Does anyone settle more than four cities?

[gingerbill]

I play large epic prince usuallly , my goal is 4 cities ASAP , then if theres appropraite spots i will go to 6 maybe even 8 . I'm happy when at 6 .

 

[gingerbill]

I've been getting really discouraged myself lately about this sort of thing.

I'm an expander/builder at heart but it seems that any time I get more than a handful of cities the unhappiness becomes quickly overwhelming. Most of my victories have been cultural with 2-3 cities usually but the pacifist-hit-next-turn approach, while effective, gets a bit boring.

So this current game I'm on I picked France, settled my capitol, and starting wiping out civs. 3 Mongol cities, 3 Persian, 3-4 German, 3-4 Russian, 2-3 Greek . . .the continent is huge and the civs were pretty spread out so I basically went clockwise around the whole place. I also hit a smaller island continent and took the 5-ish Iroquois cities there. Then went after ottomans and took their 4-5 cities, now working on India and will then only have Japan (3) and Egypt (7?) left in the world.

My problem? I have had negative happiness almost the entire game. I'd get it up to 3-5 positive for a few tuns but then it would drop again. I believe it is currently at about 85 Pretty much any time I've tried a bunch of cities I get the slow policy growth and happiness issues (though not nearly to this extent usually )

I would love to be able to have a ton of cities but the gimped policy acquisition and happiness issues usually keep me to a very few cities.

Is there some way of managing a large empire and keeping happiness/policy growth in check that I'm missing? As it sits now every city I capture is going to increase my by 20 or so. I just gotta try to win before my empire implodes now.

play as india.

 

[Civsassin]

@Panth

There are several SPs that will cure you of your happiness ills. Check the Tradition (Legalism), Liberty (Meritocracy), Piety (base and Theocracy), Patronage (Cultural Diplomacy), and Freedom (base). I can get most of these during a single game. Late in the game, the Freedom SP is huge because you can make workers fill specialist slots, which will reduce happiness by one for each two specialists.

 

[Lyoncet]

@Panth

There are several SPs that will cure you of your happiness ills. Check the Tradition (Legalism), Liberty (Meritocracy), Piety (base and Theocracy), Patronage (Cultural Diplomacy), and Freedom (base). I can get most of these during a single game. Late in the game, the Freedom SP is huge because you can make workers fill specialist slots, which will reduce happiness by one for each two specialists.

Depending on the size and shape of your empire and economy, Protectionism can be very powerful as well. Although not many civs will want to open it up because of the very conditional prerequisites.