D'oh! Is there a happiness bug?

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Yeah, so I'm playing a game this AM on Emporer level, which means that the first 2 people in your city will always be content? Is that right? Thats how it sounds in the manual, anyway.

And all of my size 5/6/7 cities are going nuts with disorder! So I start looking at the happiness charts, and what do I see? (I'll try to post a graphic sometime later today)

6 citizens (0/0/6/0)
all 6 are naturally unhappy (0/0/6/0)
an entertainer makes one happy (1/0/4/1)
a temple shuts 2 up (1/2/2/1)

What is wrong? Shouldn't my tally look like this?

6 citizens (0/2/4/0)
four are naturally unhappy, the first two are never unhappy
an entertainer makes one happy (1/2/3/1)
a temple shuts 2 up (1/4/1/1)

Could someone tell me if I'm missing something? Or if you think there is a problem here? Any help appreciated, thanks.

 

[Smash]

The riot factor.You can find it in the rules.txt.
Basically,you get "extra" unhappies as your empire exceeds a certain amount of cities.
Factors are:
difficulty level
map size
government type

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Sorry, I left out some facts.

Yes Smash, I've heard of that, though its only happened once or twice in a game of mine. But I didn't have any of those really dark unhappy people, so I don't think it is that!

Here is my status:

Republic
Small World Map (and 7 civs)
Emporer
5 cities

(I know, that's super small. I'm trying a perfectionist route

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

The riot factor starts to add unhappy people before it gets to the black hats, so you are just at the point where the extra reds have been added. Keep expanding and the black hats will show up eventually too.

------------------
DEATH awaits you all...with nasty, big, pointy teeth.

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Really? I didn't know that.

I though it was just dark citizens that represented size unhappiness.

To add to my little saga, I checked out a saved game played just the day before, on the same difficulty, and it was fine. The first two citizens were never unhappy...

my computer's on crack or something...

 

[starlifter]

The game also looks at the state of your empire relative to the sizes of other empires. If yours is much bigger, you will be penalized with what you can effectively consider the "riot factor". As the other empires catch up, the situation will improve if your empire is on the borderline. It is possible you will even see a red become dark blue again (if you stop growing/making settlers). Huge empires that are far past the borderline (point of first effect), won't really see a difference.

Also, the game keeps track of your population that was used to produce settlers, too. I haven't looked into determining the exact math of these relationships beyond the basic published riot factors, however.

If you want to see the effect of government, then when you come out of anarchy, just call for a "revolution" on that turn, and you can select any form of government (from your tech), and compare the content, happy, and double-unhappy citizens in each city under different gov't forms. Eventually, even Communism and Democracies will give you a double-unhappy (black) at a city's first citizen .

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Originally posted by starlifter:
The game also looks at the state of your empire relative to the sizes of other empires. If yours is much bigger, you will be penalized with what you can effectively consider the "riot factor".

Also, the game keeps track of your population that was used to produce settlers, too.

Hmmm. Thanks starlifter, and I did loose a lot of settlers in this particular game, as I was nestled up against several rivals and trying to mess with their terrain! To further rationalize your theory, I was kicking their @$$es, so they were naturally smaller than I was.

The things you learn after all this time spent civing...

 

[Magnus]

I believe that Riot Factor never occurs under Communism.

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Yes, because the rioters would get shot up before they even started looting!

 

[starlifter]

posted July 10, 2001 02:27 PM
I believe that Riot Factor never occurs under Communism.

A riot factor does indeed occur in communism. It is greatly diminished, however... at least when compared to Republic or Monarchy.

In GOTM 6, I took a look at some cities to double check, but in the Emperor-level game, "normally" the first 2 citizes are "born" content. #3 and subsequent are unhappy (red). In Despotism, Anarchy, Monarchy, and Republic, citizens can eventually change to (or be born) black. In Communism, you will never have a black citizen, ever. Even with 254 huge cities. But the riot ractor will cause the 2nd citizen, and eventually the 1st citizen, to be "born" unhappy.

For new cities in a 100 city empire (as I just double checked in my GOTM 6), the 2nd citizen goes from content to unhappy at pop 21, and the first goes red at pop 22. However, many cities of smaller sizes have the 2nd and/or 1st citizen already red.

In short, Communism is a great relief for a large empire, but your happiness of your citizens is affected by size and population (bigger = badder

).


BTW, in Democracy with the same empire, the 1st 8 citizens are double unhappy (in a 100+ city empire), and the #9 and later are plain unhappy (red). This is for the Emperor level in GOTM 6.