Domination Victory... Dealing with unhappiness?

[CivAddict2013]

Okay, so I was going for a Domination Victory with Rome. I rushed Composite Bowman settled up next to Askia and took his capital in the early BC years. Before I attacked Songhai, Russia declared war on me and I took 3 of her cities.

I eventually fixed my gold problem and with some more units, captured Moscow in 1000 AD. Then much later, I upgraded to CB's and Cannon's, then took Jakarta, the Indonesian capital.

It wasn't that hard to keep up with military tech. Heck, I was rank 6 in literacy, but still had more advanced military than the AI. I eventually brought tons of Cannon's and Riflemen to mecha then easily took the Arabian capital.

The biggest issue I ran into, as I started taking more and more cities; the unhappiness was unbearable. After taking Arabia's capital, I captured Bucharest from Venice and I'm suddenly hit with 20 unhappiness!

How do you deal with unhappiness when going for a domination win?

 

[justanotherturn]

How do you deal with unhappiness when going for a domination win?

policy / ideology choice, ally mercantile CS and razing useless city.

I love to play with commerce / autocracy for domination (make buying units really cheap) commerce is really good (for happiness) only when you take the last policy, so if you run into happiness problem before that, it will be hard.

 

[JeSuisNapoleon]

I always find religion can keep my happiness afloat, until the information era at least.
You will need to get your faith going early to get the choice beliefs, but its worth it in the long run. I find adding a good spreader to the belief system (religious text or It.preachers) makes it a lot easier.

Allied CS can be a big help too.

Also, conqureing cities that have the right wonders already build makes a big diference sometimes, as does the availability of horses/ivory for circuses, which are cheap. Its really nice when you puppet some capitol and your happiness goes up!

raize the useless troll cities that dont help you out. Remember to sell of thier buildings while they burn. I find this is a good time to let your army fortify until healed and upgrade while the the city burns.

or even better, sell these cities to someone who is not a threat. You dont have to take the happiness hit for having a puppet or a burning city this way, and you get a bunch of gold or resources in the deal. Just make sure your army has time to move on, or that you have open borders with the new owner, otherwise your units will get scattered if they are in the territory. I have even seen the new owner burn the city after paying for it (!?).

 

[Walter E Kurtz]

Consulates is your easiest solution early on. Pledge to protect every city state asap. After that you'll be waiting for the powerful ideology bonusses. What you do in between is situational.

Pagoda's etc. help, but if you're not producing enough faith you'll not have enough missionaries / prophets and faith to buy the buildings. It is a good idea to try and form a relationship with a warmonger civ on the other side of the map. Trade luxuries or buy them. City states with unique resources might be easy to get, but at the same time it may be impossible. Abandon this plan if Alexander is on the map.

All in all, you might have the best military on the planet, all the money in the world and a good tech lead but find you're unable to advance because of the happy faces.

 

[Atinuviel]

Were you keeping all the cities you took? Razing the non-necessary ones can go a long way in keeping your empire happy. I usually only keep ones with unique luxury resources or are situated in an important point for my army to refuel. Having workers replace farms with trading posts are also important to prevent the puppets from growing too large.

 

[Lucius_]

Remember to sell of thier buildings while they burn.

This is a great tip! Thanks, I hadn't thought of that.

 

[Acken]

I raze a lot, grab a couple Mercantile CS if possible, buy luxuries from AI etc. I also sell useless cities sometimes. The AI may even be cool enough to raze them for you.

For Cities that I want to keep only for their strategic position (usually when in a conquest spree) but don't care at all about their output I will burn them for some turns and then stop when Happiness is more manageable.