How do you manage happiness (specifically poverty and crime)?

[Darth Andrew]

Japan to my north and Greece to my south resulted in me taking several cities from each of them just to beat them into submission. I'm now in the Industrial Era, and I'm dealing with a combined ~40 unhappiness from poverty and crime, which has left me extremely close to the dreaded -20 overall Empire happiness turn after turn.

Did I expand too quickly, or what? I've built just about every poverty and crime-reducing building for every city, have garrisons in every city, and have tried to focus on Merchant specialists over others. But they haven't helped too much. Meanwhile Denmark is steamrolling out of control, and though it looks like he suffered a revolt once, he's fairly happier than me, is beating me in just about every demographic, and has way more cities. wat.

Help? I'm playing on Prince btw.

 

[Enginseer]

It is the tragedy of society that you will always have poverty and crime. The best thing you can do is to build villages and station Great Generals in cities that desperately need a crime reduction. Otherwise, you can avoid growth and slow down your unhappiness.

 

[CrazyG]

Religion can be a great source of happiness. Not just direct happiness beliefs, things like thrift or cathedrals can reduce poverty massively

 

[vyyt]

Pics or didn't happen

If you post a pic of your empire and the happiness breakdown, maybe people here will be able to help you more. I'd also specify the speed.

 

[Aldebaran1997]

Razing cities, avoiding growth, happiness policies, garrisoning. If tech level is high enough, kill civilians by only using specialists and laborers.

 

[Emufarmers]

Japan to my north and Greece to my south resulted in me taking several cities from each of them just to beat them into submission.

Next time, puppet the cities instead of annexing them. Puppeted cities come much closer to taking care of themselves in terms of happiness.

 

[Owlbebach]

Japan to my north and Greece to my south resulted in me taking several cities from each of them just to beat them into submission. I'm now in the Industrial Era, and I'm dealing with a combined ~40 unhappiness from poverty and crime, which has left me extremely close to the dreaded -20 overall Empire happiness turn after turn.

Did I expand too quickly, or what? I've built just about every poverty and crime-reducing building for every city, have garrisons in every city, and have tried to focus on Merchant specialists over others. But they haven't helped too much. Meanwhile Denmark is steamrolling out of control, and though it looks like he suffered a revolt once, he's fairly happier than me, is beating me in just about every demographic, and has way more cities. wat.

Help? I'm playing on Prince btw.

Poverty can be fixed by paving trade routes from the poorest cities, That helps a lot

 

[tu_79]

Industrial... Have you built constabularies? If not, your neighborhood surely have. This is a great source of crime for the period.
Having your cities settled on hills add a bit of defense, having garrisons with high strength also add defense. Not much, but noticeable in the long run. There's a religious building that adds defense, if a neighbour has it and you don't, your people feel scared.

For poverty, small population is usually the culprit. High population cities get incoming trade routes, specially when equipped with merchant buildings, and also get a bit from city connections. But if you are spreading your empire, your main source of gold is villages and towns, and seafaring buildings in coastal cities.

Anyways, see CrazyG recommendation. With religions you can make-up for the lack of happiness large empires have. Instead of fighting poverty, try searching for new sources of happiness : watch policies, explore the world, befriend some city states, trade for luxuries and you'll be golden.

 

[Darth Andrew]

It is the tragedy of society that you will always have poverty and crime. The best thing you can do is to build villages and station Great Generals in cities that desperately need a crime reduction. Otherwise, you can avoid growth and slow down your unhappiness.

Great Generals reduce crime more than a regular unit?

Religion can be a great source of happiness. Not just direct happiness beliefs, things like thrift or cathedrals can reduce poverty massively

Ah, that makes sense. I didn't have a religion at all (probably my first mistake) till I took Greece's holy city, and then I didn't choose any poverty-reducing beliefs.

Pics or didn't happen

If you post a pic of your empire and the happiness breakdown, maybe people here will be able to help you more. I'd also specify the speed.

I'm on Standard speed. Pics:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....600/19A10CE0D1CE42207D16CE9DCBC27CAB543C024C/
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd....808/73F0E86CF29AE61AC8B9D074FDFC05C7C04C9AAA/

Obviously I'm trying to get out of my war asap, but my warscore isn't high enough with Indonesia I guess.

Next time, puppet the cities instead of annexing them. Puppeted cities come much closer to taking care of themselves in terms of happiness.

Even more than after I've built a Courthouse in an annexed city?

Poverty can be fixed by paving trade routes from the poorest cities, That helps a lot

So having routes originate from poor cities? Do they need to be foreign trade routes, or internal ones too?

Industrial... Have you built constabularies? If not, your neighborhood surely have. This is a great source of crime for the period.
Having your cities settled on hills add a bit of defense, having garrisons with high strength also add defense. Not much, but noticeable in the long run. There's a religious building that adds defense, if a neighbour has it and you don't, your people feel scared.

For poverty, small population is usually the culprit. High population cities get incoming trade routes, specially when equipped with merchant buildings, and also get a bit from city connections. But if you are spreading your empire, your main source of gold is villages and towns, and seafaring buildings in coastal cities.

Anyways, see CrazyG recommendation. With religions you can make-up for the lack of happiness large empires have. Instead of fighting poverty, try searching for new sources of happiness : watch policies, explore the world, befriend some city states, trade for luxuries and you'll be golden.

Yeah, I've build Constabularies. So defense buildings help with crime too? I only have walls and castles in areas that I expect attacks.

 

[Enginseer]

Great Generals reduce crime more than a regular unit?

Great General improves the garrison's Combat Strength which also improves the Combat Strength of the City which reduces crime.

 

[Emufarmers]

Yeah, I've build Constabularies. So defense buildings help with crime too? I only have walls and castles in areas that I expect attacks.

For unhappiness, there's a target amount of a resource for you to produce in a city (increasing over time and multiplied by the number of citizens). The bigger the gap between what you produce and the target, the more unhappiness you have. Defense is treated as a resource for determining crime. Constabularies reduce the target amount, while defense buildings increase the amount of defense you "generate".

For other kinds of unhappiness, buildings often help you on both ends: a bank gives you extra gold production while also reducing the target gold amount.

So having routes originate from poor cities? Do they need to be foreign trade routes, or internal ones too?

Internal trade routes give food or production, rather than gold, so they won't help directly.

Even more than after I've built a Courthouse in an annexed city?

Like you, I was seduced by the free courthouse investment; experience (and reading these forums!) taught me the error of my ways.

As long as a city is puppeted, its target values are lower, so it will produce much less unhappiness. You won't have to spend all your money hurrying production in your conquered cities to keep up with ever-increasing demands; you can instead spend it on investments in your core cities to keep them happy.

 

[tu_79]

Controlling some of your conquests is not wrong. Just don't do it for all conquered cities.

 

[Grabbl]

Actually, your amount of poverty happiness is quite normal for the number of your cities, it is just crime that's getting over the top. Like Emufarmers explained, you need absolutely to build Walls and castles in all cities. Keep in mind also that you have 20 unhappiness from war weariness, so you will quickly come back into happiness when you finish your war(s).

Like you, I was seduced by the free courthouse investment; experience (and reading these forums!) taught me the error of my ways.

I'm so happy that I'm not the only one who was blinded by the courthouse investment

 

[cammcken]

Industrial... Have you built constabularies? If not, your neighborhood surely have. This is a great source of crime for the period.

Rival civilizations building constabularies won't affect your own crime. See below.

For unhappiness, there's a target amount of a resource for you to produce in a city (increasing over time and multiplied by the number of citizens).

This is a bit misleading.

IIRC (and if I understood correctly), the target amount of yield per turn per citizen needed (Aka 'Needs') is directly, if not exactly, related to the average amount per citizen produced by the entire world. So yes, it increases over time, because as tech increases the big cities will produce more and raise the average. Constabularies don't change the amount produced, so they won't change the average. Those percentile modifiers are only applied to the Needs of the city. Orders (the religious building), however, do change the amount produced.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Obviously I'm trying to get out of my war asap, but my warscore isn't high enough with Indonesia I guess.

Keep in mind, there's a period of time after you declare war and after you capture a major city where the AI will not even consider negotiating (I guess it's either becaus ehtey are 'too angry' or the CP team wants to prevent lightning surrenders.) If your warscore looks pretty high (>10), try to stop capturing cities and wait for a peace offer. You can pillage tiles and damage cities to improve your warscore.

 

[tu_79]

Rival civilizations building constabularies won't affect your own crime. See below.



This is a bit misleading.

IIRC (and if I understood correctly), the target amount of yield per turn per citizen needed (Aka 'Needs') is directly, if not exactly, related to the average amount per citizen produced by the entire world. So yes, it increases over time, because as tech increases the big cities will produce more and raise the average. Constabularies don't change the amount produced, so they won't change the average. Those percentile modifiers are only applied to the Needs of the city. Orders (the religious building), however, do change the amount produced.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.



Keep in mind, there's a period of time after you declare war and after you capture a major city where the AI will not even consider negotiating (I guess it's either becaus ehtey are 'too angry' or the CP team wants to prevent lightning surrenders.) If your warscore looks pretty high (>10), try to stop capturing cities and wait for a peace offer. You can pillage tiles and damage cities to improve your warscore.

Well, yes. It was not clear. Other civs constabularies don't increase your crime. I mean they build it, so their crime is lower.

 

[CrazyG]

Those pics make me think you are a pretty good job on all things, its just war wariness dragging you down. I bet if you just left some cities as puppets you would be fine

an important thing I learned is just because I have like 20 happiness right now, doesn't mean I can expand a bunch. happiness flucuates a lot during the game, and in this mod cities can grow very quickly

 

[Galbias]

Mercantile city states are often a good source. Make sure you're buying luxuries from everyone you can as long as the prices are reasonably fair.

Nara looks pretty crappy, getting rid of specific problematic cities is helpful if you can do it. That isn't always the case (you can't just gift someone a city and expect them to take it no questions asked, unlike in BNW; you might be able to gift/trade a taken city back to its original owner though). There's also razing but that's not much of an option while you're already in the red.

Filling specialist slots can sometimes help, but they do produce some unhappiness on their own so it may not, it's something you have to play with.

IIRC (and if I understood correctly), the target amount of yield per turn per citizen needed (Aka 'Needs') is directly, if not exactly, related to the average amount per citizen produced by the entire world. So yes, it increases over time, because as tech increases the big cities will produce more and raise the average. Constabularies don't change the amount produced, so they won't change the average. Those percentile modifiers are only applied to the Needs of the city. Orders (the religious building), however, do change the amount produced.

one correction, If I remember correctly it's actually the median, not the average.

 

[Darth Andrew]

Thanks for all the advice folks! It's helped immensely. And yeah after the war ended things started looking up.