Maximum city population before it can't stay happy?

[hardcore_gamer]

I know a city costs 4 happiness by default, but there are happiness building that can increase happiness. The thing is though, that there is a finiate amount of buildings but no real cap that I am aware of that controls the city size limit.

So what is the maxium amount of combined happiness (and thus the maximum amount of total population a city can have before happines buildings can't substain it) that a single city can have through happiness buildings alone not including special buildings like wonders?

EDIT: Not related but, is it just me or does the AI cheat even on prince which is suppose to be the "normal" difficulty? I thought AI wasn't suppose to cheat except on the higher ones.

 

[tzaari]

It depends on what civilization you are playing. India gets only 1/2 penalty from number of citizens but double penalty from number of cities, so it starts with cost of 7. Also there is number of civilizations with special buildings that either replace normal happiness buildings or have a unique building that replaces a building that does not normally give happiness.

If you count only buildings that require no special condition (like resource, or buying by faith), there is 3 buildings that give you +6 happiness.

+2 Colosseum
+2 Zoo
+2 Stadium

In Prince base happiness is +9. If you play civilization other that India that does not have special happiness building of its own, you can build a city size 11. With India you can build a city size 16.

If you count also buildings that everybody can build but require some basic resource, you get +3 happiness.

+2 Circus
+1 Stone Works

So for a normal civ this means city size of 14 and for India 22.

If you get religions with certain beliefs you can get up to +4. Usually you don't get all of these.

+1 Cathedral
+1 Mosque
+2 Pagoda

For a normal civ that is city size 18 and for India 30.

After that there is also social policies and ideology tenents that add happiness effect to specific buildings. Before getting those you might also already get other happiness bonuses from social policies/tenents themselves.

Since this is only about buildings, I didn't count the happiness from luxury resources. There is usually around 3 different luxury resources around a starting city in Prince-difficulty that can be used after enough border growth. One is usually too far away to be worked but you can improve it anyway to get happiness bonus. You get +4 happiness per luxury, so that adds +12 population or for India +24 totaling a city size of 30 or for India 54.

EDIT: And these are for BNW.

 

[SULOMON]

It depends on what civilization you are playing. India gets only 1/2 penalty from number of citizens but double penalty from number of cities, so it starts with cost of 7. Also there is number of civilizations with special buildings that either replace normal happiness buildings or have a unique building that replaces a building that does not normally give happiness.

If you count only buildings that require no special condition (like resource, or buying by faith), there is 3 buildings that give you +6 happiness.

+2 Colosseum
+2 Zoo
+2 Stadium

In Prince base happiness is +9. If you play civilization other that India that does not have special happiness building of its own, you can build a city size 11. With India you can build a city size 16.

If you count also buildings that everybody can build but require some basic resource, you get +3 happiness.

+2 Circus
+1 Stone Works

So for a normal civ this means city size of 14 and for India 22.

If you get religions with certain beliefs you can get up to +4. Usually you don't get all of these.

+1 Cathedral
+1 Mosque
+2 Pagoda

For a normal civ that is city size 18 and for India 30.

After that there is also social policies and ideology tenents that add happiness effect to specific buildings. Before getting those you might also already get other happiness bonuses from social policies/tenents themselves.

Since this is only about buildings, I didn't count the happiness from luxury resources. There is usually around 3 different luxury resources around a starting city in Prince-difficulty that can be used after enough border growth. One is usually too far away to be worked but you can improve it anyway to get happiness bonus. You get +4 happiness per luxury, so that adds +12 population or for India +24 totaling a city size of 30 or for India 54.

EDIT: And these are for BNW.

There's also buildings that get happiness from policies and tenets. Autocracy gives the most with 9 more happiness from buildings.

 

[Sessy]

if you're talking about local city happiness I believe tzaari is correct about colosseum zoo stadium and the random circus/stone works. It's always nice to get pagodas but I'm starting to find AIs like picking that belief. So we're talking about a total of 6-11 happiness locally, which combined with default settings (prince+) and standard size map, gives 3-8 pop before it starts chewing your global happiness.

But also keep in mind that you can get monarchy/meritocracy, and ideology tenets give extra happiness, so they boost your potential to grow by a lot.

For Gandhi though, you can get much higher city pop, and the only bad thing about it is that it only converts 2/3 of local happiness to global happiness, as opposed to other civs which convert 100% (if I recall correctly).

CORRECTION: other civs cannot convert local happiness to global! so

 

[shaglio]

And on top of all that has already been mention, there are some more non-building ways to get happiness. In addition to the aforementioned Religious buildings (Cathedrals, Monasteries, Mosques, and Pagodas), there's also beliefs that add happiness (+1 for Shrines, +2 for Temple, +1 per 2 cities following your religion).

Also, discovering Natural Wonders gives you +1 Happiness each.

 

[dasaard200]

Also, in EXPLORATION SPolicy, you can get +1 Happy PER lighthouse, harbor, and seaport; PER city !, as well, for coastal cities .

So if you want to go a-Viking, to set up on Bozo's continent, you might want to bring a settler (or 2), with the invasion fleet; to bring a port (or 2) along - a la Cherbourg (WWII), to get space for your CV's to unload your airpower ... and let wounded units heal up faster .

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Thanks for the replies (would still like to know if the AI cheats on prince, though).

I have another related quesiton now. What is the total number of cities you can have assuming you have every (standard) happiness building and every luxary resource in the game plus perhaps some nice social polices that give happiness?

I know this question is probably hard to answer but any rough ideas? On paper the happiness system means you can't go and take over the world like in Ci4, so I am interested in knowing how many cities one could have.

 

[Sessy]

Is this assuming you can hit close to -20 happiness? then assuming you have low enough pop in each city and have the buildings to offset all local unhappiness, you'd be getting 3 unhappiness from each city. Then assuming 15 standard luxes + 2 from city states and 9 default happiness as well as 5 from discovery of natural wonders. With protectionism, you have 6*17+ 9 + 5 =116 happiness.
Of course you can take it even further by settling cities with happiness NWs as Spain and get 30+5=35 more happiness (FoY, Ol' Faithful and Mt. Kailash)

so...basically I think you'll run out of city names unless you're Attila.

 

[MrTaylordw]

The relates to my China war... I have pretty much around 210,000,000. Stuggling with a huge bunch o' bumps and jumps.
Every two turns I often jump from 10 to -15.

 

[59saintdane]

Don't forget that with Meritocracy you can offset 1 global happiness per city.

 

[kirbdog]

(would still like to know if the AI cheats on prince, though)

The AI does get bonuses, even on Prince.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties
http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/difficulty-settings.php
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5)

Mainly because it's more fun when the AI doesn't just sit there in its diapers the whole game...

 

[hardcore_gamer]

The AI does get bonuses, even on Prince.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ5/difficulties
http://www.carlsguides.com/strategy/civilization5/difficulty-settings.php
http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ5)

Mainly because it's more fun when the AI doesn't just sit there in its diapers the whole game...

The AI bonuses for prince appear to be very mild, though. Only thing that I noticed that probably makes a big difference are the cheaper social policies.

 

[joncnunn]

The AI bonuses for prince appear to be very mild, though. Only thing that I noticed that probably makes a big difference are the cheaper social policies.

The science bonus in BNW is more important, but the AI is so bad that it's science rate is much less than the human even with the bonus.

 

[killmeplease]

some facts not mentioned yet:
- on maps larger than standard per-city unhappiness is less than 3
- mercantile CSs give additional happiness along with their luxes
- honor: +1 per defensive building, thats +4 per city; +1 per garrisoned unit (dont know if its global or local)
- some liberty policy: -5% population unhappiness
- forbidden palace: -10% population unhappiness
- some founder belief: +0.5 happiness per city
- CN tower: +1 happiness per city

so you can get 2.5 global happiness per city what offsets per-city unhappiness

 

[killmeplease]

ps: ghandi on a huge map should be OP

 

[Redaxe]

If you were doing a 1 city challenge with no limits to policies lets see

-Monarchy (-1 unhappiness per 2 population)
-Aristocracy (1 happiness per 10 people)
-Forbidden City (-10% unhappiness)
-Meritocracy (+1 happiness and -5% unhappiness)
-India - unhappiness from number of citizens halved

I'm too lazy to put all these together but is it possible your capital city could grow happiness?

 

[killmeplease]

afaik monarchy is +1 happiness per 2 citizens, not -1 unhappiness

 

[hardcore_gamer]

- on maps larger than standard per-city unhappiness is less than 3

I am playing on a large map and yet each city costs 3 unhappiness at the time of being founded.

 

[Redaxe]

I am playing on a large map and yet each city costs 3 unhappiness at the time of being founded.

Yeah I've noticed this to. Not sure if it's been there from the start. I guess 2 unhappiness from the city and 1 from the citizen.

 

[beetle]

on maps larger than standard per-city unhappiness is less than 3

Citation please? What scales up with map size? You don't get more spies, more trade routes, etc. Assuming defaults, each civ has a little bit more space, but not excessively so.

ps: ghandi on a huge map should be OP

I am not sure I follow. They still are limited (practically, not programmatically) to Tradition. They might have less happiness problems for wide scale warmongering, but that is not much compared to the happiness tenants in Autocracy.