There must be a middle point between frustration and negligence.
What do you mean by "negligence"? I'm building buildings and/or wonders in every city almost all the time, and it's mostly those ahead in infrastructure that make units. No negligence here, only enjoyment, as I don't have to stop growth in 100% of my cities after a certain point in the game, with wide conquest being basically impossible or at least extremely restrictive, unfun. I still get -75% periods if I delay courthouses and city connections, and I went at ~50% during a very long war the AIs didn't want to end, so all is fine and enjoyable.
But if I understand what you imply then yes, I hate the unhappiness of the last two versions, and the one that was present for what is a reasonably big part of the mod's lifetime. After so many Unhappy versions throughout the years, I've grown to stop tolerating that no matter what I do, my empire is wailing and any action I take fails and everything drowns in fire and tears. I am not a fan of dealing with it and I'd not like every single patch that makes it harder to deal with if I didn't know how to make things right for me and some others, judging by download numbers of my happiness modification files released in certain harsher versions despite the files being primarily stuck at just some random page in the mod thread. I do not enjoy stopping growth in every city in hopes that maybe it'll save me after I build more buildings. I don't like knowing researching a tech or making just one more city can suddenly make my empire completely unhappy.
I find no enjoyment in having all the buildings in the city or trying to get them all up as much as Production allows, a few -X% unhappiness source wonders in capital, with the cities still being unhappy. I can't say I think it's fun having 10-30 cities on a warmongering spree and having to check if it's "that" point in the game where every pop will turn unhappy and nothing will ever help, and then having to manually click on all of the cities (maybe barring capital) to stop growth in each and every one of them because things won't ever get better. I won't say I like that the system sometimes seemingly expects me to have all the buildings, but it doesn't give me nearly enough Production to afford enough of them - and before I get more, I get more techs and maybe more cities (that's what wide warmongering is about), so they might not even help the problem. In fact the next version will further reduce Production/Food on some buildings like Workshop, so it might be harder to get the buildings up. Admittedly, I feel aversion to unhappy face things beyond my control, where maybe the error was made 100-200 turns ago in settling/conquering the city in the first place, and that's despite the city being in a very good location. I saw reasoning like this in VP threads, and I think that's against what this mod should be trying to accomplish.
I do agree my version might've taken it ever so slightly too far and maybe at 100 divisor the tech penalty should've been kept where it was or slightly increased, but I am just so entirely sick of being afraid of doing anything and having to micromanage everything, with the management not even giving me a safe, unhappiness-free time anyway, that I don't care enough to make it harsher. I think it's about okay. It's just that after making the system very lenient (my unhappiness was usually related to lack of courthouses or war weariness), I've enjoyed myself far more than I had in months because I don't have to constantly think about that mechanic and that mechanic alone, with it overshadowing the entire civilisation making aspect, wars, diplomacy, policies, everything. I just need to stay watchful during wide wars, and that's fine. Unhappy face with my changes? Get another worker, speed up the city connection (the disconnected unhappiness is crazy), try to get that courthouse faster, use Gold for a building in Xcity so it gets up faster, stop the war, or do it all.
It's not things like "well maybe you have too many cities?", or "maybe you grew too much??? can't help it lol" which I did frequently see with no real solution on how to help the one having the issue, every problem can be solved as far as I can see - and not only by making 10 buildings appear out of thin air in a city which will not have enough Production even if you waste Internal TRs on it, where even they might not truly help in the end. It's not like vanilla version where I had 3 Mercantile allies and other CSs, as many buildings as I could get with the limited Production, and nearly citizen screamed in anguish as if I were tormenting them despite having what I thought was great infrastructure, on a civ with no bonus Science - and those citizens who weren't enraged, would go berserk if I let the cities grow. Are the issues fixed too easily with how I've made it? Perhaps, but I'm enjoying it. I don't think big, restricting Unhappiness with no way out enriches my experience - in fact, it ruins it. I can't remember a single game I liked where I thought "man, I'd like it if all my cities were sad and I had to build 3 more buildings in each of them to get out of the situation while also stopping growth there, except by the time those buildings are up I will have 3-4 more techs, so the slight percentage penalty might add another 1 unhappiness per X source".
What I want to see is not playing against Mr Unhappy
and his brother Mr Very Unhappy
who should be a small to medium influence on the entire game at best, I want to fight against other civilisations. I love the mod and it's effort as it's very impressive, cool, fun, and I'm astounded at Gazebo's and others work (which Firaxis claimed impossible to achieve), but I really can't say I like how hard it is to manage unhappiness in most versions, including the last ones.
