How does the ai manage happiness?

[melpolo]

Hi people! I'm a really a newbie and still struggle on prince, but my problem was always about dealing with unhappiness. I like expanding a lot, but never could manage it without a really low approval. The thing is how does the ai do it?

Like in the image Russia has six cities which makes 18 unhappiness, and the total pop is 29, so that makes 47 unhappiness right?

But her happiness should be:
(1) 12 from three luxury resources: whales, dye and imported wine (I use Infoaddict mod
(2) Up to 11 happiness if there is a colosseum in every single city.
(3) Her social polices are liberty 4 and honour 1. She probably has meritocracy ( 1 happiness per trade route). She could have up to 5 happiness from each city (if she managed to build harbors on those two islands which I just managed to research now)
(4) 9 base happiness from start of the game.
(5) Maybe a few from natural wonders but I rarely saw her scout. Let's say around 3.

That still makes her negative doesn't it? But info addict tells me she has a net happiness of 1. I think I'm missing out on something.

 

[Rpger29]

Don't forget that the AI plays with settler level happiness bonuses. They basically don't have to worry about happiness at all - just settle near one new luxury and they're gtg.

 

[Ajuga]

Don't forget that the AI plays with settler level happiness bonuses. They basically don't have to worry about happiness at all - just settle near one new luxury and they're gtg.

Not entirely correct.




I found this little thing: Civ5 Difficulties and it tells that an AI always get the chieftain player bonus no matter what difficulty level you play on. At the same time it will get the penalty/bonus from whatever difficulty you pick. (Or at least that's how I interpret it.)

So on Prince difficulty their base happiness is still 12 and their unhappiness from both cities and population is only 60%.
They don't get an additional bonus on prince (as it states 100%) so that means that the unhappiness modifier is 60% x 100% = 60% (0.6 x 1)

If you would play on immortal the unhappiness modifier would be 60% x 75% = 45% (0.6 x 0.75).
If you would play on deity the unhappiness modifier would be 60% x 60% = 36% (0.6 x 0.6).

I'm fairly certain I have interpreted it correctly but you might want to wait for somebody else to confirm. At the very least it would match with what you describe regarding the happiness of the AI.

To simplify it: the ai always gets more happiness so like the person above me said, they don't have to worry about it.
It's most likely a compensation for the ai as it's not as intelligent as a human.

 

[melpolo]

Oh wow.. thanks a lot. That's exactly the info I needed. I suppose it does balance things out though it's annoying how they can spam cities without much constraint.

Awesome site by the way.

 

[gozpel]

The AI gets like 30 happy more than you from the beginning - on any level.

 

[FeiLing]

They basically don't have to worry about happiness at all - just settle near one new snow (or better tile) and they're gtg.

fixed.

 

[Resident Mario]

fixed.

I lol'd.

 

[Rpger29]

fixed.

Nice. It does feel that way sometimes, and they sure do settle some absolutely crappy cities like that too.

Edit: I always get settler/chieftan mixed up.