New Beta Version - March 14th (3-14)

[John.B.C]

I also had a game where I opened tradition (getting to 5 pop as a result) without having found a natural wonder and ended up with rebels shortly thereafter.

I'm playing on immortal so that's probably why the rebells showed up at size 6 for me.

 

[pineappledan]

Customs houses don't have the flat poverty reduction, even though they used to reduce poverty.

 

[Gazebo]

Customs houses don't have the flat poverty reduction, even though they used to reduce poverty

Yep, was removed.

G

 

[pineappledan]

Cool. Thought it might have just been an oversight.

There are only 3 buildings which reduce flat local needs by more than 1: Military academy, Military Base, and Police Station. All 3 reduce distress.

Either late-game Distress is an absurd problem, there should be some late-game culture/gold/science buildings to match, or Distress got waaaaay too much attention. Not sure which is the case

 

[Gazebo]

Cool. Thought it might have just been an oversight.

There are only 3 buildings which reduce flat local needs by more than 1: Military academy, Military Base, and Police Station. All 3 reduce distress.

Either late-game Distress is an absurd problem, there should be some late-game culture/gold/science buildings to match, or Distress got waaaaay too much attention. Not sure which is the case

Distress is the most easily disrupted need due to it being largely tile-centric. So yes, distress can get out of hand.

G

 

[pineappledan]

The Russian Ostrog is missing the -5% EmpireNeedsModifier from the base Arsenal

 

[tu_79]

The handicap bonus would be my first suggestion.

I agree.
We are used to have 1 happiness per difficulty level (5 global happiness in King), now we have +3 local happiness per city. That's too much for the early game.
Could we get this bonus at the empire level? The same as happiness from a city state is distributed?

 

[Gazebo]

I agree.
We are used to have 1 happiness per difficulty level (5 global happiness in King), now we have +3 local happiness per city. That's too much for the early game.
Could we get this bonus at the empire level? The same as happiness from a city state is distributed?

Still comes down to the modulo being weird. But I have plan.

 

[TheBigFundamental]

A cunning plan?

 

[Moi Magnus]

Still comes down to the modulo being weird. But I have plan.

Spoiler Random meme :

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Yep, I'm able to do so as well. But I also had a game where I opened tradition (getting to 5 pop as a result) without having found a natural wonder and ended up with rebels shortly thereafter. It's literally 1 or 2 happiness from finding a natural wonder or having an easy to connect lux that makes the difference. After that initial danger window happiness is pretty easy to manage from what I can tell.

Oh, I was also playing on deity so they smaller amount of 'happiness from difficulty' is likely a difference too. Which makes me realize that if the AI has larger innate happiness than a deity player then it makes sense that the AI could avoid this early happiness trap consistently, even as Venice.

Yea I was testing on King, probably a factor in it all.

 

[Elite Spud]

I just finished my second ever game as Sweden, on Emperor, aiming for an early warmongering spree into turtling as tall as possible for a science win with mass Skolas. I was harassed early by Assyria, but vassalized him just after medieval. Did the same with the only other civ on the continent, the Inca, shortly after renaissance, and conquered no other cities beyond this. Went Progress->Fealty->Rationalism->Order, ended up with 22 cities, and won science on turn 387.

Happiness TLDR: Almost a nonfactor when playing wide outside of puppets. Because can't outpace as long as both are capped at city pop, growth is now very beneficial as long as you've either got enough luxuries or enough production. Puppet/annex unhappiness slows warmongering, but needs unhappiness does not stop or really slow down ultra-wide play. Tech/policy cost penalties are now the primary incentive to control fewer cities, and golden ages are now very rare unless you've got sources of or a small number of very efficient cities.

Also, I have no idea what makes up 'happiness from Buildings' in the city UI tooltip. Mine reads 11 in (almost) every city even though the only buildings giving me are Circus, Castle, Skola, and University.

Happiness in detail:

Spoiler :

I had small excess of non-puppet unhappiness at two points: a short while after the first DoW (from neglecting buildings) and late game. For the remaining portion of the game, city happiness == city unhappiness in non-puppets.

By a large margin (>75%), my positive happiness was held up by Building + Luxury happiness. Luxuries accounted for >50% of this subtotal per city, so once world congress banned a few of my resources, I lost several happiness per city. I then started banning the AI’s resources to tank their happiness (somewhat useful), whereas before I mostly only did it to make friends or deny a monopoly bonus.

On the other hand, tile pillaging seems to now have almost no impact on unhappiness. I set fire to literally every tile the Inca owned before I went in for the kill and they still weren't below 80% unhappiness, much less the threshold for a combat penalty. Is this because unhappiness caps at the city population and tile pillaging unhappiness is bounded by that cap?

I didn’t have any issues with growth throughout the game because of how high my positive happiness was. I never once stopped growth or built public works. Adding a new citizen always game me one happiness and one unhappiness until I reached 35+ pop when my luxury happiness finally began to peter out. Since the listed happiness in the UI caps at the pop, it would be nice to see whether a new citizen will bring about a new positive happiness, similar to how needs unhappiness is currently predicted. I was only able to know my happiness upper limit if my tallest city had already reached it.

Because I owned 22 cities, my empire scaler added +161% to needs. This seemed to basically guarantee that I would never eliminate needs unhappiness, so I was able to ignore it almost entirely. Also, because specialist unhappiness overrides unhappiness derived from needs (and my needs were so high) I encountered basically no penalty for having every city work a ton of scientists. I chose to annex all ~7 of my puppets in early industrial because I noticed that even my worst cities had no excess unhappiness. One of these newly annexed cities was working only 1 non-snow land tile, but I still was able to grow it endlessly without issue while spamming specialists. Looking back, this city was only contributing 3% of my science (even though it increased my costs by 7%), so I probably should have left it a puppet, but it also means that cities in terrible locations like single islands or barren tundra don't destroy your unhappiness like before. At worst they're now just cities with poor infrastructure.

Although I didn't have unhappiness problems, I also never had any excess happiness in cities, so I saw maybe 5 golden ages total, all of which were brought on by GA bulbing or city state rewards. I’m curious to see how easy it is to get consistent golden ages with a smaller, more efficient empire.

One notable side-effect of specialist unhappiness masking needs unhappiness is that it replaces boredom first. This allowed me to delay Egypt’s massive tourism by working more specialists until unhappiness from boredom was gone (lowering his tourism multiplier). This probably only worked because my empire scaler ramped distress & poverty needs up so high.

As an aside, I continue to be unsure of how to deal with AI Egypt. As a neighbor, he can be annoying-to-deadly depending on terrain, so I usually opt to take him out, but when he's on another continent, he consistently runs away with the game. When I met Egypt in this game, he was 8 techs ahead of me (10 over the next best), immediately influential with every other remote civ, had 2/4 possible friendships, 3/4 possible defensive pacts, and all but 6 of the pre-industrial wonders. Prior experience tells me that had I not focused culture hard, I (the only holdout) would’ve been swallowed by tourism early. I’d expect direct neighbor civs like Persia and the Huns to gang up on Egypt after maybe his 6th wonder, but they always seem to wait far too long, and he turns into a juggernaut. I couldn’t bribe anyone to attack him (though he brokered war against me to no effect repeatedly), and Skolas + a sanction against me helped to fight his tourism, but even with Skola science, I couldn’t outpace him until I picked Order. Only after he controlled every CS not on my continent did other AI begin to denounce Egypt, at which point I was already in charge of the game.

 

[Gazebo]

I just finished my second ever game as Sweden, on Emperor, aiming for an early warmongering spree into turtling as tall as possible for a science win with mass Skolas. I was harassed early by Assyria, but vassalized him just after medieval. Did the same with the only other civ on the continent, the Inca, shortly after renaissance, and conquered no other cities beyond this. Went Progress->Fealty->Rationalism->Order, ended up with 22 cities, and won science on turn 387.

Happiness TLDR: Almost a nonfactor when playing wide outside of puppets. Because can't outpace as long as both are capped at city pop, growth is now very beneficial as long as you've either got enough luxuries or enough production. Puppet/annex unhappiness slows warmongering, but needs unhappiness does not stop or really slow down ultra-wide play. Tech/policy cost penalties are now the primary incentive to control fewer cities, and golden ages are now very rare unless you've got sources of or a small number of very efficient cities.

Also, I have no idea what makes up 'happiness from Buildings' in the city UI tooltip. Mine reads 11 in (almost) every city even though the only buildings giving me are Circus, Castle, Skola, and University.

Happiness in detail:

Spoiler :

I had small excess of non-puppet unhappiness at two points: a short while after the first DoW (from neglecting buildings) and late game. For the remaining portion of the game, city happiness == city unhappiness in non-puppets.

By a large margin (>75%), my positive happiness was held up by Building + Luxury happiness. Luxuries accounted for >50% of this subtotal per city, so once world congress banned a few of my resources, I lost several happiness per city. I then started banning the AI’s resources to tank their happiness (somewhat useful), whereas before I mostly only did it to make friends or deny a monopoly bonus.

On the other hand, tile pillaging seems to now have almost no impact on unhappiness. I set fire to literally every tile the Inca owned before I went in for the kill and they still weren't below 80% unhappiness, much less the threshold for a combat penalty. Is this because unhappiness caps at the city population and tile pillaging unhappiness is bounded by that cap?

I didn’t have any issues with growth throughout the game because of how high my positive happiness was. I never once stopped growth or built public works. Adding a new citizen always game me one happiness and one unhappiness until I reached 35+ pop when my luxury happiness finally began to peter out. Since the listed happiness in the UI caps at the pop, it would be nice to see whether a new citizen will bring about a new positive happiness, similar to how needs unhappiness is currently predicted. I was only able to know my happiness upper limit if my tallest city had already reached it.

Because I owned 22 cities, my empire scaler added +161% to needs. This seemed to basically guarantee that I would never eliminate needs unhappiness, so I was able to ignore it almost entirely. Also, because specialist unhappiness overrides unhappiness derived from needs (and my needs were so high) I encountered basically no penalty for having every city work a ton of scientists. I chose to annex all ~7 of my puppets in early industrial because I noticed that even my worst cities had no excess unhappiness. One of these newly annexed cities was working only 1 non-snow land tile, but I still was able to grow it endlessly without issue while spamming specialists. Looking back, this city was only contributing 3% of my science (even though it increased my costs by 7%), so I probably should have left it a puppet, but it also means that cities in terrible locations like single islands or barren tundra don't destroy your unhappiness like before. At worst they're now just cities with poor infrastructure.

Although I didn't have unhappiness problems, I also never had any excess happiness in cities, so I saw maybe 5 golden ages total, all of which were brought on by GA bulbing or city state rewards. I’m curious to see how easy it is to get consistent golden ages with a smaller, more efficient empire.

One notable side-effect of specialist unhappiness masking needs unhappiness is that it replaces boredom first. This allowed me to delay Egypt’s massive tourism by working more specialists until unhappiness from boredom was gone (lowering his tourism multiplier). This probably only worked because my empire scaler ramped distress & poverty needs up so high.

As an aside, I continue to be unsure of how to deal with AI Egypt. As a neighbor, he can be annoying-to-deadly depending on terrain, so I usually opt to take him out, but when he's on another continent, he consistently runs away with the game. When I met Egypt in this game, he was 8 techs ahead of me (10 over the next best), immediately influential with every other remote civ, had 2/4 possible friendships, 3/4 possible defensive pacts, and all but 6 of the pre-industrial wonders. Prior experience tells me that had I not focused culture hard, I (the only holdout) would’ve been swallowed by tourism early. I’d expect direct neighbor civs like Persia and the Huns to gang up on Egypt after maybe his 6th wonder, but they always seem to wait far too long, and he turns into a juggernaut. I couldn’t bribe anyone to attack him (though he brokered war against me to no effect repeatedly), and Skolas + a sanction against me helped to fight his tourism, but even with Skola science, I couldn’t outpace him until I picked Order. Only after he controlled every CS not on my continent did other AI begin to denounce Egypt, at which point I was already in charge of the game.

Nice write-up. Not sure what the '11 in every city' is coming from - I'll make sure something isn't double dipping into that pool. Nevertheless, everything else seems pretty much above board.

I'd consider this a solid stress-test, and I think it highlights that, while there is definitely room for tweaking, the system is vastly superior in terms of 'an enjoyable experience' than the prior empire-happiness model. As I've said elsewhere, a big point of this huge change was to push the happiness system into the background a bit.

G

 

[Rekk]

Yep.

I think we may need to think about whether it's desirable to reach the unhappiness cap in a city, successfully cancel it with happiness, and become immune to religious division, pillaged tiles tourism unconnected cities, tourism boredom, specialist unhappiness and further increasing needs.

 

[Elite Spud]

After researching Future Tech, Building happiness began to accrue in my capital, despite Future Tech not being something I can build or see as being built. I opened a github ticket for this issue, as it was also rewarding me with double the listed value.

 

[Gazebo]

Yep.

I think we may need to think about whether it's desirable to reach the unhappiness cap in a city, successfully cancel it with happiness, and become immune to religious division, pillaged tiles tourism unconnected cities, tourism boredom, specialist unhappiness and further increasing needs.

I think it's fine, personally - the system has very clear rules in place now. If you allowed unhappiness to exceed population in a city but not happiness, or vice versa, it would be hard to deal with. Conversely, if you uncap both happiness and happiness from city population, controlling growth is no longer a viable method for managing happiness - it's essentially out of your control at that point.

I think, if I were to do anything to make the system more difficult, I might either change the cutoffs from 75/50/25 to something higher (i.e. 80/60/40), or I might remove puppet happiness from the 'total population' check being made at the empire level (so puppets would be less manageable). Not sure if need either, though - players shouldn't spend the game sweating going under 75% happiness, they should be doing other more interesting things.

G

 

[Txurce]

...Not sure if need either, though - players shouldn't spend the game sweating going under 75% happiness, they should be doing other more interesting things.

Words to mod by.

 

[Gazebo]

After researching Future Tech, Building happiness began to accrue in my capital, despite Future Tech not being something I can build or see as being built. I opened a github ticket for this issue, as it was also rewarding me with double the listed value.

That's just how it is calculated.

G

 

[Stalker0]

Specialist Unhappiness: I'd like to debate it a bit.

Not the current amount of it per say. But historically the pendulum was swung back and forth on this topic. Sometimes specialists are heavily penalized with unhappiness, sometimes only a little.

Why are we penalizing them at all?


Fundamentally, Specialists are a choice between greater growth and other yields. Early game they far from automatic, but are something to be used and governed to balance more yields and GPs with a reasonably growing city. Late Game they are commonplace, but that's more of a factor of the infrastructure I've built up, and the growth I've done, to allow those specialists. And the IRL argument, specialists are very common in the modern era.

So why are we penalizing this playstyle with so much unhappiness? If specialists are too strong, we should look at their yield balance. And if they are not, why do we need to rope in happiness to yet another mechanic?

 

[Gothic_Empire]

Is it possible to not have the AI take control of disconnected players?