Happiness Broken by Map Size

[Le Roi Soleil]

The point isn't the dangers of low happiness, it's the differences in happiness depending on map size.

And my point is that happiness can be easily managed even under difficult circumstances by someone with half a brain.

 

[Polobo]

The other common way to hit "very unhappy" is if you a peaceful player with only a few cities and are over-reliant on trading for luxury resources. This scenario does present a high risk-reward scenario and makes trading for luxury either a mostly short-term stop-gap or a way to work toward golden ages (by not actually using those happy faces to grow).

A major consideration will be to see how the AI reacts when you are approaching a victory condition and you are still getting resources from them. Do they cut-off trade to try and slow you down or do they continue trading because they are "friendly" with you.

City-State resources do not share this same risk since you will know whether or not you are and will remain allied and if you are they must provide you those resources.

 

[Earthling]

For the sake of clarity, do you mind if we start referring to "sparse" maps rather than huge maps? People have mentioned huge maps will/may have more civs, which means the area per civ, and therefore cities per civ, would be fairly constant. A sparse map could be a standard map with 2 civs, or a huge map with 7. The opposite situation would be a dense map.

It sounds like your concerns aren't strictly related to map size.

In every other previous civ game mapsize was directly related to "sparseness" or "denseness" but I agree those are good definitions. I already mentioned basically the same thing in the OP but I know many people continuously ignored/didn't read the OP. But in that sense, there's reasonable complaint if they were being misleading about this in the first place with their talk about mapsizes, because it's a significant change from the past that wasn't acknowledged.

Also, I would like to mention again that, while not related to happiness, we should really be on the lookout for how they changed technology, culture, and army support and so on depending on mapsize. I would think there is an extremely high chance things like technology cost still change by mapsize, which contradicts this goal by the developers - it would have been much better to try to account for size/sparseness across all settings in general. If they did and it is balanced, that's great, if not they could still patch it hopefully though (and it should not effect or imbalance any other part of the game, because adding in modifiers for different mapsizes/speeds/"sparseness" can't possibly change the way the game plays on standard/normal. Other game balance changes could effect everything but this could done essentially case-by-case)

And my point is that happiness can be easily managed even under difficult circumstances by someone with half a brain.

I expect civ5 will be rather easily beatable on Deity as well, but that doesn't mean gameplay or balance concerns should be ignored. Many things some players with rather skewed views regarded as horrible (say, religion) in civ4 were also easily managed but they removed those. Even regardless of difficulty having settings that discourage different ways to play the game and require lots of micromanagement is something to be avoided.

 

[ButSam]

As others have indicated, my gut is that more cities = more unhappiness is not unbalanced on large maps because more cities = more # of happiness-producing buildings available. I believe this is the main reason why the happiness hit due to # of cities had to be included when moving to empire-wide happiness. Otherwise, the game would be imbalanced TOWARD large map sizes instead of AWAY FROM as you suggest.

 

[dtsazza]

As others have indicated, my gut is that more cities = more unhappiness is not unbalanced on large maps because more cities = more # of happiness-producing buildings available. I believe this is the main reason why the happiness hit due to # of cities had to be included when moving to empire-wide happiness. Otherwise, the game would be imbalanced TOWARD large map sizes instead of AWAY FROM as you suggest.

Earthling's concern is that the static happiness modifiers (e.g. a flat +5 per happiness resource) will scale badly with sparser maps => more cities. In other words, if you can reasonably obtain, say, 30 happiness through natural wonders/luxury resources/starting happiness/social policies, then with five cities this is 6 "free" happiness per city. With 20 cities this is only 1.5 "free" happiness per city, so ceteris paribus you'll end up being able to support 4 and a half less population per city.

The question is whether this is a problem or not. Personally I don't feel that it is - my view is that building 20 cities should be just as challenging regardless of how much land there is or how many other players there are. On every map you start with one city and build outwards, I can't see a justification for making expansion (in absolute terms) easier on bigger maps.

The only concern would be if AIs played by different rules, such that they can expand more quickly on a large/sparse map than human players could. But even then, the fix here would be to prevent/reduce this unfair advantage, not necessarily to change the happiness system.

 

[Ahriman]

Good summary dtsazza.

I agree that you are probably going to be able to support slightly smaller cities in bigger/sparser maps, but I agree that this isnt' really a big deal.

Its certainly not "broken".

Map size/density has always affected how you played (eg utility of Bureaucracy civic).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Happiness is the civ V equivalent of civ IV's anti-expansion maintenance issue. In attempting to "balance" it, they have re-created the exact same problem: broken balance on huge maps.

Basically IV and V share the fact that their attempt to avoid ICS leads to completely different, imbalanced games on certain map sizes. The fun part is when the high level AIs manage to ignore these hindrances.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The "Happiness imbalance" happens because of
1. Sources of Happiness that are empire wide rather than per city
2. Those sources not adjusting based on map size.

So the ideal "Size" of an empire (in population) is independent of map size

So for a certain map size, there is a certain amount of tiles available per starting empire.. based on the map

The 'extra happiness' per empire is Not based on the map.

So in some maps, the "Ideal Pop per empire" to "Workable Tiles per empire" will be different than others.

The gameplay differences would be as such

1. High Pop:Tiles ratio->land is filled up fast, barbarians eliminated, wars are over 'space', cities more crowded together.

2. Low Pop: Tiles ratio->lots of empty space, barbarians persist longer, wars are over locations (special reources), cities spaced apart

#1 is favored by small maps with many civs
#2 is favored by large maps with few civs

of course #2 eventually becomes #1 over time... playing a Long enough game, you would cover the map with ~1 city every 10-15 workable hexes depending on (depending on: social policies... spread the cities out more because you have more happy/city; imperial happiness... reduces the # of cities needed city; Specialists.. give unhappiness without working tiles, increases the # of cities needed)



Also Happiness is not the only 'anti-expansion' mechanic. The Social Policies are also designed to as an 'anti-expansion' mechanic.

 

[Ex Mudder]

My games on huge maps were very sparsely settled, so I would say that the mechanic needs work. Possibly luxury resources making 8 people happy on huge, 7 on large, etc. I also find it annoying that I could build another city, but don't bother to do so because of happiness constraints in the early game. I'd call this a step backwards from Civ IV.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

My games on huge maps were very sparsely settled, so I would say that the mechanic needs work. Possibly luxury resources making 8 people happy on huge, 7 on large, etc. I also find it annoying that I could build another city, but don't bother to do so because of happiness constraints in the early game. I'd call this a step backwards from Civ IV.

I think that's reasonable though....
sparse civs/land=sparse land.

It also keeps barbs around longer.

 

[DaviddesJ]

My games on huge maps were very sparsely settled, so I would say that the mechanic needs work.

If games on huge maps are sparsely settled, that sounds like a huge step forward to me. The real world is sparsely settled too, we don't have cities covering every square inch of territory. One of the things that has always been the most annoying to me in Civ is the incentive to fill up every square inch of territory with the largest possible cities.

 

[Ahriman]

Really, the complaint is easy enough to fix if you really want to spend your time on huge maps.

Simply make a mod with another 10 different luxury resources.

 

[remconius]

Well there are 15 luxuries which provide 75 happiness (90 with a SP). And, if you have 20 cities you naturally have more luxuries then when you have 5 cities.

Each city has a base size of 11 (12 unhappy offset by 3 happy buildings of +4) The rest you have to find in getting as many luxuries as possible.
This means you can get 11 pop per city, is 220 people +90 from luxuries. Throw in a dozen circuses for another 36 pop, and the SP to reduce unhappiness in capital you can run 360+ population in 20 cities. In other words average size 18.
If you want to grow even bigger you could consider have tiny cities where you buy happy buildings to have surplus happiness to support bigger ones.

In the end it all comes down to Civ 5: the search for happiness A large part of strategy revolves around finding happiness (kinda like real life)

 

[Chieron]

While I think that the scaleability issue for ressource happiness and base happiness for larger maps is probably worth discussion, there are 2 things that have been overlooked so far, methinks:

1. base happiness is practically an offset for your first city, as you always start with just one, there is no point in have a higher cap early on.

2. why do you assume that large and small maps have the same set of ressources? remember civ4, where even standard maps tended to lack certain happy/health ressources or had them in very low quantities (silver was often missing, as well as at least one calendar ressource, deer and whales didnt play an important role too often, either)
if large/huge maps have 15 different (and non-unique) happy ressources, standard and small have 14, everything smaller only 12-13, there will also be at least some scalability.
same goes for natural wonders, of course.

However, it might've been nice to have something like +5 happy for the existence of the ressource, +1 happy for every further source.

 

[Ahriman]

A large part of strategy revolves around finding happiness (kinda like real life)

Yeah, but its easier in Civ

 

[Mantees]

I agree with the original poster that happiness should be balanced depending on map size. I am playing now a game on a Huge map and it is a bit annoying to see how in 1000 AC there are still lots of empty spots where cities could be built, and no one builds them becase no one can afford more population.

There is almost no reason to wage war because there is no purpose to grab land and cities. There is so much free land for everyone....

Edit: But it is also important to consider that with many more cities & population the research would be way too faster. Just changing unhappiness would not mean making it better. A more careful balancing should be done

 

[r_rolo1]

Happiness is the civ V equivalent of civ IV's anti-expansion maintenance issue. In attempting to "balance" it, they have re-created the exact same problem: broken balance on huge maps.

Basically IV and V share the fact that their attempt to avoid ICS leads to completely different, imbalanced games on certain map sizes. The fun part is when the high level AIs manage to ignore these hindrances.

Well, I find that civ IV method was quite harsher ( in the good sense ) regarding this: if you expanded too much on civ IV without the necessary backing, you would be with no army in a matter of turns. In civ V you get a military penalty and a pop cap ... cripling too, but far of being the "game over" that was in civ IV .

In fact this as it is now reminds me more the perpetual anarchy trick of when civ IV got out ( perma switch of civics ... because in anarchy you don't pay maintenance of any kind )... ok, you can't develop, but your army is still there and can keep on moving without caring for the happiness at all, especially if you have units strong enough to cope with the military penalty. Worse, you can still keep on banking culture to get SPs that will solve/mitigate your issue, either via your own or via cultured CS, still keep on building/$rushing military and you can still research like if nothing happened.

In resume, happiness in Civ V is a far smaller hindrance to big early empires than civ IV maintenance was. The only thing it actually stops in the same degree is the self propelled ICS or similar REX strategies that don't involve conquest

 

[fugazi]

The game seems to allocate x happiness resources per civ on each continent. So the more civs, the more islands/continents, the more screwed you are. The OP has a 100% valid point and I'm sure the developers will adress this in upcoming patches.

.. or so I hope xD

 

[WuphonsReach]

Here's what I've experienced on a large/marathon map:

- Happiness is a key limiting factor. I end up spamming colosseums and circuses everywhere possible.

- The happiness bonuses for improving luxury resources is not balanced. Right now it's a flat +5 and additional resources are useless. I think on the larger map sizes, this needs to change to +5 for standard sized map and smaller, +7 for large, +9 for huge.

- In addition, I think each additional luxury resource should add some small amount of happiness. +1 or +2 on standard sized maps and smaller, up to +3 for each additional on the larger maps. You'd still want to trade away excess to pickup unique luxuries from other civilizations, but there'd still be incentive to pickup additional luxury tiles. On the bigger maps, it's not hard to pickup 4-6 of a particular luxury and not be able to find 3-5 other civs that are interested.

(Strategic resources now scale with how many you control... luxuries should as well.)

In addition - the amount of over/under on happiness needs to scale on map size. I'm fuzzy on the math, but right now as soon as you go "-1", the full weight of unhappiness comes crushing down and there's no real penalty to going deeper into the red after that point. Instead, I think it should operate on a percentage basis.

>=10% over quota = slightly larger bonus (+10% combat, for instance)
>=+5% and <10% over quota = small bonuses (+5% combat)
>=0% and <+5% over happy quota = no bonuses / deficits
<= -2% = (-15% combat)
<= -4% = (-30% combat)
<= -6% = (-45% combat)
<= -8% = (-60% combat)
<= -10% = (-75% combat)

Which would give a small reason to stay slightly above the cap (if you need 100 happiness to break even, staying in the 100-104 range gives no bonus, but getting up to 105-109 would give a 5% bonus). But it would still give a big reason not to stray below as your armies would quickly run into severe trouble.

 

[Pragmatic]

- The happiness bonuses for improving luxury resources is not balanced. Right now it's a flat +5 and additional resources are useless.

I've been seeing a base +5 for each unique type of luxury resource, plus +1 for each additional/duplicate luxury resource. Maybe it's a social policy?