Civ V: Your people are too happy. Let's "recalculate" this...

[Mark the Bold]

A little backdrop, playing a large Emperor difficulty game as Egypt. Had complete social policies trees for Tradition, Piety, Freedom (<- AMAZING NOW!!!!), and Commerce.

Germany was the other big-dick in the game who had routed every other civ from his continent and was buying up every City State on the map. I could not outbid him for these allies so I had to conquer these city states so going Patronage was not an good option for my social policies.

Long story short, I invaded Germany and fought a long 100+year war with him and took about a dozen of his cities. My happiness was now at -10 & -15 no matter what I did so I hit a wall in the war with Germany as with -33% penalties his Panzers were doing some damage&#8230;...

During this whole war, I needed happiness so I went down the Liberty tree. I was rarely garrisoned being in a full scale war so Honor didn&#8217;t seem like a good return on my investment. Virtually all my units were being produced in my Heroic epic / Ironworks / manufactory spammed super city so this was the only city that had walls/arsenal/ etc&#8230;

Well, when I got to Meritocracy (+1 happiness for every city connected to my capital) I kid you not my happiness went from -10 to +45. Repeat +45!!!! I was tickled pink.

Then in like 10 turns my happiness went back to like +5 and I hadnt conquered a single city since then. In fact, all Germany's cities in resistance then became regular puppets which should in fact have increased happiness.

What gives? Its almost like the game said: You're too happy. Lets crash this party...

 

[Furycrab]

Might have been a visual bug, where you really had 4.5, Meritocracy alone won't make you jump 45 happy unless you are absolutely HUGE. I'd take a screenshot or try to reproduce it and supply saves and stuff.

 

[Callonia]

Naw that can be normal if many of your cities was about to hop up a pop soon.

 

[Galactic Lord]

Well, my first Civ 5 game was on Chieftain with Egypt, and I was only involved in one war with no cities taken, and my happiness was almost always around 60! I don't know if the difficulty was too easy for me or if Egypt was is just amazingly happy!
I think in your case I have to agree with Callonia, it probably was a population increase.

 

[Furycrab]

Naw that can be normal if many of your cities was about to hop up a pop soon.

For that to be true, he would have needed 40 cities about to pop up. Which I mean would also make sense for meritocracy to give him 50 happiness, but we are talking about a HUGE empire.

 

[Keejus]

I think what most likely happened is that the -5% unhappiness modifier was mistakenly added to your rebelling cities, and once the rebellion ended the game was like "Hold on, these cities are occupied! No happiness bonus for you, no sir"

Well, my first Civ 5 game was on Chieftain with Egypt, and I was only involved in one war with no cities taken, and my happiness was almost always around 60! I don't know if the difficulty was too easy for me or if Egypt was is just amazingly happy!
I think in your case I have to agree with Callonia, it probably was a population increase.

No, with the right policies and stuff like the Eiffel Tower (hoo boy, the Eiffel Tower), you can easily boost your happiness into the triple digits if you so prefer

 

[Spatzimaus]

For that to be true, he would have needed 40 cities about to pop up.

That 40 could be a mix of population growth, puppet penalties, an interrupted trade route (remember, Meritocracy requires connections to the capital!), a trade deal or two ending, a city-state becoming someone else's ally, a luxury getting pillaged... a lot of these things can happen at the same time. Especially the trade deals; I have a tendency to set up most of my trade deals on a single turn, and if you've just started being a warmonger it's easily possible that when the deals expire no one will want to renew them. So halfway through your war you'll suddenly lose a large amount of happiness as three or four luxuries disappear.

This is also assuming he didn't raze any cities. Razing has its own semi-persistent penalty...

Which I mean would also make sense for meritocracy to give him 50 happiness, but we are talking about a HUGE empire.

Remember, Meritocracy is now +1 per city AND -5% population unhappiness. 50 is not an unreasonable number when you take it in the late game, when the average city is size 20 or higher and your empire is large.

 

[Maktaka]

Got autosaves from pre- and post-crash? It's easier to look at those than guess.

 

[Mark the Bold]

Unfortuneately I dont have any autosaves right before meritocracy, the closest I have is 5 turns after taking it. Sorry. But here it is.

Also showed the graph at the end of the game showing the huge "sine" wave of what I spoke. At the very least, it shows how powerful meritocracy is on a large empire. Well at least until the "Civ V_happiness_party_crasher.exe" kicks in

 

[Mark the Bold]

Here's the capture showing the number of cities being constant:

 

[Bezurn]

The most likely cause of this would be that many of your cities emptied their specialist slots since happiness went to the positive. Unless you control the specialists or use a special work order for a city they will typically try and work the most amount of tiles while maintaining +7-11 excess food per turn. I'm 95% sure this is what happened as I have had huge spikes like this when running with freedom during negative happiness followed by a big surge, then a leveling when the computer auto balances your cities empire wide to adjust to the new happiness environment.

edit - after looking at the graph I think that is exactly what happened. Any city set to default specialization had hunkered down a bunch of specialists to combat the unhappiness. Meritocracy enabled your empire to run positive happiness without all of those specialists. So on the turn adopting the policy your empire goes from -6 to +45 (from all those specialists, as you began the turn in unhappiness). The next turn many specialists leave your cities to go return to work on the farms and mines, giving you +5 happiness. The computer auto balanced the specialists across the empire on the turn following the adoption of meritocracy.

Many games when I've run with freedom's happiness policy I've run very close to 0 happiness unless I make a conscience effort to keep specialists counts high.

 

[Smokeybear]

Regarding the general lack of happiness with a bunch of puppet cities lategame... I was experiencing that too, and watching in horror as those buggers spewed out great gobs of happiness-munching population growth like they were all rabbits infused with spanish fly... until I started annexing them out of frustration and a desire to curb all their screwing around- boom! Instant HUGE increases in happiness, no problems throughout the rest of the game. Unless you're pursuing a culture win, annexing > puppeting by a huge margin.

 

[Maktaka]

I think Bezurn's theory accounts for a large portion of the change you saw. I loaded up your empire and set every city I could to food production (no specialists); happiness went down to 16. I then set every city to great person production (maximum specialists); happiness jumped to 44. Combined with the 23 happiness through Meritocracy, and that could take you from -10 to 41. Add in a couple captured cities going from anarchy to production and the population beginning work as merchant specialists at the same time, and you could theoretically make that upward leap all in one turn.

Meritocracy alone didn't account for that complete happiness jump you experienced as again, that's only 23, and can never go down. The only revokable large-scale happiness buff in the game right now is toggling specialists with Democracy unlocked (that or losing a ton of luxuries all at once I suppose), and we can see that in your empire that can account for a LOT of happiness. Why your citizens decided they wanted to be field hands instead of scientists and engineers; that information isn't discernible from this savegame, but if you changed their focus to Food across your empire that would certainly do it. I noticed too that your deal to get Dyes from Harun al-Rashid expired just three turns before the save game, which is another 5 happiness lost (4 plus 1 from Protectionism). Then there's about 6 or 7 cities that I think have had their populations increase in the past few turns or so, which is more happiness reductions.