Happiness issues

Aquaplex

Chieftain
Joined
Nov 12, 2011
Messages
35
Hi guys. First off i play on the Prince difficulty so i'm not a very good player. My main issue is city growth and constant unhappiness in the early game. I'm not sure how to exactly curtail my city growth in the beginning. I was under the assumption that you always want your cities to grow but whenever i get that 3rd city up early (first 100 turns or so) i'm always in unhappiness, even with 1+ luxury per city. I'm looking for some advice on how to manage my city growth in the first 100 turns or so. Thank You.
 
Are you going Tradition? Getting Monarchy as your third policy will really help. You do want to be growing fast to get more science etc. so choosing policies to help with happiness is best. Another way is getting a religion, and choosing happiness beliefs.
 
Tradition 4 city start solves all happiness issues.
 
Yeah, I typically found a religion too and get a building option like the Pagoda. For 200 Faith and no maintenance costs you get +2 to culture, faith, and happiness in every city. easy way to recoup a sudden windfall in happiness. Also, get some horse cities for the circus (also maintenance free). Also, your capital almost always has a duplicate luxury nearby. Trade it off immediatly. If no one has an extra copy of something, sell it and use the gold to buy happiness boosters like colloseum. Religion is probably the most general way to manage early unhappiness as it works with any approach or tree.
 
You are getting great advice, but I wanted to key in one line in your OP:

I'm not sure how to exactly curtail my city growth in the beginning.

There is an option in the city management screen to stop city growth, but curtailing growth is the main effect of your empire being a little unhappy, so this probably is of no help to you.

Religion is probably the most general way to manage early unhappiness as it works with any approach or tree.

+1 and it’s not just the 3 special buildings, since there are pantheon/founder/follower beliefs that all provide happiness.
 
A few other things to consider too:

More luxury variety = more happiness.
You can achieve this by careful city placement and having workers prioritise working luxuries before anything else.
You can also make sure you expand towards luxuries faster by building / Tradition-acquiring monuments early, and by buying luxury tiles that look at risk of being swallowed up by other borders.
You can trade luxuries with other nations, though in the early game you probably want to be getting money rather than happiness.
Finally city states are probably the biggest source of unique luxuries, Quests are the most cost efficinet way to win them over.

Many buildings boost happiness.
A Circus is cheap and has no maintenance and gives +2 happiness. Some other resource-based buildings also give happiness (like Stone Works) but less so than Circus.
As noted, religious buildings often give happiness, and Pagodas are best for this. Small caveat: pagodas cost you faith you could be spending on missionaries, so are best if you intend your religion to be one that enhances your empire, rather than one that gains bonuses from converting the world.
Collosea give happiness too and have a maintenance cost, but once you have one in every city, you can build Circus Maximus, which will fix happiness for some time. Speaking of which:

Many Wonders give happiness.
Notre Dame is the big one, but there are others. Eiffel Tower is one I like a lot myself in the late game.
Circus Maximus is a National Wonder, so you don't have to race for it.

A lot of policies give happiness
Especially that Tradition one, which most people take as soon as they can. Once you develop your game you can play around with different openings, and there's big discussions about how best to work Liberty on this site, but the four city Tradition opening is popular because it is so strong and easy to play.

Ideologies give a TONNE of happiness
That is, if you're playing with BNW in place. Generally this is the stage of the game when mass happiness leads to massive growth and war opportunities, and a victory run becomes a lot easier. Speed players don't tend to get this far, but for you and me, Ideologies mark the turning point of the endgame starting.

The real trick here isn't just keeping happiness positive, its keeping happiness positive while juggling everything else the game wants you to do. If you're building a Coloseum you're not building a Knight. If you're teching happiness buildings, you're not teching science buildings. If you're working your economy, you're not working your military.
Generally a good goal is to stay positive in happiness almost all the time, and if you're unhappy to never get to -10 or worse. Also, you want to build a nice buffer of happiness that will let you go to war and capture or raze cities at some stage.
Happily, on Prince level you can expect to be better than the AI at working this balance, and can expect to be a lot better at warfare.

Re: avoid growth button, never ever use that. Its far better to micromanage your tiles and to set things up so growth comes at the right time. If nothing else, you can almost always switch a city's focus to make growth take so long that you'll have fixed happiness by that stage. If you do things this way, you get benefits in place of the food, whereas if you just avoid growth it'll just stop your food reserves at full, and not roll you over in population: something you're better off achieving manually.
 
solid advice here. only thing i'll add is, maybe focus on friending up with mercantinle CS. aside from the extra lux you get, you get extra happiness too when you become friends with them. Early game, the easiest way to do this is kill some barb camps that are pestering them.
 
Eiffel Tower is one I like a lot myself in the late game.

Eifel Tower: In BNW is no longer the massive happiness boost it was in G&K. It still provides a small amount but the main purpose of building it is now the tourism bonus.
If you just want happiness, skip the wonder and pick one of the many ideological tenets providing a boost.

For those that went Autocratic, the new world wonder that requires it now has the free happiness for every 2 social policies ability.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I have no issues with happiness once i hit ideologies, it's all about time before then. I try to grow my cities as much as possible, often focusing on food tiles. I guess i should focus more on religion but i really don't want to spend any points in piety. I'm sure i'll get better with it over time.
 
Eifel Tower: In BNW is no longer the massive happiness boost it was in G&K. It still provides a small amount but the main purpose of building it is now the tourism bonus.
If you just want happiness, skip the wonder and pick one of the many ideological tenets providing a boost.

For those that went Autocratic, the new world wonder that requires it now has the free happiness for every 2 social policies ability.

True and true. Autocracy easily has the most happiness available, but it demands a certain playstyle. I'm using it more and more as my game improves, but Order and Freedom are definitely "easier".
 
Ps getting a CS ally and monarchy can help alot for the cost of hapiness.
Monarchy is very op, i even get it when i og Liberty.
 
Think about why you're playing. If it's for fun and look what happen, happiness is not a problem, it's a part of the game.
If you said : « I was under the assumption that you always want your cities to grow » you have something in mind. Is it to win ? Fast or win at all ? In which victory conditions ? If it's hard with 3 city, did you try with two ? If it didn't work, did you try to settle this 3rd city in a different path than your previous game ?
A city it's -3 happiness and -1 per population. So when you found a city it's - 4.
On Prince, you start with +9 happiness.
A unique lux is + 4happiness (if you have 3 pieces of one, you still have +4 not +12).
A coliseum is + 2 happiness.
Also, if you have real unhappiness issue there's an avoid growth population option in city screen.
It's not a game over to have unhappiness from -1 to -9, if you plan to become happy again. Troubles begin on -10 with barbs around you're cities and -20 with cities leaving your civ for an AI civ.
 
Top Bottom