How to stay Happy while attempting World Domination

[bigwinw]

I would like to know the best strategy for keeping you civilization happy while trying to take over the world.

A few ways I have found to do this are.

Be sure you build The Forbidden Palace - 50% less Unhappy from population
If you do choose to take over the city build a Courthouse - Eliminates the Unhappiness from annexing enemy cities
Trade luxuries every 30 turns when possible.

Choose Policies like:
Piety - +2 Happy
Piety -> Theocary - -20% unhappiness from population in non-captured cities, requires Organized Religion
Commerce -> Protectionism - +1 Happy from each Luxury Resource
Rationalism -> Humanism - +1 Happiness from every University
Autocracy -> Police State - -50% Unhappiness in Occupied Cities

Obviously you need to build all the Happy buildings that you can in each city.

One strategy I have not tried yet is to puppet the captured city first until the production is better. Then take control of it and build a courthouse. Then you have the control to create the Happy buildings that they may or may not have choose to do as a puppet.

The other choice is to Raze all the cities once you have your core 10-25 cities (unless it offers resources that are strategic or luxury).

I would like to know what other peoples strategies are for keeping everyone happy.

 

[biohazard72]

Meritocracy, Colosseum in every city (rarely Theatres, they are less efficient). Forbidden Palace if possible, then Planned Economy in Order. Get as many luxuries as possible via war/expansion, trade spares for ones you can't feasibly war to get. That's usually enough to keep happiness positive, although dips into unhappy will occur if your expansion is aggressive. Puppets are annexed slowly usually after FP goes online and happiness is in the positive teens.

Theocracy I only like if I'm planning on completely Piety, because the prereq for it is complete garbage and I don't like to waste policies.

Try to straddle the line between unhappy and very unhappy while conquering, and the first build for puppets should be Colosseum, which helps.

I should mention that Freedom is also very good, if you have decent sized cities that can run specialists (scientists). Usually it's a solid choice, unless running an extreme ICS strategy. If you go this route, consider running a specialist economy by getting the righthand policies of Freedom for less food requirement and faster GP spawning, or Rationalism's bonus science for specialists.

 

[Paeanblack]

I would like to know the best strategy for keeping you civilization happy while trying to take over the world.

A few ways I have found to do this are.

Be sure you build The Forbidden Palace - 50% less Unhappy from population
If you do choose to take over the city build a Courthouse - Eliminates the Unhappiness from annexing enemy cities
Trade luxuries every 30 turns when possible.

Choose Policies like:
Piety - +2 Happy
Piety -> Theocary - -20% unhappiness from population in non-captured cities, requires Organized Religion
Commerce -> Protectionism - +1 Happy from each Luxury Resource
Rationalism -> Humanism - +1 Happiness from every University
Autocracy -> Police State - -50% Unhappiness in Occupied Cities

Obviously you need to build all the Happy buildings that you can in each city.

One strategy I have not tried yet is to puppet the captured city first until the production is better. Then take control of it and build a courthouse. Then you have the control to create the Happy buildings that they may or may not have choose to do as a puppet.

Forbidden Palace is always equal to +1 Happy per city, despite what the description may lead you to believe. Planned Economy is the same effect.

Meritocracy is the strongest +Happiness policy for large empires.

Freedom can also be a very strong +Happiness policy...stronger than any of the Piety/Commerce/Patronage ones.

Happiness is what constrains your empire size. If you are having problems with happiness, it means you are either expanding as fast as you can (good) or not targeting luxuries, SPs, and key techs (bad). Happiness alone won't tell you what is going on...you need to dig deeper.

Also, never annex a city unless it is for a short-term tactical reason. Any city you do annex should be razed and resettled quickly. A Courthouse is never worth constructing.

 

[bigwinw]

A Courthouse is never worth constructing.

Why is this? My assumption was that

Controlled City + Courthouse = Puppet City.

Is this not true?

 

[bigwinw]

Controlled City + Courthouse = Puppet City.

I guess I should clarify myself and say Happiness wise I thought they were equal.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

I guess I should clarify myself and say Happiness wise I thought they were equal.

A courthouse in a captured city makes that city equal to all the other cities in your empire. So unless there's a good reason not to raise the city (it has a useful wonder, has huge boarders in a boarder city, or a lot of building survived). Otherwise you're better off raising the city if you annex or are going to annex so you don't have to pay the 5 GPT of the courthouse and waste the production time of the courthouse.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

It's only worthwhile to build courthouses in cities with 8 or more population after they have been taken over, but even then they need to have some sort of strategic advantage for you. Otherwise, the 40 some turns it can sometimes take to build a courthouse you can settle a new city and build a granary there.

5GPT is a big deal. All it does is get rid of occupation unhappiness. It doesn't get rid of population happiness. Why even deal with occupation unhappiness?

A little bit more time yields a more profitable city, although that city may be smaller.

I'm not convinced on courthouses on anything but capitals or Indian cities. India tends to have huge cities.

ETA: Here's how my math goes.

25-40 turns+5gpt=removal of occupation unhappiness.

OR

25-40turns+2gpt=removal of occupation unhappiness, population, add granary.

Although it may take 60-70 turns to get up to, say, 4-5 population, you no longer have to deal with occupation unhappiness in that city can can instead devote that 5gpt to growth related things or happiness related things. A granary plus a colosseum is far better than a courthouse.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

It's only worthwhile to build courthouses in cities with 8 or more population after they have been taken over, but even then they need to have some sort of strategic advantage for you. Otherwise, the 40 some turns it can sometimes take to build a courthouse you can settle a new city and build a granary there.

5GPT is a big deal. All it does is get rid of occupation unhappiness. It doesn't get rid of population happiness. Why even deal with occupation unhappiness?

A little bit more time yields a more profitable city, although that city may be smaller.

I'm not convinced on courthouses on anything but capitals or Indian cities. India tends to have huge cities.

The only exceptions to this is wonders/large boarders for a city neighboring a Civ you don't plan on attacking anyway.

If you take over a city with Stonehenge that's 8 CPT and a courthouse is easily worth the 5 GPT of a courthouse. Now it's not worth keeping a city that has only the Great Library because that single use wonder (and many others like it) don't provide lasting benefits except a few culture per turn (but these are good to keep as puppets).

For a boarder city if it's later in the game purchasing tiles the city already has can add up to several hundred gold, which can buy a lot of turns of courthouse maintenance and your neighbor will complain about you buying tiles that he thinks are his.

 

[bigwinw]

To keep you empire happy when killing everyone off do you Raze every city unless it posses a strategic advantage?

 

[Kaxeon]

Don't raze the captured cities unless they are very small or very badly placed.

While it does take a while to construct a courthouse, and it will cost you maintenance, remember that more pop = more science, more production and more gold. Probably more land as well.

Razing is only necessary if you haven't managed your happiness well enough, and you hit the combat penalty threshold.

 

[fed1943]

To OP:

Piety and Rationalism cannot be active at same time.

 

[WeaselSlapper]

Don't raze the captured cities unless they are very small or very badly placed.

While it does take a while to construct a courthouse, and it will cost you maintenance, remember that more pop = more science, more production and more gold. Probably more land as well.

Razing is only necessary if you haven't managed your happiness well enough, and you hit the combat penalty threshold.

While this is true on low difficulty settings it's not necessarily true on King+ where maintaining balanced happiness is much more difficult. While expanding on Emperor and Immortal I almost always run at near zero happiness, in fact in my last Emperor win I won a domination game and didn't get a single GA from happiness. Granted I was trying to avoid it early by selling my luxuries, but later when I wanted it I couldn't maintain net happiness long enough or high enough to get to the GA.

 

[Kaxeon]

While this is true on low difficulty settings it's not necessarily true on King+ where maintaining balanced happiness is much more difficult. While expanding on Emperor and Immortal I almost always run at near zero happiness, in fact in my last Emperor win I won a domination game and didn't get a single GA from happiness. Granted I was trying to avoid it early by selling my luxuries, but later when I wanted it I couldn't maintain net happiness long enough or high enough to get to the GA.

Haven't played on deity yet, but I feel I can manage my happiness fairly easily on immortal. I prefer to play on emperor though, because I believe higher levels destroys certain aspects of the game. Early wonders is one of them.

Expand early -> rebuild your happiness -> blitz an enemy -> rebuild happiness -> repeat.

Of course, if you are doing NOTHING but war, you might have to raze more cities than otherwise.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Is it better to have a large number of moderately good cities, or a handfull of really good cities and a vast sprawl of size 1 placeholders?

 

[bigwinw]

Is it better to have a large number of moderately good cities, or a handfull of really good cities and a vast sprawl of size 1 placeholders?

If you have traits like

Meritocracy - +1 happiness for each city connected to the capital, requires Citizenship

then if you can build a lot of small cities that might help. Those small cities only focus on happy production and then maybe science.

 

[qyll]

I do three things:

1) Get Forbidden Palace
2) Spam trading posts, settling new cities and rushbuy coliseums ASAP for a net +1 happiness
3) Claim all luxury resources either by settling or allying with CS

These three things have kept me away from -10 happiness for many many games. Granted, I'll sometimes dip into that range when I puppet big cities (I always puppet cities and rarely raze), but it goes away soon enough. Planned economy is nice but often comes too late to make much of a difference for me.

 

[harry_flashman]

Another thing to bear in mind when razing a city is that it doesn't seem to go down too well with the other ai's. Mind you probably weren't being too polite in dowing in the first place, so there's every chance you don't give a monkeys what your other victims think of you.

 

[zuraffo]

Meritocracy is the strongest +Happiness policy for large empires.

Nope, it is not the strongest. It is possibly the earliest one you can get, but not the strongest. It gives (#ofcities -1) happiness, while planned economy give #ofcities happiness. And if you are running 2 specialists per city, Freedom gives better bonus too. Then there's military caste, which also gives the same bonus (effectively).

And then there's a policy under rationalism which gives +1 happiness per university, which CAN give you the same bonus.

Also theocracy gives more when you have above 4 population per city on average.

 

[Kaxeon]

Also theocracy gives more when you have above 4 population per city on average.

Which makes it the strongest happiness policy in almost all situations.

 

[glaivemaster]

I've found Police State in Autocracy to be very worth while Played a game recently in which I conuered the Iroquois and discovered that at a certain point (earlier than you might think) an Occupied city actually produces *less* unhappiness than a puppet city (and presumably, therefore, less unhappiness than a built city of its caliber). Razing all the smaller, rubbish cities that you take and letting the others grow to about 6 population (I think it was around there, or maybe 8) and you don't have to worry about Occupation penalties so much whilst keeping a decent empire

Then focus on building/buying happiness buildings in the cities you conquer and you're set