Keeping puppet empires happy

[Creepy Old Man]

Can someone please tell me how to stay happy when I have a large number of puppets?

I've been over +100 happiness with a raze-and-replace strategy, where I can lock my populatioin to not grow past the ability of happiness buildings to support them. But with puppets, I cannot build happiness buildings, and I can't lock their growth. Every single one of them turns into a huge happiness drain. What am I doing wrong?

 

[bryanw1995]

free religion lets you get more pop before they make your civ unhappy, but generally you're sol. best strat is to remove any farms around the puppets and just tp hills or forest. also, if you have a city with decent production (esp capitols) it's generally a good idea to annex them.

 

[UWHabs]

Just don't worry about it. Puppets are strong as it (they don't contribute to social policy increases, but you still get culture and so on from them). So if you tend to raze and replace, odds are you can't get too far down the social policy trees. So take the extra policies that you would otherwise get and put them into the happiness ones (less unhappy per pop, happy for connected trade routes, less unhappy per specialist, less unhappy per city, etc...).

 

[tylor]

Use every happy civic (along with other means of getting happiness). And gift away puppets when are too big.

 

[Truthy]

Try removing all farms from around yours puppets and only build trading posts. That way these cities can't get too large. You can also starve large cities back down to a size four or five.

 

[spfun]

I love puppets, my last game i had my capital & about 30 puppets was spitting out new policies in 5 turns at one point. I find they all decide to build happiness building when u get to red in happiness, then u get a big chunk of happiness later on. Counter is Social Policies, if u don't have many built cities that is...

Only time i have a problem with happiness is when i go on a major conquer spree or i expand to fast at the start of game.

 

[Nares]

Try removing all farms from around yours puppets and only build trading posts.

Try checking the View City option to see which tiles the puppet is working, then determining the best method for converting those worked tiles. Pure Trading Posts may not be the best idea.

Also, one of the best happiness solutions is Theocracy in the Piety branch. The final policy from Commerce is often overlooked, despite increasing happiness from luxury resources by 20%. It's a shame the decreased transportation maintenance cost modifier is so weak, and the reduced cost for purchasing is of questionable value.

 

[Alpedar]

Manipulate them.
1) make them grow to size: 4 if colloseum is available, 6 when they can build circus 9(11) with theatre and 14 (16) with stadium (by TP on food tiles and farms on money tiles and once there are no unused money tiles, you can build farms to get even better food)
2) lure them on production (same as above)
3) once they have what you need, take their food and hammers (TP everywhere until they hit stagnation)

+ add theocracy, so every puppet GIVES happiness, or play ghandi (and somehow survive low size where he is worse)

But its lot of micromanagment.

If you have your own city nearby, you can (permanently?) take their tile so they does not work it.