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

[BiteInTheMark]

No, there’s not. Quit gaslighting people.

G

There were several reports of high happiness drops out of nowhere in the lategame.
Btw, why is it necessary or why does the happiness often drops drastically, if you enter a new era? Does the era directly influence thehappiness?

 

[lunker]

Been playing with the new naval melee units. Dreadnoughts are functioning very well as bruisers that can park in front of cities, fight other melee ships, and scare away ranged navy. They are obnoxious to deal with from land too, which I think is great. I was worried about the +HP promos at first but balance-wise I think they hit the nail on the head. Boarding Parties on the other hand I can't find too much of a use for. They get creamed by ranged navy unless in groups but it feels awful to build groups of them when faced with enemy Dreadnoughts. I don't find myself making good use out of the increased CS vs <50% since I would much rather finish off kills with Targetting ships instead.

In my current game I have a 2:1 ratio of Dreadnoughts and Boarding Partys and I really wish I had just made everything Dreadnought. They just seem a lot more versatile and more effective in general.

I haven't played with side promos yet (which may be where Boarding Party shines) so I can't say too much about those. Boarding Party ships are much harder to level up as well...

I am building much more naval melee units in this patch and naval warfare has turned into more of a tank-n-spank affair rather than building literally 1 melee ship for taking cities.

Edit: Which is a good thing.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I am also finding Boarding Party largely useless.

 

[tu_79]

I'm not yet fighting massive fleets, but I'm finding ships more durable. My frigates have trouble with killing enemy caravels, sadly I wasn't checking which promotion AI had. My next combat is overseas, so I expect more naval figth.

But not today. Wife wants the last beach day of the summer today.

 

[CrabHelmet]

I'm not yet fighting massive fleets, but I'm finding ships more durable. My frigates have trouble with killing enemy caravels, sadly I wasn't checking which promotion AI had. My next combat is overseas, so I expect more naval figth.

But not today. Wife wants the last beach day of the summer today.

...or you could try multiplayer?

 

[tu_79]

...or you could try multiplayer?

The closest my wife was to play a game was randomly hitting buttons in Tekken 6 and winning by raw harassment. She then retired from vídeo games while she was still winning.

I have more hope for my son. In a few years he'll be ready for Minecraft (currently playing Eyepet) and hopefully he'll be able to play civ games before I'm too old. Do you know if this is still enjoyable at the sixties?

 

[ryanmusante]

I have more hope for my son. In a few years he'll be ready for Minecraft (currently playing Eyepet) and hopefully he'll be able to play civ games before I'm too old. Do you know if this is still enjoyable at the sixties?

Age is just a number. My parents are in their seventies and I setup a couple workststions where they can game to their hearts' content in retirement. Mostly it's online games on Facebook that they're interested in.

 

[ofmiciv5]

i dont mind happiness drops as long as it also affects the AI and not exclusively to human. before this patch my happiness is always swirling 100+ and was NEVER unhappy in any situation. i dont want a game thats spoon feeding me that much happiness. reality wise, we were NEVER always happy. there were always this gloomy years. happy-sad-happy-sad.

There were several reports of high happiness drops out of nowhere in the lategame.
Btw, why is it necessary or why does the happiness often drops drastically, if you enter a new era? Does the era directly influence thehappiness?

 

[lunker]

About to depressed-quit my current game. As China I expanded to 25 cities by late Modern. At turn 283 I'm comfortably sitting at 40 happiness. At turn 286 I am at -96 and a key strategic city that I had taken from Japan is threatening to flip back. Meanwhile my main rival on the continent and current runaway Russia attacked me the turn after I told her to get her troops away from my borders. I have no idea how to or if I can check if she incurred the global backstab penalty but I hope she gets ganged up on later.

If I lose Palace of Westminster I will probably quit since I am not confident I can win a culture or science game. I'm pretty happy to be defeated in such a manner but I didn't enjoy having a 150 point swing in happiness. Not sure what I could have done in that circumstance. I traded for all the luxuries I could and tried removing specialists. Razing cities made the problem even worse since razing unhappiness seems to be added on top of current unhappiness from needs now.

Normally I am a tall player and as progress I usually stayed around 12-15 core cities so I haven't had this kind of happiness problem in a long while. I'm never expanding for the sake of it ever again.

 

[CrazyG]

I wonder if there is something that could be done to make happiness more predictable. I also see massive drops happen, I usually just plan to sit at around 50 happiness to accommodate those drops. I think the best play is usually just to play it extremely safe.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

The sad thing is, buildings can have more influence than policies. Policies which give effectivly + 1 happiness per city are kinda underwhelming in a 6-city empire, while building a constabulary (or other buildings) sometimes decrease unhappiness by 3 or 4 in ONE city. It feels a bit out of balance, policies should have much more influence than constructing 2 buildings.

 

[glider1]

The sad thing is, buildings can have more influence than policies. Policies which give effectivly + 1 happiness per city are kinda underwhelming in a 6-city empire, while building a constabulary (or other buildings) sometimes decrease unhappiness by 3 or 4 in ONE city. It feels a bit out of balance, policies should have much more influence than constructing 2 buildings.

You aren't providing any context. It is good that the game makes local as important as global depending on context. In the real world this happens too. Sometimes the happiness (stability) of a single mega-city overrides what is possible at the national level.

....I think the best play is usually just to play it extremely safe.

Sounds like a plan. People are playing VP as if it were vanilla civ which is a bad idea.

 

[Moi Magnus]

I wonder if there is something that could be done to make happiness more predictable. I also see massive drops happen, I usually just plan to sit at around 50 happiness to accommodate those drops. I think the best play is usually just to play it extremely safe.

The main reason of sudden unpredictable drop is that happiness is a "per yield per city integer", which mean that if you have 10 cities, you can have +/- 50 happiness in one turn without real reasons. (though it would be quite unlikely to have a drop THAT big)

The solution "stop using integers for happiness" would smooth up everything and really improve the experience, but basically ask to recode everything linked to happiness and track for every use of it everywhere (which would need to a lot of works, and a lot of bugs, so even more work). Not to say it could break any mod relying on the Community Patch or Vox Populi.

The solution "average happiness trough turns" is an alternative way to force a smooth up, but would lead to the unintuitive "your global happiness is not the sum of happiness of all your cities, since it is averaged on multiple turn". On the plus side, it would make unhappiness far more predictable.

 

[vyyt]

Not really addressing the root of the issue, but one more way to increase your happiness I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is making your vassal happy (= giving/selling them your abundant luxuries). I don't remember the formula, but I think half of their happiness is added to the master.

@tu_79, would you include this in your guide to happiness? Thks

 

[CrazyG]

The main reason of sudden unpredictable drop is that happiness is a "per yield per city integer", which mean that if you have 10 cities, you can have +/- 50 happiness in one turn without real reasons. (though it would be quite unlikely to have a drop THAT big)

I've had drops of 40+. If my happiness isn't above 20 in a 10 city empire, I'm usually afraid to discover a new tech.

This is something I bet is a big problem for newer players, but I think the right play is to play happiness extremely safe. Also when I get that sudden drop to -20 happiness, I can use all of my gold to buy 4 luxuries, only removing like 6 unhappiness.

 

[Workerspam]

As China I expanded to 25 cities by late Modern. At turn 283 I'm comfortably sitting at 40 happiness.

Sitting at 40 happiness with 25 cities is not in a comfortable spot. The more cities I have, the more happiness I need to feel comfortable.

I start fixing any underlining happiness issues anytime I dip under 4 happiness per city (So 40 happiness would be okay for a 10 city empire). Most of the time that allows me to get ahead of sudden unhappiness spirals. It will plunge then recover within 6-10 turns, though those plunges are still harrowing.

 

[crdvis16]

I've had drops of 40+. If my happiness isn't above 20 in a 10 city empire, I'm usually afraid to discover a new tech.

This is something I bet is a big problem for newer players, but I think the right play is to play happiness extremely safe. Also when I get that sudden drop to -20 happiness, I can use all of my gold to buy 4 luxuries, only removing like 6 unhappiness.

I feel like I'm the only person who never experiences these huge happiness swings in my games. I don't even particular try to combat unhappiness, either. I purposely DON'T buy every lux that is available because I want to make it easier to obtain whatever lux is needed for WLTKDs, so my empires could easily be happier. The only time I ever seem to dip into unhappiness is right at the beginning of the game when I first expand to 4 or 5 cities and often get down to like -5. After that I am always comfortably positive and sometimes overwhelmingly positive (like 50+ or even 100+). I typically don't have to consider happiness when choosing what buildings to construct. I would probably have to find myself in some sort of strange situation for happiness to become a big problem- like getting Dow'd by the whole world or something.

This is the case regardless of the type of game I'm playing. Puppet/authority as a conqueror, wide/progress, tall/tradition- almost always swimming in happiness. Maybe it's inherent to the way I play? Maybe I prioritize production and have weak growth so my population never balloons and this just naturally leads to excess happiness?

 

[ofmiciv5]

About to depressed-quit my current game. As China I expanded to 25 cities by late Modern. At turn 283 I'm comfortably sitting at 40 happiness. At turn 286 I am at -96 and a key strategic city that I had taken from Japan is threatening to flip back. Meanwhile my main rival on the continent and current runaway Russia attacked me the turn after I told her to get her troops away from my borders. I have no idea how to or if I can check if she incurred the global backstab penalty but I hope she gets ganged up on later.

If I lose Palace of Westminster I will probably quit since I am not confident I can win a culture or science game. I'm pretty happy to be defeated in such a manner but I didn't enjoy having a 150 point swing in happiness. Not sure what I could have done in that circumstance. I traded for all the luxuries I could and tried removing specialists. Razing cities made the problem even worse since razing unhappiness seems to be added on top of current unhappiness from needs now.

Normally I am a tall player and as progress I usually stayed around 12-15 core cities so I haven't had this kind of happiness problem in a long while. I'm never expanding for the sake of it ever again.

aw... so many cities. i usually have around 4-7 (cities i build). the only time i have more than that is through conquered cities. though i haven't played this game yet. i'm excited about this flipping thing. have that 'issues' on old vp (june or july vp i think). hell it was chaotic but i love it. i'm a 99% warmonger by the way but an emperor player only .

 

[tu_79]

Not really addressing the root of the issue, but one more way to increase your happiness I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is making your vassal happy (= giving/selling them your abundant luxuries). I don't remember the formula, but I think half of their happiness is added to the master.

@tu_79, would you include this in your guide to happiness? Thks

Gladly. @Gazebo, is this true?

 

[Mauro Mezzina]

The closest my wife was to play a game was randomly hitting buttons in Tekken 6 and winning by raw harassment. She then retired from vídeo games while she was still winning.

I have more hope for my son. In a few years he'll be ready for Minecraft (currently playing Eyepet) and hopefully he'll be able to play civ games before I'm too old. Do you know if this is still enjoyable at the sixties?

I am 51 and still enjoying it a lot