A review of the Happiness System

[Finarvi]

This probably has been discussed before but what if garissoned unit would tank some damage? I mean, when city is reduced to 0, then unit takes damage (if it is possible then city could disappear as a target...) and only when there are no units inside you can take down city.

I know that it could be a little more complicated and hard to take city but for now it is very easy to do so in my opinion. And, I believe, it would fix garrisoned units' weakness problem.

 

[Apostremo]

Variant 3
Give Melee units a (invisible) promotion "City Defender"

• If in city, decrease CS of nearby enemy Melee units (against cities if possible)

Variant 1
Could a garrison in a city work as a promotion/modifier for the city? So for combat calculations the CS of the city is increased by X% ? Could be hard to balance, though.
Dunno if either X is fixed (for example 15%) or X is dependent on the CS of the unit (which is bad since it scales like crazy)

Variant 2
Based on Finarvi's idea, a variant that may or may not be more modder friendly:

• Garrison gives a +% CS in battle for the city as above
• Combat vs. City with Garrison has a hardcoded "Impi First strike"-mechanic that hits the unit in the City.

That means a Unit in the City beefs the City up quite a bit, but is also quite passive in a siege and when the city is attacked gets damaged.
So no city stays at 0hp when unit is alive here (that could be imbalanced anyway - Every round send a new unit in the city to keep it alive at 0hp)

 

[Edaka]

To be perfectly honest, I really don't care about the crime rate, I care about the fact that a garrisons doesn't help defend the city.

Also your suggestion would require just as many recalculations per turn as the other suggestions.

Yes, I'm aware that my suggestion does nothing to help with the issue of garrisons being weak when defending. However, I find crime the most annoying of all the sources of unhappiness, one that you have no real ways of fighting aside from building buildings. I mean, boredom is very rarely an issue, and with illiteracy and poverty you can utilise trade routes to effectively deal with them. Garrisons, however, aren't as effective at dealing with crime and most of the time they don't even reduce a point of crime-caused unhappiness.

If I understand correctly, percentual modifiers that reduce city needs are applied after calculating global average values. If I'm correct, then what I proposed won't affect any recalculations. Excuse me if I'm not.

 

[Funak]

Variant 3
Give Melee units a (invisible) promotion "City Defender"

• If in city, decrease CS of nearby enemy Melee units (against cities if possible)

Variant 1
Could a garrison in a city work as a promotion/modifier for the city? So for combat calculations the CS of the city is increased by X% ? Could be hard to balance, though.
Dunno if either X is fixed (for example 15%) or X is dependent on the CS of the unit (which is bad since it scales like crazy)

Variant 2
Based on Finarvi's idea, a variant that may or may not be more modder friendly:

• Garrison gives a +% CS in battle for the city as above
• Combat vs. City with Garrison has a hardcoded "Impi First strike"-mechanic that hits the unit in the City.

That means a Unit in the City beefs the City up quite a bit, but is also quite passive in a siege and when the city is attacked gets damaged.
So no city stays at 0hp when unit is alive here (that could be imbalanced anyway - Every round send a new unit in the city to keep it alive at 0hp)

Main problem with this is that a warrior would do the same job defending a city as a mech-infantry, which really isn't a good situation.

 

[Apostremo]

Main problem with this is that a warrior would do the same job defending a city as a mech-infantry, which really isn't a good situation.

Yeah i know, but i think you can only work with percentages in Combat modifiers, at least i never saw anything else.

On the bright side, a warrior costs as much maintenance as a mechanized infanterie and with the impi first strike the warrior would not be around for the actual defense of the city, but would die beforehand.

Could also be split per era, 15%- (Units Era - Current Era )* 2% bonus for the city.
So mechanized inf 15%, warrior 3% bonus in atomic,
warrior 15% in antics

 

[Gazebo]

Variant 3
Give Melee units a (invisible) promotion "City Defender"

• If in city, decrease CS of nearby enemy Melee units (against cities if possible)

Variant 1
Could a garrison in a city work as a promotion/modifier for the city? So for combat calculations the CS of the city is increased by X% ? Could be hard to balance, though.
Dunno if either X is fixed (for example 15%) or X is dependent on the CS of the unit (which is bad since it scales like crazy)

Variant 2
Based on Finarvi's idea, a variant that may or may not be more modder friendly:

• Garrison gives a +% CS in battle for the city as above
• Combat vs. City with Garrison has a hardcoded "Impi First strike"-mechanic that hits the unit in the City.

That means a Unit in the City beefs the City up quite a bit, but is also quite passive in a siege and when the city is attacked gets damaged.
So no city stays at 0hp when unit is alive here (that could be imbalanced anyway - Every round send a new unit in the city to keep it alive at 0hp)

Sorry guys, but this feels like a solution looking for a problem. City garrisons already add to the City's CS, but not as significantly as fortifications. This is by design.

G

 

[Apostremo]

Personally I think the status quo is okay. I mean in later eras even fresh cities build walls in just a few rounds.

Although, Defense is the one category that is always lacking the most and with the fewest and latest (!) -% need modifier (i think). Maybe some -10% defense need on walls/castle/..? Something to battle the tech increase early on.

It was always silly how the unit auto dies in the city, but that is the nature of Civ V, probably always will be. Maybe Civ VI is smarter in this regard, or at least the Civ VI CBP

 

[Gamewizard]

I agree with Gazebo, the crime system works as is. I like to think that it represents how safe the people of the city feel. Walls and barracks are the basic "crime fighting" buildings that should be required to keep order in a city. And it also gives you greater pause when having to queue up your build order.

 

[Strec]

So the conclusion is to modify that you must impatc buildings.

The thread concern the Happiness System so I don't understand why it is focused only on crime. Modifying garrison can only impact on one thing, tuning buildings can impact more than one.

 

[Apostremo]

So the conclusion is to modify that you must impatc buildings.

The thread concern the Happiness System so I don't understand why it is focused only on crime. Modifying garrison can only impact on one thing, tuning buildings can impact more than one.

Because the others are fine.

 

[Gazebo]

So the conclusion is to modify that you must impatc buildings.

The thread concern the Happiness System so I don't understand why it is focused only on crime. Modifying garrison can only impact on one thing, tuning buildings can impact more than one.

Crime represents more than just war safety. Walls help with crime because it allows the city to control who enters or leaves the city. Castles and barracks help because larger garrisons = more law enforcement (until advent of police, Garrisons did this). So walls are useful historically regardless of the city's proximity to a contested border.

G

 

[Strec]

Crime represents more than just war safety. Walls help with crime because it allows the city to control who enters or leaves the city. Castles and barracks help because larger garrisons = more law enforcement (until advent of police, Garrisons did this). So walls are useful historically regardless of the city's proximity to a contested border.

G

I agree concerning baracks, first police force and it's normal to have one in each town.

I can agree too for Castle in the major town (but a castle in each city?) too because it also a power symbol, surrounded by villages or later cities. Which make me say it can also impact on poverty and culture.

It's more difficult to agree on walls/fortification in a farmers town in the plain in the center of an empire. Frontier towns and forts are suffisient to counter an invasion.

But, my first example can be looked at, creating walls/fortications in a town may make some merchants coming and so we can consider that wall influence crime and powerty (75%/25% for example).

I'm convinced that making a major and a minor impact on buildings would permit to have more differencied cities (for example 65%/35% crime/poverty for walls).

Note I think it's more comprehensible than a great scientist slot in some walls

After, technic limitations can command :/

 

[Gazebo]

I agree concerning baracks, first police force and it's normal to have one in each town.

I can agree too for Castle in the major town (but a castle in each city?) too because it also a power symbol, surrounded by villages or later cities. Which make me say it can also impact on poverty and culture.

Civ is an abstraction. Most 'real' empires have more than four cities in them, so you can imagine that, in civ terms, the 'cities' on the map are the biggest and most important cities in your empire (with farms, villages, etc. acting as stand-ins for smaller centers of population). Thus, it is absolutely logical that the largest cities in an empire would need and/or have symbols of imperial power and military strength.

Ultimately, no one is forcing you to build these things- if you can deal with the unhappiness from crime, go for it. I don't want to get into the slippery slope of making 'hybrid' buildings for the happiness system, as that's increasingly difficult to balance. Walls and castles are useful for defense and help control a city's internal criminal population. That's...that's pretty much it.

G

 

[Strigvir]

It's more difficult to agree on walls/fortification in a farmers town

But there are no walls on farms, nor you can't build them.

 

[Strec]

Civ is an abstraction. Most 'real' empires have more than four cities in them, so you can imagine that, in civ terms, the 'cities' on the map are the biggest and most important cities in your empire (with farms, villages, etc. acting as stand-ins for smaller centers of population). Thus, it is absolutely logical that the largest cities in an empire would need and/or have symbols of imperial power and military strength.

G

I'm ok with that, I'll change the scale of my reasonings. It was more visible in Civ4 with town surrounded by village which did grow.

 

[Apostremo]

But there are no walls on farms, nor you can't build them.

or villages or even towns..

 

[Strigvir]

But there are no villages.

 

[Apostremo]

But there are no villages.

Are we playing the same game? Anyhow, i was agreeing with you, if you got that wrong.

 

[Strigvir]

The closest thing resembling villages in civ5 is farms, trading posts seem to be something like trading hubs (CBP gave them more sense by adding a bonus on top of city connections).

 

[Apostremo]

The closest thing resembling villages in civ5 is farms, trading posts seem to be something like trading hubs (CBP gave them more sense by adding a bonus on top of city connections).

CBP made them villages. And changed a GP improvement to towns