Is Happiness in a good place/direction?

[ElliotS]

I think it's undeniable that @Gazebo has been pushing happiness in a direction where it's a factor in your choices all game long. He's increased the penalties and decreased the amount you get. The stated goal (IIRC) is to keep happiness between 20 and -20 on average all game. Gazebo doesn't like late games with 80 happiness on everyone, and has been effective in fixing it. (If not done yet. I've seen Deity AIs sitting on tons of happiness many times recently.)

So what I want to ask: Does this change improve your gameplay experience?

When @BiteInTheMark first brought it up I thought "well obviously he just doesn't like the happiness system". However now that I'm giving it more thought I'm not sure if this intense focus on happiness is actually conducive to a fun game.

Does happiness require too much attention? Does it make building orders less flexible and less strategic? (Just an act of looking at needs and building to satisfy them, rather than more interesting strategies.)

This is a very subjective thing, so please give this some thought and chime in. I'd like to get another good and productive conversation going. Let's keep it civil.

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

I haven't played the new patch thoroughly yet, but I'm of the opinion that the VP is going in the right direction happiness-wise. Happiness/unhappiness should be a huge factor in the game, historically- and gameplay-wise.

I think there are many buildings and ways of ensuring you have enough happiness that are also beneficial for other things, so that it doesn't feel like you're constantly building something simply for the sake of (un)happiness. The recent change to puppets also means that for the warmongers it's easier now to get big empires without having to micromanage due to (un)happiness from puppets.

Leaving aside the historical aspect that is imho well represented by the current system, I prefer if happiness isn't too easily attained, because I think in many ways the human player will be better at micromanaging it than the AI, so it's another possible avenue to chip away at an AI's numerical,..., advantage.

In the recent 20+ games, I haven't had a game where I'd really struggle with unhappiness except early in the game.

But that's only my experience, I'm looking forward to hearing thoughts and experience from other members of the community, perhaps I'm missing something and the game could indeed be further improved by different tweaks to the system than the hitherto direction of the VP. So thanks, Elliot, for starting this topic.

 

[Rekk]

On a related note, if the goal is to keep happiness between -20 to 20, then happiness will be effectively completely disconnected from Golden Ages. How many golden ages is a Civilization that doesn't manage to pick up a steady flow of golden age points supposed to have over the course of a game?

(I am otherwise 2 months out of date)

 

[Maddiekins]

I find happiness fairly easy to manage for my play styles, and the way VP handles it makes sense a lot of sense to me. Building more buildings in your city makes people happy. Optimizing for highest population possible can make it difficult to manage happiness.

I too have noticed, especially in the last several versions, that happiness is mostly an early game concern. By the time I hit industrial era, I'm usually at 50+ happiness when not at war. I've chalked it up to having gotten very good at micro-managing it myself, and it does influence my build order, but I don't personally think it requires too much attention. For me, the unit cap is much more difficult to handle effectively.

 

[Workerspam]

I tend to go wide (10-16+ cities on Standard Map) and emphasize growth (Mandirs every time!) and happiness seems to be in a good place. Once past the early game I'll have occasional crunches where my happiness will start to dip toward the negative but that mostly means I have to prioritize certain buildings over others. Occasionally I will have to beeline a specific tech to counter a happiness dip but that's fairly rare. Some games I can top 100 happiness, others I settle in the 20-40 range.

I have to consider happiness but don't have to obsess over it; that seems like a good balance.

 

[Randomsheep]

I voted yes because it is not a fun mechanic to try to understand.

Global happiness was never a good idea, and efforts to improve it have led to too much complexity, which I don't think is in keeping with the casual nature of the game.

 

[Moi Magnus]

I'm fine with current happiness system. I have some huge criticism, but fixing them would require to (almost) rewrite the system completely, and that's out of the question, since the system works and we are near completion of VP.
But anyways, since we are there to discuss:
+ Happiness is complex, and is horrible in term of micro-management.
+ Relation between happiness and expansion is counter-intuitive. In the real world, civs used colonisation when they had happiness problems, and needed external ressources to compensate it. More generally, colonisation is supposed to give happiness at short term. It is long term colonies that may causes unhappiness issue (indepedance will, ...).
=> In fact, a simple way to make civ more realistic would be to allow to settle Puppet cities (possibly only with Colonist and Pioners). Meaning that you could settle a puppet just for its ressources. Would be an interesting modmod.

 

[Rafs]

As I've talked about in the latest patch post, I think happiness as it is right now is easy to manage, and while it does influence build order, the penalties are not strict enough that you can be chained by these needs unless you are completely ignoring the happiness mechanic as a whole and just building whatever you want everywhere. I understand at the start it can seem overwhelming, but after some games you know more or less what you will be lacking depending on your luxuries/social policies/religion picks.
Maybe the start of the game is the only tough point when it comes to happiness for me, as you are fighting for space, so you need to build those settlers and roads fast, get the buildings in towns (that will take time to build anything), and your gold will be limited, so no investing and you need to keep an army to defened your expansion, but this is part of the strategy imho.
Just limiting your growth or focusing on production/gold for a bit to catch up in 1 or 2 buildings will help you keep your cities in a good spot during the rest of the game. Now for puppeted and conquered cities (specially those crappy ones that the AI loves to plop down), most of the times I find they are high populated, but very poorly built, and that is probably the only time I have felt I really need to focus on building those key buildings to keep happiness in check.
This has been my experience in the last patches playing emperor and sometimes inmortal, don't know how it goes in deity.
I also believe some other mechanics like supply cap had me much more troubled back then, and I felt very restrictied playing civs like Attila, so as ElliotS said, this and other mechanics can be very subjective.

 

[pineappledan]

If I have 1 complaint about the current system, it's that the few buildings that DON'T contribute to happiness stick out now as having an obvious opportunity cost in happiness.

For example, gardens are completely happiness-neutral. Does this make building gardens effectively a happiness hit, since one of the things they do is put you 300 behind the happiness curve in the city? I think it's telling that I have even started thinking this way, happiness is such a central mechanic that I weigh every building choice against my happiness meter instead of against, say, my win condition or my preferred playstyle.

 

[Deadstarre]

I cant answer the poll because neither choice seems to hit the mark for me

i'll say this; circuses were more fun when they -gave- happiness as opposed to what they are now which is -reducing boredom-.

Though i think it had to be that way because the intended happiness building (circus) would be doing less for happiness than the intended spy/defense building (constabulary) but that actually doesnt change the fact that now its more... boring.

 

[RAuer2]

So what I want to ask: Does this change improve your gameplay experience?

For me it does, yes. Once I understood the system I picked it up and it is now a welcome challenge in my games.

Does happiness require too much attention?

No, not for me. My method:

• I check the global happiness indicator on the main screen every turn. This just takes a moment, so easy to include in each turn.
  
• Whenever I alter a city's build queue I look at its happiness number in the upper left. If that number is negative, I look at the needs and weigh that information when choosing what to build next (address a need for the city or a need for the empire, for example a caravan or swordsman vs an arena).

On most turns the above two things are all I do to manage happiness and it works out well. Sometimes I need to do more and that varies by situation. For example, if my global happiness dives and I can't identify why, then I look at the city information (on the F2 screen) to look at the happiness by city. If any cities stand out as problems, I can then go to each city screen individually and check them. Also, I think the happiness needs show as a tooltip on the main map if the mouse is left over a city name, don't they? If I am remembering right, that is another quick way to check city needs from the main map without opening the city screen.

Does it make building orders less flexible and less strategic? (Just an act of looking at needs and building to satisfy them, rather than more interesting strategies.)

Not for me, no. Happiness does impact my build order, yes, though I look at this roughly as another advisor, sort of like "the city's needs indicate that the city recommends we build this building next". I can choose to ignore that and I often do ignore it if the empire has a greater need than the city does (trade units, military units and so on). I also have no problem clicking the Avoid Growth checkbox for a while to help manage happiness if a situation calls for it.

General Thoughts
I find the happiness system to be one layer in the onion that is VP, so to speak. Once I began seeing where the interface provided information (I install VP with EUI), it began to come together and shifted from "what is this new thing" to "okay, I think I see how this works". I do think that the happiness system could benefit from a guide that explained where happiness information is provided and what that information means. When I was new to VP that would have helped me get a handle on happiness quicker than I did. However, I don't think I am alone in seeing a need for a happiness guide. I'd have to guess that one of the things that will happen after VP exits the development cycle is the CBP wiki seeing renewed interest and attention, and a happiness guide is a natural piece of that.

 

[Stalker0]

Hehe I’ve written several very long posts on my thoughts around the happiness system. In very quick summary: I don’t like it, many people do, G made an executive decision to make it a core and key piece of the game, he was right to do so.


In terms of happiness balance, my specific notes:

1) I don’t mind happiness buildings being essential...just not immediately essential. If I refuse to build constavukaries forever and my happiness tanks...that’s on me.

If i decide to go an alternate tech path to gear up for war and my happiness tanks...that’s a problem.

I feel that recent versions have balanced this out. Happiness is now scattered more through the tech paths so it’s easier to pick your tech path and stay happy.

2) happiness swings are still present, but getting better. The swings are most noticeable when a war gets started. You often lose many of your trade routes, blockades and road pillages can cause isolation...and pillaging in general creates unhappiness.

Further a civ dedicating hammers to war won’t keep up with buildings and start to show more unhappiness.

I find that I need a need a good happy buffer to take the swings. But not a crazy amount, I think the bonuses can be tuned towards more needs slightly.

3) I haven’t had a happiness death spiral in a while...which is key. It is honestly one the few things in game that can make me rage quit.

 

[tu_79]

I mostly ignore happiness for a long time, until I go berserk, that's when I look at it. Happiness from needs doesn't really affect my build order. If I push for culture, I'm going to have poverty, while if I push for gold, I'm going to have boredom, so why care?

The only unhappiness that really affects me is that received from war weariness, from working specialists and slightly from religious unrest. If I know I'm going to face such problems, I get a few happiness buildings or luxuries, nothing more. Even the lose of traders, it's something I can do very little about it, other than rebuild traders and send them somewhere else.

 

[FoxOfWar]

I'd say it's mostly where it should be.

...though to be fair, between trying(and failing) Emperor and betatesting the 4UC modmod, my focus has been on just living through a game at all. (Lot of games in past couple of months where I quit WAY before I had time to consider what's my Industrial+ happiness situation...)

 

[Zarrk]

Personnaly I find the changes made the system more interesting. It's the first game in months where unhapiness is still a concern from me past the initial 50 turns. I finally stabilised the situation around turn 130 and curious to see how it will evolve in the late game.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

In my opinion, there is an unfavorable link between the handicap of the AI and the happiness of the player.
The happiness is based on the average yield per population. You can increase the average yield per population by a good infrastructure. And you can have a good infrastructure, if you have enough hammers to build it.
The ability of the AI to need less hammer for anything, lead to a much better infrastructure in the hands of the AI, than of the player.
He has to put more hammers in the infrastructure, even though he is already behind the AI. And these extra hammers use the AI again more efficient, by their handicap.
It has become noticeably more difficult to resist the AI lately. But I refuse to say that this is just an improvement to their tactics. Rather, it is due to the now efficient building logic and the Happiness system that now deprives the player much more hammers than before. A point where the AI (at higher levels of difficulty) was always better than the human.
I would hope that the Happiness system is not so extreme on "who has the most hammer" designed, because then the AI is finally unbeatable, but more on intelligent planning.
I think it was fine as it was one year ago. Without the massiv introduction of need modificator buildings.

 

[Jednooki_John]

I think what is needed is a different war weariness mechanic when you are at war which has not been provoked by you. There is nothing more frustrating than being attacked for a prolonged period of time and get your defense undermined by your "own" folks (nothing more fun than defending from enemy forces and getting barbarians spawned and pillage your roads which leads to disconnect of cities which cascade into bigger unhappiness and more barbarians and cities revolting etc.)

 

[ElliotS]

I think what is needed is a different war weariness mechanic when you are at war which has not been provoked by you. There is nothing more frustrating than being attacked for a prolonged period of time and get your defense undermined by your "own" folks (nothing more fun than defending from enemy forces and getting barbarians spawned and pillage your roads which leads to disconnect of cities which cascade into bigger unhappiness and more barbarians and cities revolting etc.)

Plenty of countries have collapsed due to war exhastion rather than direct attacks. Also it's entirely preventable, if frustrating when you mess up.

 

[Jednooki_John]

Plenty of countries have collapsed due to war exhastion rather than direct attacks. Also it's entirely preventable, if frustrating when you mess up.

Well that would make sense if you always have an option to peace out. But more often than not, the attacking civ will wait centuries before allowing any peace negotiations to occur, so you end up in a no-win situation, when you are spiraling down the drain with unhappiness and there is literally nothing that you can do to prevent this. At the same time attacking AI of course enjoys 100+ happiness at all times, but that goes without saying I guess.

 

[ElliotS]

Well that would make sense if you always have an option to peace out. But more often than not, the attacking civ will wait centuries before allowing any peace negotiations to occur, so you end up in a no-win situation, when you are spiraling down the drain with unhappiness and there is literally nothing that you can do to prevent this. At the same time attacking AI of course enjoys 100+ happiness at all times, but that goes without saying I guess.

You'll only face crushing war weariness if you're losing the war. The AI is simply playing it right. I do this all the time. I'll happily have -20 happiness from war weariness if the AI has -40 and even lower supply cap. I also certainly won't peace out when I've wiped his army out and can take one city after another. War weariness is a weapon.

The solution is to not lose wars.

P.S. Does anyone know if there's somewhere to see your enemy's exact war weariness? Or happiness?