Civ 5 happiness - mods, fix or suggestion

[Scooter1]

I'll try not to make this a rant but I was really getting into the game, hoping to contribute to this forum, but then got more and more sick of happiness. Every turn in the game seems to be five minutes of managing or thinking about or planning for happiness. After that five minutes, I get to play the rest of the turn. Now i can't even bring myself to turn it on I'm so sick of it.

I've done searches, some threads agreeing with me, others said it's not worth disabling it because so many parts of the game (luxury resources, population growth, production) are tied to happiness. It just feels like happiness is 70% of the game, especially in the 1700-1900 time-frame when the game is supposed to be getting deeper and more complex. I'd rather it be 30%.

Any suggestions? Help appreciated, thanks.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Trade Luxuries, ally with City States, especially Mercentile. (do not conquer them as they disappear).

 

[Browd]

Ignore the fact it's called happiness. It is a growth/expansion limiter (new name: "Growth points"). Prior Civs used a variety of means to put a price on growth, including city maintenance, corruption, etc. CiV uses happiness. If you are having to spend 5 minutes at the beginning of every turn managing happiness, you are expanding much too quickly, without adequate foundation in social policies, happiness buildings, luxuries and luxury trades, religion and CS friendships (mercantile CSs) and alliances (all CSs).

Check out the War Academy's guide to happiness (vanilla version, not yet updated for G&K, but still very useful): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436022

 

[Argive]

this is sometimes an issue in my games, but i find that starting location and the first few decisions in terms of how fast to expand affect it in a big way. if possible, expand along a north-south axis rather than a west-east axis -- that will give you a richer range of luxury goods. consider building stunted cities if it will allow you to deny other civs access to an area rich of luxuries. and try to keep one or two civs as friends to swap goodies. that means putting off conquest for a while.

when happiness is dipping in spite of these, i do one or more of the following in addition to the ideas TheKingOfBigOz suggested:

- beeline into the techs that unlock the forbidden palace and notre dame; then rush those wonders. hopefully these two will set things straight. if not, there's eiffel tower, but by that time happiness is usually not a problem.

- do the patronage tree. one of the policies doubles the happiness from gifted luxuries. also, patronage policies make it much easier to retain city states as friends and allies, which is a prerequisite for getting their gifts.

- get the goodies that city states desire from other civs in trade deals. offer more than what you receive if need be--city state benefits will often more than compensate.

 

[Juanholio]

Try a religious oriented civ or focus on faith if you can (from desert/tundra/gold/wine etc.) Religion seems to be the best mechanic for having a more managable amount of happiness. I almost always choose ceremonial burial and pagodas if I can - that's upto +3 happiness per city - if you can afford the faith. Either that or happy temples (I forget the name) - I think puppets will eventually build them. Even if they don't you're own cities will and it won't cost 200 faith if you're short. Often I find I can maintain a decent amount of happiness even while taking a whole bunch of cities. In a recent game (large, continents, emp), I spread my religion like crazy and had an average of +30 happiness for most of the game, even while (and helping me) claim the continent.

As above forbidden palace, notre dame and chichen itza can help a whole lot. If you can't build them yourself whoever did just became your enemy . There's something nice about taking an enemy capital and ending up with a relative boost in happiness, rather than a massive drop.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Play a taller game; wide games suffer for hapiness, tall for food. If you want hapiness to play less of a factor you can just change the way you play the game.

 

[Glassmage]

go to Handicap xml file and change your starting happiness.

 

[Aaron90495]

If you want to go the lazy route, just set resources to abundant in advanced options. That should help a lot.

 

[Scooter1]

Thanks for the tips - I will definitely try a game focusing more on north-south and spreading religion. Failing that I'll go the lazy routes.

Great responses, thanks.

Ok I read the happiness guide, it might help a bit. I think I've had a few games in a row where I had less luxury resources and more food resources compared to the competition, that and I remember having the notre dame swept out from me within a few turns of completing it.

I've also never considered razing cities I own to manage unhappiness, so I've been 'in the hole' for long stretches of games and that has been frustrating.

I think I'd like a mod that increases the benefits from stone works and circus by +2 or 3. That shouldn't unbalance the game much because those are still somewhat hard to build with prerequisites, so they wouldn't be a path to 'cheating' on the difficulty.

Thanks again

 

[ense7en]

Unique luxs should always be a factor when settling cities.
Don't settle too many if there aren't enough.

Wonders obviously do help a lot, but if you are playing at tougher difficulties where they are tough to get, taking religion with happiness boosts can be extremely helpful, as can trading lux for lux with the AI, allying with CSes, etc.

It's certainly a limiting factor, but you CAN have huge sprawling empires and okay happiness, you just have to plan it and manage it properly.

If you are warring heavily, make sure you only keep the cities you want/need. Raze/sell the crap ones, and puppet the okay ones, annex the good ones as needed.
Honor and Autocracy have some nice policies that allow you to conquer the whole world and still stay happy.

 

[DabigQuack]

Play civs with happiness buildings..

Persia is my favorite civ for this.. saltans banks always bail me out in any game.. the fact they are a superior bank and provide 2 happiness each can go a long way..

if u play Egypt and go religion heavy and manage to get an early religion take "religious center" this makes Burial tombs (Egypt temple, provide 4 happiness each) 2 for the tomb and 2 for religious center..

or u can play any civ and GO for a very economy heavy build.. this u can buy happiness via buildings instead of spending hammers to build them.

look for horses.. a circus is the cheapest 2 happiness the game has to offer.

The arabs have the bazaar that allows extra copies of any luxury resource in that city. trade them away for stuff u dont have..

there is lots of deeper ways to get happiness, u just gotta do some research

 

[joncnunn]

I've also never considered razing cities I own to manage unhappiness, so I've been 'in the hole' for long stretches of games and that has been frustrating.

This is probably the main reason: The AI founds too many cities that have no key tiles not already within range of another city. Such cities are better off being razed to the ground. (key tiles = any luxury / strategic resource you can either use or sell and natural wonders)

I find myself razing to the ground half of the AI's cities.

There are a couple of mods that "promote" the AI to Prince happiness level (VEM & GEM); they've included logic to have the AI spend cash on happiness buildings when needed.

 

[Gucumatz]

A couple other things if you want to go lazy routes - happiness issues have less of an effect on bigger maps. On bigger maps its possible to settle a city with very limited happiness penalty if you instantly hook up a road and can completely negate it entirely additionaly with religion.

In the early game sometimes it makes sense to settle new cities on top of luxury resources so no stygmy the rest of your empire's growth.

 

[Fluffball]

Happiness is meant to be something you are meant to work on and tbh happiness in it's current state (G&K) is not really hard.

The two most damaging factors for happiness are generally over expansion.i.e. building too many cities and conquering with abandon.

In regard to the first point, it may seem annoying to feel like you can't build that extra city in that nice spot because it will cause you unhappiness but it is only the same as limiting yourself because of lack of gold for example. Happiness is something you need to plan around and work out and that is what the game is about...organising and balancing.

In regard to the second point, i saw you said you never raised captured cities. That is the main problem, you should only keep cities that are of actual benefit to your empire.e.g. they bring extra luxuries for happiness/you can sell, extra strategic resources, serve to connect your empire, cut off a chunk of land etc.
Whenever you capture a city you should take a short amount of time to consider "How does keeping this city benefit me?" If you can't find a good reason, or if your not sure then burn it.
A enemy city burnt at least damages your enemy.

This won't totally solve the happiness hits from conquering but will at least limit the impact to only cities that bring an overall benefit.
If your really deep in unhappiness then you may need to look more strictly at the benefits of a city you capture or hold off on some conquering while you boost your happiness.

Something people often don't think about when they have captured a city is limiting it's growth as you don't appear to have an immediate way to stop it growing but you can change the improvements on tiles to control a cities growth in a great way. If possible i tend to pillage all the good food tiles before capturing a city so its food is limited from the start. If it still has a lot of excess food you can put TP's on production tiles as the city will gravitate towards gold tiles and each tile worked will use food rather than produce it. You can also change any leftover farm tiles to TP's and even those leftover special resources like wheat can be diminished with a fort.
As changing tiles takes time and if things are really out of hand you can simply do one turn of the new improvement on each tile to destroy the old improvements then go around finishing off the new improvements once the food is under control.

 

[DrunkenRine]

lately im experimenting with a wide egyptian empire. i boost my temples and shrines in every aspect with religion and the piety tree so that i end up with:

shrine: +2 faith, +1 culture
temple (burial tomb): +3 faith, +2 culture, +4 happiness, +10% gold, no upkeep

at a ridiculously fast building time.

together with +1 global happiness per city of my religion and the liberty tree (+1 global happiness for each trade route) i can expand without any restriction. wonders, colosseums, circusses, luxuries, trade and city states only add to this.

if you try around different strategies and gather some experience. the happiness is not a problem at all.

btw. carthage works well in expanding aswell. with instant trade connections through harbour and the liberty tree, the unhappiness on founding a new city is already countered a bit.

 

[Kidinnu]

If you build wide and are short on happiness in the early game, check the "Avoid Growth" button on cities as they hit c. 4 population. When you've got excess happiness, find your most promising cities & let them grow to size 8; now's a good time to queue up libraries or other improvements that didn't make sense at size 4. Turn off growth again at size 8.

 

[JimmyJump]

Ignore the fact it's called happiness. It is a growth/expansion limiter (new name: "Growth points"). Prior Civs used a variety of means to put a price on growth, including city maintenance, corruption, etc. CiV uses happiness. If you are having to spend 5 minutes at the beginning of every turn managing happiness, you are expanding much too quickly, without adequate foundation in social policies, happiness buildings, luxuries and luxury trades, religion and CS friendships (mercantile CSs) and alliances (all CSs).

Check out the War Academy's guide to happiness (vanilla version, not yet updated for G&K, but still very useful): http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=436022

What I find rather irking me is the stupid system of this 'Happiness', as unhappiness isn't done away with when creating happiness, in that, the global unhappiness stays the same: default is one unhappiness per citizen, regardless of eliminating/lowering a city's unhappiness by creating appropriate buildings (Circus, Colosseum, etc.).

There simply isn't any balance in a system set up like this and that system only exists the way it does to create a disadvantage when wanting to grow a big empire fast. I mean, who cares how many cities an empire has? Still, unhappiness is created for "number of cities" even if you have just the one.

 

[Acken]

I think I'd like a mod that increases the benefits from stone works and circus by +2 or 3. That shouldn't unbalance the game much because those are still somewhat hard to build with prerequisites, so they wouldn't be a path to 'cheating' on the difficulty.

These 2 buildings are already good enough. Circus is extra happiness costing less than a colloseum and without maintenance. Stone works is 1 happiness, extra hammers and a rather cheap building.
Making them even better is unbalanced :/ Although of course it wouldn't totally change your game.
But you're free to do as you wish obviously.

There simply isn't any balance in a system set up like this

Actually civ5 hapiness system as an expansion limiter is rather well balanced. It is necessary to work for it, it is an effective limiter and the sources are available. Try civBE for a system that doesn't work.
Civ4 system was also okay although really different.

and that system only exists the way it does to create a disadvantage when wanting to grow a big empire fast.

Which is a good thing (to overcome the advantages).

 

[Lord Alexander]

If anyone knows a mod to turn off rebels that would be nice, I don't mind unhappiness but the negative effects and the chance of a city flipping at enough unhappiness is enough IMO, the Rebels are overkill especially later in the game

 

[reddishrecue]

If you have honor and have rebels, you can make some culture by killing them off with honor opener. Later unit barbarians that are more advanced such as rifles or great wars give you~ 50 culture per kill and more if the unit is more advanced, i.e barb great war infantry gives more culture per death than a barb rifleman.