Community Balance Patch - New Happiness System Explained

[Ulixes]

War Weariness was an issue even in the Roman Empire.
Sure, it is far more relevant in wealthy and stable societies, which were rarer in ancient times.

Believe me, usually, on this site, I'm not particularly interested in "winning" arguments and I don't want to irritate anyone, but you are making a lot of confusion, mixing together things that are very different from each other.
I apologize for the long post and I promise will not return on the matter after this.

As I said, the war weariness should be linked to devastation and/or occupation of the territory and loss of lives.
Your examples are no exception, just a particular application of this rule.

- Homer wrote two epics just to glorify war and heroism.

Absolutely false.
The Iliad contains some of the most touching and desperate messages about war. There's epic in describing the battles, but they are often more dramatic than "fun" and when people, including heroes, die, the author express the same piety for both sides, as if did not matter who wins.
Go read the goodbye from Ector to his wife or the meeting between Priam and Achilles (or if you don't have time, watch "Troy", that has many differences from the original poem but the scene of Priam and Achilles is really well done).

The Iliad seems more a memory of a long war that left too many wounds than a glorification of war, showing that even in ancient times war was feared.

About the Odyssey (that I personally like a lot), anyone who read or studied it knows that war is anything but glorified.
Again, read the part when Demodocus, in the court of the Phaeacians, tells the story of the fall of Troy, the massacre and the barbarities, and Ulixes cry (revealing his identity).

-About Crusades: People in europe was not directly involved in the conflict (who toke place in the middle east) so they didn't suffered the devastation.
The warriors were mostly volunteers looking for fortune (greed was a much stronger incentive than faith). Often they were orphans, thieves, killers, losers, 2nd, 3nd sons without inheritance, people that was not so much missed at home.

-About Reconquista: the christian kings of the peninsula couldn't care less about unhappiness of the peasants. They had little kingdoms and no real economy, plus, they could use religion as motivation for fanatism.

-About Scramble for Africa, Native American Genocide and Opium War: They were 'one-way' wars. They toke place only in enemy territory and the losses of western powers were very little compared to the immense losses of the other side. Besides, they were supported at home by strongly racist ideologies.

-About the French "Golden Age": You're confusing the historical rethoric that made Napoleon a Nationa Hero, and his age a "golden age", with what people really felt at that time.
After 25 yiears of war (including the french revolution) and the very unfortunate russian campaign, people was really tired and wanted peace.
True, there was a class of veterans that was extremely loyal to Napoleon (even after his final defeat) but the mass of people didn't want a day more of war.

Did all of these wars kill a lot of their own countrymen and leave their own cities burning?
Yes but the peasants and the workers didn't know. Society was much different than what it is now.

I know this better than you. Society is changed. Human beings are not.

In certain periods of history, war was so frequent that people often knew exactly what it was.
Peasant were not happy to die for their lord but they were forced to do so.
Sometime war was the only way to have a job, but even mercenaries usually wanted to earn enough money to find a more comfortable situation, not becoming heroes (with some exception, maybe).

Do you know why, in ancient rome, many parents were used to do everything they could to send their sons, for military duty, to join the Pretorians?
Because they were the personal guard of the emperor, usually stationed in Italy, not directly involved in war.
They wanted their sons to be safe.

Wars have been embraced happily in history to enhance national identity and technology advancement. It is not until people have become more liberal and enlightened in the 18th century that we see a gradual dissent against war.

People was not enlightened neither liberal in the 18th century.
You're referring to an elite. Most of the people was poor and illiterate.

And as time proceeds we see in the wars that you just mentioned and finally learn not to kill others and this is all because we are more universally educated. We become more liberal.

Fear of war is not "liberal", it has always been common sense. Fanatics are always a minority.
(if you are instead refering to Pacifism movement, that's entirely another matter).

Only in long periods of peace like this (or like the one before WWI) many people don't know war directly.
About this, Mass Media had probably a more important role than education in showing the cruelty and the horror of war.

Regarding the evolution of humanity into "liberals", well...
let's just say that, hearing this, many people would have this reaction:

Personally I think we are not "universally educated" even now.
What I see more often is the "Illusion (or presumption) of Education" but this is another matter.

So, in gameplay terms, my opinion is:

1) War Weariness should be possible, even if very low, from the start and it should grow together with wealth, culture and education (maybe in relation with population).
2) Mass Media Techs and Buildings, together with Freedom Ideology, should raise War Weariness significantly.

 

[Valvts]

Does food decrease poverty? When I built the grocery place(the new building that gives food and keeps % after pop up) I saw the poverty unhappiness decrease by 1 in that city
Thanks

 

[Bombad]

Food doesn't, but some food buildings do, including the grocery (I think it is in the description, maybe you missed it).

 

[WileyNg]

I usually wasn't quite into argument but you wrote a long post and it would be inappropriate for me not to reply. And to my surprise reading your post even reaffirmed my standpoint.

Philosophy and rhetorics aside, my original point was directed against Finarvi:

Sometimes when I'm attacked, my happiness drops from 40 to 0 due to broken connections, pillaged tiles, reduced yield etc........
Maybe if we decrease unhappiness from isolation, more unhappiness would be OK. For now only defender suffer.

With all the unhappiness penalty in place now are you sure you want to add another one? Are broken connections, pillaged land, reduced yields NOT a grave consequent of war weariness?

the war weariness should be linked to devastation and/or occupation of the territory and loss of lives.

All your aforementioned features have been in place. Why do you feel the need to reinstate again?

Honestly I feel that your concept is

to grant unhappiness in any prolonged wars as a means to force players to sign a peace treaty. And such national unhappiness would affect all populations within your empire.

In other words, you want your people in another city across the ocean to feel bad for the people dying in the frontline, even before modern era.
From a gameplay perspective, this is a balance issue. And it's open for discussion. But in historical terms this is so not true.

Now back to our arguments.
- On Homer:
I took a classical literature course back in college so I read the whole Iliad. I had been in enough seminars to know that if you think Homer wasn't praising those who had fought and died in the Trojan wars, you sure need to read it again. Look at how Homer delivered in the book about the contrast between Agamemnon and Achilles. The story always roots for the latter, greatest warrior of all time.
The Priam scene is just a story twist and praise the demigod for his sympathetic and forgiving heart. That is the first moment in Iliad for Achilles to show a sign of deep human emotions. So he is both a fearsome warrior and a passionate human being. That's all it's about and that's all Homer's writing all about: Praising the hero. And hero fights wars. Even the coward king Agamemnon fights in battle and earns his noble authority over the likes of Ajax and Phoenix.
Also, It has nothing to do with "the tragic loss of war" because of another thing you missed: Homer was Greek and the Greek won the war. What was there to mourn? If the war had been so devastating and depressing the Greek wouldn't have passed the epics down the generations orally.

People's acknowledgement of the war is dependent upon whether the war is won or not.

On Crusades:

People in europe was not directly involved in the conflict (who toke place in the middle east) so they didn't suffered the devastation.
The warriors were mostly volunteers looking for fortune (greed was a much stronger incentive than faith). Often they were orphans, thieves, killers, losers, 2nd, 3nd sons without inheritance, people that was not so much missed at home.

Precisely.
No one misses whoever die in a battle happened in a distant land. What is there for war to wear?

On Reconquista, Opium war, Scramble for Africa and Native Americans:

They were 'one-way' wars. They toke place only in enemy territory and the losses of western powers were very little compared to the immense losses of the other side. Besides, they were supported at home by strongly racist ideologies.

Again you get my point.
These aggressors did not suffer at all. And these wars happened before modern times.

On Napoleonic wars,
To quote myself:

France had a golden age when Napoleon won all the wars against the coalition.

The public felt happy and the army kept expanding only when Napoleon was winning the war. War doesn't wear off your economy if you are winning. It instead feeds the people with juicy spoil of war. The winning wars were the reason why the French felt so happy that they acclaimed Napoleon their king.
It was only when the war was losing the people begin to abandon their king. But back to point one, there are already too many penalties in game with regard to a losing war. You want to add one more to the list?

On Enlightenment, liberalism, universal education and the rest:
I doubt that you know their definitions.... But they are key moments in history that shape what becomes our social norms nowadays.
The way you feel about the late modern events can be traced back to Kant, Rousseau, John Locke. Their ideas helped construct liberalism and your judgement against war.

And I think you mistook the word liberal which is strictly philosophical, from the slang word "liberal". The way I say people become more liberal is an observation drawn by how other philosophies or ideologies no longer hold sway. Not to say someday the ideas of Nietzsche(Autocracy) or Marx(Order) will be revived again in the future but that's just what it is now.

About your suggestion:
For the losing side: Pillage of tiles, broken connections, loss of yields produce enough unhappiness already and it is experimented.
For the winning side: the winner is always happy. No need to add penalty. Period.
For a prolonged war: I think the AI knows to sign a peace treaty in a given time.

If we were to add anything to punish the belligerents in late game, add a "our city is being bombed!(major)" or "our city is being sacked (minor)" unhappiness would really suffice..

 

[Finarvi]

[...]
With all the unhappiness penalty in place now are you sure you want to add another one? Are broken connections, pillaged land, reduced yields NOT a grave consequent of war weariness?
[...]

I don't insist on anything. Just saying that some penalties are too high (like isolation) and some could take their place to make it little more balanced and less paralyzing for defender.

If my happiness weren't about 40 then my people would start to panic extremely just from broken connections. Making defence even harder. I think that if your city is being bombed or attacked it is worse than if enemies are in your country (or if they only pillaged railroad tile).

 

[Condotierri]

Currently, I think the unhappiness system is broken (this is just strictly testing on marathon - immortal settings).

By the Modern Age with a town pop. of 12 poverty alone can be about 9 unhappiness. I spend about 60% of the game in an unhappy civilization. This seriously affects the enjoyment of the game, since I can no longer expand nor can I wage any wars, since I fear that any of my trade routes from my cities will get pillaged and utterly destroy my fragile unhappiness into utter chaos.

Since unhappiness can be so high for so many factors (namely poverty), on many turns I see happiness jump from +18, +5, -3, +3. It's just stupid and unmanageable.

When choosing ideologies, the penalties are so bad that now in my games all the civilizations will eventually just choose one ideology. As I see it, ideology differences were a part of the game which encouraged conflict between the nations. That is interesting. Now it's to the point where if you don't choose the majority ideology, you will get such a large unhappiness penalty that it makes you have to choose the majority ideology (the last game, I tried to be a rogue and choose one outside of the majority and got hit with a 50 unhappiness penalty, putting me down to -67!).

It shouldn't restrict game play to the point where you can't play the game. It stifles any sort of expansion (a little is good), it stops wars (cause you just can't afford the unhappiness hit of pillaged trade routes), and stops any dynamic game play with monotone ideology choices (my last two games, 19/20 civs eventually choose the majority ideology by the Atomic Age; and in my latest game 8/9 civs just straight out choose the majority ideology when first given the choice, even though they would have gotten 2 free ideologies by choosing the other ones. They obviously knew that unhappiness hit would make gameplay unplayable).

The happiness system is no longer a nice refreshing, and dynamic change to the game, like a hint of cinnamon to a cappuccino, but it has become like putting two tablespoons of cinnamon into a cappuccino and ruining it).

My $0.02.

Last night was the first time since about 4 months of playing this mod probably averagely of a few hours a day, where I even thought of returning to vanilla.

 

[Opera]

I have some problems with poverty too, though I like the challenge to combat it. I find that using villages and specialists help (although specialists do give you unhappiness so this isn't perfect) but trade routes are also especially useful. It seemed they counted for poverty, despite not generating gold through the city itself (iirc).

It's annoying for largely coastal cities though, that you can't really alleviate poverty through villages because there's no land to improve. Some way to generate tile-based gold in sea tiles would be great. Maybe through the Imperialism policy branch?

 

[Ulixes]

About Gameplay:

As I said, war weariness should be linked to losses and devastation and, in addition, should be reduced if you're defending your homeland.

Meaning: if you lose too many soldiers, if your cities are bombed too much, in gameplay terms you're less "winner" and people should support you less than before.
The amount of losses and devastation should determinate how much gradually war weariness rise.
However, if your people are desperately defending their homes, war weariness should be significantly reduced.

War Weariness is not necessary only a problem for the losers.
Sure, winners usually will have less problems or, if it is a "one-way" war like the one against native americans, they won't have problems at all.
However if the losses are too heavy and there's no significant (popular) benefit from the war, not even a "victory" can avoid people discontent
(there is more than one example of useless victory, in history).

When the losses are too much?

That is what I was talking about when I said that wealth, culture and education should impact war weariness.

Exceeded a certain amount of wealth (before which there's low or no war weariness), the more a society is whealty, the more an unit lost should cause unhappiness.
Furthermore, for "wealth", I mean not only gold but also culture and food, (maybe also science and production, but not I'm sure).
However the War Weariness x Unit Lost should be not applied to mercenaries, artillery and maybe not even to gifted units.

From an historical point of view, this was true even in ancient times (in Rome, at least), although rarely the level of wealth become so diffused as it did in Rome and, anyway, it is not comparable to the wealth reached in western civilizations in our time.

Too much unhappiness from war could push the AI to ask for peace (if it is doable).

Of course, Ideologies (and religions) should affect the "tolerance" of people too.

The same cannot be said, in my opinion, for the policies reflecting philosophies.
Idologies are "Mass" Ideologies. Philosophies affects only a small elite of literates, that can contribute greatly to the advancement of your civilization (and, ultimately, are the prerequisite for Ideologies), but, usually, they don't control people's mood by themselves (even religious philosophies were restricted to an elite, only some basic features of a religion were shared by all people).
This is what I meant when I said that people in 18th Century was not "enlightened" or "liberal".

In terms of "Happiness", only significant numbers of people matter, and the majority of population, until compulsory education, was almost entirely illiterate, moved almost only by basic needs (or greed, of course).

If you can't read and write, you don't know what Voltaire thinks (and probably you don't even care).
Only a Mass Movement has enough propagandist power to include the vast majority of people (at that point, even more power if they are poor and illiterate).

Finally, if you are whealty and you are a Democracy, the unhappiness caused from unit losses should be strongly increased (unless, again, you're defending your homeland).
Fascism and Comunism should have a more higher tolerance: higher, not infinite.
If the following combination happens: Poverty + too many deads + Devastation or/and + influence from another ideology, the situation should be unsustainable.

I'm not going to reply to other matters. I had to syntetize in the, already long, post I wrote.
If I was not clear enough, I'm sorry, otherwise, to each one its opinions.
Anyway this is not the place to continue an (intersting) conversation like this
(Both Gazebo and any moderator passing by would be rightfully annoyed).

 

[WileyNg]

Ulixes.

Forgive me if I used some harsh words in my reply. I just got too excited having engaged into a Homer discussion. What you said was very interesting. Like the point you and i both agreed, society changes. The war did destroy a lot of frontier homes in pre-modern times, but one mustn't forget in those days the soldiers were like the property of the kings and they were bestowed with a number of privileges and were placed in a higher hierarchy in the feudalistic caste system. In any case, their causality in wars have little to do with the well-being of lower class people. It was not until the French revolution when feudalism was overhauled and people became actively involved in politics. So i just don't think any war before 19th century would have caused any national unhappiness.

Another example in Song Dynasty, Medieval China lost literally all wars against the Manchurians in the North but the South was unaffected and became so wealthy that the king could relocate to the South and continue a century-long reign.

War only hurts when nationalism prevails, like in Napoleonic wars, russia in ww1 and USA after the civil war.

 

[Gazebo]

For the sake of simplicity of modeling and AI understanding, it makes more sense to have the war weariness mechanic emerge alongside ideologies. Sure, historically 'war weariness' is as old as, well, war, but in gameplay terms this is difficult to model, and would be a nightmare to explain to the AI.

G

 

[pthieu1986]

When choosing ideologies, the penalties are so bad that now in my games all the civilizations will eventually just choose one ideology. As I see it, ideology differences were a part of the game which encouraged conflict between the nations. That is interesting. Now it's to the point where if you don't choose the majority ideology, you will get such a large unhappiness penalty that it makes you have to choose the majority ideology (the last game, I tried to be a rogue and choose one outside of the majority and got hit with a 50 unhappiness penalty, putting me down to -67!).

In my current game, the AIs still adopted their ideology based of their land area (i guess). However i agree that the ideology pressure is really a disaster to national happiness in this mod. Half of the civs in my current game get happiness below +10. One of Russia's cities revolted and joined its neighbor. I'll continue the game to see how the AIs will deal with happiness but i guess the new system seems hard to control to both human and AIs.

 

[Vicevirtuoso]

Can we get the formula for calculating thresholds? Or at least tell us where in the code to find it? There are instances where a 13-pop city requires more gold to reach its Poverty threshold than a 21-pop one I settled over 2000 years later.

Also, I wonder if perhaps the thresholds are being recalculated too quickly. Right now it hasn't been uncommon for me to dip from 40+ happiness down to 16 within 2 turns, and then inexplicably jump back up to 40+. I currently have a game file which I have already won and completely wiped out every other Civilization, but I'm continuing to play it a bit to try making heads or tails of the way happiness works.

It also does feel like Wide is punished due to lack of trade routes to combat poverty in all of your cities.

 

[Gazebo]

Can we get the formula for calculating thresholds? Or at least tell us where in the code to find it? There are instances where a 13-pop city requires more gold to reach its Poverty threshold than a 21-pop one I settled over 2000 years later.

Also, I wonder if perhaps the thresholds are being recalculated too quickly. Right now it hasn't been uncommon for me to dip from 40+ happiness down to 16 within 2 turns, and then inexplicably jump back up to 40+. I currently have a game file which I have already won and completely wiped out every other Civilization, but I'm continuing to play it a bit to try making heads or tails of the way happiness works.

It also does feel like Wide is punished due to lack of trade routes to combat poverty in all of your cities.

The formula has a few parts. It is in C++, so it isn't exactly 'plain english,' so I'll do my best to explain it.

1. The global output of every city is considered for each yield (Gold, Defense, Science, Culture) and added together into a big pool. Then, the global population of all cities divides the value, giving us the global average per citizen (keep in mind this is only for major civ cities - minors are never considered in this formula).
   
2. The value is passed into a median function to find the middle value, and that value is then made gradual (so the global average can only change per turn by a certain % up or down.
   
3. Each city grabs this median value every turn, and compares it to their individual output. This value is modified upwards for each player based on the number of techs they know. Right now, the formula for this is: ((# of techs known * 2.6) - 15) / # of possible techs. So, as the game goes along, the % of techs you know increases the global average by a gradually-increasing %.
   
4. The global average calculated in step 3 is decreased by buildings, wonders, policies, and traits. Buildings and wonders decrease the global average based on the population of the city. So a larger city with a poverty-reducing building will get more benefit from it than a smaller one.
   
5. Once this is calculated, the two values - global median and city average, are compared. If the city average is below the global average at all, 1 unhappiness is made the minimum. For every .4 points of difference between the averages (after the first .4, which is already covered by the minimum of 1 unhappiness), the unhappiness factor increases by 1.

G

 

[Opera]

Oh my, you mean the global average use all cities in the world in its calculation? I always understood it was calculating the output of my cities. That explains the discrepancies between my calculations and what the game told me. Wow.

This is tangential but would it be possible to have a way to check which city has the highest of a certain yield? I'd be very interested in knowing that... a sort of ledger for cities.

 

[Gazebo]

Oh my, you mean the global average use all cities in the world in its calculation? I always understood it was calculating the output of my cities. That explains the discrepancies between my calculations and what the game told me. Wow.

This is tangential but would it be possible to have a way to check which city has the highest of a certain yield? I'd be very interested in knowing that... a sort of ledger for cities.

Yep. Global average is global.

For second question, possible in what way? A good rule of thumb in-game would be to look at the spy 'potential' of a city – since potential now factors in gold and science, it'd give you a rough idea of wha the best city is (it'll have the highest potential).

G

 

[Ulixes]

For the sake of simplicity of modeling and AI understanding, it makes more sense to have the war weariness mechanic emerge alongside ideologies. Sure, historically 'war weariness' is as old as, well, war, but in gameplay terms this is difficult to model, and would be a nightmare to explain to the AI.

G

As usual, you're right about the AI. For the sake of simplicity, I agree.

For WileyNg: Don't worry, I understand.
The problem is that the matter is too complicated for a single post and, separated from gameplay mechanics, if we continue, we go far off-topic...

I can tell you only this:
School histroy books are often based on writings of Historians of the past.
They were often far from rural zones (where the highest price of the war was often paid), linked to powerful men, they could be servile, propagandistic, not objective or just not well informed.
This is the reason for which high school books should not be blindly trusted. There's a huge part of history (the more realistic one) that is studied usually only at university or that can be read on high level texts.
You should take this into account, that's all.

Anyway, I surely don't blame you for getting excited about Homer
(have you noticed my nickname? ).
Your passion can lead you to great results!

Cheers,
Ulixes

 

[pthieu1986]

In my current game, the AIs still adopted their ideology based of their land area (i guess). However i agree that the ideology pressure is really a disaster to national happiness in this mod. Half of the civs in my current game get happiness below +10. One of Russia's cities revolted and joined its neighbor. I'll continue the game to see how the AIs will deal with happiness but i guess the new system seems hard to control to both human and AIs.

The later game is going crazy because of regular city revolts. It seems so hard for the AIs to control happiness that the ones hitting -20 unhappiness are losing their cities to the most cultural civs in the game every few turns.

 

[Gazebo]

As usual, you're right about the AI. For the sake of simplicity, I agree.

For WileyNg: Don't worry, I understand.
The problem is that the matter is too complicated for a single post and, separated from gameplay mechanics, if we continue, we go far off-topic...

I can tell you only this:
School histroy books are often based on writings of Historians of the past.
They were often far from rural zones (where the highest price of the war was often paid), linked to powerful men, they could be servile, propagandistic, not objective or just not well informed.
This is the reason for which high school books should not be blindly trusted. There's a huge part of history (the more realistic one) that is studied usually only at university or that can be read on high level texts.
You should take this into account, that's all.

Anyway, I surely don't blame you for getting excited about Homer
(have you noticed my nickname? ).
Your passion can lead you to great results!

Cheers,
Ulixes

I'm a professional historian by day (and a nefarious modder by night), so trust me, it is frustrating to want to address historical flaws in a game but not be able to because of technical limitations.

G

 

[Opera]

Yep. Global average is global.

For second question, possible in what way? A good rule of thumb in-game would be to look at the spy 'potential' of a city – since potential now factors in gold and science, it'd give you a rough idea of wha the best city is (it'll have the highest potential).

G

I meant much like how InfoAddict discloses information or the frequent rankings that pop up during a game. I guess the best would actually be to write some add-on to InfoAddict to get this information.

 

[Ulixes]

I'm a professional historian by day (and a nefarious modder by night), so trust me, it is frustrating to want to address historical flaws in a game but not be able to because of technical limitations.

G

I understand what you mean...
...but thank you anyway for trying!


Ulixes