New Version - 2.0.3 (April 1, 2022)

[looorg]

So what happened to happiness? I now have multiple cities that are generating more happiness then there are citizens in the city. Previously you couldn't be happier then there are citizens. Now I'm generating extra happy people that are not even there? It's not even just for megacities. It's also for small cities. Medium cities etc. So it's not, or I guess it could be, overflow from buildings or policies or something. Either way it doesn't seem to be blocking it at the top since I'm just overflowing with happiness.

Or is this now to be interpreted like you have some kind of extra happinessbuffer that goes beyond your population? As in is the city only producing citizen smileyfaces even tho it's telling me that it's generating more then there are people in the city?

I like that the tooltip tells me that "Cities cannot produce more happinesss than the number of citizens in the city". Looks to me that I can. Take that tooltip!

 

[CppMaster]

Maybe it cannot produce more happiness after unhappiness reduction, not before.

 

[looorg]

Maybe it cannot produce more happiness after unhappiness reduction, not before.

Wouldn't the third screenshot go against that? It's a 16 pop city, generating 16 unhappiness but 21 happiness. So unhappiness is at city-pop but it's still generating more happiness then there are pops in the city.
They are somehow so happy that it's spreading to non-existing or other people?

 

[Legen]

I remember a prior patch removing the local happiness cap by population. Please post the tooltip mismatch on github, someone forgot to remove that part.

 

[Rekk]

I remember a prior patch removing the local happiness cap by population. Please post the tooltip mismatch on github, someone forgot to remove that part.

Hmm, what use is having more happiness than unhappiness? Is there a growth bonus?

 

[looorg]

Hmm, what use is having more happiness than unhappiness? Is there a growth bonus?

It creates a buffer of happiness so you don't risk falling into unhappiness, where everything is really bad -- things take longer to build, growth slows down and all those horsehockey events costing you even more food and gold starts to trigger (corruption, bandits, etc).

This is a fairly common trick I would say, or think, to lock growth in cities with excess happiness to create a sort of global happiness-buffer so you can have other cities that are unhappy for various reasons -- usually cause they are in resistance or building a courthouse or there is just some temporary unhappiness from hurricane events or something such. This so one or a couple of really unhappy cities can't drag the entire empire down. Also so your wars and conquest etc can go on for longer without their being happiness issues.

The second row in the religious policy tree, the one on the left side. I forgot it's name and I don't want to launch the game just to look up the name. As I recall it now it gives a large % of excess happiness as culture. There are probably others to that I just can't remember at the moment.

But mainly the excess happiness is used as a buffer against unhappiness and things that cause it.

 

[Legen]

Hmm, what use is having more happiness than unhappiness? Is there a growth bonus?

A city can have more unhappiness than its population due to specialist's urbanization. Having happiness uncapped by population allows your excess sources of happiness to cover urbanization .

Growth indeed is another use, as well as a buff to Fealty. Extra happiness also applies to golden age points per turn, which is useful for any golden age civ, policy or belief, and was before capped by population.

 

[Rekk]

Happiness from local sources will never be enough on its own to exceed the city's population; the rest comes from empire sources. When happiness was capped to population, "excess" wasn't wasted, it went to the next city whose happiness wasn't capped. In this way, a buffer doesn't need to exist, because empire happiness will move back into the city when it grows.

A city can have more unhappiness than its population due to specialist's urbanization. Having happiness uncapped by population allows your excess sources of happiness to cover urbanization .

From what I remember, you couldn't add specialists that would increase your city unhappiness above your city happiness, correct?

 

[CppMaster]

Wouldn't the third screenshot go against that? It's a 16 pop city, generating 16 unhappiness but 21 happiness. So unhappiness is at city-pop but it's still generating more happiness then there are pops in the city.
They are somehow so happy that it's spreading to non-existing or other people?

No. 21-16=5 <= 16

 

[CppMaster]

Imho, this mechanic that city needs only increase on pop growth and you can just lock growth to never increase is very gamey and should be removed. If that would make unhappiness too much of a problem then it needs rebalancing, not making such arificial measures to fight it.

 

[looorg]

Imho, this mechanic that city needs only increase on pop growth and you can just lock growth to never increase is very gamey and should be removed. If that would make unhappiness too much of a problem then it needs rebalancing, not making such arificial measures to fight it.

I disagree. It's not as clear cut as that. I don't think it should be removed. I see it as more or less an essential part of micromanagement. You have to actively seek it out and create it to use it. Know when to take advantage of it and when to not. It's not some magical on/off switch that you flip.

Also it's not free exploitation as you give up a lot of bonuses that are tied to growth and gaining population. Also by not growing you are technically in many aspects making things worse as later down the road as you will fall further behind various global averages that you are compared to. So it solves usually a temporary problem but you do eventually want to grow again.

It's a way to do something about another way uncontrollable and bad situation, but it's not free and it's not always simple to accomplish.

It would then be up there with say "pre-building" roads, when you build it to one turn to completion and then doesn't finish it until you have the entire road segment pre-built and then just push it to completion. Totally cheese then since you don't pay for it. You'll lose a few turns of work with the movement and such but you'll save a lot of gold. This since a finished road segment would cost money but still basically be a road to nowhere until it's all finished. This way of pre-building you save yourself a lot of gpt in the early game. It's annoying and takes a bit of work to do, but it gives results. I sometimes do this, sometimes I don't it's quite tedious to do. So it's in large depending on how much gpt I have. But it's an option I wouldn't want removed.

 

[CppMaster]

It is exactly "magical on/off that you flip". How is it not?

Yeah, that incompleted road thing is also gamey and cheesy. How is the game better with it? Also AI doesn't do it. BTW, does AI do lock growth?

 

[looorg]

Yeah, that incompleted road thing is also gamey and cheesy. How is the game better with it? Also AI doesn't do it. BTW, does AI do lock growth?

I guess it might be easier to make the AI do it then to actually remove it. I don't think the AI will ever lock growth. But then they don't exactly have the same issues to deal with as the player does. I don't know how to fix the cost issue with the incomplete roads. Is it possible to push the cost to the start of the construction instead of to the finish of the construction? I think that might be the only way, but I don't know if that is possible or not.

It is exactly "magical on/off that you flip". How is it not?

Pushing the button doesn't magically create the situation. If anything it locks the situation in place at the cost of gaining other yields. So you have had to create/manipulate yourself into the situation first. Also it's not all beneficial as there is a fairly substantial drawback to it and/with long term consequences. You are in essence paying for it later while getting some benefit in there here and now. But it's not magical and it's not instant and absolute happiness for nothing at the push of a button.
Also when you turn it off there is a flood of unhappiness that will be created at the change of the next turn. So for the most part it's a very temporary gain as you wouldn't want to lock cities and then just never unlock them, you can do that in the very late stages of the game when most of everything is finished but then quite frankly it doesn't matter and there are other issues then that are usually more pressing.

 

[CppMaster]

Yeah, I also thought about cost from starting construction as an elegant solution to this. @Recursive is that feasible?

What magical (gamey, cheesy) is in it, it's not updating the needs. It's just very arificial. Locking growth alone is ok to prevent unhappiness from additional citizen.

 

[looorg]

What magical (gamey, cheesy) is in it, it's not updating the needs. It's just very arificial. Locking growth alone is ok to prevent unhappiness from additional citizen.

Since I think the last patch a lot of things do get updates constantly now, so much so it's borderline annoying how often it occurs. It's very noticeable with unhappiness and unit supply -- that can now get updates by just clicking a button, assigning a worker to a tile, assigning a specialists, paying/investing in a building, swapping to a process etc. It can swing wildly back and forth for basically nothing. Not to mention that once it swing one way you can just click a few more things and it will swing the other way and then it will recalculate again as the end/next turn is processing to.

 

[CppMaster]

What updates? Needs updates are only when a city grows, no?

 

[Revolutionist_8]

From what I remember, you couldn't add specialists that would increase your city unhappiness above your city happiness, correct?

No, you could actually do that (haven't checked this version yet, but I don't think it was changed).

 

[Recursive]

BTW, does AI do lock growth?

Yes.

Yeah, I also thought about cost from starting construction as an elegant solution to this. @Recursive is that feasible?

What are you asking?

 

[CppMaster]

What are you asking?

Maintance of roades since start of the construction instead of end to eliminate an exploit when you don't finish roads to avoid maintance cost.

 

[Recursive]

Maintance of roades since start of the construction instead of end to eliminate an exploit when you don't finish roads to avoid maintance cost.

It's possible, not sure how feasible. Will investigate.