New Beta Version (3-20b)

[Workerspam]

Now you can argue that I should have known better. I should have expanded slower for example. That is likely true. The point was to showcase how someone can fall into this hole....and how incredibly unfun it is. We have talked recently about newer players, and this is a trap I can easily see many of them falling into. If my first few games of VP I dealt with issues like this...I might never have come back.

To be fair you are playing on Emperor; the training wheels are off. And aggressive expansion is risky: you flirt with short term hits to unhappiness for the long term reward of a large, well developed empire. It sounds like you flew too close to the sun and paid for it. From your write up it seems you expanded rapidly, responded aggressively in war, reacted to the unhappiness hit rather than anticipating it, and expended your gold reserves in rushing buildings (yes, necessary happiness buildings late but were there earlier rushes that maybe should have been delayed until happiness was stabilized?). Any of those actions individually carries some risk; all together and at once is steering into the eye of the storm.

If all your moves had worked out you would likely have been in great shape, possibly poised to distance yourself from the AI. If overreaching pays off big sometimes and only causes minor inconvenience when it backfires, overreaching would be the best strategy every time. Taking big risks needs to carry big consequences, otherwise they aren't really risks.

To be fair you are playing on Emperor; the training wheels are off. And aggressive expansion is risky: you flirt with short term hits to unhappiness for the long term reward of a large, well developed empire. It sounds like you flew too close to the sun and paid for it. From your write up it seems you expanded rapidly, responded aggressively in war, reacted to the unhappiness hit rather than anticipating it, and expended your gold reserves in rushing buildings (yes, necessary happiness buildings late but were there earlier rushes that maybe should have been delayed until happiness was stabilized?). Any of those actions individually carries some risk; all together and at once is steering into the eye of the storm.

If all your moves had worked out you would likely have been in great shape, possibly poised to distance yourself from the AI. If overreaching pays off big sometimes and only causes minor inconvenience when it backfires, overreaching would be the best strategy every time. Taking big risks needs to carry big consequences, otherwise they aren't really risks

Edit: Quotes within quotes.

 

[tu_79]

Dunno. I still think it is good to have some warning about what is going to happen.

Maybe it can be unhappiness going downwards in waves. So players have a hint of what the weariness level is then.

 

[Stalker0]

To be fair you are playing on Emperor; the training wheels are off.

Your point is correct in that I did not play the game correctly. I admit that in the opening post. My goal here was not to say "the way I played should have been ok". My goal was to document to people how happiness spirals can happen (for those who have not experienced them), and to describe the frustration that is associated with them.

The topic of newer players has come up recently, and that is the area I have concern about. Now its true that new players have to learn the game...but there is a key difference between mistakes that embolden you and mistakes that frustrate you.

For example....before this game, I was crushed 4 times in a row by the AI's excellent warring while I was trying some England strategies. And again, the issue was my play. But I found in each of these experiences a "lets do it again feeling!". I was excited that the AI was so good at hitting my weaknesses, and felt excited to try it again and tweak my play.

With these happiness spirals I don't feel that way. I feel deflated, crushed, lethargic. It saps any desire I have to play the game...or to start another one. And I am a true civ fanatic, hundreds of hours of play, been helping on this mod since Thal's day. So my fear is: if this can make me feel like that, I can't imagine what a newer player coming into the Mod might feel. Your first reaction might be "but a newer player won't play on emperor". That is also true. But as G has noted many times, the happiness curve is not strongly impacted by difficulty. Meaning that a player playing their appropriate difficulty (even if lower) and playing the way I did could have easily hit the spiral as well....likely even easier since they don't have the experience to know how to best correct it.


To make an analogy. When I was crushed as England, I felt like I was racing against the latest sports car. I have a good car, they have a better one, but with strong tactics and a little luck I can win the day. With the happiness spiral, I feel like my tank ran out of gas, and I'm watching the race from the side lines. No control, nothing to do but sit and watch what happens. If the mod makes new players feel that way....we are doing something wrong.

 

[RAuer2]

Let's talk about what made the game unfunny in the scenario Stalker0 described.

1. There's little warning about what is going to happen. A player may think that it is OK to keep fighting when he's two turns away from the abyss.

2. Once in the downward spiral, there's little a player can do to avoid it. This may force rage quitting.

An experienced player plays safe and avoids long wars from previous mistakes. But even for us, those moments are frustrating.
Are there any good ideas other than not losing gold?

Hhmm... my first thought is that, when the mod is finished, guides and civilopedia entries will help new players. However, that is not helpful unless a new player sees the guide/civilopedia entry first. What about a "happiness warning" of some sort in the UI?

If a warning seems reasonable, then I would suggest the warning be one of the alerts or notices that pops up at the beginning of each turn (in EUI, these are in the lower right under the list of Civs). If a warning is even possible, we could sort out conditions that would trigger it (such as "below X threshold" or "more than Y shift in happiness in one turn") and whatever text the message should include (such as suggesting the player check the civilopedia where there is more room for helpful information).

 

[ElliotS]

Your point is correct in that I did not play the game correctly. I admit that in the opening post. My goal here was not to say "the way I played should have been ok". My goal was to document to people how happiness spirals can happen (for those who have not experienced them), and to describe the frustration that is associated with them.

The topic of newer players has come up recently, and that is the area I have concern about. Now its true that new players have to learn the game...but there is a key difference between mistakes that embolden you and mistakes that frustrate you.

For example....before this game, I was crushed 4 times in a row by the AI's excellent warring while I was trying some England strategies. And again, the issue was my play. But I found in each of these experiences a "lets do it again feeling!". I was excited that the AI was so good at hitting my weaknesses, and felt excited to try it again and tweak my play.

With these happiness spirals I don't feel that way. I feel deflated, crushed, lethargic. It saps any desire I have to play the game...or to start another one. And I am a true civ fanatic, hundreds of hours of play, been helping on this mod since Thal's day. So my fear is: if this can make me feel like that, I can't imagine what a newer player coming into the Mod might feel. Your first reaction might be "but a newer player won't play on emperor". That is also true. But as G has noted many times, the happiness curve is not strongly impacted by difficulty. Meaning that a player playing their appropriate difficulty (even if lower) and playing the way I did could have easily hit the spiral as well....likely even easier since they don't have the experience to know how to best correct it.


To make an analogy. When I was crushed as England, I felt like I was racing against the latest sports car. I have a good car, they have a better one, but with strong tactics and a little luck I can win the day. With the happiness spiral, I feel like my tank ran out of gas, and I'm watching the race from the side lines. No control, nothing to do but sit and watch what happens. If the mod makes new players feel that way....we are doing something wrong.

This seems a lot like Aggressive Expansion (and some other problems) in EU4. I think it's fine, even if it feels bad when you get smacked down with it.

 

[Deadstarre]

Hhmm... my first thought is that, when the mod is finished, guides and civilopedia entries will help new players. However, that is not helpful unless a new player sees the guide/civilopedia entry first. What about a "happiness warning" of some sort in the UI?

If a warning seems reasonable, then I would suggest the warning be one of the alerts or notices that pops up at the beginning of each turn (in EUI, these are in the lower right under the list of Civs). If a warning is even possible, we could sort out conditions that would trigger it (such as "below X threshold" or "more than Y shift in happiness in one turn") and whatever text the message should include (such as suggesting the player check the civilopedia where there is more room for helpful information).

and an option to turn the warning off lol

 

[Owlbebach]

only base strength or with promotions ?

I think promotions do not affect strength of a city, they use base strength of a unit only

 

[Gazebo]

Question: would a process like Wealth or Research that ends unhappiness in a city (but costs your production to do so) be useful in that scenario? Essentially temporary martial law?

 

[Stalker0]

Question: would a process like Wealth or Research that ends unhappiness in a city (but costs your production to do so) be useful in that scenario? Essentially temporary martial law?

I think so. Effectively I would turn some of my cities to "Festival" or whatever you would call it, while I build happiness buildings in other cities. You could also consider that this festival would turn off growth at the same time. You don't have to go that route, but its way to make it both more of a cost but also help it keep a stronger check on unhappiness.

Further, I would use it if I have key battles to fight. I could shift some cities to festival to get my combat numbers back up, finish my battles, and then maybe turn it back down. I don't know if you would consider that an "exploit" or just intelligently fighting the unhappiness, but that is something to consider.

Thinking about it a bit more. One possible exploit would be:

1) Build a city designed for big science and or culture. Don't focus on happiness.
2) Change it to "Festival".
3) Now you have a city generating no production but actually generates happiness (from any get happy for X buildings and the like), but with full yields. So a quasi puppet city that actually provides happiness.

Id be curious if that would be seen as "not that great" or "omg that's OP"

 

[LukaSlovenia29]

At a first glance, I think that would be too strong, give too much of an edge to runaway civs that could much easier escape unhappiness/low happiness.

I'd prefer if instead a policy increased the conversion rate (instead of 20% to let's say 40%) for processes, thus indirectly also making it easier to fight the main source of unhappiness in a city.

 

[Workerspam]

Question: would a process like Wealth or Research that ends unhappiness in a city (but costs your production to do so) be useful in that scenario? Essentially temporary martial law?

Thinking about it a bit more. One possible exploit would be:

1) Build a city designed for big science and or culture. Don't focus on happiness.
2) Change it to "Festival".
3) Now you have a city generating no production but actually generates happiness (from any get happy for X buildings and the like), but with full yields. So a quasi puppet city that actually provides happiness.

Would it be possible to have a city using the "Suppression" process to not generate any empire wide yields? So that city would not generate any unhappiness but also no culture/science/faith/gold. That would make it a lot harder to exploit since it would still come with the drains of extra cities with no yields to offset it.

 

[Gazebo]

Would it be possible to have a city using the "Suppression" process to not generate any empire wide yields? So that city would not generate any unhappiness but also no culture/science/faith/gold. That would make it a lot harder to exploit since it would still come with the drains of extra cities with no yields to offset it.

The more wrinkles added to it, the harder it is for the AI. I'm not planning on adding anything, but I am curious about it's reception as a concept.

G

 

[Enrico Swagolo]

Maybe just have it reduce every unhappiness source requirement by 20% if used? So instead of +20% of a yield, your city needs to produce 20% less yields/CS per pop to not get hit by unhappiness when the conversion mode is on.

 

[tu_79]

I'm not sure about the happiness process. This would be something like a martial law. But unhappiness from war weariness is local or global? It won't be very useful if the process has to be used in the cities that are most underdeveloped.

I was thinking more of the way war weariness strikes. Right now it does nothing for a lot of time if no self units are killed, and then suddenly it goes down like crazy. And the worst thing is that it's not that easy to stop the war. Okay, it's not a good idea to let a human player to stop a war whenever he wants. So, what if war weariness is tweaked to strike in steps? So it stays at the same level for a number of turns before going down again. Turns enough to let any player seek peace. Or raze the lattest city.

 

[ScooterDWiebels]

This is an unfinished game, but its such a great example that I thought it important to discuss.

Standard Perfect World 3 (Terra Start). Playing Spain on Emperor (Standard Speed).

I may talk about the full game at some point. But I'm experiencing the happiness toilet right now, and I want to walk through step by step how a civilization that once had 20 happiness is now hovering around -30, and has started losing cities due to cultural revolutions.

When starting cities on another continent it's imperative if your cities are growing quickly you will need a connection from your capitol to your cities either roads or lighthouses or both. The building of lighthouses is one of the biggest help here from my experience.

 

[Stalker0]

When starting cities on another continent it's imperative if your cities are growing quickly you will need a connection from your capitol to your cities either roads or lighthouses or both. The building of lighthouses is one of the biggest help here from my experience.

First building I always build in every city like thst

 

[tu_79]

Another thing that can be done is a way to stop any war, with a great cost. For example, giving back the last captured city.

Also, it's not clear that capturing new cities makes it more difficult to set an end to the war. It's unclear why one cannot approach the AI to ask for peace. Maybe if the player could speak to the AI, some message saying that as long as you keep capturing cities there shall be no peace, or something alike could be given to the player so he knows. But now AI simply refuses to talk, so nothing can be learned.

Maybe give always the option to pay war amendments to end a war, decreasing with the willingness of the opponent to end the war. Without the money it will be difficult to keep developing but at least war weariness can be stopped.

 

[Gokudo01]

I think promotions do not affect strength of a city, they use base strength of a unit only

Ok i did some test with great general, and it affects the defence provided by the garrison.

 

[Gazebo]

I'm not sure about the happiness process. This would be something like a martial law. But unhappiness from war weariness is local or global? It won't be very useful if the process has to be used in the cities that are most underdeveloped.

I was thinking more of the way war weariness strikes. Right now it does nothing for a lot of time if no self units are killed, and then suddenly it goes down like crazy. And the worst thing is that it's not that easy to stop the war. Okay, it's not a good idea to let a human player to stop a war whenever he wants. So, what if war weariness is tweaked to strike in steps? So it stays at the same level for a number of turns before going down again. Turns enough to let any player seek peace. Or raze the lattest city.

Already works that way.

 

[bigcat88]

What I can say about last versions after 4 full games in this month.
Game become harder. Immortal feels like almost Deity In November/December versions. Currently in this month I even not tried Deity, Immortal is enough for me.

And I like warmonger system. A true challenge in fights now(when you are aggressor), in current game I slightly loosing war against Immortal Otto and I like how he fight! Maybe if he do some suicide attacks he will even take more then 1-2 cities during war.