I thought the whole point of the pop scaler was to allow luxes to give more happiness past early game when 1 happiness won’t cut it? How are you going to address this? Could we just have them give 2 happiness starting in medieval?
New Beta Version - March 14th (3-14)
- Thread starter Gazebo
- Start date
- Status
I thought the whole point of the pop scaler was to allow luxes to give more happiness past early game when 1 happiness won’t cut it? How are you going to address this? Could we just have them give 2 happiness starting in medieval?
Luxuries are going to go back to 2 happiness per luxury, base, from trade or empire value. It'll be flat, so getting a lux in a trade will have the same value as buying one, and it'll have linear value in your empire.
This scales with map size because, generally, you expand more on a larger map, so getting more via trade is fine.
G
tu_79
Deity
Ok, fine.
Think of vanilla.
+4 happiness per luxury. Bigger maps require more cities to complete a domination game. More cities require more happiness, and there you have it. There are more luxuries in bigger maps.
The only problem, the reason I think we changed it, it is because it does not scale well with eras. By linking the happiness provided by luxuries to the size of cities, we solved that problem, even if it looks 'arcane'.
Edit. It was even better, because luxuries meant more for tall civs, who need to trade for them.
Think of vanilla.
+4 happiness per luxury. Bigger maps require more cities to complete a domination game. More cities require more happiness, and there you have it. There are more luxuries in bigger maps.
The only problem, the reason I think we changed it, it is because it does not scale well with eras. By linking the happiness provided by luxuries to the size of cities, we solved that problem, even if it looks 'arcane'.
Edit. It was even better, because luxuries meant more for tall civs, who need to trade for them.
We will have to see if this makes it too easy early game to spam settlers and ignore happiness as long as you are settling on new luxuries.
tu_79
Deity
Just theorycrafting.
Is it possible to gain +2 flat happiness on owned luxuries and +4 flat happiness from luxuries gained by trade?
If it is, then it would scale a little on eras, since it is more common to trade for luxuries in the mid game. It won't scale for the late game, but at least it is more simple.
Sorry if I missed this, but what was the problem with the luxury system as of the 2-17 version? We went to local for the beta version because global happiness was weird, but with that issue being fixed why can’t we just use the luxury system from 2-17 exactly?
my complaints on this version is purely UI related. the top panel is still congested when more strat reso are available, therefore those hardwork you made on the happiness UI will be rendered useless as it will be toppled over by resources.
promotion tree isn't also scrollable up/downards only sideways, can't see all the juicy tree.
pretty much i'll end up myself again editing the UI to get rid of that stuffs on top panel.
promotion tree isn't also scrollable up/downards only sideways, can't see all the juicy tree.
pretty much i'll end up myself again editing the UI to get rid of that stuffs on top panel.
Because it behaved weirdly with local happiness and scaled a little too much. The scaled based on pop is also a bit arcane. Flat values or death.
G
What do you think about scaling by era then? At 2 flat luxuries will be too powerful early and inconsequential late. Reasons against scaling from 1 to 4 happiness every 2 era? There is already precedent for era scaling from specialists.
Gothic_Empire
AKA, Ramen Empire
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2008
- Messages
- 1,502
What if we added a happiness base to the city tiles?
Flat grassland river could get a base of 5 happiness (or whatever), all the way down to snow adding -1 happiness.
Flat grassland river could get a base of 5 happiness (or whatever), all the way down to snow adding -1 happiness.
Why reward good settling positions even more than they are already rewarded?
Seems really perverse to encourage people to avoid improving their own lux so they can buy it instead. If you want to scale by era, just scale by era as some others have suggested (though of course it would want to be a bit flatter than usual era scaling)
pineappledan
Deity
RIP Inuit
Wait so you are keeping the local luxury bonus and having each luxury give 2 happiness to every city? Forget about it being weak late, how is it possibly not overwhelmingly powerful early?
Edit: No that cant be right; you would have more happiness. So empire sources is in a different bucket from luxuries? Why not combine them? Or are they in the same bucket but show up separately in the city panel?
Last edited:
Empire sources are a different bucket because they're stored and calculated at the player level (this is a memory design element, no reason to store that data at every level).
Right now it's simple - every imported or owned luxury gives it's luxury happiness value (2) to the player at the player level (policies and monopolies can modify this of course). The value is then divided by your total cities, and the remainder is passed out amongst your first cities (starting with capital) towards your newest cities, until the remainder runs out.
So if 4 remainder:
Capital gets 1 (now 3)
Second city gets 1 (now 2)
etc. etc.
G
And the same remainder thing happens with empire happiness as well, correct? So capital is quite likely to have 2 "extra" happiness.
Yes. The capital will always be the first 'overflow' target, then the second city, etc. etc.
G
JamesNinelives
Emperor
This seems like a good time to share my recent experiences. I'm finding the current system to be relatively balanced on the settings I play (Prince, Huge map, Epic speed).
I feel that there that expansion and warmongering are favoured somewhat. On the other hand, the AIs that I've seen large empires don't seem to have as much infrastructure in their cities - and I haven't had too much of an issue competing with them. My cities are more developed - which means can stay ahead of them in science and culture. The main challenge has been balancing military with development and I think that's a kind challenge I can enjoy.
Still, I've done a lot more warring in this game that I have in previous games, and part of the reason for that is that war weariness isn't hitting me as hard. I've been able to rack up 30-40 war weariness without it really having much of an effect - only my outlying cities were unhappy and I don't care about their growth much. I manged to stay above 90% empire happiness the whole time. So that might bear some adjustments.
To be honest though it's been a lot of fun. I experienced parts of the game that I haven't before - like learning to sell of buildings before I raze a city, and that civs won't accept a city as a gift if it's unhappy. I learned that when you ask someone not to settle near you and they actually say yes it stays that way for a long time (and so does the diplo penalty, appropriately). I also learned that having a defensive pact with a civ gives you a minor diplo penalty. Finally I learned that if you want to spread multiple religions to a city in order to pruchase religious buildings it's more efficient to use one missionary and one inquisitor than multiple missionaries.
Next up, luxuries feels a little odd. The AI seems willing to trade spare luxes for fairly cheap, which makes getting WLTKD and completing city-state quests to access a luxury feel a bit too easy. I actually still find luxuries very worthwhile because even aside from the happiness getting WLTKD in all almost all your cities is quite valuable. Furthermore I've found I can often trade for a luxury for less gold than I get as a reward from city-states that want it. I don't know what if anything should be changed there, but I thought it was worth noting.
Finally, having specialist unhappiness apply on a local level feels... odd. In the past writers guilds, artists guilds etc. have been good for cities with lots of much food and actually work to combat unhappiness because they slow growth and provide culture. Now building a guild in city with happiness problems usually means those slots go unworked. This isn't such a big deal as happiness is less of an issue, and building guilds in the cities which already have lots of infrastructure makes sense. The thing is that this applies to all specialist slots. Which means that the island cities I would usually have working lots of specialist slots to slow their growth are working more sea tiles instead and keep on growing. This isn't unmanageable. I guess the fact that they seem to manage unhappiness dynamically suggests that it's balanced - they seem to work exactly the number of specialists that they can manage without being unhappy. I do have to invest in a fair bit in infrastructure in these cities though to keep up with their growth.
Actually, it seems to me that specialist slots are worked less in general in this patch. I haven't generated as many great people in this game, and that surprised me because my empire has been more prosperous in general than most games. I had a strong start and was able to maintain a comfortable lead from about the Renaissance era. I have fewer great person improvements, embassies, and great works than the average game though. I imagine this is probably because the unhappiness generated by specialists is factored into the city's management decision - whereas before these betas that was factored in on a global level.
I guess that's about it. Below are a some of screenshots from the game at various points. At the moment I'm on 100% happy, and of my unhappiness about half of it (70) comes from specialisation. Most of the rest (39) is from Distress. Other information that might be relevant is that I have 14 cities, 11 wonders, 385 citizens, 55 techs, and my policies are 6 Progress, 6 Artistry, 6 Rationalism, and 6 Freedom.
I feel that there that expansion and warmongering are favoured somewhat. On the other hand, the AIs that I've seen large empires don't seem to have as much infrastructure in their cities - and I haven't had too much of an issue competing with them. My cities are more developed - which means can stay ahead of them in science and culture. The main challenge has been balancing military with development and I think that's a kind challenge I can enjoy.
Still, I've done a lot more warring in this game that I have in previous games, and part of the reason for that is that war weariness isn't hitting me as hard. I've been able to rack up 30-40 war weariness without it really having much of an effect - only my outlying cities were unhappy and I don't care about their growth much. I manged to stay above 90% empire happiness the whole time. So that might bear some adjustments.
To be honest though it's been a lot of fun. I experienced parts of the game that I haven't before - like learning to sell of buildings before I raze a city, and that civs won't accept a city as a gift if it's unhappy. I learned that when you ask someone not to settle near you and they actually say yes it stays that way for a long time (and so does the diplo penalty, appropriately). I also learned that having a defensive pact with a civ gives you a minor diplo penalty. Finally I learned that if you want to spread multiple religions to a city in order to pruchase religious buildings it's more efficient to use one missionary and one inquisitor than multiple missionaries.
Next up, luxuries feels a little odd. The AI seems willing to trade spare luxes for fairly cheap, which makes getting WLTKD and completing city-state quests to access a luxury feel a bit too easy. I actually still find luxuries very worthwhile because even aside from the happiness getting WLTKD in all almost all your cities is quite valuable. Furthermore I've found I can often trade for a luxury for less gold than I get as a reward from city-states that want it. I don't know what if anything should be changed there, but I thought it was worth noting.
Finally, having specialist unhappiness apply on a local level feels... odd. In the past writers guilds, artists guilds etc. have been good for cities with lots of much food and actually work to combat unhappiness because they slow growth and provide culture. Now building a guild in city with happiness problems usually means those slots go unworked. This isn't such a big deal as happiness is less of an issue, and building guilds in the cities which already have lots of infrastructure makes sense. The thing is that this applies to all specialist slots. Which means that the island cities I would usually have working lots of specialist slots to slow their growth are working more sea tiles instead and keep on growing. This isn't unmanageable. I guess the fact that they seem to manage unhappiness dynamically suggests that it's balanced - they seem to work exactly the number of specialists that they can manage without being unhappy. I do have to invest in a fair bit in infrastructure in these cities though to keep up with their growth.
Actually, it seems to me that specialist slots are worked less in general in this patch. I haven't generated as many great people in this game, and that surprised me because my empire has been more prosperous in general than most games. I had a strong start and was able to maintain a comfortable lead from about the Renaissance era. I have fewer great person improvements, embassies, and great works than the average game though. I imagine this is probably because the unhappiness generated by specialists is factored into the city's management decision - whereas before these betas that was factored in on a global level.
I guess that's about it. Below are a some of screenshots from the game at various points. At the moment I'm on 100% happy, and of my unhappiness about half of it (70) comes from specialisation. Most of the rest (39) is from Distress. Other information that might be relevant is that I have 14 cities, 11 wonders, 385 citizens, 55 techs, and my policies are 6 Progress, 6 Artistry, 6 Rationalism, and 6 Freedom.
Spoiler Early Game :
Spoiler Mid Game :
Spoiler War Weariness :
Spoiler Late Game :
Spoiler Bonus :
JamesNinelives
Emperor
Just for the record I enjoyed it too. There are things I enjoy about the new system as well though.
- Status
