We Need More Happy and Health Buildings for the Modern Age

I played several CIV 4:BtS game campaigns already and every time I arrive to the modern age and start building factories and other health hazard buildings I encounter happiness and health crises no matter what I do.

Even when I build all the happiness and health generating buildings including wanders my largest cities still suffer from unhappiness and unhealthiness and they end up shrinking for many turns.

This part of the game is NOT fun at all because I feel I have done everything I could and I am still being penalized.

So I would like to suggest adding more happiness and health buildings for the modern age for Civ 5 (or new Civ 4 expansions).

For generating more happiness I would suggest adding:
Amusement park
Water Park
Zoo
Concert stadium
Football stadium
Casino
Resort
Day spa
Health club
And other entertainment related improvements.

Some of these entertainments should also generate coin.

We should have many happiness buildings available to us to counter any unhappiness issues we encounter.

Some defensive buildings such as bunkers should give happiness bonus in war time.

There are many healthy buildings available right now but I still manage to get negative health once I build factories and other buildings in the modern age.
Even after I build ALL the health generating buildings.

So I think we need a few more health generating buildings/improvements such as:
Health club
Water reservoir
Dental clinic
Day spa
And other health buildings/improvements.

Players should always feel they are in control and that there is a solution for the current problem they are facing.

I enjoy Civ 4 very much but when I am facing these health and happiness issues and I am unable to build anything else, then that can get very annoying.

I think that represents the inability of any non-godlike city to grow into something that could house half of the world.

I've seen what happens when you add a ton of health/happiness buildings. I had a 40 pop. city.

In the 1500s.

Cities cannot grow forever because at some point they are not going to have the food surplus that is needed to grow.
So sooner or later they will become stagnate and that is fine.

The problem is when all of a sudden a bunch of unhappiness and/or unhealthiness hits your cities in the modern age and cities start shrinking fast and there is nothing you can do about it.

That takes the fun away.

The solution obviously is you're expanding vertically to much. It's natural that cities suffer from unhealthiness in the industrial era. Were cities sparkling clean in the real world during this time period? If you can't afford the unhealthiness, don't build the factories/plants/industries. Otherwise, wait until Ecology or Genetics.

Unhappiness and unhealthiness is realistic, though. I mean, if you look back 100 years, when industrialisation was well started, there was massive amounts of discontent and poverty. Even today, it is only the handful of Western nations that don't have these problems.

And, in terms of the game, it isn't actually all that hard to prevent unhealthiness and unhappiness, or at least, to minimise them, especially once you get to the equivalent of the present day. You have clean energy (hydro and nuclear) as well as recycling plants, and then all of those happy buildings, like temples (up to 7), theatres, etc. not to mention the cultural slider.

No, as it is, I think it is too easy to avoid it, or that it doesn't provide sufficient problems, comparable to real life.

In my FutureMod, I made the Environmentalism civic simply magnify the effects of all health improving buildings. That is one solution.

Unhappiness and unhealthiness is realistic, though. I mean, if you look back 100 years, when industrialisation was well started, there was massive amounts of discontent and poverty.

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Fine, I accept that.
However, I do NOT accept the fact that the game doesn’t give me enough tools to solve the Unhappiness and unhealthiness issues.
That is exactly why I am suggesting adding more realistic buildings/improvements to solve these issues.

It's natural that cities suffer from unhealthiness in the industrial era. Were cities sparkling clean in the real world during this time period? If you can't afford the unhealthiness, don't build the factories/plants/industries. Otherwise, wait until Ecology or Genetics.

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Again, I accept that cities suffer from unhealthiness in the industrial era.
But at the same time the game should offer more tools to counter that.

The main point for the game is to have fun.
Problem solving is fun but only when you have solutions available to you, and that is exactly what I am asking for.

If someone builds too fast and he has Unhappiness and unhealthiness as a result of that, then he will have to spend more hammers on unhappiness and unhealthiness improvements and I think that is fair.

In my FutureMod, I made the Environmentalism civic simply magnify the effects of all health improving buildings. That is one solution.

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Sounds good to me.
Can you please give me the link to your mod?

But why should Environmentalism be the only civic of resort? After all, it already provides a big boost to health, and additional happiness from tile improvements. Does it really need more?

Here's another alternative: the OP mentioned a massive number of new buildings to affect health and happiness, but let's assume that some of them are built automatically by your citizens--you handle big stuff, not spas.

So, make one new building, a Recreational Park, that gives +1 and +1 . You can build it with some early Modern technology (open for debate).

Increase the health bonus of hospitals to +4 over +3 ...I've already done this and highly recommend it.

To reflect the impact of modern medicine, you can also give the Ecology or Medicine, or both, technologies an additional +1 .

Or, maybe the Red Cross can give +1 per city, like the Hanging Gardens.

For happiness, give Mass Media +1 on discovery as well.

If you want the game to be easier, then go back a few difficulty levels. The fact that your cities always stay happy and healthy is unrealistic on it's own. The happiness and healthiness buildings are good. Environmentalism is already there for people who do not have the perfect country with good resources.

The game is fine on this factor. Want to just zoom through everything in a flash? Play Rise of Mankind, or Next War Advanced.

Shackel said:

If you want the game to be easier, then go back a few difficulty levels. The fact that your cities always stay happy and healthy is unrealistic on it's own. The happiness and healthiness buildings are good. Environmentalism is already there for people who do not have the perfect country with good resources.

The game is fine on this factor. Want to just zoom through everything in a flash? Play Rise of Mankind, or Next War Advanced.

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I am already playing on “Noble”.
You cannot ask me to play on easier setting than that.

Once I started to build factories and other modern buildings my largest cities suddenly were -5 to -8 negative on health.

My largest cities also have negative happiness because of the “too crowded” factor, and at this point I don’t even have “war wariness” yet.
Just imagine what will happen when that one kicks in.

That is a big problem.

If I had more health/happiness terrain tiles then I would have been in a better shape, but in the current game I have only a few of those.

I don’t mind the game being challenging, I just want the game to give me the right tools to solve such problems when they occur.

Right now I am at a point that I built all the happiness and health buildings that are available to me and my largest cities still have negative happiness and healthiness.

That simply doesn’t make sense.

That is why we need more happiness and healthiness buildings.

Here's another alternative: the OP mentioned a massive number of new buildings to affect health and happiness, but let's assume that some of them are built automatically by your citizens--you handle big stuff, not spas.

So, make one new building, a Recreational Park, that gives +1 and +1 . You can build it with some early Modern technology (open for debate).

Increase the health bonus of hospitals to +4 over +3 ...I've already done this and highly recommend it.

To reflect the impact of modern medicine, you can also give the Ecology or Medicine, or both, technologies an additional +1 .

Or, maybe the Red Cross can give +1 per city, like the Hanging Gardens.

For happiness, give Mass Media +1 on discovery as well.

Click to expand...

That is another solution.
However, having to build more happiness and healthiness buildings can promote the fun of the game since it allows us to deal with new challenges and solve them.

Well, part of the game is managing it all. I wouldn't want there to be so many possible buildings that there's no challenge in keeping people happy and healthy.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing new buildings. I mean, in the 1900s, building up a new town, do I really have to build an aqueduct for healthiness? I wouldn't mind seeing some of the "older" buildings go obsolete (aqueduct, coliseum) to be replaced with more modern buildings.

I do like how the game goes in stages. Once you get to the industrial period, you have to really debate whether to build a factory and coal plant due to healthiness. But once you get hospitals, genetics, and some of the other modern techs, that pollution goes away and you can afford to build those.

UWHabs said:

Well, part of the game is managing it all. I wouldn't want there to be so many possible buildings that there's no challenge in keeping people happy and healthy.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing new buildings. I mean, in the 1900s, building up a new town, do I really have to build an aqueduct for healthiness? I wouldn't mind seeing some of the "older" buildings go obsolete (aqueduct, coliseum) to be replaced with more modern buildings.

I do like how the game goes in stages. Once you get to the industrial period, you have to really debate whether to build a factory and coal plant due to healthiness. But once you get hospitals, genetics, and some of the other modern techs, that pollution goes away and you can afford to build those.

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That makes sense to me.
However, I don’t think that a few more buildings that promote health and happiness can hurt the game that much.

If I had more health/happiness terrain tiles then I would have been in a better shape, but in the current game I have only a few of those.

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Then your solution is either to war and take territory with those resources, or to trade for them with other civilizations

Kornaki said:

Then your solution is either to war and take territory with those resources, or to trade for them with other civilizations

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True, however, I already traded everything I have with the AI.
Starting a war to capture more land with resources will only create war wariness and make my unhappy cities even more unhappy.

Believe me, I already explored all my options.

I read many articles in this site about all aspects of the game, so I know what I am doing.

"I mean, in the 1900s, building up a new town, do I really have to build an aqueduct for healthiness?"

- Las Vegas.

However, even in real life, factories and other things will mess a cities health up quite a bit.

I believe that not every city has to be perfect. If you can fix it, so be it, but as long as you somehow mess your city bad enough for a -5 through -8, maybe you should think about better city management.

For the "Too Crowded" thing, I REALLY think there should be a "Migration" unit that you can send to another city to lower the unhappiness, or even better, just have a "Suburb" improvement that would create happiness.

MosheLevi said:

Fine, I accept that.
However, I do NOT accept the fact that the game doesn’t give me enough tools to solve the Unhappiness and unhealthiness issues.
That is exactly why I am suggesting adding more realistic buildings/improvements to solve these issues.

Again, I accept that cities suffer from unhealthiness in the industrial era.
But at the same time the game should offer more tools to counter that.

The main point for the game is to have fun.
Problem solving is fun but only when you have solutions available to you, and that is exactly what I am asking for.

If someone builds too fast and he has Unhappiness and unhealthiness as a result of that, then he will have to spend more hammers on unhappiness and unhealthiness improvements and I think that is fair.

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Well, IMO, there is enough to handle it, if you correctly utilise methods. And, realistically, unhealthiness and unhappiness was impossible to control in very large cities. So, perhaps there could be some extra ways of producing happiness and healthiness, but these should be very costly, to reflect a level of impossibility and futility in trying to keep it completely under control.

They would probably have to be "Future" buildings, too.

perhaps there could be some extra ways of producing happiness and healthiness, but these should be very costly, to reflect a level of impossibility and futility in trying to keep it completely under control.

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Yes, I agree that such additional buildings should be somewhat costly but not too costly.
After all if they are too costly then players will prefer to leave the unhappy and unhealthy cities as they are and no one will build those extra costly buildings.

How big are your biggest cities, just as a general question? I tend to overlap anywhere from 1 to 5 tiles on my settlements, so I rarely get over size 20-25 unless I am using corporations.

Antilogic said:

How big are your biggest cities, just as a general question? I tend to overlap anywhere from 1 to 5 tiles on my settlements, so I rarely get over size 20-25 unless I am using corporations.

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My biggest cities have no overlap with other cities, their size is from 25-30 and the year is 1950.
Some of them had -8 health.

In any case I switched to Environmentalism and that solved most of the health problem.
Now I have just couple of cities with -2 health.

Still I don’t think we should be forced to switch to Environmentalism in the modern age.
Right now I feel I have to do that so I don’t really have any choice even if I prefer to have another civic.

Happiness is still an issue even without war wariness.
Suleiman has declared war on me and I had to offer cease fire because my cities started to be even more unhappy because of the war.

At this point I am not sure how to handle war wariness in the future.
I have no tools available to me to decrease unhappiness, oh well.