How strong is a high excess happiness strategy?

[Galgus]

How worthwhile is it to maintain high excess for extra Golden Ages?

I tend to go down the Commerce tree and build Trading Posts on non-resource non-farm suited tiles, to better benefit from Golden Ages.


I play exlusively Marathon games on the casual Prince difficulty, because Civ for me is more about role-playing and watching a nation grow than beating down cheating AIs.

Because of this, I feel that I may not have a good grasp on optimal strategies to compare mine to.


I tend to expand past 4 cities only when I can buy all and buildings for it, so it gets on a good start.

Is it better to use excess to city spam, or is it worthwhile to go for high excess ?

 

[civ54lyfe]

if you're going to do a standard turtle-up-and-get-Culture kind of game, take Aesthetics to the policy where excess Happiness goes directly into Culture output. it's a beast, and the most direct way to actively use your extra Happy per turn.


wait, this might not be an Aesthetics policy but an Ideology (Freedom) policy. i forgot which.

 

[NyQuil]

It's Aesthetics - Fine Arts.

50% of excess Happiness added each turn to the amount of Culture that may be spent on Social Policies.

Got it in my last game.

 

[Galgus]

if you're going to do a standard turtle-up-and-get-Culture kind of game, take Aesthetics to the policy where excess Happiness goes directly into Culture output. it's a beast, and the most direct way to actively use your extra Happy per turn.


wait, this might not be an Aesthetics policy but an Ideology (Freedom) policy. i forgot which.

While I love for extra policies, Aesthetics only seems useful for getting tourism since it doesn't ever seem to pay for its own costs.

So I like , but I don't care about meeting victory conditions with tourism.


Wouldn't it make more sense to use that to get more and effectiveness out of Golden Age friendly Trading Posts in the Commerce tree?

Or the Golden Age boost from the Freedom tree?

 

[GamerFlair]

Yeah, I love it. Culture + Golden Ages = Yum.

I played a King OCC as Brazil over the last few nights. I clocked over 100 happiness by the end.

So yeah, on the lower difficulties its totally viable. Its probably worthwhile on higher if your running a Civ that gets GA boosts. Otherwise its comes down to the avaliable sites.

 

[civ54lyfe]

no yeah, doing Freedom things for Golden Ages is super (using Brazil as an example is kinda self-evident since Golden Ages is what they're supposed to do). the guy asked about using excess Happy directly. that was the one policy that directly uses excess Happy. normally in a turtle game if i do open Aesthetics for the Effuzi, i will often go to the Happy/Culture policy if the game is super manageable. normally a game like that would just bleed into a Tourism/Diplo victory, and i find Science suffers, even when i completed Rationalism prior to dipping into Aesthetics.

 

[Alziel]

And if you're going for a Culture Victory, the tier 3 Order tenet that boosts your Tourism with less happy civs is great too and another excellent reason to keep Happiness high (if that's your Ideology).

Brazil and Persia are two Civs that it's always worth using the excess happiness strategy with as well.

I love the excess happiness strategy and will always aim to send Happiness through the roof as my game goes on. It's effective for me every time (Emperor level).

 

[civ54lyfe]

isn't that kind of ol' skool now? both with the beta seeming to tone down lux sales, but also you shouldn't really need the mechanic by the time you're into your 2nd/3rd policy tree? i don't know how to min/max the higher levels but it seems that way. although, by mid-late game, my Golden Age counter is stupid high so it's kind of like Happiness is almost useless to try to hardcast more Golden's.

 

[Liegence]

I would use for Persia/Brazil, or if my strategy nets me Itza/Freedom. Trade lux for lux for extra happiness when you begin moving to GA and trade for gold while in your stacked Golden Ages. I've used this to great success mostly with happy-focused religions.

My last Venice game I was at 70-90 happiness throughout and enjoyed some very long golden ages.

 

[Galgus]

Generally better to sell luxury resources for gold and have less excess happiness, then to try and get an extra golden age.

I tend to have trouble finding buyers for my extra luxury resources, the AI at my level is terrible at managing an economy.

I don't even know how they manage to fail so badly.

 

[phillipwyllie]

A high excess happiness allows you to conquer more and absorb a high different ideological pressure more. I find the %50 of excess happiness added to culture output not so strong as by the time I'm at high happiness levels my culture might even top the 1k mark and even with a 100 happiness that' only gives 50 culture.

 

[kimadactyl]

Remember if you have the Rationalism opener that the excess happiness translates to extra science too! I like getting that and the culture one for basically 3 bonuses at once (culture, golden age, science).

 

[MadDjinn]

Remember if you have the Rationalism opener that the excess happiness translates to extra science too! I like getting that and the culture one for basically 3 bonuses at once (culture, golden age, science).

yeah, but you only need 1 happiness to get the rationalism bonus to kick in.


1/2 culture from happiness is very nice, even though it does top out at a low 50/turn. But, you can't really find anything else that will scale up to that culture output, so it's a nice SP choice if you're maintaining the high happiness (not to mention that getting into the golden age gives you even more culture on top of that).

Ofc, once you can no longer get into the 'next' golden age due to how long it would take, then high happiness is really there to stop ideology pressure from others (the happiness hit is absorbed) and let you conquer others.

If you're looking to grow super tall, then that excess happiness is just showing you how many pop you could have had if you tried to grow faster.

 

[kb27787]

Depends... if we're talking about 30-50 happiness then you could leave it as it is...
10-20 happiness might be gone the moment that tourism powerhouse picks an opposing ideology
100+ happiness means you probably forgot to grow/expand

 

[Zaimejs]

Does extra happiness get you anything? Do you grow more or do anything better when people are really, really happy?

 

[kb27787]

Does extra happiness get you anything? Do you grow more or do anything better when people are really, really happy?

not really... as far as growth is concerned happy is happy
golden ages come by more often if you are more happy though... and some bonuses such as 50% happiness to culture, or +34% tourism to less happy civs are available through SP.

However, you want a happiness buffer (after all each pop will decrease happiness by 1, 0.5 in capitol with tradition SP which is why you should focus your growth on your capitol) such that your happiness is not teetering in the single digits... (just in case of coups on your mercantile CS, DoWs which cancel trade deals, WC bans on your main trading lux, etc. you don't want rebels to spawn just because of that)

 

[Gort]

Maximising your happiness is a no-brainer in any strategy. The bonuses for excess happiness are pretty slight, even if you take the one that gives 50% happiness to your culture.

I would FAR rather have a point of population than a point of extra happiness, though, so the strategy should really be to get as much happiness as possible, WHILE getting as many people as possible, which is easiest to do by maximising growth and food bonuses.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Actually I've though of a good reason for a high excess happiness and that's golden Ages. Getting Golden Ages late in the game when your culture is high makes more sense than say early on when you're building your empire.

Consider this strategy:
You only build happiness buildings if your empire is unhappy, and only enough to break even. You only trade lux for lux, trying your best to maintain relations. Hopefully you wont have had too many golden ages. When your culture(and hopefully your gpt) is high you go mad and build every happiness building and trade for every lux you can. You might be able to string along consecutive golden ages. In my last game Songhai did this only building the Colosseum(cant quote on other buildings as I took it shortly after) in Goa in the modern age.

 

[Gort]

If you can afford to put off building happiness buildings, you're not expanding or growing your cities large enough. More population will always beat more excess happiness.

 

[Resipsa]

1/2 culture and increased frequencies in golden ages are kind of a consolation to either growing or trading you happiness for gold. My philosophy is that if your people are too happy you aren't profiting enough off of it, or growing enough either by working food and growing cities tall, expanding or conquering.