Happiness Broken by Map Size

[WuphonsReach]

There's a social policy under mercantilism called "Protectionism" that grants +1 per luxury resource. It's a start, but probably under valued given that it's fairly deep into the Social Policies tree.

 

[Pragmatic]

I just started a new game. Had a place with four of the same type of luxury resources. I didn't select any social policies (was aiming for Medieval unlocks).

5 base + 3 duplicate = 8 happiness.

So a good reason to have multiples. A variety is better, but it only takes 5 duplicates to equal it. (The extra 2 gold for each doesn't hurt, either...)

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So we have the 5/8/13 break-evens for buildings, and if each city has two or three duplicates, that adds another 2 or 3 to the break-even equation.

 

[Thyrwyn]

There's a social policy under mercantilism called "Protectionism" that grants +1 per luxury resource. It's a start, but probably under valued given that it's fairly deep into the Social Policies tree.

There is another called Cultural Diplomacy (Patronage) which increases the happiness from luxuries gained from City States by 50%.

There are many other Policies which do scale with map size - specifically, empire size, but for purposes of this discussion they are one and the same:

Police State (Autocracy) -50% Unhappiness in Occupied Cities
Freedom (Freedom) -50% Unhappiness produced from Specialist Population
Theocracy (Piety) -20% Unhappiness produced by Population in non-occupied Cities
Military Caste (Honor) -1 Unhappiness for each City with a Garrison
Meritocracy (Liberty) +1 Happiness for each city connected to the Capital with a trade route

 

[Pragmatic]

The Freedom (Freedom) one is counterbalanced by the policy that reduces food requirement for specialists by half. So you end up with the same amount of unhappiness (eventually, give or take, as your city grows)... but you also have all the science, gold, production, and culture from all those extra specialists.

 

[Drago Askani]

There is another called Cultural Diplomacy (Patronage) which increases the happiness from luxuries gained from City States by 50%.

There are many other Policies which do scale with map size - specifically, empire size, but for purposes of this discussion they are one and the same:

Police State (Autocracy) -50% Unhappiness in Occupied Cities
Freedom (Freedom) -50% Unhappiness produced from Specialist Population
Theocracy (Piety) -20% Unhappiness produced by Population in non-occupied Cities
Military Caste (Honor) -1 Unhappiness for each City with a Garrison
Meritocracy (Liberty) +1 Happiness for each city connected to the Capital with a trade route

isn't police state -50% unhappiness caused by numbers of cities? I am at work and can't look though I leave in 1 minute and will check when I get home.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Police state is -50% from Annexed Cities

 

[Drago Askani]

Police state is -50% from Annexed Cities

You are right the one I am thinking of is Planned Economy from the order tree. Which gives you -50% unhappy for number of cities. Which interestingly enough the way the game handles it is if you have that and forgotten palace wonder then you get 0 unhappy for number of cities.

 

[Ex Mudder]

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.

I've found that on small maps it is easy to get a lot of happiness resources in a small area. On a Huge map, Happiness resources are widely and unevenly spread out. You won't find one of each near your starting location, you're lucky to find 3 or 4 in your corner of the map, and the nearby city states will often have ones you already have.

Further, the AI seems to skip some important techs (like trapping) to beeline to the classical / mideval eras. So England has the great library, but an un improved source of furs at London. I've seen many AIs with no luxuries to trade, when I had 4 (one of one plus 3 duplicates) and all of those were from my starting location. I wonder if the AI can handle happiness in this game.

This was on huge / Pangea maps, though.

Anyway, back on topic, the inability of the AI to get luxury resources makes it impossible to trade with them for luxury resources, given how widely / sparely distributed they are on larger maps.

 

[Celevin]

I've noticed some very VERY odd resource placements. I think no matter the continent size, the game will place the same number of resources.

This is the most clear on "Small Continents" map type. If you get placed on an island, you'll have double or triple the density of resources! I had more resources than blank spots in my starting city!

 

[Mustakrakish]

So if I understand it right, playing on standard map rather than large (which I play and suffer from unhappiness) will have me less problems with unhappiness and resource gathering, right?

It does seem that way when I think of it... I was strict large marathon player in civ4 and intended to continue that tradition, but after a game and a half or so I realized I had to drop to epic and now it seems I'll be dropping to standard too... I didn't realize just how different civ5 is from civ4.

Heh my evolution based on my games:

Marathon, large > epic, large > epic, standard... Maybe the speed is best on standard too?

 

[oPlaiD]

You are right the one I am thinking of is Planned Economy from the order tree. Which gives you -50% unhappy for number of cities. Which interestingly enough the way the game handles it is if you have that and forgotten palace wonder then you get 0 unhappy for number of cities.

If you are Gandhi, and you build the Forbidden Palace, and you have Planned Economy, what happens? If it goes to 0% and you basically have half happiness for your whole empire that would be pretty amazing!

Gandhi is pretty amazing regardless, though. In all my games unhappiness from population is vastly higher than the amount from number of cities, even when I've expanded quite a bit.

 

[Louis XXIV]

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)

I can all but confirm they don't have everything. I seem to be missing two luxuries and two natural wonders on standard.

 

[Celevin]

The entire point isn't about the quantity of resources, but the number of unique resources. Large maps have the same number, but demand a higher city count.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I was saying that, in a standard map, it appears there are fewer types of luxuries. I don't recall seeing Sugar anywhere on the map and two Natural Wonders are not there either. Granted, that's only a difference of 7 happiness, but it is a difference.

 

[WuphonsReach]

So if I understand it right, playing on standard map rather than large (which I play and suffer from unhappiness) will have me less problems with unhappiness and resource gathering, right?

It does seem that way when I think of it... I was strict large marathon player in civ4 and intended to continue that tradition, but after a game and a half or so I realized I had to drop to epic and now it seems I'll be dropping to standard too... I didn't realize just how different civ5 is from civ4.

I was strictly Marathon/Huge/Tectonics in Civ4 (although I think I dabbled with Large).

In Civ5, I suspect that unless you pick a leader who's traits lend themselves to managing the 15-25 cities needed on a large map, you're going to have a lot of problems with happiness. The thing is, in Civ4 - just about any leader would work if you adapted to the map.

It's very much a catch-22 right now... there's only N possibly units of happiness, and that basically forces you not to expand past a dozen cities on Prince. And none of your cities are going to be larger then about 8-10 pop. Unless you pick a particular leader or go after the specific social policies (which are very limiting in other ways).

So, not pleased that I have to step back to a standard sized map just to keep from drowning in unhappiness.

 

[andrewlt]

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.

Coincidentally, ICS is back, at least in the late game (Renaissance). You get to build a +4 colloseum, theatre and stadium in every city. If you fill every single nook and cranny with cities that never get past size 10, you won't have happiness problems. All you need is for each city to produce enough gold to offset the 12 maintenance.

So build trading posts everywhere and just get your food needs from maritime city-states.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Well, in order to get food from City-States, you need gold. In order to get gold, it would strongly help to not pay 3 gold per city. Also, your science will be hurt due to the lower population.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, in order to get food from City-States, you need gold. In order to get gold, it would strongly help to not pay 3 gold per city. Also, your science will be hurt due to the lower population.

The issue is that he will not have lower population Or atleast not so diferent ...

 

[Freyas]

Well, in order to get food from City-States, you need gold. In order to get gold, it would strongly help to not pay 3 gold per city. Also, your science will be hurt due to the lower population.

The trade route income plus a bunch of worked trading posts can easily pay for itself and potentially even net you a few gpt. As for science, the ICS strat gets you more population (+10 happiness from each city supports an extra 10 population). Once you get the happiness buildings set up, you can have the cities work on building market/bank/etc to up their gold output without increasing maintenance.

The downside is that it takes a lot of time/money to set up, since the happiness buildings aren't that cheap, so the cities will be a drain on your economy/happiness until you can get everything built/bought.

I recently played a game trying out a huge map, and I ended up having a ton of land, but very few happiness resources. Later in the game, I ended up settling probably 20 cities or so, supported almost entirely through happiness buildings and luxury resources from city states, and was making ~2500 beakers and 500 gold each turn by the time I launched my spaceship. 3 production cities, and the rest were spammed with trading posts. With Siam's bonus food from maritime states, and having 6-7 maritime states, the average population in each of those cities was probably 12-13, with my capital up to 25 or so. However, with that much income, each time my happiness would get down to 0, I'd just find a city that could build a happiness building and bought it.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Well, don't forget that trade routes grow depending on the size of the city. While this might be a viable strategy, I don't think it's necessarily the clear dominant strategy like it was in Civ3.