Trying to sprawl always dumps me into happiness hole?

[Buccaneer]

chazzy, that would also be true even if you are not spamming cities. Just 4 well-placed cities can get you at least 8 different and about 18 total (as in the case of my last map, Continents I believe). I have longed come to the conclusion (good or bad) that the only reason to settle a city is for the unique luxuries.

 

[Big_Daddy]

whatever Civ you play, using Religion to get Ceremonial Burial and/or Asceticism are huge Happiness boosters. That's a happy face for every city following your religion (foreign cities too) and another happy face for every Shrine you build.

 

[chazzycat]

chazzy, that would also be true even if you are not spamming cities. Just 4 well-placed cities can get you at least 8 different and about 18 total (as in the case of my last map, Continents I believe). I have longed come to the conclusion (good or bad) that the only reason to settle a city is for the unique luxuries.

not sure I would agree with that...with a tall empire its pretty easy to get away with a city that doesn't have unique luxes. It's more critical for wide empires to nab a ton of luxes, just to keep the ball rolling (expansion) until religion kicks in. I've found that if you lose your momentum by going into any significant period of unhappiness, it can be very hard to get it back.

 

[Buccaneer]

whatever Civ you play, using Religion to get Ceremonial Burial and/or Asceticism are huge Happiness boosters. That's a happy face for every city following your religion (foreign cities too) and another happy face for every Shrine you build.

Then you end up with 35-40 happiness instead of the usual 15-20.

But we're talking about sprawl here, so...nevermind.