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

[CppMaster]

Again the question comes back to, is that what should happen?

Once again, I still think it's related to the difficulty you play (Emperor or Immortal, right?).

In my last game at King, I had 7 cities founded by myself, about 5 puppets and about 5 annexed cities (so pretty wide). Since about early Industrial I got lazy and switched to automatic citizen assigment in all cities, never locked growth and no public works. I've bought all luxes that I could and used one Great Admiral for luxes. My war weariness got me -15 happiness. However, my happiness was at all times about 50%. Probably, automatic assigment set it up, so citizens prevent just enough unhappiness. I too had built almost all buildings, though. So I had no problem with unhappiness (except maybe in medieval).

So why my happiness situation is so much better compared to yours, despite the fact of you working harder fighting it? I think it's just difficulty. AI has more developed cities in your games, because of bonuses. Try lower difficulty and see if you have the same problem.

 

[Legen]

Expanding the rationale of why food is useful for a specialist-heavy empire, and a time bomb otherwise:

The thing about specialists is that, with them, food translates to GPTI and/or great works. Therefore, food can act as an alternative form of production. Combined with the increased food cost, specialists are a way to keep a high yield output per citizen in that city.

Without specialists, food doesn't have a direct way to boost neither citizen productivity, nor city output per citizen. So, the more food a city without specialists has, the more production and science you need to keep its yield output on par with population growth.

 

[Stalker0]

Expanding the rationale of why food is useful for a specialist-heavy empire, and a time bomb otherwise:

The thing about specialists is that, with them, food translates to GPTI and/or great works. Therefore, food can act as an alternative form of production. Combined with the increased food cost, specialists are a way to keep a high yield output per citizen in that city.

Without specialists, food doesn't have a direct way to boost neither citizen productivity, nor city output per citizen. So, the more food a city without specialists has, the more production and science you need to keep its yield output on par with population growth.

The flip side of that is urbanization. A non-guild city can generally only keep 2 specialists in a city (library + garden) before adding in even more unhappiness until you get to more late game buildings. Now your capital can usually handle it, which is why the capital tends to have a predominance of specialists (even more for tall tradition). So its not like you can grow a lot, flip everything over to specialists, and suddenly be in paradise. Now you are just working with a different form of unhappiness.

And ultimatey again that's part of the issue. In so many cases you aren't removing unhappiness, you are just transforming it from one form to another. Ultimately this is why +1 happiness bonuses are so so so much stronger than needs removals, happiness ALWAYS works, whereas unhappiness removal and shifting of yields often just removes 1 pile to immediately replace it with another.

 

[Legen]

So its not like you can grow a lot, flip everything over to specialists, and suddenly be in paradise. Now you are just working with a different form of unhappiness.

You don't grow a lot in the first place, you work specialists preemptively. For instance, playing Babylon isn't about leaving scientists slots idle until you have X population, you start working them as soon as that UB is built. You don't wait for the city to be unhappy in order to work a scientist. As soon as the city can afford food to work one more scientist slot, you work it.

Having to deal with urbanization is part of learning how to run a specialist-heavy empire, and is something you learn eventually as you get used with Babylon, or Celts under Lugh. The way to do it is to work those specialists while you still have a sizeable surplus happiness, long before unhappiness becomes a problem. It is something you get used to in time, and it is usually manageable.

 

[josh4]

I many time work many specialists if I don't have enough mines: especially when progress it is common for me to work for example two writers, one or two scientists and an engineer in a coastal resource or floodplains rich city around 10-12 population. I gladly take urbanization for that. In mid-game from 1/4 to 1/3 of citizens working as specialists is common I think.
In general when progress I tend to lock one city with merchant as soon as market is done, and the rest with a scientist as soon as libraries are up. You want at least one forge engineer city, one civil servant city, one merchant, one or many scientists cities (in which you will put national college), so you get those great persons while not dispersing the point in vain too much. Culture specialists are even more highly prioritized, I choose the most food rich cities for them. If your capital isn't stellar (many times it is, many times it is not), it's good to treat it as just normal city when wide, working only one or two types of specialist.

 

[Stalker0]

Once again, I still think it's related to the difficulty you play (Emperor or Immortal, right?).

Yes this is very much a factor. Generally on patches where I found immortal happiness very difficult, emperor happiness was much easier.

 

[Stalker0]

You don't grow a lot in the first place, you work specialists preemptively. For instance, playing Babylon isn't about leaving scientists slots idle until you have X population, you start working them as soon as that UB is built. You don't wait for the city to be unhappy in order to work a scientist. As soon as the city can afford food to work one more scientist slot, you work it.

Having to deal with urbanization is part of learning how to run a specialist-heavy empire, and is something you learn eventually as you get used with Babylon, or Celts under Lugh. The way to do it is to work those specialists while you still have a sizeable surplus happiness, long before unhappiness becomes a problem. It is something you get used to in time, and it is usually manageable.

The issue with this is that we are dictating a certain style of play as "correct" and another style as "incorrect". In the current meta, specialists are king, growth strats are anemic.

Now I can respect the notion that growing across bad tiles, especially unimproved ones, is not a good strategy, and should not be encouraged (aka if your growing that fast you better have workers a working to get your tiles ready). But when you have great land, and every citizen goes onto a nice tile after the next, and you still have big unhappiness, that's a problem to me. Specialist play should not be mandated by the happiness system, it should be just one of several options.

 

[CppMaster]

But when you have great land, and every citizen goes onto a nice tile after the next, and you still have big unhappiness, that's a problem to me.

That's a problem when even though you have all nice tiles, AI still have better cities in general.

Maybe needs just shouldn't be based on world median?

 

[nekokon]

The issue with this is that we are dictating a certain style of play as "correct" and another style as "incorrect". In the current meta, specialists are king, growth strats are anemic.

Now I can respect the notion that growing across bad tiles, especially unimproved ones, is not a good strategy, and should not be encouraged (aka if your growing that fast you better have workers a working to get your tiles ready). But when you have great land, and every citizen goes onto a nice tile after the next, and you still have big unhappiness, that's a problem to me. Specialist play should not be mandated by the happiness system, it should be just one of several options.

Again you're just playing by the wrong rule you think it should be.
Ever since vanilla it's already well established that heavy food cities are best for specialist, VP didn't just turn it into a meta, and it was designed that way for a reason (to balance most city locations to have either heavy food or heavy production - equal to heavy specialist or heavy tile worker).

Your argument about having all tile improved still not enough also isn't quite logical either. Your city outgrew what it's supposed to be at that specific tech tier thus you suffer the consequence. It's like saying having a 10 pop city being unhappy during the first 10 turns of the game is a problem, because at that specific tech level you already have the "best" tiles possible (which are all unimproved, because you don't have the tech yet, similar to this situation where your tech isn't high enough to make the current improvements yield enough to remove the deficits)

 

[josh4]

Your city outgrew what it's supposed to be at that specific tech tier thus you suffer the consequence.

You nailed it and a great example too.

 

[josh4]

The issue with this is that we are dictating a certain style of play as "correct" and another style as "incorrect".

Yes, the same way we dictate that taking authority and sitting on your ass and not getting war yields is bad, that sitting on small number of cities when progress is bad, that not focusing on capital and specialists when tradition is bad. All rules in Civ 5 are inherently a spreadsheet like someone recently characterized them, so you make input (decisions), you get output (consequences). That lies at the heart of it.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes, the same way we dictate that taking authority and sitting on your ass and not getting war yields is bad, that sitting on small number of cities when progress is bad, that not focusing on capital and specialists when tradition is bad. All rules in Civ 5 are inherently a spreadsheet like someone recently characterized them, so you make input (decisions), you get output (consequences). That lies at the heart of it.

Yes but those options at least exist, and I can choose to pursue them. There is no option right now to go power growth on good land without drowning in happiness and have all of your food go up in smoke due to negative growth. There is no policy or wonder that suddenly makes that viable. You just....can't.

 

[josh4]

You just....can't.

I don't understand when you got the idea it should be possible. It never was. Just like spamming cities is technically possible to enhance production but it shouldn't be possible cause of science and culture penalty. Growth in population =/= anything good inherently. In real life too, most of overcrowded countries can't catch up to the developed ones, and there's mass emigration from them, like India. BTW today, some moments before I write this, an Indian emigrants son had ben chosen to be UK prime minister.

 

[CrazyG]

The issue with this is that we are dictating a certain style of play as "correct" and another style as "incorrect". In the current meta, specialists are king, growth strats are anemic.

If you are interested in a growth heavy strategy, a good civ to pick is actually Polynesia. Most of the time a bigger city has very little extra culture or science compared to a smaller city, so the key to growth isn't actually food, its a payoff such as Moai.

This is really visibile with India, your big cities aren't actually better at culture/science, but they will ahve great production for wonders or military. God-King can also help to make your large population actually contribute something.

A side note is I also spam specialists and invest almost nothing in food this patch, other than getting a few food CS allies, which tend to carry my growth singlehandedly.

 

[josh4]

I mean sometimes high food (NOT growth) from certain sources, like early game +3 from progress, is great and allows you to work a mine instead of a lake for example. Or even I sometimes pick +food per follower belief, don't remember a name, ascetism? You know why? Because if you have enough mines or specialist available, it can immediately allow you to switch food tiles like farms, food plains, deer or lakes to two mines or specialists. By +10 in 12, it's actually +10 production, or +5 production, 5 science, or civil servant.

 

[Stalker0]

If you are interested in a growth heavy strategy, a good civ to pick is actually Polynesia. Most of the time a bigger city has very little extra culture or science compared to a smaller city, so the key to growth isn't actually food, its a payoff such as Moai.

Again to repeat myself, I don't think growth for the sake of growth is important to encourage. If you have just meh tiles than yeah growing large isn't really that great. But if you have a city on really nice land filled with features, maybe a NW, etc, than growing fast to fill up that territory and reap the benefit should be a viable strategy. Right now happiness kills that strategy.

 

[Stalker0]

In real life too, most of overcrowded countries can't catch up to the developed ones, and there's mass emigration from them, like India.

You are missing my point though. I am agreeing with you that a city with no infrastructure and improvements should not be good, I'm on board. What I am saying is, that if DO have infrastructure and improvements I should be able to support rapid growth....and I can't.

 

[CppMaster]

Again to repeat myself, I don't think growth for the sake of growth is important to encourage. If you have just meh tiles than yeah growing large isn't really that great. But if you have a city on really nice land filled with features, maybe a NW, etc, than growing fast to fill up that territory and reap the benefit should be a viable strategy. Right now happiness kills that strategy.

It doesn't. I was doing great in my game when growing without limit and no public works.

Your situation is worse, that's for sure, but still... It's just some penalty to combat, growth and settler production. Saying that happiness killed your game even in this situation it is an overstatement. Also, the higher the difficulty, the less there are viable strategies, because it has to be more optimized in order to compete with the AI.

 

[josh4]

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. You could have less pop, work some specialists, make some units/envoys, don't improve those floodplains, don't have buildings that are non essential to you right now, and have much better yields and much better purpose for this city. And lower unhappiness, cause your citizens would have larger yields = a prupose in life beyond working farms. That's when I think the needs system shines. You overgrowed your city, now large part of the population needs work , needs money , needs entertainment , and needs literacy/skills education that you cannot provide.

 

[beginner_]

It was before, is now, and will be in the future. We're not hard-coding any numbers into the dll.

OK, so can you point me and potentially other to the right place? (which file, which settings?