Happiness - what was Firaxis smoking?

[lordsurya08]

Happiness pisses me off more then anything, more than the AI, more than the loading times.

Usually, I annex most of the cities I conquer, which contributes -4 happiness. To compensate, I have to rush one coliseum in one of the cities I own, contributing +4 happiness. However, in almost all of my games I have more puppets cities than controlled cities, so there are never enough coliseums to satisfy. I could annex all conquered cities and build a courthouse and a coliseum, but that is insanely expensive and isn't really an option. Luxury resources? I have them all already.

So, what do I do? How do you guys deal with ungrateful citizens? Happiness is really ruining the fun of this game!

On a related note, does razing a city destroy all the improvements? I could possibly raze everything I capture, then send settlers to colonize any good tiles I find, as it doesn't hurt happiness as much as puppeting or annexing...

 

[GeneralMayhem]

make a settler, and raze the city? it's a pita to do, but it helps a lot if you are on a roll.

 

[Camikaze]

I've seen some nice valid complaints about the happiness system (mostly revolving around the fact that it is not nearly important enough), but it seems good to me if you are held back by happiness considerations. It shouldn't be something that you should be able to ignore, so if it is frustrating you, then it's doing its job, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Tutkarz]

I dont agree. Local happiness was considered not interesting because there was "no strategy in it". But global happiness is the same. There is no strategy. But with removing local happiness they removed alot of things to do. Like now you know nothing wrong can happend in your cities, so besides production you have no reason to visit your cities at all.

Maps are not balanced: small maps allow you to claim whole continetns while still keep surplus happiness but large maps are almost unable to be settled because there is not enough happiness on the map. AI dont have this problem because they cheat and have tons of happiness out of nowhere what leads to situation that your only stratey in game is to conquea AI before he build too much cities and gain too much tech advantage from population (which is another bs).

Yes i know you can found new cities that has only happiness buildings in it and pop 1 size but there is another *** thing that you actually can forget about policies because they will take forever to get with alot of small cities.

And to me global happiness is not realistic and not fun and not working as intended (because is annoying more than gives strategy). What strategy is in it that you are forced to build happiness buildings because your whole empire will stop functioning because of one small city? Oh yes, sorry you have an option, you can raze city. But what country in the world was razing cities because there was unhappy people???

Not to mention that emigration and revolution mods are now pain to create because in essence modder should remove global happiness and add local again.

 

[snoochems]

make a settler, and raze the city? it's a pita to do, but it helps a lot if you are on a roll.

I am a fan of this strat. Although I am puppetting a lot more now since the last patch. I will never annex though. If I annex, it's only to build a settler than raze.

 

[Tutkarz]

I am a fan of this strat. Although I am puppetting a lot more now since the last patch. I will never annex though. If I annex, it's only to build a settler than raze.

You have policy tree that reduces unhappiness in occupied cities. But there is also another one which does exactly the same to your own cities. So to me another reason to just raze cities and build your own so you only pick one policy instead of two.

 

[mihaifx]

small maps allow you to claim whole continetns while still keep surplus happiness but large maps are almost unable to be settled because there is not enough happiness on the map

This is totally wrong. I always play large map size, and the AI always settles everywhere, and I usually get to conquer at least half of the world...no major problems with happiness to me. Besides buildings, there are tons of social policies that increase it, so I really don't see where the issue is.

 

[lietkynes]

Happiness pisses me off more then anything, more than the AI, more than the loading times.

Usually, I annex most of the cities I conquer, which contributes -4 happiness. To compensate, I have to rush one coliseum in one of the cities I own, contributing +4 happiness. However, in almost all of my games I have more puppets cities than controlled cities, so there are never enough coliseums to satisfy. I could annex all conquered cities and build a courthouse and a coliseum, but that is insanely expensive and isn't really an option. Luxury resources? I have them all already.

So, what do I do? How do you guys deal with ungrateful citizens? Happiness is really ruining the fun of this game!

On a related note, does razing a city destroy all the improvements? I could possibly raze everything I capture, then send settlers to colonize any good tiles I find, as it doesn't hurt happiness as much as puppeting or annexing...

Annex the city as soon as you can afford it, switch food to stagnation and focus all citizens on production, build courthouse, it will only take 15-20 turns. Then re-assign citizens normally and build a colosseum if needed.

Choose social policies that remove unhappiness.

Raze the useless cities (AI builds a lot of them)

Don't raze/rebuild a good city, building a courthouse is always a better option.

If you still have problems, maybe lower the difficulty settings a bit.

 

[lschnarch]

Happiness pisses me off more then anything, more than the AI, more than the loading times.

Usually, I annex most of the cities I conquer, which contributes -4 happiness. To compensate, I have to rush one coliseum in one of the cities I own, contributing +4 happiness. However, in almost all of my games I have more puppets cities than controlled cities, so there are never enough coliseums to satisfy. I could annex all conquered cities and build a courthouse and a coliseum, but that is insanely expensive and isn't really an option. Luxury resources? I have them all already.

So, what do I do? How do you guys deal with ungrateful citizens? Happiness is really ruining the fun of this game!

On a related note, does razing a city destroy all the improvements? I could possibly raze everything I capture, then send settlers to colonize any good tiles I find, as it doesn't hurt happiness as much as puppeting or annexing...

1) Go for mediocracy: +1 happiness for each city connected via roads/harbor with your capital
2) Pick diety: +2 happiness for the "empire"
3) puppet conquered cities first until they go out of disorder
4) annex the cities with the highest potential production first and build/rush colosseum, then build courthouse there
5) repeat (4)
6) make allies with CS which have luxuries you are missing
7) some of the conquered cities may even be sold to other nations to fund the rushing as in (4)

That way, I came out of an unhappiness of -66 to less than -10 happiness in my last game (immortal/huge/continent) within ~20 turns.
Painful? Yes.
Doable? Yes.
Fun? Not so much, here I agree... but hey, nobody ever said, running an empire would be fun, hm?

 

[zimmah]

But what country in the world was razing cities because there was unhappy people???

i don't know, but i think razing a lot of towns would actually create more unhappiness in real life.

i think it's just more 'balanced' this way.

i usually puppet a lot of cities too, but i never really have big problems with happiness. even tho it is sometimes slowing down my expension.

btw when i attack an enemy i only keep the cities with resources, wonders, or a lot of good buildings. or if i really have a lot of happiness.

i will raze the rest.

and i never really annex it.

 

[Slowpoke]

Really they could've cured this by making courthouses 50 prod, 2 maintenance, and having puppets produce ZERO benefits.

 

[stealth_nsk]

There are some general building balance issues, which cause "raze and rebuild" usually more valuable than conquering, but that's not a general design flow and could be fixed in patches.

Another happiness issue is too little penalty for low happiness and too little bonus for higher happiness. I mean it doesn't matter if you have -11 or -50 happiness and happiness golden ages are too rare on higher difficulty levels to worry about. That part require much more work on.

Other than that I found global happiness a totally awesome concept.

 

[Biz_]

it's deliberate

they removed maintenance so this is basically the check against just throwing down a city every other tile

 

[lschnarch]

Other than that I found global happiness a totally awesome concept.

Well, you can deal with it, of course.
But "awesome" concept? I would have to disagree.

Even if you rename it to "stability", in the present way it does not make that much sense.
You conquer a city at the other end of the world and your core cities (next to your whole empire) go literally into disorder?
You have to provide a super bowl stadium to each Ottery St. Catchpole in your "empire" to have your capital still working?

As said above, you can deal with it, but it just feels strange and artificial.

 

[Slowpoke]

it's deliberate

they removed maintenance so this is basically the check against just throwing down a city every other tile

Too bad it didn't stop it lol. Should've stayed with maintenance.

 

[lschnarch]

it's deliberate

they removed maintenance so this is basically the check against just throwing down a city every other tile

What doesn't work, as we know by now.

 

[remconius]

If you ignore happiness and just act when you are below it will be difficult.

Managing happiness for the long term takes serious planning.

If you want to grow big by conquest, you need to accomodate this. Having the right policies in place helps a lot, some wonders do too. And dont grow all cities to max size. Control who can grow and who cannot. Keep puppet cities small by removing farms and adding trade posts.

Worst case you need to have some small cities (size 2-4) with all happiness buildings.

Believe me it can work, but you need to plan ahead.

 

[Slowpoke]

If you ignore happiness and just act when you are below it will be difficult.

Managing happiness for the long term takes serious planning.

If you want to grow big by conquest, you need to accomodate this. Having the right policies in place helps a lot, some wonders do too. And dont grow all cities to max size. Control who can grow and who cannot. Keep puppet cities small by removing farms and adding trade posts.

Worst case you need to have some small cities (size 2-4) with all happiness buildings.

Believe me it can work, but you need to plan ahead.

Or you just put colosseums everywhere, get the right policies, and hit avoid growth when they hit size 6 No planning.

 

[nebux]

with the latest patch i don't bother at all with building happiness. now that puppets are so good i only build 3-5 cities myself and after i just puppet everything. with the same choices from ICS i can have a immense empire with very nice tech lead and average happiness. what i see it's if i'm in red with happiness and have lots of puppets they will switch to building coliseums or theaters

 

[JLoZeppeli]

Razing is so simple and efficient to win a dominaion game....