Domination Happiness

[thegingerninja]

I like getting domination victories but i found that i end up with 80 un happiness and that really stinks. Tiny growth, combat penalties and barbarians near your capitol really do stink. I end up so rich and scientifically advanced that the combat bonus does't matter and the I managed to drive the barbarians into nearby sweden BUT i wan't to find a way to keep unhappiness down without razing the cities because my empire doesn't get much more powerful if i do that (other civs just settle in the ruins) help me please

 

[rekh]

If you're so rich, just buy Courthouses in every city you conquer and make sure you have circuses/theatres/coliseums in your cities where you can. A large empire should also give you access to lots of luxuries, no? For whichever ones you don't have just ally with city states/trade with any civs that don't hate you.

 

[Circlet the Zen]

If you're going for a large empire, the Commerce tree is always a good choice with its beneficial trade route bonuses for gold and the +2 happiness for every luxury resource. That +2 happiness can be REALLY useful (it has saved me from rebel barbarians many times!),

 

[thegingerninja]

I do buy courthouses and happiness buildings. The unhappiness is so great once i start winning it's uncontrollable. I would of thought that my citizens would be happy that i am making their country great and destroying their enemies.

 

[TractorBoy]

I like getting domination victories but i found that i end up with 80 un happiness and that really stinks.

I only play vanilla prince level, but I often build empires with upwards of fifty Cities and I find the key is to not expand to quickly. You desperately need all the Policies that give you extra happiness across the board and the only way you can obtain all those Policies is to build gradually. I take out my two immediate neighbours as soon as possible and try to do this before they build a third City. I then consolidate and build all the culture buildings, at this point connect all the Cities and reap the benefits of the many surrounding barb camps, I try and build Machu Pichu ASAP and I don't worry about any other Wonders except the Oracle because the intention is to capture all the others. Even NotreDam is of little consequence compared to what the Social Policies can give you.

Another way of playing is a One City Challenge, then the major Wonder IMO is the Hanging Gardens. The beauty of playing OCC is that every City is razed without happiness penalties. The downside is that you may have to take your soldiers on very long trips back to base to get their tech upgrades!

 

[Socratatus]

I do buy courthouses and happiness buildings. The unhappiness is so great once i start winning it's uncontrollable. I would of thought that my citizens would be happy that i am making their country great and destroying their enemies.

Yea. The happiness mechanic is completely upside down in Civ 5. I`d even go so far as to say its broken or just BADLY thought out and they just went ahead and kept it like that anyway.

I`ve played plenty other games and the happiness\unhappiness makes intuitive sense, unlike Civ 5.

I think the problem is the way the Devs have stuck all happiness in one over-arching Civ effect. The unhappiness of captured cities is NOT TRULY offset by the happiness of your indigenous cities. The happiness of your ESTABLISHED LONG-TERM Cities should have a greater effect over the unhappiness of recently taken cities. There should be two kinds of happiness: Your home crowd happiness and the captured people happiness. Done right, you might get unhappiness and rebellions from your captured cities, but never get unhappiness from established cities unless rebellions spread to them. And over time the unhappiness of your recently acquired cities should greatly reduce down.

 

[Clause]

Try to get Forbidden Palace or conquer city that has it (usually AI has priority to build it), if you had 20-30 cities it may gives you 50+ of happiness. Meritocracy from liberty policy not to mention, 5% reduction from non occupied can give u further more compare to one in commerce has.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Raze/sell more cities. Lots of them. Keep the ones that have new lux's and/or already have hapiness buildings.

Take the right SP's. Focus on taking half trees just to get to the hapiness policies. Honour RHS is very useful (spam scouts for garrisons and puppets build walls), liberty one is good (have workers focus on trade routes), and the order opener is very strong. Patronage and commerce can be decent too, but take lots of policies to get.

Take a hapiness religion (Think Cerimonial Burial, Pagodas, 2 hap per temple etc.). Shouldn't be so tough if you start warring early as puppets like shrines, and the low pop cities will be quickly converted.

Put money in mercantile CS's. Attack whoever built the hapiness wonders. Sell useless cities. If you have any friends trade lux for lux if needed.

What is good is that you seem to be a good enough warmonger to be having this problem. I suggest you move up a difficulty level. You won't have such a tech advantage, and you'll capture cities at a slower rate, making hapiness issues easier.

 

[dutchengineer]

Basically what you need to do is focus the entire game on gaining as much happiness as possible from the different sources:

• Religion: I recommend ceremonial burial +1 per city, +1 per shrine, +2 per temple
• Luxeries: get all of them available (usually happens automatically when going for domination)
• wonders: get / conquer the ones giving , such as Notre Dame, Taj Mahal, etc.
• social policies: pick the ones giving a lot of ; make sure your culture per turn is as high as possible, so you can pick more policies
• build all the buildings giving happiness
• things I forget right now

However, even with a focus on happiness, if you kill 80% of the world, you WILL get into unhappiness sooner or later. There simply is not enough happiness imo to own the complete world and be happy. But you can delay unhappiness to a point in the game that it does not matter anymore if you are happy or not....

 

[Syntax Error]

Remember that for domination, you only have to hold capital cities. I'd really love it if there was a 20-turn peace requirement after you're the only original capital standing.

 

[Heretiv]

Sell (or give) the useless cities off to otehr civs that are weak, it will keep them in contention and minimise your happiness hit.

 

[Fluffball]

This sounds like a common issue when warring of trying to keep every city you capture.
When warring, for a domination victory or not, you should beeline for any cities that are useful to you.e.g. have resources you need or can at least sell. If they are luxuries you don't have then this often offsets a good proportion of the unhappiness from taking that city, if it is resources you can sell you can use that gold to boost your happiness also.

For the rest of the cities you should decide on a city by city basis. Does it have any happiness building already? how big is it? how much food will it produce and therefore can i keep it's population low it i simply puppet it?

Using the right social policies also helps a lot. Honor is the obvious first choice if your looking to war a lot as not only does it give a military bonus but all those defensive building (which puppets like to build) will produce happiness.
The order opener give you +1 happiness for every city.
A second tier (and therefore quite easy to obtain) policy in rationalism (humanism) give you +1 happiness from universities, observatories and public schools, which again puppets like to build.

 

[bcaiko]

Ah, Unhappiness - the rightful bain of the Domination Victory. Especially if one makes an early domination rush, Unhappiness can be a game-long pain. You really have to plan for unhappiness if you're taking the Domination route.

As other players have suggested, it sounds like you're keeping a lot of cities you shouldn't. The small, crummy spam cities some AIs tend to build are of diminishing value to you, and should be immediately razed unless they have a resource you *really* need. While large cities give you a big unhappiness hit for the extra population you just added, at least you get the benefit of that population. Small cities give you the global unhappiness for the extra city plus a couple extra dings of unhappiness for their small population, all of which won't be made up by local happiness measures like buildings. Seriously, burn down those cities. They're unhelpful.

Capitals with a strong production ability should be annexed ASAP to build in the Courthouse and join in pumping out units.

I'll echo Fluffball here, the Liberty and Order policies are your friends if you're dominating a large map. Also, investing in a happiness-forming religion will serve you well with Global Happiness. Finally, if there's a wonder-spammer on your map, bee-lining for them usually means a capital ful of happiness-pumping wonders (if you can't build them yourself).

 

[Light Cleric]

Aside from the good advice in the above posts, don't forget to replace as many Farms as you can with Trading Posts, even unfinished ones. The point is to remove the food from your puppets and stop them from growing and causing a ton of unhappiness.

The other thing is to go trash a wonderspammer and take his stuff which will give you a TON of happiness. They often tend to be easy targets because they've spent so much time building wonders. It will very easily let you keep your happiness in check. For instance:

Spoiler :

(Look at the minimap )

Beating up Babylon to tag a buttload of his wonders and targeting Siam to get Notre Dame let me have an empire as sprawling as Attilla's and still have 31 happiness. That was without a religion either(may have had Honor, that game was weeks ago lol).

Ofc Atilla probably had like 200 happiness from Deity AI cheating bonuses.

Another thing is to not underestimate Neuschwanstein Castle. Your puppets will often build Castles and, like Petra, the placement requirements(and the AI's general disinterest in Railroads; I've NEVER seen them build one) mean that some civs won't even be able to try for it if they want it.

I'm echoing bcaiko's too because it is almost like having a second capital if you can annex one of the AI's in a good location.

 

[Gucumatz]

Yea. The happiness mechanic is completely upside down in Civ 5. I`d even go so far as to say its broken or just BADLY thought out and they just went ahead and kept it like that anyway.

I`ve played plenty other games and the happiness\unhappiness makes intuitive sense, unlike Civ 5.

I think the problem is the way the Devs have stuck all happiness in one over-arching Civ effect. The unhappiness of captured cities is NOT TRULY offset by the happiness of your indigenous cities. The happiness of your ESTABLISHED LONG-TERM Cities should have a greater effect over the unhappiness of recently taken cities. There should be two kinds of happiness: Your home crowd happiness and the captured people happiness. Done right, you might get unhappiness and rebellions from your captured cities, but never get unhappiness from established cities unless rebellions spread to them. And over time the unhappiness of your recently acquired cities should greatly reduce down.

I really like this! It seems like a much better system than Current Civ 5's system but not as easy as Civ 4's system either.

 

[mintcandy]

I haven't read the entire thread, but the OP sounds like he is annexing every city that he doesn't raze.

That wouldn't be my first choice. I'd only annex the industrial powerhouse cities that I conquer (usually foreign capitals).

The rest I would puppet. Why? Because Social Policies can be a good source for happiness, and I don't want to drive up the Culture Point cost of something that can make a big difference in making my civilization happy.

Either that, or I'd start razing.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Those rebels are a great source of culture if you filled out honor, esp for Aztecs.

 

[thegingerninja]

I don't know why but i find that i come up with really pathetic reasons to keep a city and then i won't let it go

 

[Fluffball]

I don't know why but i find that i come up with really pathetic reasons to keep a city and then i won't let it go

I understand that. I think it's a hand-over from previous games where you could keep everything you captured, especially in the mid-late game where every city you captured had a load of happiness buildings and the odd city being unhappy didn't matter anyway as they were all separate entities.
It can also be hard to capture a large swath of land only to look at the mini map to see it is very bare in places as you have burned half the cities you captured.

It can be a hard change to make but you really need to evaluate every city and get rid of it if it is trash, especially when invading the big spamming empires.

 

[Socratatus]

I don't know why but i find that i come up with really pathetic reasons to keep a city and then i won't let it go

I`m the same. I also think it somewhat flies against all intuitive understanding of reality. You don`t expect your people to get more upset the more cities you take. Sure, the captured people might get upset, but not YOUR people.

That`s what throws people. It`s not intuitive.