Is "We Love the King Day" more of a penalty than a bonus?

[Peng Qi]

I can't say I've ever been particularly enthused when a city enters "we love the king day" mode, especially in vanilla. It's almost never the case that I have enough excess happiness that I want any of my cities suddenly and rapidly growing. It's a nice bonus sometimes when you're building tall, but it feels almost like a penalty if you're building wide. Despite the fact that the game needs incentives for building tall, it seems to me that a celebration should never be a penalty. Does anyone else feel this way? I was thinking it could be changed to something like +10-20% production in the city, but if I'm the only one who feels this way then obviously I just need to adapt.

Let me know your difficulty level in your response please. I'm currently playing on Immortal.

 

[PhilBowles]

If you're playing well, growth is always good - it means more science and more population to work tiles or act as specialists. And if you've just secured a new resource to prompt a city to go into We Love the King, you've got at least 4 more happiness than you had before - it's rare for a city to grow that much during We Love the King.

So no, on the face of it it's never a penalty - you gain population only after you secure a source of extra happiness.

 

[Peng Qi]

Oh, it would be helpful if people list their difficulty level in their response. I'll add that to the original post.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

How can it be a penalty if you can just turn on avoid growth? It's like it isn't happening at all.

 

[Peng Qi]

How can it be a penalty if you can just turn on avoid growth? It's like it isn't happening at all.

Having to take additional steps to ensure a bad thing doesn't happen to you would be a penalty in my book.

 

[AstralVisage]

Maybe "your book" isn't the same as the majority's book. With the acquisition of a new resource happiness boosts by 4, and unless the population jumps by 5 before one can acquire more happiness "We Love the King Day" is not a penalty. I just finished a King game as Egypt, tall, and the WLtKD was no issue. Earlier I was playing with my brother as well, in which I was the Mongols on King difficulty once again. I was actively expanding with a wide empire and trade mongering with the AI to sell excess resources and recieve ones that I didn't have. Once more this wasn't an issue.

 

[FeiLing]

More food = less workers needed for not starving = more production.

 

[Gamewizard]

And even if you grow too much and end up in the -75%food unhappiness penalty, the WLtKD would still leave you at -50%food, so its not like you would keep growing into the major unhappiness penalty.

Question for OP: Do you think building aqueducts is a penalty as well? Or any food building for that matter?

 

[Halcyan2]

I will agree with the OP and say that "We Love the King Day" can sometimes be a problem.

Most often, it is an issue when I am planning to conquer additional cities. I may be currently in positive happiness now, but I won't after taking another 2 or 3 cities. I want the happiness buffer for taking the cities, rather than extra pop in my cities now. Besides needing to micromanage my cities, "Avoid Growth" doesn't always avoid growth (i.e. sometimes you might want to manually starve the city by having everyone be a lazy worker but the Governor AI will never do that), you have limited control over puppet cities (you can influence their tile choice but you don't have that much power), and allied Maritime CS' may be giving extra food to marginal cities you don't want to grow.

When you get to the late game and have most of the luxuries, it may often be the case that a new luxury triggers We Love the King and most (if not all) of your cities, which compounds problems even further.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Having to take additional steps to ensure a bad thing doesn't happen to you would be a penalty in my book.

It's one click to a check box. Also how often have you arranged a city to have exactly the right amount of food to feed everyone and not have one point of extra food at all? Hardly ever. So you'd have to have avoid growth turned on anyway, and WLTKD doesn't add more food it only multiplies the surplus your already generating. So if you have micromanaged every city to have 0 extra food, making for stagnant growth, then WLTKD would do nothing anyway, but like I said that's almost never the case. Also it's only a 25% increase. Unless you have a large surplus anyway it's not going to be a large increase, but again, if you had a surplus at all you'd need to use avoid growth anyway.

If this is a penalty then any growth at all is a penalty. But that can't be true because it's a basic function and you'd lose the game by never growing a city. So the only penalty is having to deal with it if it's not fitting you current situation, which is done with a very simple action, which you'd have to do anyway if you were near your happiness limit unless you were for some reason timing it so you turn off growth on exactly the turn you need to, or get more happiness at exactly the right turn and not before. That would require you to monitor each city to make sure they don't go over. That seems like a lot of work to do. More so than clicking a check box. So the only thing to complain about is that the game can't yet read your mind and do this before you have to.

Your book is ridiculous.

 

[StormEye]

Having to take additional steps to ensure a bad thing doesn't happen to you would be a penalty in my book.

The game is not APM heavy.

Its not StarCraft...

Its not a penalty that it takes extra clicks, as it does not serve you any disadvantage in gameplay sense. Its just a convenience matter.

If it was a RTS, then it makes sense that extra click counts as disadvantage, but in a turn based game, this action can be taken even at the VERY END of the turn and you get no penalty.

 

[Andulias]

Having to take additional steps to ensure a bad thing doesn't happen to you would be a penalty in my book.

Not only are those additional "steps" meaningless within the context of a TBS game, but the bonus is in no way wasted. By having extra food you city can focus even more on production tiles and ignore those that produce food even more. So no matter what you do, that We Love the King Day bonus will always benefit you. I am honestly surprised you don't see it this way.

 

[Peng Qi]

Not only are those additional "steps" meaningless within the context of a TBS game, but the bonus is in no way wasted. By having extra food you city can focus even more on production tiles and ignore those that produce food even more. So no matter what you do, that We Love the King Day bonus will always benefit you. I am honestly surprised you don't see it this way.

I guess calling it a "penalty" is too strong. What I meant is that the bonus can be incredibly small depending on the situation. I guess I'm not even sure why WLTKD is even in the game as it is now; it's just like having a random quest that gives you a random bonus. The only thing it even effects is which luxury I trade for when I trade, and even then only if they have an extra of something one of my cities needs.

 

[eris]

I play on lower levels, so my direct experience is probably useless to you, but growth is never a problem, always a good idea. And if not growth, then extra food for using production tiles is also a great thing. I don't know if you manually assign citizens to manage growth, but it might be something to consider as an adaptation of your play style and would give you an advantage to gain during We Love the Boss Day.

You seem to consider the possibility of entering unhappiness to be a big source of the problem. It is my understanding that on upper levels, occasional dips into low level unhappiness are not uncommon and not to be feared. It's a trade off of expansion vs happiness that these players have different comfort with than I would as a lower level player, but the notion of having different approaches to happiness does make sense.

You liken it to a random mechanism. That really baffles me. The mechanisms for both happiness and growth are well known and can be planned for, even exploited. I don't see anything random about it.

 

[ezbutton]

I really don't see what the big issue is since "We love the king day" is tied with new luxuries you connected to your city. With the four happiness, it allows for growth and if you don't want the growth there's a little tab you check off "Avoid growth" in the city so centralizing that growth bonus is easily manageable.

If your going wide and your having happiness problems, then if most likely your not rushing vital policies, picking the correct beliefs, or building the needed infrastructure to keep rolling. Often the easiest way for wide empires to use their gold advantage is to drop it into city-states, especially mercantile.

All in all happiness is even more manageable in G&K than vanilla, because there's five new luxuries and the scaling between cities and policies have been lowered.

From my own experience on emperor, I've been gifted eight cities pushing my unhappiness up to 48 and by selling/razing unwanted cities, trading luxuries, rush buying courthouses/happiness buildings and allying up with maybe two city states I was able to bring it down to only 15 happiness in 6 turns and 9 in 8 turns before any rioting happened.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

IIt is my understanding that on upper levels, occasional dips into low level unhappiness are not uncommon and not to be feared...

Also the first thing that happens when you enter unhappiness is it cuts your growth rate, which solves the problem of growing too fast for your happiness.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Most often, it is an issue when I am planning to conquer additional cities. I may be currently in positive happiness now, but I won't after taking another 2 or 3 cities. I want the happiness buffer for taking the cities, rather than extra pop in my cities now.

I think the official "happiness buffer" procedure is to starve your target city a while. At all events it's a suggestion I've heard. (I never play that way so I wouldn't know anything about it...)

 

[PhilBowles]

I really don't see what the big issue is since "We love the king day" is tied with new luxuries you connected to your city. With the four happiness, it allows for growth and if you don't want the growth there's a little tab you check off "Avoid growth" in the city so centralizing that growth bonus is easily manageable.

You could avoid connecting that particular luxury too if you really want to...

 

[chazzycat]

growth is the engine that powers your entire economy. you do want your science, production, gold, and culture output to rise over time, right? you need to keep your cities growing. Having too much growth is NEVER a bad thing unless its a puppet, and as far as I know, puppets can't even celebrate WLTKD.

 

[Halcyan2]

From my own experience on emperor, I've been gifted eight cities pushing my unhappiness up to 48 and by selling/razing unwanted cities, trading luxuries, rush buying courthouses/happiness buildings and allying up with maybe two city states I was able to bring it down to only 15 happiness in 6 turns and 9 in 8 turns before any rioting happened.

I think the official "happiness buffer" procedure is to starve your target city a while. At all events it's a suggestion I've heard. (I never play that way so I wouldn't know anything about it...)

Yes, starving/razing can bring unhappiness under control over time, but you do spend several turns at the critical -10 or worse threshold. That is a lot of wasted hammers and it leaves you very vulnerable to counterattacks due to the combat penalty.

Strategies I can think of:

Keep surplus happiness ready with unconnected luxuries, ungarrisoned units (Military Caste), or toggling/untoggling specialists (Democracy).

Have gold ready to trade for luxuries (with AI's) or rush buy happiness buildings (might sometimes need to Annex a puppet just to do this).

Wait to complete happiness buildings and wonders. (e.g. sometimes I will leave Notre Dame unfinished with one turn remaining, so that I can have it ready as soon as I take an enemy city).

Gifting/selling crappy cities to the AI.

Actually I've found that one of the fastest ways to decrease a population's city isn't through razing/starving (limited to one per turn) but to constantly recapture the city. With the insane amounts of damage that siege weapons can do, I find that in G&K you can often lose a city right after you capture it if you leave any enemy siege units in range. But letting your opponent recapture a city (and then taking it back again) will quickly demolish even the largest cities. In some "Scenarios," there might be benefits or penalties that apply (Into the Renaissance may award you points each time you recapture the city, though less each time since the city becomes smaller; Fall of Rome penalizes you each time you lose a city to the barbarians so capturing/recapturing isn't as helpful).

growth is the engine that powers your entire economy. you do want your science, production, gold, and culture output to rise over time, right? you need to keep your cities growing. Having too much growth is NEVER a bad thing unless its a puppet, and as far as I know, puppets can't even celebrate WLTKD.

I'm pretty sure that puppets do celebrate We Love the King. I've had plenty of games where I only own 2 or 3 real cities and have a huge puppet empire and I get LOTS of We Love the King messages.

Also, to a poster who was asking why the feature is in there - it's a holdover from (or a homage to) prior Civilization games. I miss the throne room though.