Confused by new changes

[Bridger]

+2 (happy) per empire.
+1 (unhappy) per city.
+1 (unhappy) per 20 population (returned to vanilla).

What does it mean +2 happy per empire? Does that get added on to the default difficulty setting bonus happiness?

And if I understand this correctly, with a population of 19 (ignoring cities) you'd have 19 unhappiness. When you get to 20, you have 21 unhappiness, is that right?

 

[Ahriman]

What does it mean +2 happy per empire? Does that get added on to the default difficulty setting bonus happiness?

Yes.

And if I understand this correctly, with a population of 19 (ignoring cities) you'd have 19 unhappiness.
When you get to 20, you have 21 unhappiness, is that right?

No, unhappiness is fractional (and then rounded).

IIRC:
In older versions of this mod, each population point caused 0.8 unhappiness, so 19 people would cause 15.2 unhappiness, 20 people would cause 16 unhappiness, 21 would cause 16.8 unhappiness. [And these would end up getting rounded.]

Now, if there is an increase of +1 unhappy per 20 people, then that is an increase of +0.05 per population. So I presume that now each population point causes 0.85 unhappiness, so 19/20/21 people would cause 16.15/17/17.85 unhappiness. [And again, these would round.]

I had thought that vanilla was 1 unhappy per person though, so a reversion to vanilla would be 19/20/21 unhappiness for 19/20/21 people. But as I understand it, that would have been an increase of 1 unhappiness per 5 people (0.8 -> 1 per person), not 1 in 20.
Irregardless, these happen in a fractional fashion, not a discrete bump for the 20th person.

 

[Seek]

Edit: ninja'd by Ahriman.

 

[Thalassicus]

Sorry for the confusion! Yes, happiness per empire is the difficulty default happiness.

I typed the per-population happiness wrong on the patch notes... I'll correct that. Does this make more sense:

• 10 per empire (was 8).
• 4 per city (was 3).
• 5 per 5 population (was 4 per 5) (returned to vanilla).
• +1 for each Colosseum, Theater, and Stadium.

I've seen feedback happiness is too easy to get in VEM, especially for tall empires. I've seen it in my games too. I often have 50 happiness or more by the late game when going tall. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it adds to goldenages, but I figured it would be okay to make it a little more challenging. Depending on what feedback is like over the next few weeks in the upcoming Game of the Month, I'll adjust things from the present levels.

 

[Ahriman]

Sorry for the confusion! Yes, happiness per empire is the difficulty default happiness.

I typed the per-population happiness wrong on the patch notes... I'll correct that. Does this make more sense:

• 5 per 5 population (was 4 per 5) (returned to vanilla).
• +1 for each Colosseum, Theater, and Stadium.

I've seen feedback happiness is too easy to get in VEM, especially for tall empires. I've seen it in my games too. I often have 50 happiness or more by the late game when going tall. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it adds to goldenages, but I figured it would be okay to make it a little more challenging. Depending on what feedback is like over the next few weeks in the upcoming Game of the Month, I'll adjust things from the present levels.

This is different from what you had before.
You had the Colosseum, Theater and Stadium bonuses only with the Representation policy, whereas now they are just listed as flat bonuses for the buildings, and Representation only gives +1 happy per city.

Which is it?

 

[Thalassicus]

It depends on the version. Based on your feedback I moved the bonus from representation (v.8) to the buildings (v.9), increasing the happiness of tall empires.

 

[Ahriman]

It depends on the version. Based on your feedback I moved the bonus from representation (v.8) to the buildings (v.9), increasing the happiness of tall empires.

Ok. I like the boost on the buildings, I think that will be very valuable.

But now Representation is quite weak again, especially compared to Mandate of Heaven. You could add +10% trade route bonus? That would fit with the trade-connection theme, and would boost the policy without providing too much happiness.

 

[Thalassicus]

Sure.

 

[Seek]

I think a flat 1 or 2 gold may be better than a percentage? It is an early game policy after all.

 

[Ahriman]

I think a flat 1 or 2 gold may be better than a percentage? It is an early game policy after all.

That would be fine too. A city would have to be very large for a 10% bonus to give more than 1 or 2 gold anyway.

 

[Agamemnus]

Hmm, wasn't it +2 per colosseum? I kind of liked the old values more. By the time I had one city left to conquer (Future Age, Marathon, biggest world size), I had over 400 happiness and most cities had about 25 pop or more, and of course all the Happiness buildings... I liked all the love, man.

 

[Thalassicus]

In 25 cities the changes are:

+1/city
+5 from population
+3 from happiness buildings

Overall there's less happiness than before.