Has anyone been able to get their cities to Happy since the update? Pre-patch I would usually have all cities Happy and maybe even some Ecstatic late game. It is still very easy for small empires, but I put in a big effort in my latest Science game and just couldn't move the needle and every single city was between -1 and +1 almost the entire game.
For happiness I:
1. Captured or traded for all 18 luxuries that were in the game.
2. Had almost every city in range of a Zoo (easier since Mexico City was in the game). I almost never build Zoos but really wanted to go for Happy this game.
3. Found a great Colosseum site that hit 8 cities.
4. Eliminated all unhappiness penalties (war weariness, etc).
5. Built about two dozen waterside City Parks with Liang (playing as Teddy so I wanted the Appeal anyway).
6. Ran Liberalism. I had planned to also run Republican Legacy but needed Oligarchy more so ended up without that legacy policy.
Near the final turn of the game I counted up 246 citizens spread across 36 cities. Maybe I should have burned more cities, but almost every one I kept served a purpose, either it had some good districts already in place, had 4+ forests to chop, or was keeping other cities from flipping by loyalty. I was a also a little sloppy slowing growth. Around T100 I started putting citizens in district buildings to cap cities that were not aiming for 10 pop for Rationalism, but kind of slacked off on it in the late game and especially let cities captured late where the AI spread Feed the World grow to much.
To be clear, it would have been possible to get happier by doing certain things, but these would slow down the spaceship. For example, I could have:
1. Gone hog wild with National Parks but that faith was better used for Builders and Jesuit Campus buildings.
2. Could built Stadiums and the Estádio do Maracanã, but by the time there unlocked the spaceship was already heading to Mars so it would only be helping for a few turns.
3. Ran New Deal, but Suffrage was off the beeline to Globalism and I prefer Communism for Science Victory.
4. Built Stupa, but since only about 1/3rd of cities had Holy Sites it would not have made much difference, plus I was using faith for Builders and Jesuit Education so I never bothered with a Worship Building belief.
5. Taken River Goddess of Zen Meditation, but I Religious Settlerments / Earth Goddess and Choral Music / Jesuit Education are much stronger.
So, is Happy just not worth ever going for anymore? In retrospect, the hammers invested in those Entertainment Complexes and Zoos would probably have been better for projects. The only way I could really see getting my cities happy without slowing the overall space race down seems to be Cahokia, who were not in the game. Maybe also a very odd thing like winning to the vote to double effectiveness of a luxury that I had 5 copies of, but that never came up.
