(6-7) Dealing with Crippling Poverty

[j86x]

Hello, I'm a somewhat new player to VP (~100 hours on this mod) and I've obtained a few wins on King difficulty (All CVs with Ottomans, Portugal, and America) - I somewhat know what I'm doing in VP at this point, and have familiarized myself thoroughly with the new happiness system.
Going from King->Emperor difficulty on VP for me has been an absurdly large jump in difficulty for me due to poverty - all my games on King I had zero problems with happiness, but I guess since it is based on average citizen yields and AI gets more of those as you progress in difficulty, one cannot play the same way and expect to do just as well

I have attached a screenshot of my third attempt to win an Emperor game, and it has gone the exact same way as my earlier two attempts - in the early 100s of turns, my empire is in rebellion due to poverty unhappiness with no way to get out. The things I've tried in this game:

• Cathedrals in all my cities (except Kufah as I haven't had time yet)
  
• Gold trade routes to Russia out of my two biggest offenders (Damascus+Medina)
• Early purchase of tiles where I can build gold pastures/plantations/gold camps

I'd love some advice on what to do differently and/or an explanation of why the difficulty ramps up so steeply - I haven't changed the way I play much (All my king wins have also been tall 5-6 city tradition, micromanaging citizens/cycling specialists, etc) and I've had no problems internally or externally there) and I've went from having pretty much no resistance to not being able to progress past turn 150

 

[azum4roll]

Your tiles look bare. You should research Currency and build villages along the roads (and send trade routes passing all of them). You shouldn't be working any unimproved tiles in your cities.

 

[Melchizedek]

You have several unimproved luxuries. Additionally, commerce buildings can help. There is a chance you have too many cities or have let them grow too large depending what social policies you have. It looks like you're getting a new policy soon and also about to unlock currency (if I'm reading that tech thumbnail right) so there might be some help on the way. You are building an arena in one city, and once you have them all you can build the associated national wonder for a little more help. I'm confused by your statement that you have cathedrals built. None of your cities are showing a gold output on farms or pastures. If you had cathedrals these should generate +1 gold.

Overall, as an emperor player my tips would be:

• some unhappiness is fine, but you shouldn't let it reach this point;
• stop growth either in number or size of cities before this happens;
• build enough workers to hook up all your luxes;
• never work bare tiles after the very early game;
• prioritize libraries early -- they give you a specialist slot without urbanization (can use it on any building, not just the scientist) and that + working mines is the best way to slow growth while getting up tech and infrastructure;
• prioritize trade and currency, then build TR (as you have) and villiages;
• run some merchants in at least one city so you get a town or two. Towns help greatly with poverty;
• if you are Tradition your secondary cities can be unhappy, but not by more than a frowny face or two. Your capital should almost never be unhappy.

 

[Stalker0]

So as far as salvaging this game, here's the plan:

• Immediately stop growth in every city except your capital, to help us recover.
• Buy luxs. Looks like Russia has at least a silver for you. See if you can buy any others. Your gold looks decent at the moment, so its worth paying a little extra to stabilize. Even 2 more luxs can totally fix your immediate issue. I almost always buy at least 1 lux from an AI at this point in the game, it really helps you manage your happy.
• If you do have any unimproved luxs, change your workers to focus on them now.
• Najran - From what I can see it looks like you only have 1 stone in that city. So I would delay the stone works (unless you are trying to finish a CS question), and switch to another happy building (aka arena/barracks that give you an immediate reduction in happiness).
• Start moving 3 of your c bows and that scout back to your capital immediately. You are now at barbarian risk, and they most often go after the capital. If they kill a key TR or pillage a key road it can really knock you down, so make sure you can take them out quickly. Medina is close and has a little unit coverage so I wouldn't be concerned about getting bum rushed by Russia, I would be much more fearful of the barbs.

In terms of happiness management in general, I can tell you that I felt the same happiness pain going from emperor to Immortal. You do get some happy penalties as you go up, but mainly its the fact that the AI is more efficient and faster, and so your unhappiness increases faster with each difficulty jump. So part of the game is just "getting good", aka learning what buildings to build, efficient use of your gold, when to expand versus when to slow down and improve your territory first, etc. Small changes here can mean big changes to your happiness at this stage in the game.

You also have to get used to shutting off growth. In many cases I will shut my satellite cities at 4 pop during the "fast expansion phase", and then as my luxs go up and my improvements fill in I can unlock growth again. A quick guide (though not perfect advice) is.... if your not growing into improved tiles (or specialists) than stop growing. Looking at Najran, even though its about to grow to pop 6, its only got a few productive tiles at the moment. Same with Medina, is it really working all productive tiles? (and remember if productive just means heavy food....that doesn't really count, because there is no reason to keep growing if all your getting for your efforts is more food).