Community Balance Patch - New Happiness System Explained
- Thread starter Gazebo
- Start date
tu_79
Deity
This post should be linked in a sticky post with other CBP tutorials. A new player pretty much surf in darkness.
And no, the changelog isn't near a tutorial.
And no, the changelog isn't near a tutorial.
I think this will be a good thread to share my experience about happiness system.
First of all I would like to say that CPP system seems more dynamic & natural compared to arbitrary happiness system of vanilla ciV.
However I've felt that it just gets too easy to keep your self in 20+ happiness mid to late game. Once you've settled most of your cities after the early stage of the game, happiness is rarely a problem.
Most unhappiness comes from unrest due to different religions in a city as well as lack of city defence which is fine early game. But I think as the game progresses people should complain more about the city being boring, being improvised or illiterate. It thematically makes more sense & would give more purpose to buildings like zoos which are rarely worth it.
Finally I would say that cities should grow more demanding as they grow larger. This would give a soft limit on city growth. Right now what happens is that the capital city with proper policies can easily cross 20-25 population in mid game & they barely generate any unhappiness. This will also give the 'limit city growth' some purpose & give some strategical choices in what cities to grow. Player should try to limit cities in growth which he feels are becoming too much of a happiness hog, so he limits their growth, builds more infrastructure & then resume their growth.
Anyway that has been my experience in past couple of games. Feel free to agree/disagree with my points.
First of all I would like to say that CPP system seems more dynamic & natural compared to arbitrary happiness system of vanilla ciV.
However I've felt that it just gets too easy to keep your self in 20+ happiness mid to late game. Once you've settled most of your cities after the early stage of the game, happiness is rarely a problem.
Most unhappiness comes from unrest due to different religions in a city as well as lack of city defence which is fine early game. But I think as the game progresses people should complain more about the city being boring, being improvised or illiterate. It thematically makes more sense & would give more purpose to buildings like zoos which are rarely worth it.
Finally I would say that cities should grow more demanding as they grow larger. This would give a soft limit on city growth. Right now what happens is that the capital city with proper policies can easily cross 20-25 population in mid game & they barely generate any unhappiness. This will also give the 'limit city growth' some purpose & give some strategical choices in what cities to grow. Player should try to limit cities in growth which he feels are becoming too much of a happiness hog, so he limits their growth, builds more infrastructure & then resume their growth.
Anyway that has been my experience in past couple of games. Feel free to agree/disagree with my points.
tu_79
Deity
You are troubled by unhappiness three times: at the beginning, once you get a religion/religious differences and later with ideologies. The rest of the time, I agree it's far over what we are accustomed in BNW. People here seems to like it this way, so more Golden Ages, and civs that profit from that are competitive.
Zoo is now a science building, so you have a good reason to build it. It is somewhat misguiding, as initially you may think it is a happiness building.
City pop size is very important for many yields, but it isn't so important as before, now that more citizens doesn't yield more science. So feel free to try other buildings before growing ones. I've won a game producing mostly diplomats and military units, and I haven't bothered with the Aqueduct in several cities, many of them still don't have a granary.
Bridger
Prince
- Joined
- Nov 10, 2005
- Messages
- 318
Well the way that I understood the system is that a city is unhappy when it isn't as good as the average of cities across the world. This is a really cool concept to me. It implies that by being extra developed I will incur unhappiness on the other civs in the world.
In practice though, I feel like there are so many buildings that give lower crime rate, lower boredom rate, etc. that the base average seems to matter much less.
On the other hand, crippling the players who are already behind in development seems like a bad idea. I think the best balance would be that the least developed player sits at maybe +1-2 happiness (unless hit by religious problems, crime issues from lack of garrisons, or ideological problems later), and the most developed player sits at +20-30.
In my experience, the above description is what appears to happen in my games. When I focus on producing lots of buildings and improvements to improve the yeilds of my cities, i tend to hover around +10-20 happiness. When I play someone like Rome and take Progress and focus on city development, I hover around 20-30.
When I play other ways (focus on large military/conquest/wonders/specialists/great people/city-state alliances) I tend to hover between +5-10. Seems like a good balance to me.
In practice though, I feel like there are so many buildings that give lower crime rate, lower boredom rate, etc. that the base average seems to matter much less.
On the other hand, crippling the players who are already behind in development seems like a bad idea. I think the best balance would be that the least developed player sits at maybe +1-2 happiness (unless hit by religious problems, crime issues from lack of garrisons, or ideological problems later), and the most developed player sits at +20-30.
In my experience, the above description is what appears to happen in my games. When I focus on producing lots of buildings and improvements to improve the yeilds of my cities, i tend to hover around +10-20 happiness. When I play someone like Rome and take Progress and focus on city development, I hover around 20-30.
When I play other ways (focus on large military/conquest/wonders/specialists/great people/city-state alliances) I tend to hover between +5-10. Seems like a good balance to me.
Big J Money
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
- Messages
- 1,141
Have the equations to calculate happiness been released, or does that go against the spirit of the mod?
For example, I'm looking at the tooltip in my first game and trying to make sense of it. I would think deficit would be the difference between yield Needs and Produces, but I guess it doesn't work that way (tooltip jpg attached).
Edit: Nevermind, I did a little math and in my case the difference is being multiplied by 5. I have 4 citizens in my city. This could perhaps mean an equation for the modfier of something like Pop+1 or Pop*1.25.
So if I understand this correctly, you really need to get your ducks in a row in terms of needs or you could be in big, big trouble since the difference is multiplicative.
Aside: I notice that I have very bad crime from the beginning of the game. I believe this is because I settled on plains instead of a hill, reducing the defense value of my capital. Is this factor (hill-settlements) perhaps weighted too heavily into the effects of crime/unhappiness?
For example, I'm looking at the tooltip in my first game and trying to make sense of it. I would think deficit would be the difference between yield Needs and Produces, but I guess it doesn't work that way (tooltip jpg attached).
Edit: Nevermind, I did a little math and in my case the difference is being multiplied by 5. I have 4 citizens in my city. This could perhaps mean an equation for the modfier of something like Pop+1 or Pop*1.25.
So if I understand this correctly, you really need to get your ducks in a row in terms of needs or you could be in big, big trouble since the difference is multiplicative.
Aside: I notice that I have very bad crime from the beginning of the game. I believe this is because I settled on plains instead of a hill, reducing the defense value of my capital. Is this factor (hill-settlements) perhaps weighted too heavily into the effects of crime/unhappiness?
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Big J Money
Emperor
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2005
- Messages
- 1,141
Maybe the reason crime was so bad for me is the AI went for walls early. I guess early game any one factor can cause lots of unhappiness because techs and buildings move so fast, creating many potential disparities.
vyyt
Deity
Don't know how your other cities are doing and what turn it is, but you are not supposed to have 0 unhappiness in your cities. It seems perfectly fine to have 2 unhappy from crime - especially if you do not have walls or a garrison unit in the city.
Txurce
Deity
I'm currently playing a game where I have been in unhappiness pretty much all game, despite having 8 balanced cities. More to the point, it's now late, and although (my) Freedom is the World Ideology, the happiest civs are those in Order and Autocracy -- despite having huge negatives due to the penalty for not being Freedom.
Now that I think about it, I always play Freedom, and I almost always have some issue with happiness -- guaranteed to be huge if it's not the World ideology. Is it possible that Freedom is handicapped on this front?
Now that I think about it, I always play Freedom, and I almost always have some issue with happiness -- guaranteed to be huge if it's not the World ideology. Is it possible that Freedom is handicapped on this front?
tu_79
Deity
Freedom is better for small empires. It has everything for specialists, more food, more GP rate, cheaper and happier specialists. Specialists perform much better in small empires. But not only that, you get also trade routes, Great Works and landmarks/GP Improvements bonuses, that don't scale with number or cities.
Txurce
Deity
That's interesting. I brought my Freedom bias from vanilla, along with its focus on science. It's been automatic for me. But I have eight large cities in the late game -- not all that many -- and have been betwen -32 and -55 since 20 or so turns after entering Freedom (and again, this is with Freedom as the Wold Ideology). What's crazier is, I'm about to win on Emperor, either via Science or Diplomatic.
tu_79
Deity
Hmm. I remember the unhappiness for working specialists has increased in last version, perhaps it's too much now. Did you generate any tourism? You need to influence some civs if you don't want your unhappiness skyrocket.
Txurce
Deity
My game is paused before launch. This isn't exactly scientific, but I removed all specialists, and the unhappiness went up somewhat. I'm sure it could be fine-tuned.
I didn't know that about tourism. I had 4 exotics and 2 familiars, which put me 4th out of 7.
FWIW, my 8 cities ranged from 30 to 48.
The other factor I may not be considering is that the happier others are, the less happy I'm going to be. And in this game, despite not having the World Ideology, Polynesia was at 85, Morocco at 61, Ethiopia at 40 (much higher until the end), and Greece at 25.
The bottom bunch were Greece, Indonesia (-12), Aztecs (-21, 15 of which were due to war weariness), and the Shoshone (me) at -40 or so. These bottom four all share one thing: thr World Ideology, Freedom.
I didn't know that about tourism. I had 4 exotics and 2 familiars, which put me 4th out of 7.
FWIW, my 8 cities ranged from 30 to 48.
The other factor I may not be considering is that the happier others are, the less happy I'm going to be. And in this game, despite not having the World Ideology, Polynesia was at 85, Morocco at 61, Ethiopia at 40 (much higher until the end), and Greece at 25.
The bottom bunch were Greece, Indonesia (-12), Aztecs (-21, 15 of which were due to war weariness), and the Shoshone (me) at -40 or so. These bottom four all share one thing: thr World Ideology, Freedom.
ColonelCarter
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2013
- Messages
- 98
Keep in mind there is an unhappiness snowball if you're running close on city needs and dip below 10 happiness: from there you start losing percent yields in your cities which could cause more unhappiness lowering your yields further, dropping happiness in more cities, lowering your yields...etc. etc.
Txurce
Deity
Thanks -- I had no idea.
I actually think that was addressed a long time ago. Happiness is calculated before the yield adjustment from happiness is factored in, so happiness does not snowball up or down.
ColonelCarter
Chieftain
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2013
- Messages
- 98
Really? Today I learned. I haven't really noticed happiness issues much except when I go on genocidal rampages, and then I just keep a homeguard to protect the capital from the barbarians that will inevitably spawn from sub 30 unhappiness...
It just made sense that it could work like that in my mind but if it doesn't that's logical too.
matlajs
King
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2015
- Messages
- 807
actually i try keeping close my eye on this matter as i have now huge problems with happines due to being 1 off 2 Autocracy nation in game, rest is Freedom. I thought i understood happines system to the point where ideology diferences came into count. Especially i dont understand how its stacks and absolutely no idea about war wearines. i just simply have to play conquer, wait till unrest is done, conquer and so on. I dont dare annex something or burn it down bcoz than i dropp on -25. So ideology unhappines stack with more culturaly at least familiar nations against my culture. So it begin at -15 for one familiar + next -15 for each other ? About war wearines i apreciate some much deeper insight. also i dont know what diferences(if any) are between puppeted city and annexed(already with courthouse). If its produce less unhapinnes, giving full yilds and pay less for building maintanance?
