 

[chris79]

The US *is* made unhappier and harder to govern because of its large size, as witnessed by the fact that Texans have on average very different policy preferences to New Yorkers, and both would be happier with the policies they prefer than the compromise policies they get.

Yes, and the Luxembourgians are all the same. They don't even need a government as they all agree on everything because there are so few of them.

In every society living on a certain area there are people who have different ideas and views. Take a look at this forum and opinions on civ5 (also, look at how - for so many people - civ4 suddenly became a really simple and generally bad game just because civ5 is here). So if varying political views in your society are to be a reason for "happiness" problems, it doesn't matter if it is 100 million or 100 people you are governing.

 

[Bill_in_PDX]

To explain the significance of DaveGold's comment: yes, there are lots of stadia in Texas...every community (some of which are not even towns) has one; and it is not uncommon to find small towns in Texas with a stadium that seats more people than the population of the town because they expect everyone from the other town to come see the game.

The "game", of course, is FOOTBALL.

Exactly. In Texas you would almost need an entire social policy tree dedicated to football.

 

[Tokira]

No its not. Its that people in New York are unhappy because they're governed by the same set of policies that suit people in Dallas.

Its harder to run a big country than it is to run a bunch of small countries.

And, more importantly of course, its a gameplay mechanic designed to make expansion costly.
Just like maintenance costs from number of cities in Civ4.

Maybe so, but calling the system happiness/unhappiness is not a very good solution. Better to replace it with maintenance, corruption, order or something like that.

Also if the people are governed by the same set of policies, it doesn't actually mean that it makes them unhappy. If two cities are similar to eachother, the policies should fit them both.

I do know that it is equired to make expanding to be costy in some way but in my opinion the happiness system doesn't really do its job properly. Maybe it would be simply better to make a new city simply cost more gold as it does in real life. Then again the cities could cover their costs by having buildings that increase their gold output.

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, and the Luxembourgians are all the same

Yes, Luxembourgers *are* more like each other than New Yorkers are like Texans.

Larger places have more diversity, smaller places have less.

So if varying political views in your society are to be a reason for "happiness" problems, it doesn't matter if it is 100 million or 100 people you are governing

Sure it does. The more people you have, scattered over a larger area, the more different they are.

A city of 10 million people is likely to be more similar than 10 million people scattered over a large country. We tend to be more like people near us.

This is even more true historically, because of limits in communications technology. Take out radio, TV, internet, etc. and you'll find a big increase in spatial variation; modern technology has a homogenizing influence.

But again, all this is academic, the mechanic is there for gameplay reasons.

 

[MrWashington]

Exactly. In Texas you would almost need an entire social policy tree dedicated to football.

This should be implemented in the next patch.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

I would also note that in civ you seem to rule an entire civilization of sociopaths.

Please elaborate...

Well in every civilization game since II (don't know about one) your people are unhappy because there are other people living IN THE SAME CITY! Even 1 pop cities suffer from "It's too crowded!".

Well, Texas wasn't to happy about being a part of the USA. They even joined the Civil War to be free.

Now hold on a second partner, Texas was a Mexican territory. American settlers and couple revolutionary Mexicans eventually out numbered loyal Mexicans. They launched a revolution WITH THE EXPRESS INTEREST OF JOINING THE USA, the Republic of Texas was a temporary government. The Texans however saw things the souths way in 1861 resulting in their secession.

 

[neptune2000]

True. But when you think about the unhappiness caused by number of cities, doesn't that mean that the bigger your territory is the unhappier your people are. I don't think that its very reasonable. It's like people in New York are unhappy because Washington D.C, Los Angeles, Atlanta and all the other American cities exist.

No its not. Its that people in New York are unhappy because they're governed by the same set of policies that suit people in Dallas.

Its harder to run a big country than it is to run a bunch of small countries.

And, more importantly of course, its a gameplay mechanic designed to make expansion costly.
Just like maintenance costs from number of cities in Civ4.

I agree, although I can say with some certainty that the people of San Francisco wish that Los Angeles didn't exist. And as for Texas, I think if anything they probably don't care too much one way or another about other states' cities

 

[darroldtg]

Well, I didn't start this thread to give lectures on Texas history, although I could.

So, I'll just say that "Me,myself,and,I" doesn't give anything approaching an informative account of the rebellion of ALL of Mexico against the assumption of dictatorial powers by Santa Ana.

 

[Polycrates]

"Happiness" is just a misnomer in this game, and probably has been for at least a few iterations now.

Rename it to "stability" and suddenly you've got an eminently sensible mechanic both from a gameplay and realism perspective. A populous, far-flung empire is going to be prone to considerable instability; every new city adds its own administrative hurdles; and in particular, an empire that has just absorbed a whole bunch of cities by conquest is going to be unstable as hell. So you need to throw an awful lot of bread and circuses at people to keep them in line.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Well, I didn't start this thread to give lectures on Texas history, although I could.

So, I'll just say that "Me,myself,and,I" doesn't give anything approaching an informative account of the rebellion of ALL of Mexico against the assumption of dictatorial powers by Santa Ana.

I was talking about Texas specifically not the rest of Mexico. Though you are correct that by that point a Mexican loyal to Santa Ana was difficult to come by. Still the revolt was launched primarily by American settlers. In game terms Texas culture flipped.

As for happiness I think it should be city based not global. However if a large number of cities are unhappy then perhaps there could be some global effects.

 

[skallben]

I was talking about Texas specifically not the rest of Mexico. Though you are correct that by that point a Mexican loyal to Santa Ana was difficult to come by. Still the revolt was launched primarily by American settlers. In game terms Texas culture flipped.

As for happiness I think it should be city based not global. However if a large number of cities are unhappy then perhaps there could be some global effects.

I thought Texas cessation from Mexico more had to do with them wanting to control their own affairs. Pretty much the same motives as the civil war when Washington tightened it's grip.

As a EU citizen could certainly sympatize with that, there's alot of things going in Brussles that I dislike. We are slowly becoming annexed.

IMO, global happiness is good in theory but there are some issues with it. The local cap was good but not that effective IMO, cities grow damn fast to size 6ish.

 

[chris79]

Yes, Luxembourgers *are* more like each other than New Yorkers are like Texans.

Larger places have more diversity, smaller places have less.


Sure it does. The more people you have, scattered over a larger area, the more different they are.

A city of 10 million people is likely to be more similar than 10 million people scattered over a large country. We tend to be more like people near us.

This is even more true historically, because of limits in communications technology. Take out radio, TV, internet, etc. and you'll find a big increase in spatial variation; modern technology has a homogenizing influence.

But again, all this is academic, the mechanic is there for gameplay reasons.

Firstly, I know it is a mechanic for limiting growth, but someone suggested that the Texas-New York thing proves the new system is based on reality. And in game like CIV, the mechanics like this should be at least a bit "realistic".

Secondly, you fell into a trap nicely - by saying that having control over many strongly populated territories (in game terms: cities) makes it more difficult for the state to keep people happy AND by stating people living near one another are less likely to cause such a problem for the government, you confirmed the OP thesis: CIV5 got it wrong even from the "realism" point of view (I guess that from gameplay depth point of view the new happiness is wrong is obvious).

Because in CIV5, it doesn't matter if you have New York (10M people), Texas (10M) and Mexico (10M) under control or you only have New York with 30M people living there - the amount of unhappiness created this way is the same.

The RL unhappiness mechanism you are describing was represented in CIV4 by "number of cities maintenance cost" - and is not present in CIV5 as far as I know.

Oh, and Luxembourgians - are they all catholic fundamentalists or social democrats?

 

[Ahriman]

Secondly, you fell into a trap nicely - by saying that having control over many strongly populated territories (in game terms: cities) makes it more difficult for the state to keep people happy AND by stating people living near one another are less likely to cause such a problem for the government, you confirmed the OP thesis: CIV5 got it wrong even from the "realism" point of view (I guess that from gameplay depth point of view the new happiness is wrong is obvious).

....huh?
In Civ5, larger cities are more unhappy, and empires with more cities are more unhappy.
How is that in conflict with people being near each other (ie within the same city) haver lower average happiness than the same population living more dispersed?
In Civ5, 2 size 6 cities generate more total unhappiness than 1 size 12 city.
Seems entirely consistent to me.

Because in CIV5, it doesn't matter if you have New York (10M people), Texas (10M) and Mexico (10M) under control or you only have New York with 30M people living there - the amount of unhappiness created this way is the same.

That isn't true.
3 size 10 cities have 36 unhappiness, whereas 1 size 30 city has 30 unhappiness.

I guess that from gameplay depth point of view the new happiness is wrong is obvious).

I don't guess that at all. I'd probably tweak the system so that it had some nonlinearities, but there's nothing inherently wrong with using happiness as the main determinant of empire limitation (merging in maintenance costs and health).

The RL unhappiness mechanism you are describing was represented in CIV4 by "number of cities maintenance cost" - and is not present in CIV5 as far as I know.

You're aware that each city you have generates 2 unhappiness, right?
Or did you miss the "unhappiness from number of cities" stat?

 

[chris79]

As I said "as far as i know" - I am not playing CIV5 and base on my experience from time of game release and especially on what people post. So, I forgot the unhappiness from number of cities is in the game.

But it doesn't really change much since the main factor that influences the unhappiness is global population. So the NY/Texas/Mexico example is still valid. According to your theory, the bigger the population in a region that has different views to the ones represented by government's policies, the more unhappiness and this is simply not in the game. AS I said, if you had max population in NY and minimum in Texas and Mexico, it would be almost the same as in having all population in NY and exactly the same as having a lot more pop in NY than in the other 2 cities.

 

[Reginleif]

I don't get the idea that Americans, Canadians, Russians, Chinese, Australians, and maybe Indians are the most unhappy people on earth because we live in geographically large countries. Obviously, the people in Haiti must be jubilant, and the people of Liechtenstein must be ecstatic.

Note to Sid: Texans are NOT unhappy because we live in a large state!

In Canada, we have a UB called "Hockey Stadium" which replaces the Stadium, it provides an additional +1 happiness than usual and adds +15 experiance to military units produced in this city with only 2 gold to maintanance the structure.

 

[d,,p]

I live in Switzerland and I am very very happy!

Spoiler :

I hope we do not expand to the EU though.

 

[Ahriman]

As I said "as far as i know" - I am not playing CIV5

So you're complaining about the game rules of a game when you don't even know the rules?

Wow.