"it's too crowded"?

[satyesu]

what improvement fixes this unhappiness?

 

[phungus420]

Hapiness improvements don't "fix" the specific issues of unhappiness; instead they add happiness so that the happy cap is raised. If a city has 5 and 6 then the city will be 1 below the cap, ie one more pop can add to the city and be willing to work, regardless of causes.

 

[cdcuase]

One thing that is not clear to most beginners is the "turn off city growth" button in the city screen. Everytime your city grows it adds one unhappy and one sick citizen. Early on you are only allowed about 4-5 unhappy citizens. If you acquire certain resources or build certain buildings that give you you can have more unhappy citizens without any penalties. It's when your city grows and your outnumbers your you get the "It's too crowded" penalty.

If you turn off city growth before your unhappy outnumbers the happy you should be fine. It took me a while to figure this out when I first started playing.

 

[Powerslave]

Slavery. Slavery fixes unhappiness. I struggled on Prince until I realized the power of Slavery. Afterward, I started slumming on Monarch, winning the vast majority of my games.

Let's say that you've got a city the size of 15, 4 of which are angry and refusing to work. Sure, you could fix this in a number of ways that don't involve whipping your populace, such as building a theater, increasing the culture slider, and/or switching to Hereditary Rule. But why not get some production out of those unhappy people, especially after you've already explored some of the other options? My rule of thumb: if they're still too lazy to work after building a market, theater and going to 10% culture, then they deserve what they get.

Let's say that you're building a University. It's going to take 50+ turns to complete in this city, because most of the tiles offer no production (for example, coastal tiles or cottages). You want to hurry this University, because Oxford is a critical National Wonder. Oxford University grants +100% research to the city that builds it, but it requires a certain minimum number of Universities before it can be built. Universal Suffrage is an excellent alternative to Slavery (if you have enough money per turn to waste hurrying stuff, that is), but it comes much later in the game -- with Democracy, a technology that requires several more discoveries after Education.

How can we solve these two dilemmas (angry people + wanting to hurry our current building) at once? Slavery. Slavery converts your excess population into production. There are two important rules: 1) Each citizen is worth 30 hammers and 2) You can only slave away half of your population at a given point in time. Since you have 15 people in this city, your limit is 7 people lost to slavery. 7 * 30 = 210 hammers (I'm too lazy to open the game just to check, but I think Universities are around 200 hammers). As long as your current job costs 210 hammers or less, you're all set! Just switch to Slavery (if necessary), click on the "hurry" icon, and watch all that unhappiness fade away! Of course, this city will be left with a -1 unhappiness penalty from using the whip on it, but since you lost all those citizens to Slavery, it's going to take a while before you notice the unhappiness penalty.

Uh, I probably didn't do a very good job of explaining Slavery. Check the War Academy for much better (and probably more concise) explanations.

 

[Silu]

One thing that is not clear to most beginners is the "turn off city growth" button in the city screen. Everytime your city grows it adds one unhappy and one sick citizen. Early on you are only allowed about 4-5 unhappy citizens. If you acquire certain resources or build certain buildings that give you you can have more unhappy citizens without any penalties. It's when your city grows and your outnumbers your you get the "It's too crowded" penalty.

If you turn off city growth before your unhappy outnumbers the happy you should be fine. It took me a while to figure this out when I first started playing.

That's the button of DOOM. Eventually you (read: I) will forget some city to have it on for centuries while the happy cap has risen a dozen notches over what it was at the time of growth-prevention.

 

[Powerslave]

Certainly, it can't be any worse than "temporarily" optimizing for hammers in a commerce city (or vice versa). All of those buttons are dangerous to the forgetful player.

That's why I play below my level. I'm too careless to be playing on Emperor or Immortal.

I used to use "avoid growth" much more often, but I've since decided that I like Hereditary Rule and Slavery more than avoiding growth. After I switch to Universal Suffrage and Emancipation, I usually try to use diplomacy to get enough luxuries to pacify my people. And if AI civs won't share their bounty with me, then I bring democracy to their people.

 

[Patak]

Whip, whip, whip, whip, whip....

Democracy is owerrated.

 

[binhthuy71]

For a long time my motto was "Smile, or I'll whip you some more!" These days I'm working at getting the most that I can from whip overflow so I'm whipping less and investing more thought before I whip.

 

[mariogreymist]

Hapiness improvements don't "fix" the specific issues of unhappiness; instead they add happiness so that the happy cap is raised. If a city has 5 and 6 then the city will be 1 below the cap, ie one more pop can add to the city and be willing to work, regardless of causes.

There are improvements/actions which reduce or eliminate particular causes of unhappiness. Jails reduce the amount of war unhappiness, for example. A garrison soldier can eliminate "we feel unsafe." A peace treaty or revolution can elimate "we won't fight our brothers in the faith." But there is no improvement or action to reduce/eliminate "it's too crowded." You just need to get enough + to overcome it, (or whip the population back into line.)

 

[duckstab]

Well, except for the Globe Theatre, but you can only build one of those.

 

[BufordTJustice]

That's the button of DOOM. Eventually you (read: I) will forget some city to have it on for centuries while the happy cap has risen a dozen notches over what it was at the time of growth-prevention.

LOL, yes, so true!

I wonder if it will be possible to add a symbol to the city bar if this is active (e.g. in the BUG mod)?

 

[jauggy]

There's should be a button "Avoid city growth IF happy cap is reached"

 

[PieceOfMind]

There's should be a button "Avoid city growth IF happy cap is reached"

I had the same thought. However I think you'll find the city governor already tries to avoid growing when the city is already unhappy. I think it's happier to go to 1 over the happy cap when you run Slavery. Smart no?