Happy slider or entertainers

fwfessly

Chieftain
Joined
May 11, 2004
Messages
41
Hello

When palying at monarch level should the happy slider be used or is it a waste? After a while the citizen will riot. I also do get the most luxuries in as possible.

Also when should scientists and taxmen be used? Thanks
 
The Lux slider is always important for keeping your "core" sities happy. Bumping the Lux Tax can be cheaper than allowing your most productive cities to go into civil disorder.

Non-productive cities on the fringe of your empire may be served just as well (or better) by an Entertainer.
 
My rule is, when I want production in that city (usually early in the game) I use the lux slider. Once my cities max out, then entertainers are okay. But early in the game, bumping the lux slider means that the wonders I'm shooting for I have a better chance of getting it, since productive tiles aren't being wasted by entertainers.
 
I use entertainers if a small proportion of cities are unhappy, and lux slider if the majority of cities are unhappy. Also as mentioned above, in the early game it's best to keep your cities producing things and just spend the 1-2gpt it will cost you in the lux slider.
 
I try to use taxmen & scientists as much as possible - if I only need to get rid of one unhappy person. This is very useful in the early game, but later on it almost becomes inevitable that the luxury slider will be needed. I really try to avoid entertainers, and only really use them in cities that are unhappy due to being conquered.
 
When you use a specialist, your growth will slow down or even come to a halt.
It depends a bit on how much gold you can afford, but basically i try to avoid any specialsists in early game. If however only 1 or 2 cities cause problems, i might make an exception. If you need to move up the luxury slider 10% to avoid x specialists, look at the amount of money you lose by moving the slider (after setting those specialists back to work) if the difference is less than 6 gold per specialist, use the tax slider. If the difference is more than 10 gold per specialist, use the specialists. Between 6 and 10 gold depends on your economic situation.

Later in the game, you need to look better at what you lose by using specialists. I assume your cities are now maxed or almost maxed in size.
if for example you are producing knights (70) and using a specialist makes you go from 20 to 18 shields by using a specialist, that doesnt matter, it is still 4 turns. If however a specialist brings you from 18 to 17 shields, the loss is pretty big.

Scientists or taxmen i often use whenever that is enough to solve happiness problems. Also in conquered total corrupt cities, since that is the only thing they can really provide me.
 
As others have said, I always look at the situation. If it is one or two cities i use specialists unless that would put a hurt on my current strategy, such as slowing down a wonder too much. In the very early game i almost always use slider excpet for some rare cases, like when the city is about to produce a settler and using a specialist for one turn will not affect the build, but using a scientist will help research.

basically, i view speicalists as a shoret term solution for trouble spots. When i get to the point where unhappiness is empire wide and several core cities are needing specialists, it's time to up the slider.

however, i frequently like to use specialists in those "useless" high corruption cities even if they are only one or two pop and have no unhappiness, but that is a totally different strat altogether.
 
I think the basic idea that you only use the luxury slider when many cities are unhappy is a sound one. In practice (rightly or wrongly), I tend to build marketplaces, temples and cathedrals whenever I see cities requiring entertainment, so I use them pretty sparingly. I generally only need the luxury slider during long wars. This is at Monarch level; I might need to change my approach at higher levels.
 
It is commerce that is divided into tax,science and luxuries.
So if you don't have enough roads to create happy faces
you better build a worker to get rid of the clown and save
the commerce as tax and science instead of wasting it on
luxuries.
 
Using the luxary slider allows you to work more tiles. These tiles provide food/trade and shields. Entertainers provide only a happy face.
 
kb2tvl said:
Using the luxary slider allows you to work more tiles. These tiles provide food/trade and shields. Entertainers provide only a happy face.

I agree that an entertainer "may" be a waste, unless you jave only one city out of 10 that needs it and then it could be a waste of gold to move the slider. building a worker / settler from such a city is a good idea like tartan suggested. But, in most cases you do not need an entertainer, you can use a scientists or tax collecter instead & that does yield some benefit.
 
I find that there is no point in using the luxury slider later on in the game, as almost all my cities are maxed, so I might as well use entertainers and/or taxmen. I find scientists tend to be a waste, as I always have my science slider as high as it will go that I can still make gpt.
 
agree that using a specialist deprives you of gold shields and food and thats a steep price to pay, so i generally only use them on a few cities. mainly though its the luxury slider. this is true at all difficulty levels. as for the comment about cities being maxed out anyway .. well i dont have that happening much because cities with huge surpluses eventually get their surplus irrigation converted to mines to trade food for more production. if a city is still maxed out it is a good candidate for producing settlers or workers. i tend to use the slider a lot during wars. i cringe over going to communism because a lot of production shifts away from my core to remote cities that have few improvements. its true they can start building improvements under communism but building dozens of marketplaces and aqueducts and so on in all those peripheral cities aquired by war can get expensive. and its inneficient when you think of a marketplace in a city with half its gold turned red boosting the gold count on only the remaining half. so i fight some painful wars under democracy or republic and crank that old slider up to 30 percent or even more sometimes.
 
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