happy citizens

[chieflookout]

This is a late game question. I'm playing on Warlord (about to jump to Prince for the first time, lol) and I've noticed something. I was playing with a Fundamentalist government, and noticed that when I changed entertainers in cities (the ones that show up after all squares are worked) to taxmen, the number of happy citizens didn't change. I built a Stock Exchange (luxuries on 50%) in a city pulling 130+ trade arrows, and there was no change in happy citizens. I was wondering if there was a limit on how many happy citizens you could have in a city. So far, I have checked several different city sizes, and this is what I have come up with. Please note, that for all of these cities where possible, all squares are being worked, and most city improvements have been built, with the exception of Stock Exchanges, because they seem to have no effect. Also, note that I changed luxuries from 50 to 60 with no effect on citizens (after three turns). These cities were checked with luxuries at 50:
Size:18 Happy citizens: 11
19 12
20 12
21 11
22 12
23 12
24 13
25 13
26 14
27 14
28 15
29 15
Has anyone else noticed this? Where possible, I checked multiple cities of the same size to see if citizen number was the same.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

You noticed correctly. Typically happiness due to luxuries maxes out at half the number of your citizens plus one. To make more people happy after that you need wonders such as Hanging Gardens and The Cure. In democracy, the courthouse and the palace also give you a happy citizen.

Other than your first 3 numbers, the others match this rule. I have seen rare exceptions to this rule myself but could not explain them.

 

[Terrapin]

More specifically, you cannot use more than double your population in chalices (happy cups). At diety level, this generally boils down to Ali's rule, since it takes four cups to make an unhappy citizen happy. Once you pass your city limit, all citizens start out unhappy, so, at four cups per citizen, you can make half of your citzens happy, meaning your cities will only celebrate WLt_Day when their populations are on even numbers. At warlord this limitation should have little or no effect on your ability to celebrate.