Do you folks think happiness is to harsh this version 2.7?

[Delvemor]

What I am saying is, that if DO have infrastructure and improvements I should be able to support rapid growth....and I can't.

I believe that's the point where you get diminishing returns from science and production alone. You can get increased yields from new techs and keep up with the new buildings, but having more techs also increases your population needs at the same time. Having more social policies though doesn't increase your population needs. So basically at this point culture > science for happiness in the long-term.

 

[ma_kuh]

This idea of over-growing for the sake of food tiles makes me think, is there a mechanism other than internal trade route (food) where you can convert a city's e.g. food/turn into food/turn in other cities? It would actually be kind of cool if you could build up specialty buildings that help spread your excess in one city to your other, needier cities (something like religious pressure but for needs-like yields? ), but trade routes are at a super high premium, and they are really focused (1:1 connections, you can't split to the rest of the empire).

 

[Stalker0]

But your city didn't have "nice land filled with features" it was only more food tiles. It had nice land for 11, 12 pop max at this stage. You seem to believe that if you make a farm on every food plain and constructed every building, the city has "infrastructure". That doesn't work that way.

I don't think you are looking that closely at this city.

First, I have petra, so most of those tiles are generating extra gold then normal. So these tiles are already boosted. I have several forge enchanced mines that produce more hammers than engineers (and I'm working more mines than farms, so really I should be producing faster than I'm growing, which again should release unhappiness). Basically every one of those tiles produces more yields than a specialist. Hell I have a holy site,citadel and a UI (the feitoria), which aren't common tiles in a satellite city. Every one of these tiles is rock solid, there's no fat here. Probably the worst one is that non-freshwater wheat tile, and even that is producing more yields than a specialist.

Now if my distress unhappiness was low and my illiteracy high, well sure that's a rebalancing issue. But ALL of my unhappiness is high. These are amazing tiles, again each one produces more yields than any specialist I could work, often by a good margin. And yields are supposed to reduce unhappiness. To me this should be a good happy city, it has lots of buildings, way more yields than an average city of this size would have.

 

[josh4]

City yields are not some contest how many mines you have versus how many farms. And sorry, you are wrong. +1 gold on a bad tile, is still bad. "Basically every one of those tiles produces more yields than a specialist". I don't even know how to explain to you how wrong that is. Yes, mines are better than engineers, Petra is a nice compliment on top of a good tile. No, five food free gold oasis, or six food, one production, one gold farm is not producing more yields than a specialist.
6 , 1 1 <<<<<<< 4 or 5 or civil servant which is some gold and culture IIRC, or even 5 from merchants and town in the future. You need those yields, not food. If you don't understand that, I'm amazed you are able to play VP at all. You basically produced more food, which adds a citizen but nothing to your city or empire if the citizen doesn't work high or or or . And you repeated that several times in a row. Why do you want more citizens? In order to work food?

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[Stalker0]

If you don't understand that, I'm amazed you are able to play VP at all.

Cut the snark. We are engaging in a debate, not a child's shouting match. You are making fine points, which are being eroded by the poor attitude.

 

[CrazyG]

First, I have petra, so most of those tiles are generating extra gold then normal. So these tiles are already boosted. I have several forge enchanced mines that produce more hammers than engineers (and I'm working more mines than farms, so really I should be producing faster than I'm growing, which again should release unhappiness). Basically every one of those tiles produces more yields than a specialist. Hell I have a holy site,citadel and a UI (the feitoria), which aren't common tiles in a satellite city. Every one of these tiles is rock solid, there's no fat here. Probably the worst one is that non-freshwater wheat tile, and even that is producing more yields than a specialist.

I think recursive's changes will address what is going on here. The issues is that the +% changes to needs are too large. To have no distress you need double the world median (its 55th percentile but I'm just calling it median), which just isn't possible. I've had similar thoughts in games where a city with 8 Moai somehow still has boredom. Its why effectively if you beat the population its usually just because the -1 distress/poverty/whatever. I realized that the reason my capital is doing well isn't just from yields, its because it has wonders that reduce those. Also religious distress is pretty high this patch, a 10 pop city with 8 followers will have 2 unhappiness from it (again, the way this gets managed is because of the population cap).

His changes, as I understand them, will revert back to the true median and there will be very few if any modifiers to % needs. So a city that is above average in culture will actually lack boredom.

Side note, do you have a trade route starting in this city? I spent sometime trying to figure out how my 2nd strongest was the most unhappy, and eventually realized it was just because of trade routes. Even with Petra I think beating poverty without it will be difficult.

On working specialists, this is an discussion mostly separate from happiness in my view. I think using 2 scientists or building a guild and using 2 writers/artists would be a very good idea, not for happiness per se, but just for generating important yields. If a city has high population but low culture/science, then what is the point of the high population?

 

[josh4]

Cut the snark. We are engaging in a debate, not a child's shouting match. You are making fine points, which are being eroded by the poor attitude.

I didn't mean that in a derogative way, sorry. I meant, I'm really amazed that without controlling growth anyone is still able to win games on Immortal.

 

[Stalker0]

Why do you want more citizens? In order to work food?

Why does that matter? If as you say, growth at this point is basically pointless....than why are we further penalizing it? If working specialists would get me more in the long run (not total yields but more important yields)....than the work is done. Why have another subsystem on top that just kicks you when your down?

I could understand if growth was so powerful we needed to corral it at every turn....but you have admitted its pretty weak at this point.

If people want to focus on growth, and growth isn't powerful, than why take the effort of further punishing it.

CrazyG's point about the updated system is valid, and ultimately I don't think this argument changes the plans for the new system. I engage in the debate more because this has been a long standing discussion around what the point of happiness is.

My point remains that unhappiness should be the tool that curbs abuses, it shouldn't be kicking someone when they are down. If a person is naked expanding everywhere, yeah that should be curbed. If people are warring without end, yeah that should be curbed. But trying to punish growth...when growth isn't all that strong a strat to begin with by everyone in this debate's admission....I mean what's the point of that? If someone is already playing "badly"....well then they aren't going to have good yields and they will lose....so again, what is the point of further punishing that?


This is ultimately why I think vanilla's system is in many ways superior to what we have now. At the end of the day, that system does EXACTLY what it means to. It provides a cost to expansion, and it provides a cost to growth (which is MUCH stronger in vanilla than in VP because pop = science). You want those things, you pay your fee. I know EXACTLy what my fee is, and EXACTLY how much building X will pay that fee. And then once you pay your fee, you go on your way. The only thing vanilla messed up was making those sources limited, meaning that you could hit points where you have NO way to further improve happiness. The public works was the perfect fix. I do think VP improved things with the addition of isolation, pillaging fees, and an improved war weariness, but the rest...eh I still question it.

 

[josh4]

His changes, as I understand them, will revert back to the true median and there will be very few if any modifiers to % needs. So a city that is above average in culture will actually lack boredom.

I'm not sure it will be good.

Why does that matter? If as you say, growth at this point is basically pointless....than why are we further penalizing it? If working specialists would get me more in the long run (not total yields but more important yields)....than the work is done. Why have another subsystem on top that just kicks you when your down?

I could understand if growth was so powerful we needed to corral it at every turn....but you have admitted its pretty weak at this point.

If people want to focus on growth, and growth isn't powerful, than why take the effort of further punishing it.

You have to ask Gazebo cause he introduced the system. I think it's stellar in realism.

 

[Stalker0]

You have to ask Gazebo cause he introduced the system. I think it's stellar in realism.

G and I have had more debates on this topics than I care to recall (I've been with the project since its inception, which is MANY years now!) We've just never seen eye to eye on it.

 

[nekokon]

Personally, I think all those talk about happiness would disappear if you think of happiness as the amount of citizen you can reasonably have in your empire (unhappiness equal number of pop in all cities), and you get bonus happiness if some of your cities can go above global median in term of yield (when unhappiness is less than pop in some cities).
Happiness is a mechanic meant to limit both your growth and expansion (why do you think it's ok to punish ppl getting more cities than they can handle but not ppl getting more pop than they can handle ?) to keep the game balance, and not a rewarding mechanic that makes you upset when you can't get zero deficits in everything to get an extra dozen happiness. It has been the design of civ series and not just VP.

 

[Delvemor]

I think growth is penalized by unhappiness because in real life unhappy people are less likely to have kids

 

[Delvemor]

Happiness is a mechanic meant to limit both your growth and expansion (why do you think it's ok to punish ppl getting more cities than they can handle but not ppl getting more pop than they can handle ?) to keep the game balance,

Reading this I realize I would prefer to have it the other way around. Excessive growth should be punished if you can't handle it but not expansion. Why should a player gets penalized for making one more city? oh yeah because otherwise tall play would not be viable. I guess we can't please everyone.

 

[Stalker0]

Happiness is a mechanic meant to limit both your growth and expansion (why do you think it's ok to punish ppl getting more cities than they can handle but not ppl getting more pop than they can handle ?) to keep the game balance, and not a rewarding mechanic that makes you upset when you can't get zero deficits in everything to get an extra dozen happiness. It has been the design of civ series and not just VP.

So if you look at previous civ titles. For most of civs histories, growth had a "HARD CAP". You could only get a city to X size and then it stopped growing period. You needed buildings like the sewer system to grow past a certain point. But once you did, you were on your way.

In Civ IV, growth caps were softened a bit. In Civ IV when a citizen became unhappy it stopped working, effectively making your pop "useless". However, the second you got more happiness, that citizen was back in action, working to full.

In Civ 5, growth cap was softened a bit more. Now unhappiness gave you a very strong curb on growth (-75%). But once again, once you built a few happiness buildings, you were back in good standing, and rocking again.


There are two common themes in the civ games that VP has not carried over, which is why there is a key difference.

• Growth has much stronger in previous civ games than in VP. Civ 4's tiles were often very powerful (as was the slavery mechanic that converted pop into hammers), and so growth was strong. Civ 5 pop and science were linked, so a high pop civ had a strong science foundation.
• Happiness had direct and immediate ways to address it. You build X building, your happiness problem is solved, and you move on. Meanwhile, you knew exactlly how much growth would trigger more unhappiness, so you could plan for it. VP's system is much murkier, and your decisions can haunt you for many turns to come. If I make a mistake in classic civ, I just turn to my happiness tools, and I bail myself out. In VP, its "suck it up buttercup" for 50 turns or more because you "played wrong". There is no quick fix for unhappiness, heck even building PWs in every city often is not enough.

So with respect, teh design of Civ and the design of VP are quite different when it comes to happiness management. No civ game has ever pushed the kind of happiness management that is in VP, and I think there are good reasons why not

 

[josh4]

Reading this I realize I would prefer to have it the other way around. Excessive growth should be punished if you can't handle it but not expansion. Why should a player gets penalized for making one more city? oh yeah because otherwise tall play would not be viable. I guess we can't please everyone.

I think cause you grab territory, you take responsibility for what's happening there, like a real world countries. Not only in the region's capital. That's also simulates a a lot of investment into controlling a new territory that is unaccounted for. Like making bridges, irrigation, setting communication posts, military outpost along the border, properly mapping and building small roads from mines to towns to lumber mills to towns (big roads workers make are more like highways or Roman system of roads).

 

[Delvemor]

So with respect, teh design of Civ and the design of VP are quite different when it comes to happiness management. No civ game has ever pushed the kind of happiness management that is in VP, and I think there are good reasons why not

While the vanilla happiness system was much more manageable, the VP one has one big thing going for it. A pop is not unhappy for simply existing. Early expansion is not harshly punished and you have a good margin before you have to play around unhappiness.

 

[CppMaster]

I think growth is penalized by unhappiness because in real life unhappy people are less likely to have kids

But on the other hand; poor, uneducated and bored people are more likely to have kids

 

[ma_kuh]

Happiness as a counter-balance to the things that produce unhappiness is pretty good, in my opinion. Things like revolts and combat penalties would ideally only come into play at severe unhappiness. Maybe part of the problem is that the reduction in growth (settlers, population) doesn't kick in sooner, to prevent you from "accidentally" getting to the point where the city is crashing? If happiness becomes "too easy" after this round of tweaks and smoothing, I'd be interested in trying to apply the growth penalties sooner, but leave the severe outcomes down below 50%.

 

[Delvemor]

I think cause you grab territory, you take responsibility for what's happening there, like a real world countries. Not only in the region's capital. That's also simulates a a lot of investment into controlling a new territory that is unaccounted for. Like making bridges, irrigation, setting communication posts, military outpost along the border, properly mapping and building small roads from mines to towns to lumber mills to towns (big roads workers make are more like highways or Roman system of roads).

Ya I agree that the cost of expansion should be significant, I just disagree with how it works in most games, including Civ 5 VP. Let's say I need one more small city to gain oil for example. I will still start that city but the drawback is worse than if I had excessive growth.

But on the other hand; poor, uneducated and bored people are more likely to have kids

Indeed you have a very good point. You like, destroyed my hypothesis. I stand corrected.

 

[CrazyG]

So with respect, teh design of Civ and the design of VP are quite different when it comes to happiness management. No civ game has ever pushed the kind of happiness management that is in VP, and I think there are good reasons why not

Yea the system mostly works right now just because its capped at city population and unhappiness == city population is a reasonable system. I checked a city from my current game and by calculation it would have like 20 unhappiness at a population of 8. When cities get down to more reasonable levels its really not because they meet their goals, its because you stack enough "-1 from boredom". I have a game where I'm a clear runaway and my capital still would not meet its requirements in a single category without those -1's.

One thing I'll comment here on analyzing your city, I really think you should work science/culture specialists. Some have suggested that you cannot afford not to grow, but I think you can't afford to skip culture ever because social policies are the key. Science is less obvious but I think picking up wonders helps a lot with happiness. The happiness system really punishes being behind, as an example in my current game the least happy civ is the smallest in population and last in basically everything, and the happiest AI is actually the highest population one (who is also leading in tech and culture).