that could indeed make the drops less steep.
for example: i get a drop from 20 happiness to -30. that's like if i had a productivity mod from 120% drop down to 70%, that's almost halving the productivity. so it's no wonder the cities are unhappy, if they produce 42% less yields than before.
now, what if the %-bonuses/maluses from happiness scaled with city amount, instead of being linear... if thats possible at all?
some extreme examples:
in a 3 city empire, a change of +-10 happiness is rare, but because of the low amount of cities, it would have a big % impact.
meanwhile, in a 30 city empire, a change of +-10 happiness happens like every turn, but since the bonuses/maluses are reduced due to the high number of cities, the % impact is low. But if the happiness changes by +-100, the % impact is big again.
of course the numbers need to be crunched, but this would likely solve the problem, except for the remaining problem of "cities flip at -20" which is a stupid thing (and imho should be a modmod) anyway. oh, and players would need to evaluate happiness numbers according to their empire size.
I think the happiness increase/decrease in yields is capped at +10%/-10%, so worst case scenario you are losing that 20%, problem being losing this 20% will likely put you in a worse situation than before (famous death spiral).
I don't understand the proposal though, you would get more happiness yields if you were taller, wider? I think in both cases this could be solved by prioritizing the right techs/limiting yourself when you know the crunches are coming (my experience is the jump to industrial is the deadliest, as I will probably go for scientific theory to get zoos+public schools, and then you need to fight off distress).
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Wide empires suffer the most by happiness jumps, but also have the greatest ability to gain happiness sources. If for example the revolt mechanic need more unhappiness to be triggered, cause you have more cities, this would create a growing buffer, targeting the center problem.
While wide empires suffer the most from the jumps, it just means you can't overexpand and grow at the same time (this is important) until you get those key happiness policies (most of them time locked behind ideologies or 3rd tree policies).
Wide empires benefit the most from happiness policies, see policies like enlightenment, Martial law, Entrepreneurship,Nobility, Discipline VS Exchange Markets and Refinement favoring tall more.
Then you have ideologies, which I find extremely benefitial for wide empires (once you get 2-3 policies in I find it honestly impossible to dip into negative values), but of course these are always offline for industrial/modern crunches (maybe china can get some policies in by modern).
My belief is wide empires don't need an extra buffer, but need to be mindful of how much the expand and grow your later cities (this is specialy true for cities you capture, which unless you are rome tend to have poor infrastructure for the population they have), it is important to control yourself and build your key buildings asap (universities if you went rationalism, constabularies for imperialism)
would effectively work as a +1
in many cases.
