Happiness Balance Discussion

[Ayana the Pale]

Tradition only helps your capital as it gives your capital more yields and larger pop lets you work specialists. Your other cities aren't going to support those pop this early on. Honestly, the only way happiness can even be remotely be manageable for what you have is if you went Authority and went down the right side of the tree to get Discipline. That gives you 1 happiness per garrison and, even then, you'll still be in the negative.

If that's the case, then why is my capital suffering from the same problems that every other city is? I get that the build is ambitious really early - the part that I genuinely don't understand is why it's DISTRESS that I'm suffering from so much. Why is every city suffering from it so heavily when I'm above the world median? The guide led me to believe that it was based on those world averages. Why aren't the synagogues I went for not working to reduce the distress either? Why aren't my cities suffering from isolation? My problem is a mix of 'what am I missing in this?' and 'why is it skewing so hard toward distress rather than anything else?'

This build is pretty much the exact same thing I've done dozens of times before. Sure it'll be a short term pain in the ass, but it's never hit this high unhappiness, much less from just one thing. Synagogues are usually enough to mitigate it until I've got mining or whatever else.

 

[Rekk]

Regarding isolation: A citizen can only be unhappy about one thing, and there's a hierarchy, starting with distress. If all of your citizens are unhappy from distress, then no one's going to bother being unhappy about being isolated (or bored or uneducated etc).

 

[amateurgamer88]

If that's the case, then why is my capital suffering from the same problems that every other city is? I get that the build is ambitious really early - the part that I genuinely don't understand is why it's DISTRESS that I'm suffering from so much. Why is every city suffering from it so heavily when I'm above the world median? The guide led me to believe that it was based on those world averages. Why aren't the synagogues I went for not working to reduce the distress either? Why aren't my cities suffering from isolation? My problem is a mix of 'what am I missing in this?' and 'why is it skewing so hard toward distress rather than anything else?'

This build is pretty much the exact same thing I've done dozens of times before. Sure it'll be a short term pain in the ass, but it's never hit this high unhappiness, much less from just one thing. Synagogues are usually enough to mitigate it until I've got mining or whatever else.

Even if your capital is meant to grow enormous, there's a certain rate you can move before it just gives you tons of unhappiness. If I go Tradition, I might have 4 pop once I get my second Tradition policy. After the opener, the rest of Tradition policies all give you a building with a specialist slot. I usually start working on one or two specialist slots to slow down the growth while still getting reasonable yields overall. I can't see your tiles around your tile but most of them won't provide sufficient yields until you get more techs. In addition, I see that you have a Great Engineer in your capital. Why not build a Manufactory? That can help the Distress in your capital at the very least.

As for why distress is such an issue early on, you must remember that the AI don't have their culture and science buildings either. As your cities grow larger, then poverty will also have a larger impact. One thing that's agreed by everyone is that early unhappiness can hit rather high for the latest version and will improve entering mid game. If you play very ambitiously, then you are going to feel the unhappiness a lot. For instance, I keep my city small but, if I expand enough, I can hover around -10 unhappiness. You can imagine how bigger pop can hit you even harder. I'm curious if your build was used with previous versions or if it's this version as well. I noticed some obvious changes with happiness with the recent version.

 

[Minh Le]

If that's the case, then why is my capital suffering from the same problems that every other city is? I get that the build is ambitious really early - the part that I genuinely don't understand is why it's DISTRESS that I'm suffering from so much. Why is every city suffering from it so heavily when I'm above the world median? The guide led me to believe that it was based on those world averages. Why aren't the synagogues I went for not working to reduce the distress either? Why aren't my cities suffering from isolation? My problem is a mix of 'what am I missing in this?' and 'why is it skewing so hard toward distress rather than anything else?'

This build is pretty much the exact same thing I've done dozens of times before. Sure it'll be a short term pain in the ass, but it's never hit this high unhappiness, much less from just one thing. Synagogues are usually enough to mitigate it until I've got mining or whatever else.

I have the same distress problem playing as Tradition too, but it go away once I was able to build Barrack/Arena/Forge in my cities. Earlier I would try to improve my lux and trade for other lux to help with happiness. With 5 tradition cities I was able to stay in -12 to -16 happiness. Tradition capital tend to work more specialist slots and without building and strong buffed improvements, it will suffer hard from distress as well.

 

[amateurgamer88]

I have the same distress problem playing as Tradition too, but it go away once I was able to build Barrack/Arena/Forge in my cities. Earlier I would try to improve my lux and trade for other lux to help with happiness. With 5 tradition cities I was able to stay in -12 to -16 happiness. Tradition capital tend to work more specialist slots and without building and strong buffed improvements, it will suffer hard from distress as well.

Doesn't higher difficulty also give you less happiness to begin with? Or has that been changed?

 

[Minh Le]

Doesn't higher difficulty also give you less happiness to begin with? Or has that been changed?

I dont know ... I just play on one difficulty.

 

[Ayana the Pale]

Even if your capital is meant to grow enormous, there's a certain rate you can move before it just gives you tons of unhappiness. If I go Tradition, I might have 4 pop once I get my second Tradition policy. After the opener, the rest of Tradition policies all give you a building with a specialist slot. I usually start working on one or two specialist slots to slow down the growth while still getting reasonable yields overall. I can't see your tiles around your tile but most of them won't provide sufficient yields until you get more techs. In addition, I see that you have a Great Engineer in your capital. Why not build a Manufactory? That can help the Distress in your capital at the very least.

As for why distress is such an issue early on, you must remember that the AI don't have their culture and science buildings either. As your cities grow larger, then poverty will also have a larger impact. One thing that's agreed by everyone is that early unhappiness can hit rather high for the latest version and will improve entering mid game. If you play very ambitiously, then you are going to feel the unhappiness a lot. For instance, I keep my city small but, if I expand enough, I can hover around -10 unhappiness. You can imagine how bigger pop can hit you even harder. I'm curious if your build was used with previous versions or if it's this version as well. I noticed some obvious changes with happiness with the recent version.

So what is it based off of then, if not the global medium? Or does crop yields and manufacturing not have anything to do with, well, anything? That was how I judged how well I was doing before And what about the synagogues? They did jack to reduce distress, hierarchy of unhappiness or no.

 

[amateurgamer88]

So what is it based off of then, if not the global medium? Or does crop yields and manufacturing not have anything to do with, well, anything? That was how I judged how well I was doing before And what about the synagogues? They did jack to reduce distress, hierarchy of unhappiness or no.

I don't exactly know the details as there are other people more familiar with this. For me, I go to the individual cities and look at the needs below the yields of the city. I use that to decide what I need. I generally keep small pop early on and grow cities once my happiness can support it. If you want more details, I fear I'm not the right person. I just go with what I feel works and it helps to a certain extent.

As for synagogues, they help somewhat but, at your city pops, they will do little. Do you have the turn 0 save? Maybe I can try out this game and see what I can do with it. It's can be helpful to see how other people do with your games and learn from it.

 

[azum4roll]

Please post the screenshots of each of your city, hovering on the happiness panel. It'll provide every info we need.

 

[tu_79]

I think I know what is going on.

I barely see any worker. You have 5 cities with 5+ population each one, but you don't seem to be working on improved tiles.

Instead of having one garrison per city, try to have one worker per city, and only put an escort when there's a risk of barbarians.
As Carthage, you can delay roads for your coastal cities, but the land locked ones should be connected by classical age.

 

[Merx]

And this is the demographics. As you can see I'm second in crop yield and fifth in manufactured goods - i.e. I shouldn't be below the global average for distress. I'm above the average on both counts, yet I'm up to my eyeballs in distress (even though I've also got synagogues in the cities that have religion spread so far, and those are supposed to reduce distress).

iirc demografics take into account the total number of yields among all your cities/population so you might be winning in global yield output (empire wise) but your output per citizen may be well below the average, hence your distress.

You are also second in population so being fifth in manufactured goods means your production per citizen is not on par with the other civs.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

So what is it based off of then, if not the global medium? Or does crop yields and manufacturing not have anything to do with, well, anything? That was how I judged how well I was doing before And what about the synagogues? They did jack to reduce distress, hierarchy of unhappiness or no.

The democraphics only compares the total amount of generated yields, not, how efficient those are worked. And the happiness system is based around efficient citizen management. You could be first in everything, but if you need double the amount of population to generate the same amount of yields as the AI, your yields per population would be only the half of the median. And this would result in a huge amount of unhappiness.

As tu_79 already mentioned, there are no improvements except roads. Carthago is able to get a lot of gold early, you should invest this money for a fast invasion (a legion of warriors is badly fitted to do this) or into your infrastructure by buying workers.
Unhappiness by isolation is based on population of the isolated city. I think you get around 1 unhappines per 4 or 5 pop (dont know the exact number), but if all people in your city are already unhappy, this unhappiness isnt added.

 

[chicorbeef]

I do think the level of unhappiness he has is a bit odd. There shouldn't be THAT much Distress if he has Synagogues too. Perhaps report it with logs: https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues?

 

[Ayana the Pale]

I do think the level of unhappiness he has is a bit odd. There shouldn't be THAT much Distress if he has Synagogues too. Perhaps report it with logs: https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues?

I'm hesitant to do that without knowing exactly how synagogues work. They say they reduce distress - how? Does it alter the modifier, or just flatly take one distress away (which might explain why I have some poverty instead of distress)? I'd like to know regardless since I went synagogues over mosques specifically to help remedy the distress situation regardless.

 

[Stalker0]

I'm hesitant to do that without knowing exactly how synagogues work. They say they reduce distress - how? Does it alter the modifier, or just flatly take one distress away (which might explain why I have some poverty instead of distress)? I'd like to know regardless since I went synagogues over mosques specifically to help remedy the distress situation regardless.

Its alters the needs modifier, which means you need less food/production to maintain a certain level of happy.

 

[Ayana the Pale]

Its alters the needs modifier, which means you need less food/production to maintain a certain level of happy.

Well, they weren't terribly helpful, I'll be honest. Next time I'll probably just take the lumps and go with something better for the long haul.

 

[Ayana the Pale]

Huh. Well okay, that's fair enough. Turns out that the community events saved me - a volcano erupted and killed three of my citizens. I've got growth stopped until I've got mining. Of all the damn things... Also, another event came after - the city caught fire. While I appreciate the thought of the little notices calling me an idiot for choosing to lose a citizen instead of simply saving the city with the water source nearby, after actually benefiting from losing citizens I'm actually kind of reticent. Choosing to lose a citizen is the better choice in that case. Food for thought?

 

[vyyt]

You are not playing optimally, but still, the distress numbers seem to be too high.

Next time, would you start without the extra mods and post a save?

 

[Ayana the Pale]

You are not playing optimally, but still, the distress numbers seem to be too high.

Next time, would you start without the extra mods and post a save?

I'll give it a shot, but that won't be for a while. I made it three hundred turns in before my game crashed. I hadn't saved for a while (like an idiot) and now I'm kind of done with civ for a week or two xD There was just no winning with that game.

 

[civplayer33]

I made it three hundred turns in before my game crashed. I hadn't saved for a while

I would recommend turning on the Autosave option and set the interval to 2 turns or something like that. That way, even in late game, a crash won't wipe out more than 2 turns of progress.