Happiness Balance Discussion

[Gazebo]

Hey all,

Let's chat about Happiness. In short, I think it is too easy at this moment, with most AI games showing a constant surplus of around 20-50 per civ (with rare dips below 0).

Potential solutions:

- Reduce efficacy of unhappiness need modifiers from buildings.
- Reduce 'free' happiness on buildings, resources, policies, etc.
- Increase city unhappiness factor from population
- Return a 'wide' penalty to the happiness calculation for all cities (tied to the static update of course)

Thoughts?

G

 

[tu_79]

Increase unhappiness from puppets?

I have the impression that people with happiness problems are underusing puppets when going wide. So the opposite could be true: wide happiness is easier due to puppet abuse.

 

[Enginseer]

Bonus from luxuries is too much. If I'm wide and importing a lot of luxuries, I can definitely keep myself up on 2.5+ happiness per luxury for 8-10 GPT. I can definitely pay 10-20GPT for 2.5+ happiness, 1.ish happiness for 10-20GPT is harder to pay for I am noticing the AIs are paying quite well for my luxuires as well.

I'm also basically cheating with happiness if I know my city will produce 4 unhappiness if grown, I'll avoid growth until I get proper infrastructure. That's a big help.

We shouldn't nerf happiness from policies though since that would only increase rigid playstyles if I found out I'd be punished by going Wide(without the happiness bonus of those buildings)... But if we must touch policies, I'd prefer if it touched ideologies' happiness.

 

[Mad Madigan]

I can't remember a game in the last year where I ran into problems with negative . I usually can stay in the +20-50 range for most of the game, sometimes rocketing up to 80+ if I'm really pulling ahead and closing in on a victory. And it's only gotten easier to control Unhappiness in the last few updates.

I feel that the -dependent calculations are doing well now, as are the needs % modifiers from buildings. Building the appropriate infrastructure "feels" like it makes a real difference, which is a good player experience. If anything I feel like the bonus from luxuries could be toned down just a tad and the "free" sources of from buildings, policies, and tenants looked at instead. The tricky part is making Happiness management fair when you go wide, because right now Wonders like Neuschwanstein are pretty much mandatory if you're going to settle/capture more than 20 cities, so anything that adds a flat +1 per city really needs to be reevaluated, especially if it's something not every player can get. Stadiums are late-game and need to be meaningful/strong, but Zoos giving +1 might be too much for when they become available. If removing the from Zoos makes them too weak, then maybe add a yield ( /) to the they provide to forests/jungles?

 

[YukiN]

I'm not sure how representative my current Germany game is since I am having a very good game, but I am indeed floating a lot of happiness.

I support returning a small amount of population unhappiness (maybe 0.1 to 0.2 per pop? Just ball parking here) or another appropriate happiness modifier for wide play. My reasoning is thus:

I don't think buildings should have happiness effects nerfed. The point of the current happiness system compared to vanilla is that there is a cause and effect. You have a problem, you can solve it. The needs reduction from buildings is what keeps civs who are behind on yields afloat on happiness.

The same can be said for polices. I have a happiness problem, I take a happiness policy to resolve it. The solution is also appropriately expensive since policies and tenets usually have massive opportunity cost. Happiness is also a factor that helps differentiate trees.

I think luxes are fine where they are. 3-4 per lux makes them feel impactful without being overpowered.

That leaves baseline unhappiness, which I feel can be increased. Anything tied to needs will probably be fully resolved or close to if we are talking about civs that are doing well, or it would torpedo the happiness of weaker civs, unless we make tech scaling really harsh. I think the current tech scaling is fine. There are already a lot of options for catching up and it is commonly agreed science has a lower priority than culture until lategame and comparable or lower priority compared to production. Science does not need a nerf.

 

[Revolutionist_8]

I agree that it's too easy to manage, and AI tends to manage it very well as well from what I have experienced. Only occasion when it really nosedives is when WW mounts up. I think it would make the game more interesting to make it harder to be in such excess happiness numbers.

I think base unhappiness could be increased, in my opinion it's very important to have countermeasures to fight Unhappiness (buildings, policies, importing luxuries, etc.), and that they have real impact (so if you care about it, you should be a stable country, but you might fall behind in other area).

Spoiler slightly-offtopic question :

You mentioned earlier G that it's possible to tie Happiness to Cities locally (like Civ4, Civ6), instead of one "pool" that we have from base game. May I ask if this idea is still on the table?

 

[Stalker0]

If I had to pick one, it would be the luxuries. Do they even need to scale, or is +2 happy per luxury period enough to keep them interesting?

My second would be reducing happy from policies/buildings, etc.

I would strongly be against reducing the effectiveness of needs buildings and increasing unhappy with population. The two common complaints about the system are:

1) Not enough control dealing with unhappiness.
2) System penalizes high growers too much.

Now for number 1, technically the luxuries and buildings would impact that, but I feel less often than making the needs buildings weaker.

 

[Enginseer]

also not sure but everyone keeps trying to ban luxuries because everyone is in a nice net happiness pool.

I definitely want a nerf because I'd like to see an actual resolution instead of banning luxuries: amber every time it gets rejected.

 

[mikes61293]

Puppets should cause more unhappiness than theuly currently do. It's not uncommon for my puppets to have less unhappiness then my second tier cities while being substantially less developed.

 

[Enginseer]

Then there are no incentives to puppet (0.5 unhappiness per population) if it's touched. You're better off getting a free investment in the courthouse and halving the turns off revolution with (1 unhappiness per population) at the time being then

 

[mikes61293]

Puppets are currently at .25 unhappiness per population. I think having it at .5 happiness per population would be a good level. Puppets should be some of your most unruly cities that have not yet been fully folded into the empire.

I'm hoping that increasing puppet unhappiness and decreasing overall happiness will put more of an internal constraint on aggressive expansion which I think is currently too easy.

 

[azum4roll]

AIs don't really do that well in my difficulty (Prince). The leader can have ~100 happiness late game, but the others have at best 40-50 and the ones at war, especially when losing, can even have -100 and have a city flipping every 10 turns. I play with Events (base ones, not the mod mod) on, so that could've mattered as well.

IMO while peaceful happiness could be too much sometimes, the unhappiness from isolation and pillaged tiles is also too much.

 

[tu_79]

Then there are no incentives to puppet (0.5 unhappiness per population) if it's touched. You're better off getting a free investment in the courthouse and halving the turns off revolution with (1 unhappiness per population) at the time being then

How so? I'm pretty sure that people that still struggle with happiness aren't using puppets. And I'd gladly pay a happiness cost for less micromanaging and faster research.
I'll put it the other way, in my last domination game I ruled over a huge puppet empire, partly because of Imperialism, but also to be able to focus on the combat.

 

[CrazyG]

I don't think the issue is luxuries. I was happy all game the last game I played while importing 0 luxuries. I don't ever buy a luxury unless I need WLTKD.

Its because I just don't generate very much . There isn't too much available, and certainly isn't coming from luxuries.

 

[tu_79]

Do you know that a player tried to stay happy just checking the 'no growth' button forever? His game got ruined when he received one extra population from an event in the mid game.

While this has some logic, having a too low population led to slow research and social progress, which in the end hurt more.

Well, BiteInTheMark was very insistently asking for larger cities. In this release it looks like it can be done. (Could this have something to do with the removal of the AI growth bonuses?)

 

[Minh Le]

I have 98 happiness with a 51 pops Indian Capital and 40 pops secondary cities without import any lux .... I agree with CrazyG, the problem is cities generate too little unhappiness now. Population doesnt matter.

 

[Txurce]

I had a chronic unhappiness problem for months, and definitely believe that happiness is too plentiful now.

I wouldn't touch luxuries or needs buildings, because that's what creates the agency that made the system seem additionally frustrating.

Everything else is fair game for me.

 

[Gazebo]

I don't think the issue is luxuries. I was happy all game the last game I played while importing 0 luxuries. I don't ever buy a luxury unless I need WLTKD.

Its because I just don't generate very much . There isn't too much available, and certainly isn't coming from luxuries.

This is where I lean too. I needed confirmation.

G

 

[Galbias]

Puppets are currently at .25 unhappiness per population. I think having it at .5 happiness per population would be a good level. Puppets should be some of your most unruly cities that have not yet been fully folded into the empire.

I'm hoping that increasing puppet unhappiness and decreasing overall happiness will put more of an internal constraint on aggressive expansion which I think is currently too easy.

Puppets should be some of your least unruly cities because they contribute basically nothing, they're mainly a way to prevent crappy captured cities from generating too much unhappiness (with the useful side effect of reducing the amount of stuff you need to manage as a human which is a plus if your empire is getting big).

 

[CrazyG]

If puppets give 0.5 unhappiness per population, I'm pretty sure there are commonly situations where puppets produce more unhappiness than non-puppets. Just saying, in case we need more evidence that the unhappiness is a bit low.