city happiness and build times

[malfuriouspete]

hey guys,

playing a noble/epic game on the erebus map type as Sheaim (sp?) the wizard looking evil guy

How do I deal with the unhappiness in my cities?? When I get to a pop. level of 5 or 6, the red faces come up and I'm basically strangled and can't really improve any further. None of the early buildings really provide any happiness bonuses and I don't have a lot of resources that provide happiness at the moment.. how do I combat this problem??

Also, whats the deal with the insanely long build times of certain units and buildings? Most wonders for me require almost 100 turns to build. Research, as well, takes a long time to get anything done, especially at the start of the game.

And finally.. the Erebus map. Its a good concept and idea but I hate the execution of it.. Why is the entire world cut-off by mountains? In my current game, I'm basically closed in and no way of moving troops to other areas except by sea. I got bored playing that map, decided to turn on the worldbuilder and see what everyone else was doing. One civ built ONLY mines in his empire. Every tile was a hill in his valley... what the hell?!

 

[Avahz Darkwood]

game speed to slow, make it normal or quick and build times will improve. You can edit the Erebus map script with notepad and get rid of many of those mountains (making them hills) and about that civ building only mines? You must have found them dwarfs, the Erebus map script will actually place civs based upon their theme, even to their detriment. The forum for the map script can be found here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=261688

 

[WarKirby]

everything's insanely long because you set it on epic, what did you expect ?

I played a few games on quick, and it's better to begin with once you get off the ground faster, but you end up with so much to do once you have a huge empire. You end up researching new techs every 3-4 turns, and gaining new build options faster than you can build the previous things you unlocked.

I just found it kind of hectic, so now I'm playing on epic for the first time. It's kind of refreshing.

 

[WarKirby]

being unable to move anywhere except by sea can happen sometimes, but not always. Erebus gives an interesting feel with lots of natural walls. It makes your empire easier to defend, as you can build a fortress in a mountain pass for instance.

To be honest, fortresses in vanilla civ were pretty pointless. Since we no longer have the old Civ II zone of control rule, people would just casually walk by your fortified strongholds. and pillage things anyways. Mountains all over makes fortified points much more useful.

 

[Kenjister]

I would really have to recomend against playing on the slower speeds in FfH. Kael had already decreased the tech speed drastically compared to vanilla civ, and some buildings too. Once you get into the later game, happiness ceases to be an issue as most civics give a happiness boost with certain buildings, and public baths eliminate the rest.

As for the map script, I really don't play the Erebus script all that much since I prefer more open borders. I would recomend the Tectonics map set to Lakes (30% water) with extra civs added. It has good mountain ranges and large bodies of water that can divide things up a bit. you might want to generate a few of those maps and take a look in Worldbuilder to see if you like them.