Civ 5 Strategy: The Search for Happiness .

[Schalke 04]

No they're not (reply to the bolded text). You get them to size 3 (or whatever reasonably supports enough hammers to build the improvements, and turn on avoid growth.

Moreover:

you have some decent usage for the poor tiles in your starting area. Down to the south/north there may be useless tundra; to the west/east some desert. You would never build a "core" city in it.
Now you can build a happiness city in it which will provide some for your whole empire at least. And maybe you can collect some precious resources which are just abundant in this unhospitable countryside.

Perhaps you would want to settle there anyway just for these resources. Now you know how to make use of this otherwise useless city!

I think it is not just about a "hardcore ICS happiness city spamming" only. Moreover it is about making the most of your given tiles.

 

[remconius]

Happiness can work in different ways...

Huge cities and tiny cities as I proposed in the first post.

Could also be medium cities of size 6 who pay for themselves (colo&theater) and the fixed happiness is then used to grow other cities bigger.

 

[remconius]

I decided that I will start the game with Egypt. +2 happiness from the burial tomb could be quite powerful. +20% wonder production and faster war chariot can also help.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The ideal "minicity" would have Happiness+Culture Buildings (and possibly the Market for Specialists)

longer incubation time, but it doesn't hurt the SPs (depending on the calculation.... asuming most of your culture is coming from buildings)

You would Definitely want Meritocracy, and probably Warrior Caste as well (effectively making the military unit a 'building'... not sure what its maintenance is)

 

[Ahriman]

I'll add something here from a playthough (playing as Rome, which probably suits the lots-of-small-cities strategy best): the happiness buildings get quite expensive. It will take many dozens of turns for small ~2 size cities to produce each one, even with the building constructed in Rome.

 

[remconius]

I played the demo yesterday. It is my early conclusion that you do need happy cities early on.

You should focus on getting a few luxuries and you can easily grow to several cities. Then build a few circuses where you have horses.

If you later on want to grow big, then you can build happy cities, but you should have the cash to buy them... Producing them in tiny cities will take forever.

 

[remconius]

UPDATE AFTER PLAYING THE DEMO:
From the first 100 turns it become apparant that finding happiness is indeed key in Civ5. You really need to get cities around luxuries and trade for others (city states). This together with circuses this should get you through the early game. Support cities for happiness are only really needed later on when you can keep them small and buy buildings.

Whenever you have enough happiness you can grow, expand, build, train units, etc. Science will come automatically.

 

[Alexfrog]

Am I the only one feeling the opposite way here? It has been very easy to generate sufficient happiness early on, just get calendar and build plantations (or whatever is needed for the luxuries you have access to).

What I am finding is the big struggle is that the buildings cost insane amounts of production and production is very hard to get in any reasonable quantity. Most buildings seem to not be powerful enough to justify their cost.

 

[mcmpan]

Am I the only one feeling the opposite way here? It has been very easy to generate sufficient happiness early on, just get calendar and build plantations (or whatever is needed for the luxuries you have access to).

What I am finding is the big struggle is that the buildings cost insane amounts of production and production is very hard to get in any reasonable quantity. Most buildings seem to not be powerful enough to justify their cost.

Totally agree. But I think we must keep difficulty level in mind.
I've played Egypt on Warlord (my first game, demo), have rushed War Chariots, conquered the Greek's and German's capital city and had a happiness level of -2 (about 1000BC). 1 turn later a happiness buidling finished, so happiness was no big problem. I've expected, that early warmongering would've been more difficult and the happiness pain of conquering cities very high, but in low difficulties it can be disregarded.
I will try my next game on a harder difficulty and will check, if happiness will be a bigger concern.

 

[remconius]

I did notice the same. It's not so easy to get some proper production in my cities. Mining is very important.

The challenge in happiness comes later on when the fixed happiness runs out and the you want to continue to grow. Early on each luxury of +5 is great. But once you have all of them it can be tricky to grow more.

 

[mcmpan]

Ok, so I've just played with Egypt again on King.
I did a War Chariot rush again, conquered Athens by 2040bc and happiness went down to -3. I think it will be really hard to conquer a second capital, although I haven't lost any unit.
But now every city state seeks for help against barbarians and War chariots are great for this mission. I think this can be a viable early strategy on higher difficulties:

Beeline to Animal Husbandry, build Chariot Archers / War Chariots, rush first civ, use units to help city states and build a good economy.

Drawback is, that you need horses (except for Egypt).

 

[Gath]

Ok, so I've just played with Egypt again on King.
I did a War Chariot rush again, conquered Athens by 2040bc and happiness went down to -3. I think it will be really hard to conquer a second capital, although I haven't lost any unit.
But now every city state seeks for help against barbarians and War chariots are great for this mission. I think this can be a viable early strategy on higher difficulties:

Beeline to Animal Husbandry, build Chariot Archers / War Chariots, rush first civ, use units to help city states and build a good economy.

Drawback is, that you need horses (except for Egypt).

Make them puppets, don't annex them. You can always annex them later.

 

[Ahriman]

Even with puppets, the extra pop hurts your happiness. But yes, always puppet, you almost never want to immediately annex.
[Main exception, you can't buy units in puppets, so sometimes you want to instant-annex so you can buy more units in the right place.]