Community Balance Patch - New Happiness System Explained

[Condotierri]

My experience is limited to immortal, but I really don't see a problem. Even if you overexpand and drop into negatives you can usually deal with it as negative happiness isn't anywhere near as brutal as it is in vanilla.

No offence, but if your experience is limited then why are you commenting and saying it's fine. You don't have any clue.

It's hard to play on marathon immortal+ from late renaissance to industrial due to unhappiness. From the modern area it does get easier, since the ideologies help a lot (only if you choose the majority one that doesn't create lots of unhappiness from ideology pressure).

I think if luxury population requirements didn't boost so much with era it would work out. Currently, I am in the modern area and still have +1 happiness from luxuries cause I need 286 pop, and I only have 98. In fact only 3 of the 22 civs in the game have over the pop requirement to have +2 happiness. If it it were fixed so by the industrial age luxuries gave +4 happiness it would be a lot better. Then curbing happiness in the modern area could work out well.

 

[Llednar Twem]

The population requirements for increased luxury happiness do seem pretty high. I'm fairly sure that regardless of whether I build tall or wide, I almost never get above +1 per luxury.

 

[Delekhan]

There have been a lot of complaints about how good specialists are and how easy happiness-management gets later on, I just figured a higher number would make people consider working that mined hill instead of a engineer


Anyways with such a thing specialist unhappiness could be raised by a good bit. Maybe to 0.8

It was 0.3 unhappiness/specialist before. I was one of those who was repeatedly complaining about happiness being too abundant in the lategame.

An increase to 0.4 unhappiness/specialist translates into +33% unhappiness from specialists. It's probably wise to test unhappiness values in steps, and not increase it too suddenly - that sort of calibration provides better testing results in my experience.

An increase to 0.8 represents a +167% boost to unhappiness from specialists, and if that's the right value we'll eventually get there through testing by degrees. Hope that makes sense.

And regarding population/happiness requirements for luxuries: I often reach the +2 level by the mid-Renaissance. Just grow your cities' population and avoid building cities in crappy locations too early on. I'm an incorrigible warmonger, conquering and burning everything in sight despite my best efforts to play a peaceful game, and I have had few issues with unhappiness from the late Renaissance onward. Hopefully the extra unhappiness from specialists will add some challenge and force us to make some choices.

That said I've never reached the +3 level for luxuries, despite having 30+ population cities. Not that I've ever needed that extra happiness.

 

[Funak]

No offence, but if your experience is limited then why are you commenting and saying it's fine. You don't have any clue.

Because you were talking about both immortal and deity? And you're still talking about immortal.

 

[Funak]

An increase to 0.4 unhappiness/specialist translates into +33% unhappiness from specialists. It's probably wise to test unhappiness values in steps, and not increase it too suddenly - that sort of calibration provides better testing results in my experience.

That's one way of looking at it, another way would be to say that you could get around 1 less specialist per point of unhappiness. Those are all pretty big numbers, but keep in mind that this still means that 6 specialists only provide two points of unhappiness, 6 specialists is a lot and 2 unhappiness is nothing.

An increase to 0.8 represents a +167% boost to unhappiness from specialists, and if that's the right value we'll eventually get there through testing by degrees. Hope that makes sense.

The value used to be 1 point of unhappiness per specialist, it got tuned down to 0.5 due to there being no way to gain happiness in any policy-tree. After that the number got lowered once again to the 0.3 number. That makes you think that you were getting closer to the true value, but since that decrease there have been added a lot of extra happiness into the game, most policytrees now have some kind of happinessboost, there are buildings that provide happiness now. All specialists also got buffed after that decrease so they are way more powerful now.
I don't think increasing the number back to a value that makes you actually think about your specialists rather than just run them in every city to bring down poverty and illiteracy would be unreasonable.

And regarding population/happiness requirements for luxuries: I often reach the +2 level by the mid-Renaissance. Just grow your cities' population and avoid building cities in crappy locations too early on. I'm an incorrigible warmonger, conquering and burning everything in sight despite my best efforts to play a peaceful game, and I have had few issues with unhappiness from the late Renaissance onward. Hopefully the extra unhappiness from specialists will add some challenge and force us to make some choices.

I usually reach +2 around mid to late renaissance aswell, earlier if I don't expand, later if I expand a lot. I usually reach +4 in modern or atomic and happiness usually isn't a problem after that.

That said I've never reached the +3 level for luxuries, despite having 30+ population cities. Not that I've ever needed that extra happiness.

I've had my capital reaching 80 pop and my other cities being around 50, so I guess that's why

 

[Gazebo]

+2 happiness from luxuries is the unofficial 'high-end,' even though you can, theoretically, reach +3. I felt like the base game made luxuries way, way too important for their happiness value alone, whereas they have more of an economic role in CBP.

G

 

[Funak]

+2 happiness from luxuries is the unofficial 'high-end,' even though you can, theoretically, reach +3. I felt like the base game made luxuries way, way too important for their happiness value alone, whereas they have more of an economic role in CBP.

How in hell do I reach +4 in every game then?

 

[Gazebo]

How in hell do I reach +4 in every game then?

I didn't say it was impossible, just that +2 is the intended average of almost all games. The absolute maximum is +5.

G

 

[Funak]

I didn't say it was impossible, just that +2 is the intended average of almost all games. The absolute maximum is +5.

G

Makes sense

Is that +5 counting the industry finisher or not?

 

[Gazebo]

Makes sense

Is that +5 counting the industry finisher or not?

Not counting it, no, so +6 is the absolute maximum. The +5 is the maximum from population growth.

G

 

[pthieu1986]

Hi Gazebo, I've got two questions if you don't mind (I'm sorry if they had been asked elsewhere):

1. Should wars be another penalty to a civ's happiness (not to mention pillaged tiles and cities without garrison)? No matter if it is a defending war or a conquering one, families are going to lose their children. The penalty should even be heavier along eras since the more developed people are, the less tolerant we are towards wars (for example, -10% happiness per polulation in ancient era, -12% in classical era, -14% in mediaval, and so on).

2. Does warmongerring penalty scale with eras?

 

[Gazebo]

Hi Gazebo, I've got two questions if you don't mind (I'm sorry if they had been asked elsewhere):

1. Should wars be another penalty to a civ's happiness (not to mention pillaged tiles and cities without garrison)? No matter if it is a defending war or a conquering one, families are going to lose their children. The penalty should even be heavier along eras since the more developed people are, the less tolerant we are towards wars (for example, -10% happiness per polulation in ancient era, -12% in classical era, -14% in mediaval, and so on).

2. Does warmongerring penalty scale with eras?

1. I've considered this, but this seems to be a punishment for playing civ, as civ is largely a war game. Also, the AI would suffer greatly from this.

2. Yes.

G

 

[pthieu1986]

1. I've considered this, but this seems to be a punishment for playing civ, as civ is largely a war game. Also, the AI would suffer greatly from this.
G

Yep, war is part of the game but it should be in the RIGHT TIME. I think you can still manage this well depending on the scales. This mod makes happiness so easy to manage through policies , especially with ideologies so i guess it won't harm the game so much.

 

[Finarvi]

Sometimes when I'm attacked, my happiness drops from 40 to 0 due to broken connections, pillaged tiles, reduced yield etc. I wouldn't like to see even more unhappiness then.

Maybe if we decrease unhappiness from isolation, more unhappiness would be OK. For now only defender suffer.

 

[WileyNg]

Sometimes when I'm attacked, my happiness drops from 40 to 0 due to broken connections, pillaged tiles, reduced yield etc. I wouldn't like to see even more unhappiness then.

Maybe if we decrease unhappiness from isolation, more unhappiness would be OK. For now only defender suffer.

Of course only the defender suffers. Did you see USA suffer from invading Iraq?

 

[Ulixes]

Of course only the defender suffers. Did you see USA suffer from invading Iraq?

Actually, yes (in "Happiness" terms), and much more in Vietnam, in my opinion.

Sure, in Iraq the "unhappiness" from citizens was far more controlled (especially thanks to the media) but, still, it caused a lot of discontent and, usually, a president has to think twice before sending land units in war because of the resistence of the public opinion (recently, see the reluctance of Obama to send troops against IS).

For example:

I think that Vietnam war would have continued without the massive pressure of the public opinion.

Franklin D. Roosvelt wanted to join WW2 before Pearl Harbor, but only after the japanese attack he had enough support form the people (and from the congress) to send troops,
and I doubt Bush Jr. would ever have had enough support to invade Iraq without the 9/11.

Even in the Nazi Germany, when the number of dead in Russia became incredibly high (and german cities were bombed) there was disenchantment (and sometime even disobedience) from the poulation.

In the Fascist Italy the poularity of Mussolini rapidly declined also for the the consequences of war: hign number of deads, bombardments, starving.

The last thing Soviet Union did, before falling into pieces, was invading Afghanistan.

So, I think that "War weariness" is a problem for the attacker too (especially in a democracy), at least when the number of deads is high and part of the territory is occupied or bombed.

 

[WileyNg]

Actually, yes (in "Happiness" terms), and much more in Vietnam, in my opinion.

Sure, in Iraq the "unhappiness" from citizens was far more controlled (especially thanks to the media) but, still, it caused a lot of discontent and, usually, a president has to think twice before sending land units in war because of the resistence of the public opinion (recently, see the reluctance of Obama to send troops against IS).

For example:

I think that Vietnam war would have continued without the massive pressure of the public opinion.

Franklin D. Roosvelt wanted to join WW2 before Pearl Harbor, but only after the japanese attack he had enough support form the people (and from the congress) to send troops,
and I doubt Bush Jr. would ever have had enough support to invade Iraq without the 9/11.

Even in the Nazi Germany, when the number of dead in Russia became incredibly high (and german cities were bombed) there was disenchantment (and sometime even disobedience) from the poulation.

In the Fascist Italy the poularity of Mussolini rapidly declined also for the the consequences of war: hign number of deads, bombardments, starving.

The last thing Soviet Union did, before falling into pieces, was invading Afghanistan.

So, I think that "War weariness" is a problem for the attacker too (especially in a democracy), at least when the number of deads is high and part of the territory is occupied or bombed.

All of your examples are pulled out from the modern era.

Counterargument:

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

- The Crusades sacked cities and protected the Christian faith. Christian even moved to Jerusalem to engage in battle.

- Spain were happily slaining Muslims in the Reconquista, same goes for what Europeans did in Scramble for Africa and to the Native Americans.

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

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.

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.

How gradual? Like before the Opium war (1842), we see the British parliament was against the war due to the lack of a more justifiable reason than greediness and warmongering. But the war was still waged because the public was still foolish.

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. Correspondingly, if the war weariness is to be introduced, it should come in the late game, say after the modern era when the WC has enacted the Casus Bell or the Global Peace Accords.

 

[Finarvi]

Good point. Unhappiness from war could increase through eras gradually (just as warmongering penalty does).

 

[Gazebo]

The easiest way to do this, from a gameplay standpoint, would be to tie it into the adoption of an ideology (as there aren't 'governments' in civ 5, as in other civ games), and then have the bonus affect the 'dissent' element of ideological pressure. This would make dissent possible with or without tourism pressure, and would give me the ability to add a policy function that could minimize or remove war weariness (for ideologies like autocracy).

G

 

[Finarvi]

Great! I like this idea... I feel almost no difference choosing freedom/order right now... maybe a little difference choosing autocracy. If ideology would influence unhappiness from war then it will be a little more interesting...

At least something since we don't have real policies in Civ5, only some WoW-like trait trees