Making your Citizens Happy by moving them to the city?

[Marshall Thomas]

In my current game, I just adopted the freedom social policy for the first time in any of my games. I'm finding it's bonus really interesting, as it's a great way to avoid "unhappiness" every turn.

Whenever you find yourself with 1 or 2 unhappiness just before the end of a turn, you can simply go to a few cities and take citizens off tiles and your happiness goes up one for every two citizens you turn into specialist. But they don't even need to be specialist; they can be just "citizens" who don't work tiles (+1 hammers).

So with "freedom", you really should never end a turn with an unhappy civilization, unless unhappiness is really high. Bringing in population off the surrounding land (city tiles) is really one of the only fast solutions to unhappiness (contructing happiness buildings and aquiring more luxury resourses can often take several turns).

What do you think this represents historically? That the joys of freedom applied more to the urban, city dwelling population than it did to farmers, miners and fisherman (country folk)? Thanks in advance

edit: what do you think that the citizen "specialist" is intended to reflect historically. They're not really specialist, as they don't generate any great person points; they just give +1 hammer. Though they are effected by "freedom" in the same way as specialist are (less unhappiness from population then citizens working tiles). Just curious.

 

[flashog]

Personally, I don't think there is any rational explanation to this. It's just how the mechanics work, whether or not it's intentional is difficult to say.

 

[The Great Apple]

One thing to bear in mind is that maintaining global happiness isn't actually very important until you start to get very unhappy (ie. production slow and units weaker). By moving your citizens into the city you lose productivity and growth, whereas global unhappiness just slows growth.

That said; I tend to run quite heavy on scientist specialists, so I quite like the base freedom bonus.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

One thing to bear in mind is that maintaining global happiness isn't actually very important until you start to get very unhappy (ie. production slow and units weaker). By moving your citizens into the city you lose productivity and growth, whereas global unhappiness just slows growth.

That said; I tend to run quite heavy on scientist specialists, so I quite like the base freedom bonus.

If you later choose the "civil society" social policy (all specialist consume half as much food as normal), then I suppose that the base freedom bonus is extra good. If your specialist consume half as much food as normal (one, instead of two), is it the same as if they produce one food?

I wonder if "unemployed citizens" should count as specialists for these social policies. It might be too easy in new, undeveloped cities to get benefits by just bringing in citizens from working the tiles; especially in island cities that you settle after you have astronomy.

I guess that the base freedom bonus and the civil society social policies just represent the historical, cultural phenomenon of the shift to the city from the country side. Your civlization begins to provide new services and consumer opportunities which revolutionises the nature of urban living.

 

[Ahriman]

what do you think that the citizen "specialist" is intended to reflect historically.

If you put your poor into urban ghettos, it is much easier to control them with a state security force. Hence, less effective "unhappiness".

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

That's a pretty grim assessment.

But it works. I'd go with better conditions in the city and more opportunity, like what Marshall Thomas said.

 

[alpaca]

Yes, both the flexibility, and if you can afford a lot of specialists, the magnitude of the freedom policy are pretty awesome. It has a lot of potential: You can conquer or annex some cities and compensate with specialists. And you can pull citizens off the field to increase your happiness surplus to get a golden age.