How can the AI have this much happiness!?

[Genghis_Sean]

I'm playing a Prince-level archipelago, huge map as Elizabeth with something like 6 city-states in an effort to get the achievement for sinking 357 ships as Elizabeth. I'm currently far ahead of my closest competitors with a score of 657 with the next closest being 471. However, Darius is ahead of me with a score of 773. He just kept expanding and expanding, and I never tried to stop it thinking that eventually he'd run out of happiness, and stop grabbing territory, but I just reached the modern era and he's STILL founding cities.

I hit print-screen, so if somebody can tell me how to find it and post it, I'll do my best to put up a screen shot, but when the game recounted the happiness scores, Darius with 20 cities and counting, is all alone at the top with 73 happiness! WTH! How is it possible to have 73 happiness with 20 cities at Prince level!? Even with 20 Satrap's Court, it doesn't seem possible. I'm barely above water at present with 6 happiness, which will drop to 1 shortly as I found another city.

 

[dexters]

AI plays on cheiftain happiness on any difficulty level.

Even though prince is the 'fair' difficulty, AI still have some advantages. This has been true in 'prince' difficulty as far back as Civ3 IIRC. Civ3 Prince settings still give the AI trade bonuses so they are more willing to trade with each other.

But I digress.

This is one area I'm not entirely happy with in Civ5. Due to the bonus happiness AI gets, it's impossible to be the biggest empire by population because the AI will often grow much larger due to their extra happiness, even if the human player is dominant.

 

[AfterShafter]

Many of the cities are probably puppets, he probably has a good lineup of policies in action, the AI seems to trade happiness resources with each other than with players, and the AI cheats. It all adds up, and continues the longstanding tradition of Civ AI being competitive because it cheats.

Specific answers though? No idea. I'm constantly blown away by the numbers the AI puts out.

 

[Wolle68]

The AI has an insane amount of happiness cheats. You can't compete with them, and you can't take advantage of happiness problems they may have. The only reason they are buying your happiness resources is that they're hard-coded to do so. Just play the game as if happiness doesn't matter to the AI.

 

[dexters]

The AI has an insane amount of happiness cheats. You can't compete with them, and you can't take advantage of happiness problems they may have. The only reason they are buying your happiness resources is that they're hard-coded to do so. Just play the game as if happiness doesn't matter to the AI.

Happiness still matters.

A general rule in Civ5 is happiness tends toward 0 if you have positive happiness because surplus happiness is used up with population growth. Growth stops when you have no happiness, so a good way to starve an AI is to deny them of extra luxuries.

It's also possible to be the happiest civ in the game for long stretches if you have the wonders, SP and your main AI competitors at max happiness and or are otherwise being starved of happiness for various reasons.

 

[Kabloosh]

AI plays on cheiftain happiness on any difficulty level.

Even though prince is the 'fair' difficulty, AI still have some advantages. This has been true in 'prince' difficulty as far back as Civ3 IIRC. Civ3 Prince settings still give the AI trade bonuses so they are more willing to trade with each other.

But I digress.

This is one area I'm not entirely happy with in Civ5. Due to the bonus happiness AI gets, it's impossible to be the biggest empire by population because the AI will often grow much larger due to their extra happiness, even if the human player is dominant.

My last match I owned 3/4 of the continent and had like 40 cities with 55 happiness and the largest everything except population which China seemed to have. It made no sense why I could not catch up in population growth.... that is until I nuked her into oblivion.

 

[dexters]

My last match I owned 3/4 of the continent and had like 40 cities with 55 happiness and the largest everything except population which China seemed to have. It made no sense why I could not catch up in population growth.... that is until I nuked her into oblivion.

You have to get insanely large to catch up. I think being #1 in pop in demographics is likely only possible in conquest/domination games.

Dominant culture/science or mixed games will mean you're behind in pop, even if you have the largest empire.

 

[Kabloosh]

You have to get insanely large to catch up. I think being #1 in pop in demographics is likely only possible in conquest/domination games.

Dominant culture/science or mixed games will mean you're behind in pop, even if you have the largest empire.

I got it once as a single city state as a cultural victory. I think population scales higher the number the city is cause my city was at like 46-50 by the end of the game.

In my domination game with the super massive empire my capital was the only city above 30 and I only had like 4 barely above 20. I didn't really "need" them to go any higher since I had a solid income and an insane production output.

I also like to annex cities as my income becomes large enough I can just buy court houses outright. They put more of a dent in unhappiness then just leaving them as puppets.