How to maintain happiness while your empire grows?

[SirIsaacNewton]

Hello Everybody! I have a problem with happiness on King. I played Prince until I was satisfied I could handle King, but since this advance in difficulty I have had a problem with happiness. It seems it is harder to keep your civ happy while expanding your empire. Each time I found a new city, or my population grows, my population gets unhappy. I try to build buildings that produce happiness, but my efforts don't yield very much result, especially when I'm trying to build science / culture / productivity buildings at the same time. Should I switch focus from technological and financial buildings to just keep my civ happy? Because happiness is not going to kill invading barbarians

Also, my preferred social policies are, Liberty, Commerce and Rationalism. Is there another social policy that would yield more happiness? Any help would be much appreciated!

 

[Sherlock]

How many cities are we talking about? I try to have two, then puppet anything I take.

 

[A Rabid Dopsis]

Commerce shouldn't really be anyone's preferred policy. If you're not going science victory then piety is pretty good for happiness.

Also, don't go nuts with the cities. Happiness is there to prevent you spamming them.

 

[AfterShafter]

All that going significantly red in the unhappiness tells me is that I'm expanding too fast in the wrong while picking the wrong social policies.

First off, don't annex too many foreign cities - create more puppets as you go to war, and maybe just annex capitals or such. Second, make sure your empire isn't too big to begin with - I actually only build between 3 and 6 cities most game, and by game's end, have annexed 2 to 3 more tops. Third, actively trade excess resources for happiness resources. Fourth, grab happiness policies and utilize them. Fifth, happiness buildings. Sixth, even bribing - or puppeting - a city state for a happiness resource doesn't necessarily hurt.

Add to this an early focus on happiness resources... If you build four cities initially, at least three of them should have access to a happiness resource - and preferably all of them.

Next time you play a game, take whatever general order of doing things you're using now, and change one item from a culture/tech/military focus over to a happiness focus, be it a tech path, social policy focus, or otherwise. Rinse and repeat until your empire is more optimally balanced. You'll lose some things you think you need, but, you'll find out you don't actually need them at that point and your empire will turn into a larger, more stable base, allowing you to catch up for lost ground faster in the later game.

Oh, last note... Happiness deficits are not the end of the world. In fact, they're a great stopping mechanism. In Civ IV, if your empire went south in some major area, you often had to sell your soul to get out of the pit you found yourself in - in Civ V, when your empire is unhappy, it just stops growing until you fix things. Your empire can do just fine for a while without constant growth, and depending on what type of game you're playing, you should expect to end up in the red from time to time.

 

[buchengshi]

You're doing something wrong if you're suddenly having happiness problems. Go back to doing what you did when playing on Prince.

Before you go saying that wasn't helpful, keep the following in mind:
Happniess breaks down as follows (on standard map):
3 unhappiness per city
1 unhappniess per population
On Prince, you get +9 happiness from the difficulty level.

Move the difficulty up to King, and the numbers are identical.

 

[Shmike]

Also, don't go nuts with the cities. Happiness is there to prevent you spamming them.

It doesn't prevent the A.I from spamming 4 tiles away from each city.
You kind of have to expand a lot because population = science (stupidest thing ever) and with multiple cities with libraries, that's a huge lead in science. It's really hard to out tech them, I managed to do it a few times but recently I've been having trouble. Happiness is the most annoying factor for me.

 

[A Rabid Dopsis]

It doesn't prevent the A.I from spamming 4 tiles away from each city.
You kind of have to expand a lot because population = science (stupidest thing ever) and with multiple cities with libraries, that's a huge lead in science. It's really hard to out tech them, I managed to do it a few times but recently I've been having trouble. Happiness is the most annoying factor for me.

Really? I've found a tall empire is excellent for science. My last science win was Catherine at emperor with a grand total of 5 cities.

 

[drivebyposter]

I have never won a diplo, cultural or science victory. All I have ever done is domination. I play on level 7 diff these days. I don't know if it can be done as easily with this new patch since poor warmongers like myself are penalized by no longer having a courthouse give + 6 insteand it's only +3

The keys to happiness and you'll never really have much. You'll always be sweating it until the end. Your cities will never get about size 18 or so either.

Build your first 3-4 cities spread out bodly going for luxury resources and then iron. You are basically saying, "This is where my borders will be."

The exact strategy is here.

Go liberty for your first policy tree and the only one you'll finish. You may be tempted to do honor as a warmonger, but don't. The -10% , +1 per trade route and free great person are too big to pass up.

Try to time your technology after beelining iron working to get theology and then education. The cool thing is that you should finish Liberty right around the same time.
First, build Hagia Sophia. +25% GP generation and another free great person which you will use to select a new engineer for

Notre Dame +10 This will get your first big expansion in . Either wait for your cities to grow up or use it to take a couple of large cities.

Another way to go is to wait for the Forbidden Palace and now get -20% , but I seem to have a hard time getting it. I usually just have to hope it's close by and assume I'll take it later.

Next, go with honor. Take the policies on the right hand side (I don't know their names) and you'll end up with -33% on upgrades and +1 for every defensive building. This is huge all at once at least +14 if you're doing warmongering correctly. You'll also save tons of gold on upgrading your most excellently experienced army and navy. Defensive buildings are great too as they add numbers to your army making it easier to get peace deals and scare your enemies. The best thing about them is no maintenance costs. (Unless that's something they "fixed" in this patch too). That, and +10% combat for having troops next to one another and +1 per unit that is fortified in a city. Now, go and do that voodoo that you do so well and make your enemies pay for thinking your army is smaller than theirs.

By the time you're done with that, you should be ready for autocracy. (Make sure you're in the industrial era) Get to the upgrade that gives you +3 for every courthouse. At that point, you'll get a massive dump. If you have captured 15 cities, that's +45 all at once around the time you're researching fertilizer. Watch your cities go from around size 12-7 to around 18-12. Now you're cooking with gas production wise.

Coming up to the end of the game,

Abandon autocracy. You may be tempted to go for double resources, but there's probably no need. If your aluminum sources are dire and you have no way of getting more, bribe or attack a city state. You'll never even need nukes. Stealth bombers/jet fighters and rocket artillery will finish the job. Go to rationalism and take the ones on the right that get you +1 for each university and public school. And now the game is over as you have just likely gained another + 20-30 from your massive sprawling empire.

And win.

 

[drivebyposter]

It doesn't prevent the A.I from spamming 4 tiles away from each city.
You kind of have to expand a lot because population = science (stupidest thing ever) and with multiple cities with libraries, that's a huge lead in science. It's really hard to out tech them, I managed to do it a few times but recently I've been having trouble. Happiness is the most annoying factor for me.

Put your armies in the field and kill/capture anything that comes from the ai. If they are stronger, take your new worker and retreat to your capital and wait for their armies to come. The ai usually won't settle cites while at war until they are desperate. And then, they'll send them out unprotected.

That's how I get almost all my workers. Also, don't ever make peace with them until you have what lands you want settled.

 

[Adjuvant]

I play king difficulty alot because it's the "easiest difficulty with which I can still have fun". Congrats on bumping yourself to a higher difficulty, and honestly emperor is a very small step above.

I play varied styles, try different policy branches often and win consistently in each victory condition. Happiness will be an issue if you're not "playing well with what you're given". There are too many examples to cite to illustrate this, but I'll throw a few guidelines I use.

1. You don't need size 6-8 cities early. I find a capitol with 4-5 population and a handful of 2-4 population to be optimal by medieval era. IF you have size 6-8 population cities early, generally you're only "feeding people just to keep them happy". You should "crop" your cities, maintaining the best production and income. For example a size 3 city with 1 productive farm plot, 1 productive hammer/income plot (gem, gold silver mine?) and 1 1-food, maybe 1 hammer, 2 gold plot is about optimal. For this city I'm not getting "punished by happiness" and getting good yield for producing units/building.

2. But how many cities? This becomes situational. The first obvious factor will be the number of luxury resources available. The next factor will be proximity to other civs. If I hurry to build total 4-5 cities, I might get early grab on luxuries, but I risk enraging surrounding civs to dow me for "building too many". If I build a city in very close proximity to another civ, I'm pretty much begging him to attack me, so I probably don't want to build 2 more quickly and give other nearby civs good reason to ally him and attack me en-masse. I guess there are no strict guidelines here, and I kinda do it by "feel". Sometimes I play a military game early and it actually benefits me to push other civs to dow me. Beating the crap out of one generally makes the others shut up. I'm digressing...

3. Policies. If you have the space and you want to rock a solid, peaceful start, 4 total cities by 1000BC is about optimal, using freedom. Some people see this as the "only way" because the benefits are clear and easy, but it's not. As a matter of fact if I'm given loads of hills and mountains it's a backwards way to play, because ultimately my food will suffer, and worse if I have raging barbs enabled, or additional AI's added for a very "compact game". I'll let you play around with that on your own and recognize the strong long term benefits of tradition, or the military benefits of honor, especially if given few river, camp or fish tiles and I'm not playing a "Bob the builder" game.

4. "Bob the builder games". Many players want to stack tons of buildings in every city. I guess on lower difficulties this is entirely possible, but as difficulty rises you need to specialize your cities. I've won games very easily with catherine (my little pony) and temujin (golden horde) on any map size building next to nothing in any "secondary cities" except units. It just works, and it's fun as a diversion, but the perfect balance is city "specialization" wherein I have (of, say 10 cities mid game) 1 or 2 science cities (usually capitol but not always! a city by a mountain surrounded by 4-5 jungle plots and adequate food is amazing science), 1 or 2 currency cities (by rivers, with camps, sea resources, mints) and the rest as many hammers as possible, for building wonders, but especially units. Sneaking a "great person city" among these is a must, in my opinion. This city will have ample population and the necessary buildings/wonders to really crank out whichever great people are applicable for your aimed victory condition.

I know this post turned out more as a general "how to", but really happiness is a fundamental aspect of the game and relies on all of these factors. Additionally, don't forget...

5. "Happiness? Who cares?" Happiness leads to growth and golden ages, and to a lesser extent better production, BUT if I don't care if my population grows, if I can get occasional golden ages from wonders/great people, and if I've cropped my cities correctly yielding adequate hammers even with a slight penalty, my only real worry will be the "happiness hit" from capturing the next capitol I can't raze and eventually those little barbarians that spawn from civil unrest (4 red tanks spawn in my borders! what!). If I'm mindful, and not "driving my empire into the ground", there are always quick fixes, from quickly bought courthouses and coliseums, to demanded resources from piss-ant neighbors, to the next anticipated policy (humanism in "Bob" games anyone?).

You can build happiness, you can buy happiness, you can militarily seize or demand happiness, you can gain happiness from city state friends, but always, always anticipate your next action's effects on happiness.

 

[ChrisRobin]

You're doing something wrong if you're suddenly having happiness problems. Go back to doing what you did when playing on Prince.

Before you go saying that wasn't helpful, keep the following in mind:
Happniess breaks down as follows (on standard map):
3 unhappiness per city
1 unhappniess per population
On Prince, you get +9 happiness from the difficulty level.

Move the difficulty up to King, and the numbers are identical.

Its weird, cause im having the same problem om King. Ive experienced Cathrine having 10-15 cities (all with russian names, so no annexed cities), but i dont know how she does it!

Maybe ive become high on the bulb:S
I think its about timing though, not expanding to quick!

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

It's common knowledge hat the AI has access to "happiness cheats"

 

[ChrisRobin]

I play king difficulty alot because it's the "easiest difficulty with which I can still have fun". Congrats on bumping yourself to a higher difficulty, and honestly emperor is a very small step above.

I play varied styles, try different policy branches often and win consistently in each victory condition. Happiness will be an issue if you're not "playing well with what you're given". There are too many examples to cite to illustrate this, but I'll throw a few guidelines I use.

1. You don't need size 6-8 cities early. I find a capitol with 4-5 population and a handful of 2-4 population to be optimal by medieval era. IF you have size 6-8 population cities early, generally you're only "feeding people just to keep them happy". You should "crop" your cities, maintaining the best production and income. For example a size 3 city with 1 productive farm plot, 1 productive hammer/income plot (gem, gold silver mine?) and 1 1-food, maybe 1 hammer, 2 gold plot is about optimal. For this city I'm not getting "punished by happiness" and getting good yield for producing units/building.

2. But how many cities? This becomes situational. The first obvious factor will be the number of luxury resources available. The next factor will be proximity to other civs. If I hurry to build total 4-5 cities, I might get early grab on luxuries, but I risk enraging surrounding civs to dow me for "building too many". If I build a city in very close proximity to another civ, I'm pretty much begging him to attack me, so I probably don't want to build 2 more quickly and give other nearby civs good reason to ally him and attack me en-masse. I guess there are no strict guidelines here, and I kinda do it by "feel". Sometimes I play a military game early and it actually benefits me to push other civs to dow me. Beating the crap out of one generally makes the others shut up. I'm digressing...

3. Policies. If you have the space and you want to rock a solid, peaceful start, 4 total cities by 1000BC is about optimal, using freedom. Some people see this as the "only way" because the benefits are clear and easy, but it's not. As a matter of fact if I'm given loads of hills and mountains it's a backwards way to play, because ultimately my food will suffer, and worse if I have raging barbs enabled, or additional AI's added for a very "compact game". I'll let you play around with that on your own and recognize the strong long term benefits of tradition, or the military benefits of honor, especially if given few river, camp or fish tiles and I'm not playing a "Bob the builder" game.

4. "Bob the builder games". Many players want to stack tons of buildings in every city. I guess on lower difficulties this is entirely possible, but as difficulty rises you need to specialize your cities. I've won games very easily with catherine (my little pony) and temujin (golden horde) on any map size building next to nothing in any "secondary cities" except units. It just works, and it's fun as a diversion, but the perfect balance is city "specialization" wherein I have (of, say 10 cities mid game) 1 or 2 science cities (usually capitol but not always! a city by a mountain surrounded by 4-5 jungle plots and adequate food is amazing science), 1 or 2 currency cities (by rivers, with camps, sea resources, mints) and the rest as many hammers as possible, for building wonders, but especially units. Sneaking a "great person city" among these is a must, in my opinion. This city will have ample population and the necessary buildings/wonders to really crank out whichever great people are applicable for your aimed victory condition.

I know this post turned out more as a general "how to", but really happiness is a fundamental aspect of the game and relies on all of these factors. Additionally, don't forget...

5. "Happiness? Who cares?" Happiness leads to growth and golden ages, and to a lesser extent better production, BUT if I don't care if my population grows, if I can get occasional golden ages from wonders/great people, and if I've cropped my cities correctly yielding adequate hammers even with a slight penalty, my only real worry will be the "happiness hit" from capturing the next capitol I can't raze and eventually those little barbarians that spawn from civil unrest (4 red tanks spawn in my borders! what!). If I'm mindful, and not "driving my empire into the ground", there are always quick fixes, from quickly bought courthouses and coliseums, to demanded resources from piss-ant neighbors, to the next anticipated policy (humanism in "Bob" games anyone?).

You can build happiness, you can buy happiness, you can militarily seize or demand happiness, you can gain happiness from city state friends, but always, always anticipate your next action's effects on happiness.

Fantastic guide - I'll be re-thinking my priorities from now on.

I also just "upgraded" to King, but I'm having problems keeping up with the opponents expansion and keep my happiness. I now realize I'm a "Bob", and maybe its not always so good

I see the CPU Russia usually goes liberty. I want to do so too, and finish with order (making a big Soviet-like empire). Should i pick up tradition as well?

 

[Unresolved]

I usually have some happiness issues early on when I settle my 3rd and 4th cities. But I almost never have happiness issues once I get Notre Dame and/or the Eiffel Tower. Combine that with some of the strong happiness policies in the late social trees and you can have some relatively high happiness values.

 

[Matthew.]

The buy cost reduction in Commerce is excellent. Not to mention the reduction on roads really adds up as well. I agree for those running the 4 city Tradition, but for sprawling domination games, commerce is a huge boon. I almost never hard train aircraft or naval, relying on gold to purchase. Big Ben + Mercantilism is a lot of gold saved.

 

[Smokeybear]

Bribe Mercantile city states, you don't even have to become allies with them if you can't afford it or if you don't want to get on the bad side of other civs already allied to them- just getting friendly with them earns you +3 happiness, then all you have to do is give them minor bribes again each time they are about to drop to neutral again.

 

[joncnunn]

Main cause of Hapiness problems on King is expanding too fast:

Running a 2 City National College helps a lot with this: Faster science -> faster access to happiness structures.

Next, until Maximus Circus is built only found a city being in a unique luxury, resource, or natural wonder.

After that is built, then expand to bring in extra copies of luxuries to sell.

As to policies, in G&K I prefer Tradition. This includes a major happiness boost to the capital.

Commerce: On a water based map, I like the left side.

Rationalism: My favorite policy overall.

 

[Biologist]

I am currently learning to play on Emperor. Here are some general things I do to combat unhappiness. I usually play wide, so happiness is one of the biggest limiting factors to my gameplan.

1) In the early game you should give potential city sites with new (to your civ) luxuries a higher priority. The same goes for potential conquests.

2) Puppet captured cities if you intend to keep them, you can always annex them later when your happiness situation is more stable. Cities you've just captured are in "resistance" and useless for micromanagement anyway.

3) If you are playing wide (5+ settled or annexed cities), take Meritocracy from the Liberty tree and connect all your cities with trade routes. If you are playing tall, take Tradition and get the Monarchy policy.

4) Unless you have a specific reason to choose Honor, I would recommend taking Commerce or Rationalism as your second policy tree. Each of those trees contains one policy that will improve your happiness.

5) Befriend Mercantile City States. You don't even need to ally them (although that helps because they always have luxuries). Just being Friendly with them gives extra happiness per turn.

6) If you have a wide empire and make the Industrial age, taking the first policy of Order as soon as possible is always a good idea. 1 global happiness per city really adds up if you have 20 cities, and the bonus applies to puppets too.

7) Build circuses wherever you can and whenever appropriate. +2 happiness for no maintenance fee is more helpful than it looks. Also build stoneworks wherever you can, as appropriate.

8) Choose beliefs such as Ascetism, Ceremonial Burial, or Pagodas that can be used to generate additional happiness for your empire. In fact, Pagodas are an awesome, maintenance-free way to increase happiness while also boosting faith. Some Pantheons, such as Goddess of Love can be helpful in generating happiness as well (although GoL is better for empires where most cities can be expected to reach 6 population).

9) If you are going to annex a large number of captured cities, you may want to consider Autocracy to reduce the cost of building/buying courthouses. I'm not sure the benefits outweigh those of Order, though.

I hope something in this list is helpful to you. I find it helps to think of "Happiness" as "Stability", and try not to do things that might destabilize your empire (e.g. annex 10 cities at once).

Edit: I failed to mention that Honor has two policies that increase happiness. One increases happiness for each city with a garrisoned unit, and the other adds a happiness bonus to defensive buildings. That said, if your strategy is not military-focused, you may still want to take Commerce or Rationalism instead because of the broader bonuses they grant.

 

[lithium97]

only thing i'd add here is, if you go wide don't be afraid to sell a useless city (typically the ones that the AI sells to you in exchange for peace). I sell those cities to a non-threatening AI in exchange for a luxury or cash.