Do Happiness improvements have carryover effect?

[rschissler]

Do happiness improvements have a carryover effect? For an example, if you have one unhappy citizen and build a cathedral ( which makes three unhappy citizens content), will it make the one citizen content and save the unused effect for future unhappy citizens?

 

[NewbieHere]

No, or at least not one that I know of.

 

[Gainy]

Happiness improvements don't work as a one-off. They are continuous. If you were to build a temple whilst yer citizens are all content, nothing will happen. But as soon as a citizen would usually become uphappy in that city, then it would immediately be contented by the temple.

Hope that helps

 

[Blasphemous]

Something I keep wondering, is if imporvements take priority over luxuries and luxury tax...
If they do, then building a cathedral or colosseum in a city with many content citizens and some happy citizens (but no unhappy citizens) would create additional happy citizens, because the improvement would replace the luxuries in the role of keeping people content, thus allowing the lux to make the content citizens happy.

 

[Wakboth]

Heh. First post on this forum, but this is kinda interesting.

The first thing to understand is that there are two completely different factors at work. Content faces and Happy faces. Content faces make one unhappy citizen content. Nothing more. If there isn't an unhappy person to make content, it doesn't do anything. Happy faces make one content citizen happy. If there isn't a content citizen, then it has no effect. The result of the combination of total population and the caclculation of unhappy, content, and happy citizens is remade each turn.

Content faces are generated *only* by specific city improvements (temple, colluseum, and cathedral) and Wonders (and only some of the wonders).

Happy faces are generated *only* by luxury resources, luxury slider (entertainment), and entertainers.


It's also important to note that despite popular belief, entertainers do not turn an unhappy citizen into a happy citizen. There's a two step process going on.

First you make a specialist. This turns one of your unhappy citizens into the specialist. This costs you a square of production on your city though. Then, the effect of the specialist is applied. A scientist adds a beaker. A tax man adds a gold. An entertainer adds a single happy face. So, it's more correct to say that you first turn the unhappy person into an entertainer, and then the entertainer gives you a happy face, which in turn will turn a single content person into a happy person.


The number of default content/happy faces is determined by the level of game you are playing. For example: At regent level, the first 4 citizens are content. All remaining citizens in your city will be unhappy due to overcrowding. So a size 10 city would have 4 content and 6 unhappy citizens by default (which is not a good thing obviously). I actually picked 10 for a reason since 6 is the maximum number of content faces you can generate without having Wonders invovled (temple is 1, colluseum is 2, cathedral is 3 for a total of 6). Thus, with all the city improvements, you could turn those 6 unhappy citizens into content ones. Tragically, cities will continue to grow to a size of 12...

This has bearing on how to use the luxury slider and luxury resources. There's a common misconception that you can combat unhappyness in cities by turning up the slider or bringing in more luxuries (maybe building a marketplace). That's true to a point, since a city wont go into disorder unless it has more unhappy then happy citizens. However, remember that you can't make someone happy unless they are content first. Without wonders, the most content citizens you can have in your city is 10 (at regent, 8 at deity and 12 at chieftan IIRC). Thus, the most happy faces you can actually use is also 10. Usually, there's enough room to play in there, but it's quite possible when you reach later ages to have cities that have nothing but unhappy and happy people (no one's "content"). At that point, luxuries are meaningless. Fortunately, you only get 21 squares (20 pop), so you have to turn anyone past that point into a specialist anyway (coincidence that 10*2=20, so you can have max sized cities in regent without wonders? I think not...).

However, until you've built those city enhancements, it's pretty key to understand that luxuries don't help you much initiallly. In fact, you only get 4 (or 3 or 2...). A city with no content faces wont get much benefit from luxuries. Deciding to forgoe building temples/colluseums/cathedrals in favor of simply adjusting the luxury slider is also likely going to be a big mistake in the long run. At regent level, you could support a city up to size 8. Any pop past that would have to become a specialist or your city would go into disorder. As much as the names don't imply it, content faces are actually much more important to get then happy faces. They're also harder to get.

 

[Yeti]

Wakboth:

Nice post

But I'm pretty sure that luxuries and entertainment (luxury slider) work differently than you decribe. I believe they basically move people to the left. They can both make unhappy people content, and make content people happy.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Wakboth's post is slighly wrong.

For things that generate content faces, he's almost correct, he only forgot to mention that also military police make unhappy faces content.

For content-happy effects he is slightly more wrong.

This is how it works.

First all unhappy -> content effects are applied. Those only affects unhappy citizens, so in a size 3 city with 3 military police, temple, cathedral and colloseum, there will still be 3 content faces, no happy faces.

Then, content -> happy effects (lux effects) are applied. Those are applied one by one on every content face in the city. When there are no more content faces, but some unhappy left, the next lux effct makes one unhappy content, and then the lux effect after this makes this (content) face happy. And so on.

Some examples may clarify this:

Assume a size 8 city on regent. Without any effects, there are 2 content and 6 happy faces. If you have a marketplace and 5 luxuries for a total of 9 lux factors, then the following will happen.

          happy   content unhappy
At start   0       2       6
1st lux    1       1       6
2nd lux    2       0       6
3. lux     2       1       5
4. lux     3       0       5
5. lux     3       1       4
6. lux     4       0       4
7. lux     4       1       3
8. lux     5       0       3
9. lux     5       1       2

Now assume that this city gets a cathedral (3 unhappy -> content), then the following happens:

          happy   content unhappy
At start   0       2       6
cathedral   0       5       3
1st lux    1       4       3
2nd lux    2       3       3
3. lux     3       2       3
4. lux     4       1       3
5. lux     5       0       3
6. lux     5       1       2
7. lux     6       0       2
8. lux     6       1       1
9. lux     7       0       1

 

[syndicatedragon]

Just a small edit:

Assume a size 8 city on regent. Without any effects, there are 2 content and 6 happy faces. If you have a marketplace and 5 luxuries for a total of 9 lux factors, then the following will happen.

Shouldn't that be "2 content and 6 unhappy" faces? Otherwise that is a very good explaination, thanks.

 

[Wakboth]

Hmmm... I'll have to do some tests, but I'm almost positive that the luxury slider does not make unhappy people content. It generates happy faces (the yellow ones).

While I wasn't exactly counting or doing full tests, in a past regent domination win I remember playing around with the luxury slider (and I had all 8 luxuries available). I remember on a couple of occasions cranking the slider to see what effect it would have and seeing none at all (I see the extra happy faces appear, but the number of happy/unhappy citizens remains the same).

I'll go load up that particular game again (if I can find it). This was awhile ago, and I didn't exactly do a scientific test. I could very easily have missed the content effect. It's just odd because I was specifically looking for it (I was trying to see if I could reduce unhappy folks and trigger WLTKD in larger cities and was unable to without using specialists to remove the citizens completely). Heh. Now I really want to go back and look...

 

[Blasphemous]

Thanks TheNiceOne, you verified my guess and now I know that building happiness (or contentedness ) improvements in a city with no unhappy citizens very well could increase the number of happy citizens.
I am, however, slightly confused, becuase I usually see that around half of my citizens are content, and if happy faces go first towards making content people happy, and then unhappy people content, you should see very few content citizens in lategame when you have marketplaces and numerous luxuries... Are you absolutely sure about this?

 

[Wakboth]

Originally posted by ShadowFlame
Thanks TheNiceOne, you verified my guess and now I know that building happiness (or contentedness ) improvements in a city with no unhappy citizens very well could increase the number of happy citizens.

Not exactly. Be very careful when thinking about "city improvements", and be really clear whether you're dealing with happy faces (yellow) and content faces (red/pinkish). City improvements (temples, colluseums, and cathedrals) generate content faces. They turn unhappy people into content people. There is no spill over in this case. No matter how many of those you build, you wont have any effect unless there's already an unhappy person in the city to make content.

So if you have a city with nothing but happy and content people, building a cathedral wont do anything. Also miltary police (thanks for adding that TheNiceOne, I tend to forget about them sometimes) wont have any effect. Arguably though, you have to assume your city will continue to grow at some point, so you'll likely eventually make use of all city improvements that generate content faces. However, in the early game, you can overdo it. If you're keeping your cities down in the 3-5 range for maxing out population production (settlers, workers, and such), building more then a temple is probably a waste.

What TheNiceOne was correcting me on was the effect of happy faces. Those are not generated by city improvements. They are generated by luxury resources, entertainers, and the luxury slider.

I am, however, slightly confused, becuase I usually see that around half of my citizens are content, and if happy faces go first towards making content people happy, and then unhappy people content, you should see very few content citizens in lategame when you have marketplaces and numerous luxuries... Are you absolutely sure about this?

That's exactly the issue I was questioning too. Except in the opposite direction. That's been the trend I've seen as well. In a civ with lots of luxuries, you really shouldn't see many content citizens. Pretty much everyone should be either happy or unhappy. The gist of my post was that there are lots of things in the game that generate happy faces, but not nearly as many that generate content faces. Since you only really get use of happy faces if you have an equivalent number of content faces, alot of the time, those happy faces are wasted. Even assuming the correction TheNiceOne made is correct, then you're still really only getting half effect from your happy faces once you have more of them then (content faces - {initial content citizens by game difficulty]).

Are you sure you have that many content faces? Using either my info, or the modified formula, you shouldn't have more then 1 content face in a city with really high luxuries available to it.


Take a size 16 city in regent. You've got all the city improvements (6 content faces). You've got maxed luxuries and a marketplace (20 total happy faces - yeah!). By my calculation, you would start with 4 content citizens (the default on regent), and 12 unhappy citizens. Then the 6 content faces would be applied, making your total 10 content people and 6 unhappy people. Then the happy faces are applied, making thsoe 10 content faces happy, leaving you with 10 happy and 6 unhappy citizens.

By TheNiceOne's calculations, you'd start with 4 content citizens and 12 unhappy ones (same). You'd then apply your 6 content faces and end up with 10 content and 6 unhappy (same). You'd then apply the first 10 happy faces and turn those 10 content people to happy (10 happy, 6 unhappy). You'd then use the remaining 10 happy faces to turn 5 unhappy people first to content, then to happy, one at a time. End result would be 15 happy citizens and 1 unhappy.

In both cases, the number of content citizens is zero. If you happened to have an odd number or luxuries, you'd be left with one content citizen. But that's the most you'll have in a civilization with a really high amount of luxuries.


I'll go back and play with that game (I had a lot of cities that were very large and had tons of luxuries, so it's a great test). I'll let you know what I find out. I'm pretty sure the content citizens should be low no matter what. If you aren't getting that effect, you might want to check out the city in particular. It may be that you don't have a marketplce built, or you don't have attached luxury resources for some reason.

 

[Blasphemous]

Thanks Wakboth... I may have been remembering the earlier state of the city in mind... The state it was in before I conquered half the world and got all luxuries. =P

 

[Wakboth]

Just to follow up (been incommunicado all weekend). It's good to be wrong sometimes. That's how we learn.

Sure enough. Happy faces do count like content faces (making one unhappy person content) if there are no content citizens in the city. Content faces (city improvements, wonders, and military police) do not have the reverse effect though. It's interesting to note, however, that content faces can *appear* to generate happy faces if you're in a city that already has an excess of happy faces in effect.

If some of your happy faces are being used as content faces, then when you replace them with "real" content faces, the happy face will be freed up to turn that newly generated content citizen into a happy citizen. The end result can appear that adding a police unit will turn someone happy, but that's not really what's happening. So in a way Shadow, the answer to your initial question was correct. If you are already using luxuries to keep a city happy, adding a cathedral will reduce the luxuries needed to maintain the same happiness rate.

I generally like to keep entertainment to a minimum whenever possible (if I can keep it at zero an entire game, I'm happy!). To me, using the slider is like a sledgehammer approach (which is probably why I missed the effect earlier). You end up wasting a ton of resources. I'd much rather micromanage my cities and adjust the citizens in each individually. What you've got to remember is that the entire range between civil disorder and WLTKD is going to result in exactly the same production for your civiliation. Most of your cities will be somewhere in the middle of that range (actually, they should be one citizen away from disorder if you're really maxing things out). Thus, most cities wont actually gain anything from using the entertainment slider. You're losing a percentage of your total civ's income or science (Ok, actually science since income is going to be relatively static if you think about it). It's just not worth slowing down the whole civ's long term development just to make it easier to maintain control over a handful of problem cities.

Obviously, there are exceptions (like when adjusting as new techs get close to maximize your beakers), or cranking up or down for fast income, or perhaps cranking to combat war weariness. But I think you're much better off spending resources once to get those luxuries directly then spending resources everyturn to get the same effect. But that's just me...

 

[TheNiceOne]

Wakboth, good that you now agree with me regarding how luxury works. The conclusion is that happyness factors (luxury slider, luxuries) are just as good as content factors (improvements, military police) when it comes to figthing disorder. In a size 6 city on regent (2 content, 4 unhappy) it doesn't matter whether you get a temple and 3 MP (which makes it 6 content) or 4 luxuries (which makes it 3 happy and 3 unhappy).

The difference between luxuries and improvements are more important when it comes to WLTKD, where you'll need at least half happy, and none content.

In a size 6 city, the minimum combo of luxuries/improvements (on regent with 2 born happy), are 4 "unhappy->content" modifiers and 3 "content->happy" modifiers. (Ex: temple, cathedral and 3 luxuries).
If you want to achieve the same with luxuries only, you will not do with 7 luxuries, you'll actually need a total of 9 to get WLTKD. The first 2 will make the two content citizens happy, the next 6 will make 3 of the 4 unhappy citizens happy, leaving 5 happy and 1 unhappy. The 9th will then make the unhappy content, giving you a WLTKD.

 

[TheNiceOne]

Originally posted by Wakboth
I generally like to keep entertainment to a minimum whenever possible (if I can keep it at zero an entire game, I'm happy!). To me, using the slider is like a sledgehammer approach (which is probably why I missed the effect earlier). You end up wasting a ton of resources. I'd much rather micromanage my cities and adjust the citizens in each individually. What you've got to remember is that the entire range between civil disorder and WLTKD is going to result in exactly the same production for your civiliation. Most of your cities will be somewhere in the middle of that range (actually, they should be one citizen away from disorder if you're really maxing things out). Thus, most cities wont actually gain anything from using the entertainment slider. You're losing a percentage of your total civ's income or science (Ok, actually science since income is going to be relatively static if you think about it). It's just not worth slowing down the whole civ's long term development just to make it easier to maintain control over a handful of problem cities.

Here I would agree with you ... until I started playing on emperor and above. In the early game, the luxury slider is invaluable. Its first important use is while I have one city only.

On emperor/deity, the second citizen is unhappy which means that I either must build a temple before the first settler (bad idea), or use one or two units for military police (which is also usually a bad idea since it is more important too scout the surrounding terrain). Or I can move the luxury slider up a nothc - which I will usually do.
If I start by building a granary before my first settler, the lux slider becomes even more important. The city will then usually reach size 4 or 5 before the first settler, which means that there's simply no other way than the lux slider to keep the city from disorder. I loose maybe 20-30 gold, but that 's worth it to get an early settler factory.

Also, when I get a few cities up and running, the lux slider is a valuable tool. Many cities will have only one MP, max two, which means that even with a temple, they will go into disorder (or loose production/growth by hiring a specialist) when they reach size 5, unless I use the slider - which I will use.