Happiness sinking suddenly and utterly

[Landmeister]

Dear all,

I am playing a game with las last updates installed and something new happened to me. I'm playing on Prince mode, so no difficult at all, but for a unexplainable reason the happiness of my empire dropped to from +2 to -17 in one turn!!!

I am playing with autocracy and I've never had any problem with it in my previous games. However, according to my happiness info tab, people doesn't want autocracy and this is why level dropped so much . Could someone please tell me what happened? Is this a bug? I never had such a situation in ANY previous game.

This is so weird...

Thank you very much in advance.

 

[GeoModder]

From the sound of it the ideology of another civ appeals more to your people, and it makes them quite unhappy.
Either switch to this other ideology, or built extra happiness buildings/(national) wonders.

 

[Landmeister]

From the sound of it the ideology of another civ appeals more to your people, and it makes them quite unhappy.
Either switch to this other ideology, or built extra happiness buildings/(national) wonders.

But this didn't happen before. Is this a new game feature? If so it's utterly flawed. I find simply unacceptable that some ideologies are considered good and other bad by the game. Is there any other way to fix it? I already built all possible happiness buildings

Thank you for your quick answer.

 

[GeoModder]

I *think* tourism/culture plays a role as well. A civ with another ideology, with a high tourism over your civ, might be able to force it.

 

[nokmirt]

But this didn't happen before. Is this a new game feature? If so it's utterly flawed. I find simply unacceptable that some ideologies are considered good and other bad by the game. Is there any other way to fix it? I already built all possible happiness buildings

Thank you for your quick answer.

Modding the game.

 

[MrRadar]

But this didn't happen before. Is this a new game feature? If so it's utterly flawed. I find simply unacceptable that some ideologies are considered good and other bad by the game. Is there any other way to fix it? I already built all possible happiness buildings

It's a BNW feature.

The game does not consider one or another ideology bad or good. Simply some ideologically different AI's tourism output is overwhelming your culture output. Go to the culture tab and explore the situation. You must keep up your culture if you want to be able to pick an ideology independently. If your culture and tourism is low, your choices become limited - it may be wiser to align your ideology with that of the tourism leaders.

For quick remedy you may also try and ally with more CSs, especially happiness ones, if you can. Trade for more luxuries.
And for long term solution go to war and wipe out the tourism leader. If you can

 

[Browd]

You may find this War Academy article useful: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=523375

 

[Landmeister]

It's a BNW feature.

The game does not consider one or another ideology bad or good. Simply some ideologically different AI's tourism output is overwhelming your culture output. Go to the culture tab and explore the situation. You must keep up your culture if you want to be able to pick an ideology independently. If your culture and tourism is low, your choices become limited - it may be wiser to align your ideology with that of the tourism leaders.

For quick remedy you may also try and ally with more CSs, especially happiness ones, if you can. Trade for more luxuries.
And for long term solution go to war and wipe out the tourism leader. If you can

Thank you for your response. Just two questions: what does BNW and CS mean? I'm sorry, I don't visit this forum very often

 

[MrRadar]

Thank you for your response. Just two questions: what does BNW and CS mean? I'm sorry, I don't visit this forum very often

BNW - Brave New World, the latest expansion of CiV.
CS - City State

 

[LordBalkoth]

I find simply unacceptable that some ideologies are considered good and other bad by the game.

If that was true, it would be unacceptable. But it's not.

Long story short, your Tourism and/or Culture is significantly worse than people with different ideologies. If you had a bunch of Tourism and Culture yourself...people using Order and Freedom would be the ones getting massive unhappiness (because the people in the civilization think Autocracy is much cooler due to your Tourism).

 

[Finnagain]

Landmeister, there are a lot of powerful social policies that can work to offset the effects of an unpopular ideology. It's pretty hard to catch up on tourism after the fact, but if you are managing your empire well, you should be able to keep up with even a very unpopular ideology. The only problem with that is that you are not spending your policies on the good stuff if you are doing that.


A quick way to keep up on lots of scenarios is to just build the all the guilds as early as you can and be sure you get some amphitheaters and opera houses up and running. You probably do not need museums. Spend your first couple of writers and/or artists plus all of the musicians on great works. If you aggressively go after about five antiquity sites outside of your territory too, this should carry you into atomic age. (If you are feeling very ambitious look into maximizing tourism with themes, but that should not be necessary unless you are playing at like Immortal difficulty.) Finally, build a hotel and an airport in your capital when you research them.

That oughta do it. Just enough tourism to keep your ideology relatively popular. It will not work in all games, but it is a good place to start. I basically do this in all may games and augment it with policies.

 

[Landmeister]

Ok. Apparently I stabilized situation trough spending valuable Autocracy policies on happiness (barracks, etc.) instead of doing it in what I used to before. Then I declared war on the guy overwhelming my tourism and...nothing happened!!

My level of tourism before the war was 50 and his 81. The unhappiness leves caused for it was -17. After the war my tourism was 61 and his 68...and my unhappiness level is -21.

Now I'm not so terribly backwards, why no improvement in my happiness level happened? Even worse; another civ took Order too and their tourism level is 11, but they are content <snip>!!! Shouldn't they be extremely unhappy because of my high torurism? I don't see how it works...

Moderator Action: Please do not try to avoid the autocensor by using special chars.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Kriogen]

I look at Turism as "Propaganda".

...
My level of tourism before the war was 50 and his 81. The unhappiness leves caused for it was -17. After the war my tourism was 61 and his 68...and my unhappiness level is -21.
...

You should burn more. The other one still has 68. You should continue util it has 0.

It's not really 'turism'. It's 'Culture'. Think of Culture as 'defense' and Turism as offense (attack rating). Each turn others Turisms score "eats" away some of your acumulated Culture. If others "eat" away to much, your people think others are better. A bit like combat, attack rating vs defense rating.

It goes both ways. Others attack your culture with their own propaganda, you defend with your culture. You attack with your own propaganda, others defend themself with their culture.

Looks like you civs overall Culture is low(ish) and the other one still has 68 "attack rating" and huge acumulated Culture.

Kill them. There is no other way. Sometimes only total extermination helps. You did picked Autocracy, so doh ...

Edit: is the other one France or Brasil?

 

[Browd]

Ok. Apparently I stabilized situation trough spending valuable Autocracy policies on happiness (barracks, etc.) instead of doing it in what I used to before. Then I declared war on the guy overwhelming my tourism and...nothing happened!!

My level of tourism before the war was 50 and his 81. The unhappiness leves caused for it was -17. After the war my tourism was 61 and his 68...and my unhappiness level is -21.

Now I'm not so terribly backwards, why no improvement in my happiness level happened? Even worse; another civ took Order too and their tourism level is 11, but they are content <snip>!!! Shouldn't they be extremely unhappy because of my high torurism? I don't see how it works...

What did you expect war to do? All a DOW does is cancel any open borders treaties between you and your opponent, which just eliminates one of the possible tourism modifiers, but leaves in place all of the others and doesn't change your or your opponent's base level of culture or tourism. Both have cumulative effect -- as in over the entire game -- and just DOWing your opponent won't put a dent that tide.

So, what did you actually DO in your war? Did you take any of his cities, and plunder his great works? Do you even have any great works (50 tourism indicates "yes"), and have you managed them to max out your tourism bonuses? What do the culture screens tell you about the situation -- besides a snapshot of current tourism levels? Tourism (and defensive culture) are long-term matters, not single point in time matters. Current levels can indicates trends, but tell you little about the situation. Managing culture, tourism and happiness in the ideological stage of the game requires careful study of those screens to understand where you are and what you need to do to counteract the effects of opposing ideologies. War can be a solution, but it usually requires that you exterminate your ideological opponent. Taking a couple of cities won't move the needle. (IRL, would France be any less of a cultural powerhouse if the Spanish conquered Bayonne and Toulouse?)

 

[Sclb]

Usually taking our the capital city of a culture powerhouse combined with any other cities generating most of the culture (world wonders, landmarks etc) is enough to stop a culture powerhouse from producing culture, except the effect still lingers for many turns if your own tourism is too low. In many cases you will have to totally exterminate the civ.

 

[meatpardle]

I have a simple mind so look at it like this - culture is how you influence your own people, tourism is how you influence those of other civs. If another civ has more influence over your population than you do then your people will want to follow that civ's ideals.

In your case your culture is so low in comparison to that civ's tourism that your population worship that civ's cultural identity rather than your own, and therefore when that civ chose an ideology your people decided that they wanted to follow that one rather than the one that you chose. If your culture was strong in comparison to this other civ's tourism your people would likely be happy with your choice, but as they worship this other civ they will want the ideology that they have.

I think it's supposed to mimic powerhouses like the US and Russia influencing smaller nations who aren't able to match cultural and ideological influence. If you ignore culture and building a national identity you will not be able to defend your identity when other nations are exporting their 'blue jeans and pop music'. Your people don't want home-made arthouse films and traditional music, they want Hollywood blockbusters and Katie Perry, and along with that goes a desire to share political ideals.

It's a difficult situation as once you find yourself culturally dominated by another civ it's probably too late to do the easiest thing (concentrate more on culture). One option is to switch ideologies, although if you've already invested in a number of tenets that can be hard to swallow. The other is to go to war with the civ and target what is generating their tourism, but that will likely mean taking the capital of a superior civ. Trying to generate 20 happiness off the bat isn't easy and the efforts to do so will likely mean you're ignoring something else important.

It's a horrible feeling.

 

[Redaxe]

Autocracy is the best ideology for happiness issues.
Order can generally give you about +4 happiness per city and Freedom is worse.

Autocracy with barracks, armories and military academies, that is +6 happiness per city. Additionally you can build Prora and Neuschwanstein.
Fortified Borders can give you +2 happiness per castle with Neuschwanstein so there are many possibilities with Autocracy.

 

[Sclb]

Autocracy is the best ideology for happiness issues.
Order can generally give you about +4 happiness per city and Freedom is worse.

Actually Freedom/Autocracy are tied for the highest possible happiness. Except Autocracy requires courthouses which aren't build-able in self founded cities. Otherwise you lose 3. Order is the worst for happiness. A typical Freedom city will have 10 and Autocracy city will have 9, so Freedom still wins.

Freedom:
Capitalism (level 1) +2 per city (+3 if mint can be built)
Urbanization (level 2) +2 per city (+3 with watermill)
Universal Suffrage (level 2) 50% unhappiness for every specialists, max 11 slots (12 with windmill) effectively +5.5 per city.
Total: 9.5-12

Order:
Socialist Realism (level 1) +2 per city
Young Pioneers (level 1) +3 per city (+4 with hydro plant)
Academy of Sciences (level 2) +2 per city (+3 with observatory)
Total: 7-9

Autocracy:
Fortified Borders (level 1) +3 per city
Militarism (level 2) +6 per city
Police State (level 2) +3 (with courthouse which requires captured cities)
Total: 9 or 12

Prora can be captured regardless of your ideology, and it's pretty high priority whenever I'm going for modern era or later domination.
Note that Freedom/Autocracy has 2 happiness policies in the level 2 which means it's pretty difficult to take both for maximum happiness when you need the other level 2 policy. Freedom also offers more specialist slots for certain cities so you can get a bit higher excess happiness on certain cities, typically capital.

 

[beetle]

I am playing a game with las last updates installed and something new happened to me. I'm playing on Prince mode, so no difficult at all, but for a unexplainable reason the happiness of my empire dropped to from +2 to -17 in one turn!!!

I think it is terrific game design that Prince players will, on rare occasion, have to struggle with the routine problems of Deity play!

Actually Freedom/Autocracy are tied for the highest possible happiness.

That may be strictly true, but I think it gives Freedom too much credit. Freedom happiness comes from late buildings (Stock Exchanges) and marginal ones (Hospitals and Medical Labs). Autocracy happiness comes from buildings you are building anyway (the xp line).

Universal Suffrage (level 2) 50% unhappiness for every specialists, max 11 slots (12 with windmill) effectively +5.5 per city.

How did you come up with 11? I think you are counting the guilds, but that would be 6 more slots. How many slots max in an expo without a windmill and no guild? I thought it was 8 (market, workshop, factory (2), university (2), public school, research lab). Do you get slots for banks and stock exchange? If not, then typical (i.e., mode average) Freedom total happy is just 6, not 9.5! (4 for the eight specialists, then one each for bank and stock exchange as happiness buildings).

Counting the guilds for this comparison miss represents the range. I have not worked out the math, but I am pretty sure if you total up the local happy assuming four cities then Autocracy beats Tradition (and that is with assuming that your four cities have Medical Labs, etc.). Annexed cities for Autocracy really puts it over the top.

That said, Freedom has happy enough to resist the rest of the world being in Autocracy or Order, where as typical Autocracy play really needs the happy!

 

[Browd]

You get merchant slots for banks (1 slot) and stock exchanges (2 slots), and you forgot that factories get 2 engineer slots.

Ignoring guilds, and windmill (which can't be built if the city is founded on a hill), you can have 11 workable slots in every city by late game -- 4 scientist (university (2 slots), school, lab), 4 merchant (market, bank, stock exchange (2 slots)) and 3 engineer (workshop, factory (2 slots)).