New Beta Version - September 25th (9-25)

[Enrico Swagolo]

I have an idea. Increase base needs with every tech researched more drastically, but have every single building in a city reduce all possible needs of the city by 1% (independently of what they do right now). This way you have to stop overexpanding and take care of building s in your cities.

Or keep it as it is, I'm not having big problems myself - but then, my game is a bit different as I change tons of values and use 4UC which I also change if I don't like something, so do I really count?

 

[Moi Magnus]

What does that mean?

Happiness stability is correlated to the number of city you have.
If you have less than 2 excedent happiness per city, you can lose them at any moment (due to all the rounding stuff).
Currently, if you have +10 happiness in a 20 city empire, the happiness indicator is full green, and a beginner has no indication that he is not far away from being crushed by unhappiness.

To the question "how do we change the UI", this should of course be discussed before being changed.
Example of changes:
1) Change the main global happiness indicator to a "average per non-puppet cities".
2) Just change the color of the indicator depending on this average pre non-puppet cities.

 

[Almonds]

It sounds like the best solution is to do nothing, then. I mean, if I’m taking the honest approach it would be much easier for new players to just get thumped once or twice. If someone quits their first game because they got their feelings hurt over an unhappiness dip they weren’t going to stick around anyways.

I can turn off the tech median - in fact anyone can with the defines in the CBO. But I think you’ll see that it primarily benefits runaways to do so.

G

I have to agree with G here. So far I think retooling GAP to stave off or at least reduce unhappiness effects is the best suggestion if we want to curb the big dips people are facing, but initially I thought even that was an unnecessary change. The only real issue people are experience is that they don't know why their happiness drops off, but there is always a reason. It needs to made clear somehow that all cities under a player's control can drop a point or two in unhappiness at any time due to Needs, Tech Level, Urbanization etc, and that preemptive measures are often the best defense against this.

 

[Enginseer]

If you have a better way of reigning in overexpansion and runaways I’m all ears. Seriously.

G

I think your action of doing nothing is the best action to be taken. It provides a sense of realism to what the real nations were actually going through. In the Industrial Era, nations were actually fighting against their own happiness. As independence movements become apparently common, the spikes of happiness can really increase and decrease.

I think what many players are arguing for more is more transparency on what the happiness mechanic is going on(should I be concerned about my # of happiness or not) and some are even advocating for a reduction of this happiness mechanic because it bamboozles them into a frustrating mechanic. If we want to rework the UI, let's just add a static (4 happiness per city) UI where if you rise above this, then you are considered Stable in green text if lower than 4 happiness per city, but more than 0 happiness per city then have a Unsteady status of yellow text and obviously unhappiness is already red texted for us.

On a footnote, my modmod address this pretty fairly. Civics and Reforms is pretty an adjustment policy that allows the AI and you to dynamically adjust your "bonuses" and "penalties" to which rarely AIs dip below the happiness if they have money to spend(which is usually the case in real life if you have a lot of money you can usually get a lot of stuff done).

 

[tu_79]

Happiness stability is correlated to the number of city you have.
If you have less than 2 excedent happiness per city, you can lose them at any moment (due to all the rounding stuff).
Currently, if you have +10 happiness in a 20 city empire, the happiness indicator is full green, and a beginner has no indication that he is not far away from being crushed by unhappiness.

To the question "how do we change the UI", this should of course be discussed before being changed.
Example of changes:
1) Change the main global happiness indicator to a "average per non-puppet cities".
2) Just change the color of the indicator depending on this average pre non-puppet cities.

Or show relative happiness values. I think they reflect much better how you are doing.

 

[Owlbebach]

If you have a better way of reigning in overexpansion and runaways I’m all ears. Seriously.

G

G, i gave an idea above. Might be not the best one, but still. The main things we need is:
1) make it predictable;
2) make it less big - droping by 20 happiness is okay is okay, 50 is not;
3) make it less absurd - getting more unhappiness from Illiteracy because i researched Apollo Program is just stupid, getting more Boredom because i now can build a Bomber is even more stupid.

 

[Workerspam]

For easy changes I could maybe adjust processes so that they also reduce their relevant need. Dunno if that would really help though.


G

Is a happiness process possible? My thoughts on how it would work:

• The city generates no unhappiness while working the process
• The city generates no culture, gold, science, or faith and is set to "No growth"
• Empire wide happiness grants no bonuses while any city is running a happiness process (i.e. you couldn't run the happiness process in a few cities to bump your empire happiness up to get the 10% bonuses to yields in your capital)

This would allow players (both new and experienced) to effectively turn off the unhappiness generated by the worst cities if they hit a sudden downturn. You could fix the issues causing unhappiness in your remaining cities without the draconian downsides that come with deep empire-wide unhappiness. As you fix your happiness issues in your better cities you will be better able to address the unhappiness in the remaining cities.

I don't think this would be exploitable since cities running the process would generate no yields while still increasing your science and culture costs.

 

[pineappledan]

If the happiness overflow pool idea, with a rate of +/-5 per turn, is easy enough to make then I see absolutely 0 downside.

One specific case that would help with is if your happiness is playing jump rope with one of those rounding issues. If your happiness is going to jump down 20, then jump back up 15 the turn after that, then some smoothing can't have any negative impact.

It also helps with the whole "feels bad man" aspect of your happiness plummeting.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

The only real issue people are experience is that they don't know why their happiness drops off, but there is always a reason. It needs to made clear somehow that all cities under a player's control can drop a point or two in unhappiness at any time due to Needs......

We are not talking about a drop of one or two per city. And not talking about the drop of happines due to more population in a city or increased needs cause the median have changed a bit.
We are talking about a drop of FOUR happiness per city, after you have researched a tech in a new era. The technology modificator cant be the source of the problem, cause else we would suffer every new tech such drops.
A drop of 4 happiness per city (This value coincides with Lunkers report [100 unhappiness in 25 city empire] and the drop in my last game [around 30 in 7 city empire]), means.... every yield based unhappiness creates ONE more unhappiness.
As already mentioned, a simple rounding error cant be the source, cause the chance it would trigger all 4 happiness yields at same time is very low.

And you cant point at people which are in the deep green with happiness (40+) and tell them: "You are doing something wrong, cause a mysterious crash will kill your happiness with no real reason in 5 turns, cause you have too much cities/citizen."
This is stupid. Of course experienced players will know this strange behavior and do things to avoid it. But nothing is telling a normal player such thing will happen. Nor will they understand it why. Cause they see 40+ happiness and think, all is fine.

Creating a buffer or decrease the happiness decrease didnt solve the problem, it only softens the result.

In my opinion Tu_79 thoughts are the best, making happiness and the influence by happiness relative to the empire.
20 happiness in a 5 city empire isnt the same as it is in a 20 city empire. A 20 city empire is much more vulnerable.

Couldnt we simply compare all happiness sources with all unhappiness sources?
This would result in a better comparable UI, which would show 100% in the case, happiness and unhappines is the same (At the moment 0 global happiness)

And it would need longer to trigger bad events, if your empire is bigger, if the bad events starts below 80% or 70% respectivly for rebels and revolts.
Gaining more yields cause of excess happiness would be also more difficult in bigger empires, but this is ok, cause the percentual increase also gives more advantage in bigger empires.

 

[arthurF]

Too all those who have argued that massive happiness swings don't happen unless your infrastructure is terrible, I posted a save game with a happiness swing of about 50 in one turn, a few weeks ago on the github bug report page. You can download and see for yourself.

https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/4731

 

[ofmiciv5]

"Don't you dare push that button my son..." - 2012

Do nothing G. People complain because they don't know how to adapt and still play their own style. More like newbies who are used to vanilla or from VP to JFDLC.

It sounds like the best solution is to do nothing, then. I mean, if I’m taking the honest approach it would be much easier for new players to just get thumped once or twice. If someone quits their first game because they got their feelings hurt over an unhappiness dip they weren’t going to stick around anyways.

I can turn off the tech median - in fact anyone can with the defines in the CBO. But I think you’ll see that it primarily benefits runaways to do so.

G

 

[BiteInTheMark]

"Don't you dare push that button my son..." - 2012

Do nothing G. People complain because they don't know how to adapt and still play their own style. More like newbies who are used to vanilla or from VP to JFDLC.

So, in your opinion this version, which is still a beta, is the holy cow, and all mechanics, numbers and UI are sacred and have to be given as the ultimative version?
In your opinion we have to adopt to collect a massiv amount of happiness before we enter industrial age? Cause of unknown reason even well developed nations get striked by massiv happiness drops? Even AI gets hit? Do you want to say, AI.... go and adopt to the playstyle we want or go down?

 

[76ers]

Do progress civs experience these huge happiness dips or just authority? Just wonder because I only ever see it as authority and makes me wonder if the source of happiness in the authority tree needs adjusted. Equality in progress is way better than discipline in authority.

 

[tu_79]

Do progress civs experience these huge happiness dips or just authority? Just wonder because I only ever see it as authority and makes me wonder if the source of happiness in the authority tree needs adjusted. Equality in progress is way better than discipline in authority.

I've done recently an Authority run without any problems. Don't blame the tree.

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

Do progress civs experience these huge happiness dips or just authority? Just wonder because I only ever see it as authority and makes me wonder if the source of happiness in the authority tree needs adjusted. Equality in progress is way better than discipline in authority.

Last few games I had with unhappiness spikes were running progress.

 

[ofmiciv5]

So, in your opinion this version, which is still a beta, is the holy cow, and all mechanics, numbers and UI are sacred and have to be given as the ultimative version?
In your opinion we have to adopt to collect a massiv amount of happiness before we enter industrial age? Cause of unknown reason even well developed nations get striked by massiv happiness drops? Even AI gets hit? Do you want to say, AI.... go and adopt to the playstyle we want or go down?

First and foremost, change is necessary. This is why G is constantly updated/reworking/re balancing VP. Second, it doesn't mean I don't want it to change, we will be forever stuck up to that idea. What I'm trying to say here is adapt on the current patch while giving feedback. Nowadays, for me, all I see are people whining. Third, I view the happiness issue as in real life. Just look at the first world nations now. That doesn't mean you are first rate country doesn't mean people are happy.

I don't know G's take on VP but I embrace the idea of making the game realistic as possible, AI don't rely on bonuses but rather be smart as humans without affecting the balance (which is tricky).

 

[Edaka]

If the happiness overflow pool idea, with a rate of +/-5 per turn, is easy enough to make then I see absolutely 0 downside.

One specific case that would help with is if your happiness is playing jump rope with one of those rounding issues. If your happiness is going to jump down 20, then jump back up 15 the turn after that, then some smoothing can't have any negative impact.

It also helps with the whole "feels bad man" aspect of your happiness plummeting.

This echoes my thoughts. It would probably be just like it is now, but smoother.

 

[crdvis16]

Too all those who have argued that massive happiness swings don't happen unless your infrastructure is terrible, I posted a save game with a happiness swing of about 50 in one turn, a few weeks ago on the github bug report page. You can download and see for yourself.

https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/4731

Has anyone looked at this game and figured out what caused the drop? I'm not at home, nor do I often have the time to do so but I'm really curious because I don't think it's ever happened in my games.

 

[CrabHelmet]

So, in your opinion this version, which is still a beta, is the holy cow, and all mechanics, numbers and UI are sacred and have to be given as the ultimative version?
In your opinion we have to adopt to collect a massiv amount of happiness before we enter industrial age? Cause of unknown reason even well developed nations get striked by massiv happiness drops? Even AI gets hit? Do you want to say, AI.... go and adopt to the playstyle we want or go down?

It's not unknown. It's caused by your population:infrastructure ratio compared to other Civs. Either you're getting so soundly beaten by other Civs you are probably on too high a difficulty level, or your pop is too high. Note that your pop doesn't have to be high in absolute terms, just high relative to the good tiles and buildings available.

Find a really unhappy City and look at the worst tile that is being worked. Ask yourself: is that tile worth +1 unhappiness? If No, don't grow to it.

I promise you experienced players don't have these happiness swings because good growth management is just part of good play that you pick up almost without noticing. I am rarely ever consciously managing Happiness, but I never end up with Unhappiness spirals because I don't work Food tiles without reason.

Progress is especially vulnerable because Progress plays very wide and can grow very easily because of Fraternity. Be careful with your Cities! You are not Tradition, you are Progress, that means Wide not Tall.

 

[Gazebo]

Alright, so let's break this down into 3 parts:

1. The UI:

The current UI is a holdover from vanilla. I'm considering changing it so that, instead of a flat +/- number with an appropriate face, it becomes:

'Unhappy Citizen Total' / 'Happy Citizen + Bonuses Total' (+/- Happiness Per Turn) (Appropriate Happy Face)

The top panel tooltip can also show the current tech penalty for your needs modifier.

2. The sudden drops:

Currently no easy solution here. Possible 'fixes' are:

- Buffer
- Rethink of how 'local' unhappiness translates into global unhappiness

3. Player agency:

Also not easy.

- Remove tech median penalty
- Processes can affect modifiers
- GAP as negative happiness pool buffer

Does this about cover it?

G