Community Balance Patch - New Happiness System Explained

[rthompson4]

I play on Emperor, and once I hit the industrial period I get destroyed by unhappiness. Even with a content populace on ideology, still getting up to -30 unhappiness (all of which can happen in a turn) from poverty and "illiteracy". It is extremely difficult to manage once it starts hitting. God forbid you are looking to win a domination victory. Being in war destroys my happiness even worse.

I was sanctioned one game using this mod, and a turn went by and threw me -30 happiness in one go around. Happiness relies so much on trade routes outside the civ.

Anyways, is there a way to adjust these values manually or disable this specific module from the community patch? I love everything else, just the unhappiness is very annoying.

 

[DLimited]

I'm playing on Immortal and I haven't had any of those severe happiness issues and using only internal trade routes.

Have you assigned your specialists (every science + gold)? Have you built trading posts (I usually prefer them on hills)? Do you have a Religion, and put points into Piety?

 

[rthompson4]

I'm playing on Immortal and I haven't had any of those severe happiness issues and using only internal trade routes.

Have you assigned your specialists (every science + gold)? Have you built trading posts (I usually prefer them on hills)? Do you have a Religion, and put points into Piety?

Yes, I have assigned specialists sometimes they help sometimes they dont (they apply negative happiness in some cases) . and have towns in all the cities I build. I don't get this issue early game. I have a religion but have not put points in Piety. With this mod I tend to go Honor Science industry autocracy. I play aggressive throughout most of the game and tend to capture a few cities. No more than 8 (altogether) usually. I can't go to war as much as I'd like due to happiness going severely in the negatives if I capture any cities.

 

[DLimited]

I find that Piety alleviates a lot of unhappiness problems in wide (6-8 city) empires. Put a focus on Cathedrals and Pagodas, purchase both in all your cities (for GPT and culture respectively, alleviate poverty and boredom). Monestaries are good as well, and when you finish Piety you gain 3 happiness per city along with the GPT from the policies etc. Finished Piety is usually during Industrial for me, and really kickstarts my empire.

How big are your cities? Are they on-par in terms of infrastructure? The only times when unhappiness gets really bad for me is when the AI have the next tier of Banks/Universities/Groceries etc in all their cities but mine don't, yet - that's when the local unhappiness really takes flight. It could also be that your cities aren't high-enough Population for the Unhappiness Reduction to take effect. I've had success with ~10-15 pop cities in Industrial. How big are they, and what's their local unhappiness like?

Also, for wide Empires Freedom actually offers the most hammers and happiness, rather than Autocracy. Unless you absolutely depend on Autocracy tenets, maybe try Freedom in your next game.

 

[rthompson4]

Thanks for the advice. In terms of technologies, I tend to be in the lead by industrial. Most of my cities are on par with each other with a few exceptions being 1-2 cities recently captured. But the problem is that even my best cities have these issues. My capital is on a harbor and I have trade routes originating from there and I still have 4-5 poverty with some illiteracy.

I'll try out piety and see how it works for me. And maybe freedom; but I just love autocracy and it meshes with my style of play (domination).

 

[Gazebo]

Thanks for the advice. In terms of technologies, I tend to be in the lead by industrial. Most of my cities are on par with each other with a few exceptions being 1-2 cities recently captured. But the problem is that even my best cities have these issues. My capital is on a harbor and I have trade routes originating from there and I still have 4-5 poverty with some illiteracy.

I'll try out piety and see how it works for me. And maybe freedom; but I just love autocracy and it meshes with my style of play (domination).

I made a big change in the latest version that caps unhappiness from resistance to 25% of the population (was 100% of the population). This should help with conquest, as you won't have 2+ turns of major unhappiness due to conquering a city.

G

 

[DLimited]

Thanks for the advice. In terms of technologies, I tend to be in the lead by industrial. Most of my cities are on par with each other with a few exceptions being 1-2 cities recently captured. But the problem is that even my best cities have these issues. My capital is on a harbor and I have trade routes originating from there and I still have 4-5 poverty with some illiteracy.

I'll try out piety and see how it works for me. And maybe freedom; but I just love autocracy and it meshes with my style of play (domination).

The thing is even with freedom you can get triple promotions if you have Brandenburg Gate (not sure if without, might be possible too) and while I agree that Autocracy has some insanely useful tenets, Freedom feels like a less all-out war choice, but still has the option to wage war very well.

The Illiteracy issue is weird though, especially if you're using the Science specialists. Not really sure what the problem could be, sorry.

 

[TheUnholyPotato]

As a caveat to this post, keep in mind that I'm playing Germany on the YNAEMP 22 civ map, King Difficulty, Normal Speed, meaning that balance may be different than in different situations.

As one would expect, I am first in food production due to the immense growth bonuses that Tradition gives across the board. I am second on population due to India getting an early religion and their growth-centric UBs, but I am fairly rapidly catching up. I've managed to keep poverty and illiteracy low by focusing on marketplaces, libraries/universities, villages, and even the occasional Great Merchant-founded town.

Realpolitik has also helped significantly, despite unlucky Civ spawns meaning that I had to look well into Eastern Europe in order to find any city states (Kiev and Riga). Having two alliances (as I currently do) results in equivalent bonuses to the Organized Religion tenant from Piety, which is a non-trivial advantage. If I had access to some of the Western European city states, things would be even better.

As I am playing on YNAEMP, I could not get a religion due to sharing the map with the Celts, India, a Mt. Sinai-owning Arabia, a Prophet-rushing Maya, and Egypt with a turn ~25 Stonehenge. If I had a religion, things might be going more smoothly. Still, I don't think that it is reasonable to balance Tradition under the assumption of a religion.

I noticed as I started that literally no other civ chose to start with Tradition (liberty comes in first, with 12 of the 19 discovered civs), despite several of them refusing to expand beyond their first 1-2 cities. In hindsight, I ought to have paid more attention to this, but hindsight is 20/20. Still, this being King, I remained optimistic that my abnormal choice wouldn't cripple me.

I am more or less correct. While Arabia leads in gold (after conquering much of Ethiopia during the Reign of the Camel Archers) and Mongolia in production, I am first in science by a small margin, and I am a close runner-up for gold. Egypt is holding close behind in science with just two cities, due to over half of the world being Muslim and their ownership of the Religious Council wonder. India is just behind them due to their immense population.

However, even with my rapid technological advancement, I find my cities outpacing my technological ability to provide city Combat Strength. In the late renaissance, Berlin is well into the high 20s, and I am suffering over 15 happiness from Disorder across a mere 5 cities. I find myself intentionally rushing techs which provide disorder reduction, only to discover that knowing a tech is insufficient due to my lower production relative to my Liberty-selecting AI opponents. It is worth noting that my cities are vanilla BNW-levels of invulnerable to outside attack, due to their immense populations, multiple defensive structures, and omnipresent, max-tech garrisons. However, this is insufficient to meet the ratio needed to avoid 3+ disorder unrest.

In short, I'm here to argue that tradition's supposed advantage – growth – is insufficient relative to the alternatives of pure production bonuses. In theory, more population results in more of all outputs including production, but the double penalty of specialist unhappiness means that it is inferior to simply taking the extra hammers from liberty. Buildings provide food, production, culture, and science in a fashion superior to pure population, and their malus (relatively tiny maintenance penalties) only threatens a single category (science) instead of threatening growth, production, culture and gold (and completely preventing golden ages from occurring), as unhappiness does. The happiness-producing capstone is, frankly, inferior to either Might's early stabilizing power (which double dips by reducing boredom) or Liberty's constant, scaling benefit.

I likely could've circumvented this disadvantage by selecting piety for its comically huge happiness bonus, which speaks to the power of the policy tree. I chose Patronage, instead, in the hopes of leveraging Realpolitik. Even with only two (poorly located) city state allies, Patronage is providing very real benefits in terms of culture, food, and commerce, but it can't get around my key difficulty of being unable to keep my population 'safe.'

I may simply be misusing Tradition's strength, or applying it to the wrong civilization (in hindsight, a City-State-Focused civ probably ought to select Might to get closer to desired allies or Liberty to ensure a sufficient supply of paper to produce various diplomatic units). However, it is quite frustrating to find myself risking first unhappiness, and then the unhappiness cap, by continuing to leverage my supposed advantage.

Edit: My net unhappiness runs between 2 and 6, due to luxuries, Patronage tree happiness buffs, a fair number of discovered NWs and generally high-quality cities. All other unhappiness factors run between 1 and 3 each, contributing to a total of around -25.

 

[Gazebo]

Great write-up. I think that Tradition needs a buff, particularly a production buff. Since Tradition is all about growth, and most growth comes from farms, the concept I have in mind is as follows (this would replace Tradition's rather-paltry internal trade route buff):

+1 Production in a city for every Farm being worked by the city, up to a maximum of +5 Production.

The latter amount can be adjusted, but the idea here is to give a city focusing on growth a distinct advantage, in that the bonuses from farming can be used to direct energies elsewhere. Capping it at 5 also prevents utter exploitation with 10+ farms around a city.

Regarding Disorder, I'm going to bump up the disorder reduction values on barracks/armories/constabularies/police stations a bit to compensate for the difficulty. It should be a factor, but not quite as big of one as it is right now.

G

 

[TheUnholyPotato]

I appreciate the response, Gazebo. Would you consider adding a -Disorder tenant to Tradition? It'd makes sense that a more hierarchical society could keep the serfs in line more than the citizens in a Grecian style republic or a Native American tribe, where all (free) adults have significant say in the management of society.

And, as noted, I'm very much NOT having trouble with science. Larger cities automatically lead to a more literate populace, ironically, because of the functionality of Universities and Libraries. Larger populations also lead to more people working forest tiles instead of farms, leading to more science. Would it be possible to add a (capped) production bonus from farms? As, otherwise, investing in Liberty for production buildings and engineer slots seems more sensible.

Edit: This may be less true on higher difficulty levels or more normal maps.

Additionally, would you consider buffing the Patronage gold advantage (though not influence) from trade routes to city states? As-is, it usually is still more advantageous to trade with other civilizations when running Patronage, unless you risk losing ally status. Other civ capitals have +gold buildings quite frequently, and they also give large science yields if one is behind.

 

[Gazebo]

I appreciate the response, Gazebo. Would you consider adding a -Disorder tenant to Tradition? It'd makes sense that a more hierarchical society could keep the serfs in line more than the citizens in a Grecian style republic or a Native American tribe, where all (free) adults have significant say in the management of society.

And, as noted, I'm very much NOT having trouble with science. Larger cities automatically lead to a more literate populace, ironically, because of the functionality of Universities and Libraries. Larger populations also lead to more people working forest tiles instead of farms, leading to more science. Would it be possible to add a (capped) production bonus from farms? As, otherwise, investing in Liberty for production buildings and engineer slots seems more sensible.

Edit: This may be less true on higher difficulty levels or more normal maps.

Additionally, would you consider buffing the Patronage gold advantage (though not influence) from trade routes to city states? As-is, it usually is still more advantageous to trade with other civilizations when running Patronage, unless you risk losing ally status. Other civ capitals have +gold buildings quite frequently, and they also give large science yields if one is behind.

Sorry, I meant for that to say production, not science. Yeah, I agree - production is very much needed in Tradition.

As far as disorder, let's make the tweak to the disorder values and see where that leaves us. I can also buff patronage gold trade a bit.

G

 

[TheUnholyPotato]

While I would definitely enjoy having tradition buffed that heavily, on reflection, +5 production in all mid-sized-or-larger cities is a quite large buff for an already growth-focused policy tree may be too powerful. Maybe a scaling food-to-production setup (per 5-15?), maxing out at +3? By contrast, a half of a policy in Liberty is one hammer per city. The multiplicative effects will equal out to 10-30 hammers in the late game, depending on focus, though, so perhaps I'm over-hyping the benefit of such a policy.

 

[Llednar Twem]

Quick question that occurred to me in a recent game: Mandate of Heaven (I think) significantly boosts all of your holy city's yields during a golden age. Does this drive up the yield ratios needed to avoid unhappiness in your other cities? If so, that seems a bit counterproductive.

 

[powder0321]

I'm getting towards the end of a mostly successful game where I used Tradition with Germany. There are only two civs with a legitimate chance to win the game on turn 283, myself and the Maya (both of us are about 500 pts clear score-wise from the rest of the civs), and both of us started by filling out the tradition tree and then filled out patronage. Between us two we have 24 wonders, other six civs have 10.

It certainly can be done but like most things in the game is somewhat situationally dependent. I find if my starting location has no decent food tiles but has plenty of good production tiles then Tradition is great. If my start has great food but poor production then Liberty is a better start. If my starting location is great all around then I can go Might to take advantage of that. Bottom line, I think it is very well balanced at the moment in that all three are very viable options depending on your starting situation.

Disorder (and happiness overall) has not been a problem with the combined effects of the military buildings and defense buildings. In fact, by far my biggest source of unhappiness (over half) comes from specialists even though I recently puppeted two cities. If there is any issue with Tradition at the moment its specialist unhappiness that comes from having larger cities.

As far as production goes, as I stated above, if your city looks like it might have difficulty with production then Tradition might not be the best way to go and the mod provides you with other options in this case. A buff to farm production in particular to help out Tradition might make it a little too good especially when you consider +1 production and +1 gold to farms already exists in Imperialism-Exploitation.

If it is decided that tradition could use a buff I would suggest one of a few alternatives:

• 
  Adjusting unhappiness from specialists. Consequently happiness management in general might become too easy, without adjustments elsewhere, but this would have a particularly positive effect for Tradition.

• 
  Either increasing Golden Age duration bonus from tradition or decreasing Golden Age delta so they occur more frequently.

• 
  Some sort of happiness to food tie-in. I understand that food had an effect on happiness when the new system was introduced but that mechanic was removed for some reason? Anyway, it makes sense to me that plenty of food would have a positive effect on happiness that the Tradition policy tree would take advantage of. This would have the added benefit of making coastal cities a little more viable as well.

• 
  If you must add a buff to an improvement, how about the Lumber Mill? Currently the Lumber Mill is the only improvement we don't have the opportunity to significantly 'improve' as the game goes on. Whether its Trading Posts through Rationalism, trade routes, and roads or every other improvement in the game (besides the oil improvements if I'm not mistaken) all of them have some sort of social policy buff except the Lumber Mill. Most of them have two or more significant enhancements available throughout the course of the game.

 

[TheUnholyPotato]

The issue that I have with your position, Powder, is that a growth bonus is innately additive, even though the bonus TO growth is multiplicative: the value of 1 citizen does not increase significantly across the game. If anything, the relative value decreases as cities begin to hit their population caps.

The bonuses from might and liberty (the true, cumulative bonuses, rather than the individual policies) are multiplicative. The +5% at the beginning of the game represents perhaps half of a hammer in large cities, but the +15% (liberty, buildings) and the +25% (might, units) can represent literally 10-20 production by end game. Literally nothing in the tradition tree can offer a comparative benefit. I'm currently playing a different Germany game (to compare), and by turn 230, Berlin has higher output in everything but science (even with tradition's culture/gold bonuses!), ~7 lower population and 5 lower unhappiness than it did in my tradition game. My infrastructure is better (despite both starts being basically grasslands with two hills), and I had an easier time expanding due to different civ spawns, but also due to lesser limits of unhappiness because I was able to produce the buildings and improvements which I needed.

My distant cities are much, much better than previous game's other outlying settlements due to the improved production speed for crucial support buildings, such as universities and windmills (which, surprise surprise, feed back into the production advantage). My slightly less crowded start helped, but I'm still being pressured significantly by Rome and Poland.

In summary, while I appreciate some elements of Tradition, its cumulative power is non-trivially lower than Liberty (or, in a more aggressive game, Might) would be.

 

[powder0321]

The issue that I have with your position, Powder, is that a growth bonus is innately additive, even though the bonus TO growth is multiplicative: the value of 1 citizen does not increase significantly across the game. If anything, the relative value decreases as cities begin to hit their population caps.

Is it purely additive though? Cities will grow to a certain level faster AND they will grow faster once they get there. Population cap itself will be one pop higher and I do think the value of citizens increases very significantly over the course of the game. Between faith, culture, tech, and buildings the river farm producing 3 food at the beginning of the game produces, at the very least, 4 food at the end of game. A 33% increase in yield is significant and at the very low end of yield increase per citizen over the course of the game depending on social policy, religion bonuses, buildings, and wonders. Faster growth means more of everything that citizens produce faster as you're aware. Its not just multiplicative, its EXPONENTIAL (sorry and yes I know).

The bonuses from might and liberty (the true, cumulative bonuses, rather than the individual policies) are multiplicative. The +5% at the beginning of the game represents perhaps half of a hammer in large cities, but the +15% (liberty, buildings) and the +25% (might, units) can represent literally 10-20 production by end game. Literally nothing in the tradition tree can offer a comparative benefit. I'm currently playing a different Germany game (to compare), and by turn 230, Berlin has higher output in everything but science (even with tradition's culture/gold bonuses!), ~7 lower population and 5 lower unhappiness than it did in my tradition game. My infrastructure is better (despite both starts being basically grasslands with two hills), and I had an easier time expanding due to different civ spawns, but also due to lesser limits of unhappiness because I was able to produce the buildings and improvements which I needed.

I would expect, if your starting city is surrounded by mostly grasslands with very little production tiles, liberty to be the better choice as your first social policy. My tradition game as Germany is going a little better than yours did I'm guessing but I also have plenty of good production tiles around my capital. I don't NEED any boost to production (especially with the Hanse production bonus) but my capital wasn't going to grow as quickly as I wanted it to without tradition bonuses. I would also argue that Germany itself is uniquely well-suited to a Liberty/Patronage start over any other because of the Hanse production bonus.

My distant cities are much, much better than previous game's other outlying settlements due to the improved production speed for crucial support buildings, such as universities and windmills (which, surprise surprise, feed back into the production advantage). My slightly less crowded start helped, but I'm still being pressured significantly by Rome and Poland.

When expanding I prioritized city locations with great production potential over food potential because I knew the growth of my cities was going to take care of itself. This, of course, resulted in cities with high production AND high growth. It's really more of a philosophical/playstyle discussion.

In summary, while I appreciate some elements of Tradition, its cumulative power is non-trivially lower than Liberty (or, in a more aggressive game, Might) would be.

After all that, I would have to agree with you for the most part. All else being equal it might be the weakest of the three overall although I think Liberty gives Tradition a run for its money here. But it still is situationally the best option, depending on terrain and civ, as all social policy groups should be. As for potential Tradition buffs, one alternative I didn't mention in my last post is a wonder production bonus. There is a civ-wide wonder production boost pantheon bonus that, if transferred to Tradition, would give it all the help it needs in my opinion.

 

[TheUnholyPotato]

Is it purely additive though? Cities will grow to a certain level faster AND they will grow faster once they get there. Population cap itself will be one pop higher and I do think the value of citizens increases very significantly over the course of the game. Between faith, culture, tech, and buildings the river farm producing 3 food at the beginning of the game produces, at the very least, 4 food at the end of game. A 33% increase in yield is significant and at the very low end of yield increase per citizen over the course of the game depending on social policy, religion bonuses, buildings, and wonders. Faster growth means more of everything that citizens produce faster as you're aware. Its not just multiplicative, its EXPONENTIAL (sorry and yes I know).

It absolutely and without a doubt is an additive bonus due to the manner in which population scales.. The output of a single citizen changes only with technologies (which Tradition is marginally better at providing, due to the increased benefit from science structures), buildings (liberty) and improvements (liberty). The food cost for each citizen increases. The cost for your 10th citizen is a total of approximately 500 food. The 15th is approximately 1250 (a change of 750). The 20th? Over 2500 (a change of 1250) food. In addition to this, increasing population leads to unhappiness, which reduces golden age gain (indirectly decreasing culture, production, and gold), and has the potential to reduce actual yields. More in depth tests would be needed, but on average, a 15% increase in growth should result in a 1-2 population advantage, which must be compared to a 15% increase in buildings (which while not necessarily the majority of production in all cities, will be a significant portion in most of them).

You make other valid points, and I definitely haven't addressed all of them. I'm quite tired. We'll see how the newest patch feels.

 

[Anastase Alex]

I was just thinking:

The way the system works, assuming that all cities produce the average value of every yield per citizen they have, then, in the late game everyone is penalized by a certain amount because of technology level.

Are the cumulative reductions to unhappiness (for each source of unhappiness) obtained through different buildings equal (or close enough to equal) to this amount of extra unhappiness caused by technology creep?

If not, why not?

 

[Jandos]

Sorry for dumb question, but is there some effect with local unhapiness of specific city ? Lets say I have one city with +5 hapiness and second with -4 unhapiness. Is there any penalty for second city ?

 

[Funak]

Sorry for dumb question, but is there some effect with local unhapiness of specific city ? Lets say I have one city with +5 hapiness and second with -4 unhapiness. Is there any penalty for second city ?

Not really