how do I keep everyone happy?

Gwynnja

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I'm at a loss. I am the Harun al-Rashid and I started out with a ton of land but not a ton of happiness resources. I settled my second city quite a ways away thinking I could road it for the bonus TR gold. Sure$hit, as soon as I do I meet Montezuma. C-IV has ingrained me to destroy Monty asap so I can fight the war on my own terms, so I killed him. My only other continent-mate is Catherine to whom I'm selling excess resources for gold. She has an extra source of ivory that I'll trade from her as soon as I can, but then what? Do multiple happiness buildings like circuses and coliseums stack the happiness? With my first and second opportunities to implement social policies I chose honor in order to kill Montezuma then piety to cheer everyone up. I have the opportunity to choose a third social policy now, but I'm torn.
 

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I did not look at your file so this is just a general comment. Do not freak out about Monty, I played a prince level game and he was fairly close. I had 2 military units in the ancient and classical periods. I did not help him out an any way nor did I try to antagonize him, I gave him open border agreements and did not sign any other treaties with him. He never attacked me but he was very aggressive toward two other civs.

Multiple happiness buildings stack

Taking (annexing) cities and not building courthouses in them is a big happiness hit.

What about city states , do they have any happy resources? If so ally them with the money you are getting from Cathy.
 
Eh, you're not in that bad of shape. You kind of oversettled I think. You can't really spam settlers in this game like previous civ games. I know you captured one of those cities but still founding 4 cities (including your capital) before 1AD is a lot. But you're still only a building or a trade from getting back in the positive. Catherine happens to have some ivory to trade to you but you already sold her your extra wine for gold instead. So at the worst in 16 turns when that deal ends you can make that trade. If you want to fix it sooner build a colosseum in one of your cities.

You also could have razed or puppeted Monty's city and you wouldn't have gone negative in the first place.

edit: As a note if you puppet a city you can still take control of it at any point. So you could have puppeted it until you had excess happiness and then annexed it.
 
I don't quite have a grasp of the puppet/annex mechanics. When I got the prompt after capturing Tenochtitlan I initially was going to puppet it but then I remembered the shiny things monty built for me and I wanted them. Evidently you can puppet the city and then annex it, but once you annex it you cannot puppet it. Is that correct? Also, as a side note, what does stonehenge do other than provide great engineer points? Do I get the culture even though I didn't build it?
 
Do not just settle cities for the purpose of settling more cities.

Settle cities in order to gain access to new happiness or strategic resources.
 
Do not just settle cities for the purpose of settling more cities.

Settle cities in order to gain access to new happiness or strategic resources.

I wasn't settling cities for the sake of settling cities. I was settling cities for the sake of trade route income which is enhanced as the arabs.
 
Then you're just going to have to plow that revenue back into happiness building maintenance.

Think about the game mechanics a little differently. You're not founding new cities to get money, even as Arabia. When you use a Settler, you're effectively putting a permanent improvement on the tile. A 2/2/1 tile is much better than the tile was before it was settled. You also add up to seven tiles to your territory immediately, and make a few citizens arrive faster. The cost of doing this is happiness, hammers (and food) invested to build the Settler, and having a hammer stream that is distinct from the one that spawned the Settler.

Your bonus to trade routes effectively enables you to grow horizontally to spots without luxuries and still finance expensive Colosseums and Circuses in response to the Happiness problem. There can be reasons to want to do this. Luxuries may be scarce or distributed in a small number of desirable spots that must be settled early. Defensible positions may not be conveniently located next to the luxuries. Prospective barracks city sites that lack luxuries may just be too good.

Your trade route bonus will permit you to afford to be a little more spread out than other players. That means better tiles, which likely means more hammers in the long run (either through better tiles worked or fewer of your units dying). Just don't take it to extremes.

Another way to think about it is this: there's a growth curve in this game. As cities get large, they grow slowly. If you want to maximize science, you're better off plowing food in a large city into creating a new production site that grows rapidly, rather than having it rot while you wait ages for a new citizen. The only exception is large cities where you have stacked a ton of science improvements already.

The trade route bonus lets you start on that process a little sooner than everyone else, because you can afford to pay for happiness building maintenance. That translates into larger populations and more science. So you could look at your passive trade route bonus as something that is convertible (at the cost of some hammers) into a passive science bonus in disguise.

Either way, don't try to found cities to get income as Arabia. It won't work. You found cities to get other things; the passive trade bonus just helps you keep the books balanced when you do.
 
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