Happiness Balance Discussion

[dylansan]

Individual cities are not all at the median, and cities above the median do not produce happiness from being above the needs threshold to counteract the unhappiness of the cities below the threshold.

Right, but I'm talking about if you only own one city in your empire, e.g. Venice. The median yields for your Empire would just be the yields of your city. And the yields of that city will never be below...the yields of that city. Hence, no unhappiness?

 

[Rekk]

As long as you're keeping pace with the technology modifiers, I guess.

 

[dylansan]

Another question:

How are instant yields factored into needs, if at all?

 

[Rekk]

Not at all.

 

[dylansan]

Should they be? A significant portion of yields can be instant yields, and if those aren't counted, it limits the solutions to unhappiness problems. I was going to say you'd be limited to basically buildings, policies, and trade routes, but even buildings wouldn't always help. Unless I'm mistaken, a council wouldn't help with science needs because it's an instant yield on growth.

If you had two cities which produced roughly equal amounts of a yield overall, but one did it entirely with flat yields and the other had a portion coming from instant bonuses like from citizens, border growth, etc. would the latter suffer from unhappiness?

I'm not even sure how you'd address that. There is a measure of the last several turns of instant yields that could be included in calculations, but I feel like there are instant-yields which don't go to a city, but to the whole civ (science, culture, or gold), so those would probably have to be left out.

I bring this up because I saw another discussion about how instant yields make for more interactive gameplay, and I agree, but a reliance on them could cause problems with happiness if they're not included somehow. If it were a rare thing, it probably wouldn't matter, but if your strategy is based on a UA that gives instant yields, it seems dangerous to ignore them. Fortunately, in most cases the yields benefit all cities somewhat equally, so it might not change things that much, but it's worth thinking about.

 

[vyyt]

@dylansan, let's not overcomplicate things. It would be difficult to represent in the interface and the happiness system would be even more difficult to understand for new players.

I understand it as libraries, universities, etc. are part of the infrastructure and directly contributing to the education of the masses and making them happy, while instant science are results of some breakthroughs and opportunities which do not contribute directly to the education of the masses and thus have no impact on their happiness.

 

[dylansan]

That's fair. Rather than suggest we need to change the happiness system to include instant yields, I'd instead recommend that mechanics involving instant yields take the happiness system into account. Put simply, if a building/policy/whatever is intended to be a typical source of a particular yield, like a building to boost science for example, it's worth considering having some flat yield in addition to any instant yields, so that it may be used to counter unhappiness from those yields. Otherwise a player may get the impression that a building will help when it doesn't. I've definitely built councils thinking they'd be good for illiteracy when in fact they don't help at all, despite increasing my science.

To temper that suggestion, I don't necessarily think every building needs to give flat yields on top of instant ones. I'm okay with the council being only instant yields, as long as there are reasonable ways to get the flat yields (though I do feel that's kind of tough in the early game, as science is not a common yield from terrain, improvements, or early buildings). What might be nice is a comparison of the main buildings for each yield, to make sure no yield is more focused on instant-bonuses than the rest. For (a made up) example, if the market line relied more on instant yields than the granary line, that could be a target for some balancing.

I've had some strong opinions about the happiness system lately, and I'd like to clarify that when I bring up concerns or suggestions, I don't necessarily think everything needs to change or that we need to get rid of or add features, but just that there are certain consequences of the mechanics that might be unintended, and they might require solutions. What those solutions are or whether they need to be solved is not up to me, but I will of course have suggestions. In particular, I'm most concerned about whether the choices available to the player are clear and that the results of those choices behave as expected. If a player has bad strategy, that's one thing, but if a player makes bad choices based on misleading or confusing information, or mechanics they don't understand, that can be very frustrating, and good design will clarify things as much as possible. That's why I'm a big fan of UI mods like promotion trees and trade opportunities. They take information that's technically already available to the user, and make it easy to conceptualize and integrate into their strategy. The more a player can predict and understand the results of their actions, the better.

That said, and on a slightly off-topic note, I think the tooltips for buildings could use some rearrangement to make the flat yields more obvious, and generally make the more important information easier to see at a glance. I often keep looking at buildings I had skipped to make sure I didn't miss some yield that would actually be beneficial. There's a lot of buildings that boost certain resources or tiles, and I don't need them in cities without those resources, unless they also give a flat boost to production, for example.

 

[Rekk]

Can you provide examples of buildings that provide instant yields but not flat yields?

 

[dylansan]

Perhaps I'm mistaken. Does the council give +1 ? If so, that supports my point about the tooltips.

I only have the wiki to go by, though, and I know it's not up to date. I'll look in game tonight for anything unusual.

 

[tu_79]

Instant yields are interesting because they don't increase median values, precisely. You are complaining about the council. Well, see it this way: if you build council in half your better cities, you gain a good chunck of science without hurting too much your underdeveloped cities.
There are so many instant yields that go to the capital or the holy city that if we were taking that into account, happiness would be much more difficult to manage.

Gaining techs faster is not nice for happiness, but founding more cities isn't it either, or growing big cities. That's the point. The things that make us win faster cause unhappiness. The alternative is 4 cities tradition guaranteed science victory in vanilla.

 

[My5t1kal]

Pretty new but just wanted to throw my 2 cents regarding the recent update.

Its hard. Like, incomprehensible.

I have 5 cities on my own island. No wars. No problems. Nice location. My own natural wonder. Took a good 10 restarts to get. Now Im 200 turns in on epic and nobody is happy. Actually, my current 10 happiness is only because Im playing on chieftan, but if you look at each city they are all -3 or -4 with the exception of one random city that is neither holy or a capital and is relatively new. So judging by that its logical to presume the new strategy is to not grow cities which is kinda weird cuz if I dont do that I feel I should be probably playing a different game...

TL;DR I just wanted the promo icons mod that is now incorporated into VP... I think Im going to have to live without it. (I love VP and will not play without it... just not this version)

 

[tu_79]

Pretty new but just wanted to throw my 2 cents regarding the recent update.

Its hard. Like, incomprehensible.

I have 5 cities on my own island. No wars. No problems. Nice location. My own natural wonder. Took a good 10 restarts to get. Now Im 200 turns in on epic and nobody is happy. Actually, my current 10 happiness is only because Im playing on chieftan, but if you look at each city they are all -3 or -4 with the exception of one random city that is neither holy or a capital and is relatively new. So judging by that its logical to presume the new strategy is to not grow cities which is kinda weird cuz if I dont do that I feel I should be probably playing a different game...

TL;DR I just wanted the promo icons mod that is now incorporated into VP... I think Im going to have to live without it. (I love VP and will not play without it... just not this version)

You could get rid of unhappiness in older versions because you play very low difficulty. Usually, we have to live with some unhappiness in almost every city. G wants it this way.

There are four ways to avoid unhappiness (well, to avoid too much unhappiness) :
Limit your growth.
Limit your expansion.
Limit your research speed.
Or limit city specialization.

And several ways to improve happiness:
Luxuries, policies, buildings, merchant city states, monopolies,...

As long as you keep your empire happiness over 0, you are fine.

 

[dylansan]

@Stalker0 requested we bring discussion here, and he's right.
@Rekk @civplayer33 @tu_79

I wouldn't be really worried about this, because it is rare to find your cities with 100% unhappy citizens from needs. It may happen right at the beginning, but later I think you will only find this in new founded cities after Classical age, and such cities develop pretty fast, so you really must not care about that.

I don't see the point in ignoring an issue when @Gazebo is specifically working on the happiness system and the relevant tooltip right now. It may only happen in certain circumstances, but is it okay to have misleading UI as long as it's only at the beginning of the game or in small cities? Is it okay to not know what the biggest problems with my city are until it grows?

I can't help but notice the discussion shifted from "working as intended" to "it doesn't happen often", though that may just be a result of different people weighing in.

I don't understand why there's so much pushback against giving the user more accurate information. It wouldn't affect @Rekk's strategy of focusing on production, instead making it easier to decide where to focus. It wouldn't change any mechanics or involve ridiculous computations. All I'm asking is not to show 0 illiteracy in a city whose science yields are abysmal, just because citizens are assigned to be angry about distress ahead of any other needs. If distressed citizens don't behave any differently than poor citizens or illiterate citizens, there's no reason to assign them that way. They generate unhappiness exactly the same way. It just obfuscates a city's culture and science problems for no reason. I get that it's trying to represent a hierarchy of needs, but that has no bearing on gameplay or strategy, and that's what I use the UI for, not immersion.

 

[tu_79]

@Stalker0 requested we bring discussion here, and he's right.
@Rekk @civplayer33 @tu_79


I don't see the point in ignoring an issue when @Gazebo is specifically working on the happiness system and the relevant tooltip right now. It may only happen in certain circumstances, but is it okay to have misleading UI as long as it's only at the beginning of the game or in small cities? Is it okay to not know what the biggest problems with my city are until it grows?

I can't help but notice the discussion shifted from "working as intended" to "it doesn't happen often", though that may just be a result of different people weighing in.

I don't understand why there's so much pushback against giving the user more accurate information. It wouldn't affect @Rekk's strategy of focusing on production, instead making it easier to decide where to focus. It wouldn't change any mechanics or involve ridiculous computations. All I'm asking is not to show 0 illiteracy in a city whose science yields are abysmal, just because citizens are assigned to be angry about distress ahead of any other needs. If distressed citizens don't behave any differently than poor citizens or illiterate citizens, there's no reason to assign them that way. They generate unhappiness exactly the same way. It just obfuscates a city's culture and science problems for no reason. I get that it's trying to represent a hierarchy of needs, but that has no bearing on gameplay or strategy, and that's what I use the UI for, not immersion.

By showing the maximum unhappiness caused by a need, you are already getting what you want. You know now that 0 illiteracy (max 6) means that you have a severe problem with illiteracy that is not hitting yet because the city is already 100% unhappy.
Maybe a new player won't understand the tooltip the first time, but after three games most will get it.

 

[vyyt]

So how about highlighting the "Maximum unhappiness cannot exceed the city population:" somehow, placing it right above the breakdown (and keeping the double colon at the end). And then you can word it like (Illiteracy: 3 unhappy out of 5 potential). Of course it has to be explained more in detail in the Civilopedia.

I think that all the needed information is already there, but the problem is that new players are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of the information and texts, so they will likely miss the info about effective / potential.

 

[My5t1kal]

You could get rid of unhappiness in older versions because you play very low difficulty. Usually, we have to live with some unhappiness in almost every city. G wants it this way.

There are four ways to avoid unhappiness (well, to avoid too much unhappiness) :
Limit your growth.
Limit your expansion.
Limit your research speed.
Or limit city specialization.

And several ways to improve happiness:
Luxuries, policies, buildings, merchant city states, monopolies,...

As long as you keep your empire happiness over 0, you are fine.

I kept playing after commenting and came back here to delete my comment but couldnt see the delete option I so clearly see now.

After 50 more turns I was @ 35 happiness. Now, after worrying so much about happiness in my cities and tree (and difficulty level) Ill likely not have to worry any longer. HOWEVER, If I check the individual cities nothing has changed. They are all unhappy but one is only a little bit unhappy.

Im not going to argue or even attempt to give advice, merely throwing my two cents in as feedback that G (or whomever) can do whatever with. I do, however, feel slightly put off. Like any story there are conflicts/resolutions, but in the stories Im trying to make up in the game I often cant resolve their conflicts with anything beyond "meh too bad".

Again, not trying to complain. Love the mod and cannot/will not play without it. Even this version.

So how about highlighting the "Maximum unhappiness cannot exceed the city population:" somehow, placing it right above the breakdown (and keeping the double colon at the end). And then you can word it like (Illiteracy: 3 unhappy out of 5 potential). Of course it has to be explained more in detail in the Civilopedia.

I think that all the needed information is already there, but the problem is that new players are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of the information and texts, so they will likely miss the info about effective / potential.

This ^^^ I think a lot of my problem is simply feeling like I have a problem when I dont.

 

[tu_79]

I was wondering if unhappiness from needs could be toned down for the psichological reasons My5t1kal is highlighting.
These players are feeling bad about a situation that is really not hindering the game, but even then, they become obsessed with removing unhappiness. It doesn't matter if we tell them to relax, to look only at the empire happiness.

If needs thresholds were lowered everwhere, it will be easier to balance yield production in every city and completely eradicate unhappiness. I could think that citizens are still a bit unhappy, but they are not causing a fuss over this.
But that would make, maybe, too easy to manage happiness, so some trade offs should be included. For example, the number of citizens getting angry when not meeting needs could increase. Some of the factors that currently increase needs thresholds could increase the number of angry citizens when there's deficit. Or some factors like city size and empire size could be increased (but then we'll hear complaints from Indians and Incas). The problem with this approach is that it increases complexity, having one set of bonuses for moving thresholds and another to affect how many citizens get angry about the deficits. Currently, the number of (potentially) angry citizens matches the deficit of needs, which is simple and easy to understand.

Maybe what players can't stand for is seeing some cities so unhappy. Even if local unhappiness has no effect. Whenever a happiness building or happiness policy benefits one city, their effects are not showing in the city, but in the whole country.
I think it is more clear to see all the happiness in the global briefcase, where it actually matters, but people look at the city happiness and get the wrong idea.

I don't have a real proposal yet, I need to think about it. Giving explanations in the tooltips would take too much place, and risks to not be read anyways, but modifying how happiness works or how it is shown at city level may break current balance or end up being too much work for nothing.

 

[vyyt]

@My5t1kal , having 3-4 unhappiness per city in turn 200 seems perfectly fine to me. You are not supposed to be completely unhappiness-free. What matters is the resulting total emprire-wide happiness. The experienced players sometimes even advocate dipping into negative total happiness in the early expansion stage of the game (which can be dangerous if it gets too bad).

Gazebo and team are currently working on a pop-up tutorial system for VP (thanks to @JFD for creating the platform for this). I think it will be very helpful for the new players and I think it should highlight that it is natural to have some unhappy people - like in real life.

I sometimes see the advice to novice players that they can use the stop growth checkbox, but I rather consider it a panic button. When I start to feel that a city is growing too quickly and lacking the infrastructure, I rather shuffle the citizen/tile assignment and specialists. Maybe I work too many specialists, but I think I used the checkbox like once or twice in my whole life and it was only half a year ago when happiness was really tough.

 

[dylansan]

By showing the maximum unhappiness caused by a need, you are already getting what you want. You know now that 0 illiteracy (max 6) means that you have a severe problem with illiteracy that is not hitting yet because the city is already 100% unhappy.
Maybe a new player won't understand the tooltip the first time, but after three games most will get it.

I don't think it's just new players who are confused. The number 0 in this situation is misleading. It's only zero because the angry citizens were arbitrarily assigned to distress when they're actually unhappy about both.

Why can't the UI just be clear from the start? Show all the unhappiness then adjust the total based on the population:

I tend to see the numbers ("X from distress") as a quick indicator of which need suffering the strongest, so it's counter-intuitive that the yield with the biggest deficit, in this case science, is showing 0 unhappiness, when it would be responsible for 6 unhappiness with more population. I would see these numbers and focus on distress, then wonder why every new citizen gives another unhappiness.

I'd rather the max unhappiness for each yield be what's shown (i.e. 3, 4, 6), summarized as Local Unhappiness 4 (13 limited to population). I don't think science should be listed as 0 at all, because the choice of which needs contribute to unhappiness is arbitrary. It could just as easily be 4 unhappiness from science and 0 from the rest, which means those numbers don't really mean anything, and I think they obfuscate the important information about where your unhappiness is really coming from.

4 Local Unhappiness (13 limited to population)

3 from Distress
4 from Poverty
6 from Illiteracy​

Or assign unhappiness proportionally based on deficits:

What if the relative unhappiness was preserved, but scaled to the population if it's a limiting factor? So for the 3, 4, 6 scenario, it'd be normalized to .92, 1.23, 1.85. It's not as clean, but it's clear that science is the biggest contributor and it still adds up to 4, so there's no inconsistent math.

4 Local Unhappiness (13 limited to population)

0.92 from Distress (3 limited by )
1.23 from Poverty (4 limited by )
1.85 from Illiteracy (6 limited by )​

I think the former option is clearer, but both make it clear which need is actually suffering the most, at a glance. No longer would I see 0 Illiteracy and have to dig further to see that I have a severe illiteracy problem. You may be used to it, but the fact that 0 Illiteracy can mean "serious illiteracy problem" is just bizarre. If I have to look past the zero to the number in parenthesis which actually matters, then the zero is useless. Just tell me what my city is missing!

 

[tu_79]

Current algorithm stops calculating unhappiness from the other needs when the population is reached, so it avoids running some unnecessary code and improves performance.
But since this situation may only happen rarely, and given that G is willing to make the code compute every potential unhappiness, it could be shown as you did in your first example.
13 unhappiness (limited to 4 due to population)