MOD request : infinite happiness for player + AI

[Spatzimaus]

You're right. I play my own mod too much that I forgot what vanilla policies did.

I know the feeling. I keep having to do that as well, separating the Policy changes made in my own mod from the baseline effects. Regardless, removing Happiness would change a tremendous number of things. Why would you build a Colosseum or Stadium, if Happiness wasn't necessary? (The AI would continue to build them, and pay the maintenance for no gain.) Why take the Happiness-boosting Policies at all?

And Egypt would actually be WORSE than a normal civ, as its UB (+2 Happiness, +2 Culture, but enemies loot twice as much gold when they capture your city) would now be worse than the default Temple it replaces (+3 Culture).

And isn't unlimited happiness removing the point of the game? O_O

That was pretty much my response to the OP when he first posted this back in July. If you're constantly running into problems with negative happiness, that says more about the player's abilities than the game's design. It's a problem transitioning from Civ4 (where the "land rush", placing settlers at all key locations, is absolutely critical) to Civ5 (where you have to pace yourself by how much Happiness you can spare, and a good spot might stay vacant for quite a while), but it's something the player needs to learn if they ever want to be good at the game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Happiness without Golden Ages is impossible.

No, I don't want happiness without Golden Ages, I want No Happiness with Golden Ages.

Go read Kael's Modding Guide and find out how to mod buildings.

tl;dr

By the way, you didn't answer my first question : is the map editor still have the loading error ?

That was pretty much my response to the OP when he first posted this back in July. If you're constantly running into problems with negative happiness, that says more about the player's abilities than the game's design. It's a problem transitioning from Civ4 (where the "land rush", placing settlers at all key locations, is absolutely critical) to Civ5 (where you have to pace yourself by how much Happiness you can spare, and a good spot might stay vacant for quite a while), but it's something the player needs to learn if they ever want to be good at the game.

My abilities are fine, thx. I do whatever is possible to have the best happiness possible, don't worry... that said, I still experience happiness problems, particularly when I want to expand or conquer. That does not happen all the time in Prince, but it happens sometimes that I have all the units needed to conquer some capitals, but am held back by too few happiness. Also, I'm not particularly too accustomed to Civ4 as I hated this game, particularly the maintenance system which were too opaque, (you didn't know how much a new city would cost you before effectively found it), but rather accustomed to Civ1, 2, 3 and Alpha Centauri, where things were plenty clear and simple. Because this is an old habit I have from those games to expand, simply expand. I believed it was a part of that game. Incidally, I find that in Civ5, without much expansion, there's too little things to do.
Now for my happiness problems I played a fair number of Settler games, but I lost interest as the civs there are so ridiculously weak, it is just like I would play a game of Morpion against myself, not very fun.

The point to play without/infinite happiness ? You just get what you do, it's a race to expansion and building.

By the way, AI in Prince does not seem limited by happiness in any way, so it's already that way the AI plays since Prince. Beside, it's rather the player who plays this way.

So infinite happiness is not that unknown even in standard games, so that you could figure out quite easily what is the point to play with it, unless you don't find any point to play Civ5, which I would understand.

 

[Pazyryk]

@Naokaukodem,

Happiness is the primary (and the only significant) "limiter" in Civ5. If you remove it, the game will be broken in many ways. It would be interesting if some mod were to explore alternatives to happiness as the primary limiter. Food would be a natural alternative (the present food production/consumption system is set up so that food is easily always in excess). But I'm not aware of any mods that attempt this.

Your point about the AI not being limited by happiness is interesting. I think the AI still runs into a happiness limit. It's just a lot higher than for the player.

But to answer your question, I believe the map editor still has the loading error. Unfortunately, you will probably have to mod "no unhappiness" yourself (see post #18 for ideas ... although this will not take care of GAs). It is unlikely that someone else will do this.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Thx for the kind and polite answer Pazyryk, it sure changes from "your wrong" concepts.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Your point about the AI not being limited by happiness is interesting. I think the AI still runs into a happiness limit. It's just a lot higher than for the player.

Correct, the AI IS limited by happiness, even if it doesn't always seem that way. The AI, in vanilla Civ5, plays on Chieftain regardless of what difficulty YOU play. On Chieftain, any player gets:
> 12 base Happiness instead of the usual 9
> x0.6 for population unhappiness (i.e., 0.6 from normal city population, 0.8 from conquered cities)
> +1 Happiness per Luxury
So, unless you're playing with a mod that changes the AI's default handicap (like most of the major balance mods do), the AI will just have a much larger Happiness pool, but it's not infinite. It's still possible for them to go negative; it's just much harder.

Play any mod that bumps the AI up to Prince, though, and suddenly it's a very different dynamic. Now, you should only do this if you're using a mod that adds Happiness sources in AI-friendly ways, since it's penalizing the AI and not you. Maybe you add a new Happiness-generating specialist, maybe you spread the Happiness out to a larger number of buildings, so that the AI's scattershot method of picking buildings doesn't penalize it as badly, maybe you tweak the Policies to have a few more that add to Happiness, or maybe you just overhaul the whole process. (I've done a combination of the first three in my own mods.)