New Version - April 30th (4/30)

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It depends on what people want, and the kind of end product G and the community wants. Do we want a game where combating happiness is an overriding concern? Do we want happiness below 0 to be a normal thing, to the point where having positive happiness for more than half a game is bizarre?

If this were up for a vote, my vote would be 'No'.
- I want to play Civ against other civs, not against a happy face on the top ribbon
- Having unhappiness be the norm makes a lot of bonuses for golden age points (mastery, Korean UA, etc.) meaningless until you can get these mechanics under control. Why have sources of GAP when they just decay off?
- The state of the current happiness mechanic reminds me a lot of the discussion about WoW's rest mechanic, in that I think there is an issue with framing. Being constantly unhappy, all other things constant, is arguably bad game design. The game uses happy/unhappy to signal that a player is doing something wrong. Even if all the bonuses and maluses were kept the same, but the flip between happy/unhappy happened where -10:c5unhappy: is now. Then frame the current % damage malus as a damage BOOST for happiness on empire. Mechanically, nothing would change, but it would cause a lot less mental anguish for players overall. Less stick, more carrot.

re that last point, I don't think that's what actually should be done, but it serves to demonstrate the point that the game currently is telegraphing "U SUCK" to the player for a generous portion of your play time. People, especially people coming from vanilla, might find that reason enough to give up on VP. People are used to having a mechanic limit growth, but there's virtually no point in any of my games where I havent been at least -4. That's the game telling me explicitly that my empire, as a whole, is below median, regardless of how I actually rank. And that blows.

For my part, I haven't played a single game past turn 150 on this current build because I have found the endless unhappiness harshing my buzz.

Really great breakdown of what happiness should be, and what the dangers are. @Gazebo please tell me you agree, and reaching for an optimal state here is one of the main targets of balancing.

Disclaimer:
I'm not saying everything is bad right now. I'm saying that he's right when he says that happiness is an indicator of success, that combatting unhappiness the whole game is not fun, and unexplainable, unforseeable amounts/spikes of unhappiness is absolute venom for new players, especially since the happiness system is quite different from vanilla and difficult to understand.
 
The game uses happy/unhappy to signal that a player is doing something wrong.
re that last point, I don't think that's what actually should be done, but it serves to demonstrate the point that the game currently is telegraphing "U SUCK" to the player for a generous portion of your play time. People, especially people coming from vanilla, might find that reason enough to give up on VP; new people won't be used to a game mechanic telling them they suck that hard that often. People are used to having a mechanic limit growth, but there's virtually no point in any of my games where I haven't been at least -4. That's the game telling me explicitly that my empire, as a whole, is below median, regardless of how I actually rank, game score-wise. And that's not rad.

For my part, I haven't played a single game past turn 150 on this current build because I have found the endless unhappiness harshing my buzz.

Why would you say that unhappiness specifically is telegraphing to player "U Suck"? It's just one of many variables. Your empire can be unhappy, but be leader in science, culture and military, which means you definitely not "suck".
I would say that science or culture lead is way more important than happy empire.
 
Disclaimer:
I'm not saying everything is bad right now. I'm saying that he's right when he says that happiness is an indicator of success, that combatting unhappiness the whole game is not fun, and unexplainable, unforseeable amounts/spikes of unhappiness is absolute venom for new players, especially since the happiness system is quite different from vanilla and difficult to understand.

I have no problem with the fact, theres always some unhappiness, even in my capitol or well working cities. But battling every time, the whole game only against unhappiness, is no fun. The fact, I survived in my last game that long, was my relative isolated start on my own continent, not triggering border issues or interest conflicts with the warmongering mongols. And the fact I got free units from city states and dont have to invest into them.

But I disagree with you at some point. Happiness isnt an indicator for success or doing well anymore. You can do anything right, and still suck in happiness cause the happiness is based on the success of EVERY nation. And 50% decrease in construction cost for AI nations lead to much more success in the other parts of the world. With the only solution, going for war with the others to let them suck more than you. At the moment, if you have a bad start or happiness issues in medieval, its hard to get out of it. Battling against AI with +10 happiness with an own happiness of -10 is a battle between 100% and 120%. Something you cant easily compete with. The lead in science and culture which helps the AI to build more infrastructure pushes you more into unhappiness, decreasing your ability even more to close the gap. At this point, the game starts to annoy and gets boring, cause its no competition anymore with the game or the other nations. But only vs unhappiness.

I dont think increasing the value of luxuries is the right way. Maybe the simplification of luxury calculation is good. But whats with the social policies/tenets? Luxuries with monopoly +5 happiness? In comparision of 80-100 unhappiness, +5 happines or +3 specialists give happiness instead of consuming them (effectivly +2 happiness ...) is a joke.

I ask again... the fifth time... Gazebo.... and you always have read those question cause you replied to the posts but didnt answered to the question. Like youve done in this discussion 2 sides ago.... you could answered the question instead of giving only empty phrases....
Why do you only raises the values instead of tuning them down? Why did you raised the need threshholds extremely instead of lowering the happiness sources, if AI was observed with too much happiness? Instead of rising needs and now rising worth of luxuries, .... tuning down the needs??
 
Why would you say that unhappiness specifically is telegraphing to player "U Suck"? It's just one of many variables. Your empire can be unhappy, but be leader in science, culture and military, which means you definitely not "suck".
I would say that science or culture lead is way more important than happy empire.
Because that's a negative variable.
Negative happiness, negative GPT, or negative whatever you want communicate "you are objectivelly a bad player", while positive values lower than the opponent's communicate "your opponent is better than you" (so you are only "a relatively bad player").
Peoples are not rationnal.
 
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I ask again... the fifth time... Gazebo.... and you always have read those question cause you replied to the posts but didnt answered to the question. Like youve done in this discussion 2 sides ago.... you could answered the question instead of giving only empty phrases....
Why do you only raises the values instead of tuning them down? Why did you raised the need threshholds extremely instead of lowering the happiness sources, if AI was observed with too much happiness? Instead of rising needs and now rising worth of luxuries, .... tuning down the needs??

(Note: even if you do not intend to be aggressive. This post can certainly be read as aggressive)

About happiness:
+Luxuries: happiness from luxuries is getting buffed from "popular demand". It follows a nerf of happiness from luxuries one of the previous version which was particularly harsh.
+AI: Are you suggesting to nerf AI bonuses? Some Deity players may disagree.
+About lowering happiness sources: If you just reduce the happiness given by a policy/building/... it would alter the balance between policies/buildings/... I can understand that Gazebo does not want to make an additionnal rework of the policies/building/... and prefer tweaking simple values like needs an luxuries.
 
(Note: even if you do not intend to be aggressive. This post can certainly be read as aggressive)
It wasnt intended to sound aggressiv, but how would you react, if you are worried about the development of some aspects of the game and simply cant understand, why some things were changed, even there are more easy, uncomplicated solutions? And additionally didnt get any answer to understand the changes several times, but only empty phrases?

About happiness:
+Luxuries: happiness from luxuries is getting buffed from "popular demand". It follows a nerf of happiness from luxuries one of the previous version which was particularly harsh.
Iam not talking about the last one or two patches. I think, the changes Iam talking about were made around christmas, where more and more "need"-reduction-buildings were introduced and the population and technology effect for needs were dramatically raised. Gazebo said, he have seen AIs with 100+ happiness and I asked, whe he didnt simply reduced the happiness sources, instead of increasing the needs. But no answer. We are now in the same situation. But instead of reducing the needs to simply go back a bit to "normal" values, he will increase the worth of luxuries. While the social policies (which were balanced around lower +/- values) didnt get any attention and it feels, they have less influence to the game. In my logic, reducing the needs would be easier to balance than rising the values of luxuries and then maybe rising the values of social policies and monopoly to make them worth enough and then maybe see too many happiness. And the needs again get raised..... Like a spiral.

+AI: Are you suggesting to nerf AI bonuses? Some Deity players may disagree.

I would like to see same decision making of immortal or deity games (always picking best solution) in emperor games but with the handicap of king difficulty (difficulty less than immortal pick always randomly one of 2 or 3 best solutions). I know I can change the numbers for my self, but it would feel like cheating and I think this would make the difficulty rise more smoother than it is now. Deity games should be extremly hard, as they are now. Iam fine with it and will never play it. :)

+About lowering happiness sources: If you just reduce the happiness given by a policy/building/... it would alter the balance between policies/buildings/... I can understand that Gazebo does not want to make an additionnal rework of the policies/building/... and prefer tweaking simple values like needs an luxuries.

See the first point. The policies/monopolies were balanced before the changes of christmas with rising needs need buildings. The change in need buildings pulls away the hammer production of the player, increasing the gap to AI. I never had such problems in creating my infrastructure than before, cause I have to spend my hammer in such kinda (former) useless buildings like circus. I would prefer he would simply tweek the "need" numbers around the existing policies and luxuries, and not changing the luxuries or other things to compensate the changes he have made around the "needs".
 
Because that's a negative variable.
Negative happiness, negative GPT, or negative whatever you want communicate "you are objectivelly a bad player", while positive values lower than the opponent's communicate "your opponent is better than you" (so you are only "a relatively bad player").
Peoples are not rationnal.
Maybe it's hard to accept that being -10 to 0 happiness is still faring well. Psicology. But that's for new players.

I think the troubles right now is that city manager is used to grow cities considering old happiness. If I manage manually my cities, things go well, or as well as I might expect for difficulty. But when I leave it to city manager it's too much growth. Food reduction was put in place to delay science, as late game great people were spamming too badly. Then happiness had to be reduced (less growth, more happiness). Complex systems. Now city manager doesn't play for happiness.
 
Because that's a negative variable.
Negative happiness, negative GPT, or negative whatever you want communicate "you are objectivelly a bad player", while positive values lower than the opponent's communicate "your opponent is better than you" (so you are only "a relatively bad player").
Peoples are not rationnal.
So you want to change how happiness is calculated just because a player can feel that he is bad? That's ridiculous. Why not just show "You are awesome" popup?

@BiteInTheMark You have unhappiness, because you are behind AI. Either learn to catch up to them or lower difficulty. If King is too boring then you can create hybrid Kind-Emperor difficulty that fits your needs.
 
Maybe it's hard to accept that being -10 to 0 happiness is still faring well. Psicology. But that's for new players.
And it's even harder when you look at that angry face. Would it be possible to include another icon with a "neutral" face, maybe between -10 and 10 happiness (or -10 and 0)? Just an idea.
 
So you want to change how happiness is calculated just because a player can feel that he is bad? That's ridiculous. Why not just show "You are awesome" popup

I was just answering to your question to pineappledan "Why would you say that unhappiness specifically is telegraphing to player "U Suck"?".

"How to present the technically exact same thing in a positive or negative way to a player" is a basic tactic of good Dungeon Masters. The point of most successful games is to give to the dumbest of your player the feeling of being a good strategist/tactician/... Though I would be against sacrifying balance and good gameplay for that (we're not trying to make money, we're trying to make a good mod), player's perception is not something to dismiss completely.

There is a lot of things I don't like about the happiness system, but they all are minors and not relevant enough to make a change of the mecanism. If there were any pro-beginner change to do, I think that increasing happiness from difficulty at settler (and maybe cheiftain) would be a better approach.

I've made a test game in settler by systematically choosing at random one of the advised building and tech, and letting full control to the governor (which is probably more efficient than most beginner choices, since Vanillas reflex are usually counter-productives. The advisor was surprisingly good, the only exception being world wonder advices), and didn't had any problems of happiness, but rarely was above 10. Meaning that happiness was the only things that was "not completely trivial" at this difficulty level.
 
I think we can just wait for a new version with fixed happiness system. After that we just need play 1-3 games and post our impressions :grouphug: and observations.
But yeah, using this version there were my first games when all civs in world are unhappy(include me) :cool:
 
I was just answering to your question to pineappledan "Why would you say that unhappiness specifically is telegraphing to player "U Suck"?".

"How to present the technically exact same thing in a positive or negative way to a player" is a basic tactic of good Dungeon Masters. The point of most successful games is to give to the dumbest of your player the feeling of being a good strategist/tactician/... Though I would be against sacrifying balance and good gameplay for that (we're not trying to make money, we're trying to make a good mod), player's perception is not something to dismiss completely.
Then I agree :)
I think we can just wait for a new version with fixed happiness system. After that we just need play 1-3 games and post our impressions :grouphug: and observations.
But yeah, using this version there were my first games when all civs in world are unhappy(include me) :cool:
I also can't wait for new version. However, in my last game on Emperor as Denmark, none of civs had happiness problem (with the exception of me during early medieval when it reached -29, but later I was like +100 despite killing spree). Last game when I had mayor happiness problem was some time ago as France on Emperor, but that was because of my mistakes.
 
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Concerns about the happiness system can be directed to HR. Average wait time for HR response: 5-10 years.

In all seriousness, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here. The system works very well as-is, it just needs a few light tweaks (which it is in the process of getting).

Really great breakdown of what happiness should be, and what the dangers are. @Gazebo please tell me you agree, and reaching for an optimal state here is one of the main targets of balancing.

Disclaimer:
I'm not saying everything is bad right now. I'm saying that he's right when he says that happiness is an indicator of success, that combatting unhappiness the whole game is not fun, and unexplainable, unforseeable amounts/spikes of unhappiness is absolute venom for new players, especially since the happiness system is quite different from vanilla and difficult to understand.

It's different, but it is only difficult until you see what the mechanics are (as with any new system). Since many of you seem to have strong views as to how the system should be, I feel it would be prudent to remind you that the system is designed so that you should always have at least a little bit of each type of unhappiness. Why? For a few reasons:

First, it's a training tool: if you are always dealing with a bit of Poverty, for example, you're reminded of the importance of balanced growth and gold production in cities, and of the penalties of having all trade from just one city. This applies to all the sources.

Second, having a little bit of unhappiness of a type keeps it in your mind. If it is gone, you forget about it, feeding into the prior issue (and making players suddenly aggravated at their inability to predict the sudden emergence of unhappiness).

Third, it's easier to balance a scale with 100 small coins than 5 big coins. If we start stripping away sources of unhappiness and happiness (what some of you are asking for), you run into a situation in which singular objects (a belief, a policy, a monopoly, etc.) can drastically skew your experience from one game to the next. With the increase in unhappiness (and the subsequent changes to unhappiness need reduction buildings) earlier this year, we pushed towards this model in order to smooth the curve. I'm seeing far fewer reports of sudden shifts of unhappiness, which is good (it means that players have the time they need to deal with it in most cases). It's not perfect, which is why I'm increasing the value of luxuries. Luxuries are widely reported to be of better use in trade for GPT than their happiness value, which needs to be rebalanced. Injecting more positive happiness into the existing system will make it easier for players to generate a buffer of happiness, which will also help alleviate the spirals noted above.

I don't usually 'put my foot down' on things, but this is one of those situations where you'll either need to accept my expertise and argument, or get over it. Arguing from experience is a terrible fallacy, and I'm not saying that that is why I'm right, but I am asking you to have faith in my years of experience working with the VP system, in that we are circling towards a nice balance with each iteration. So, patience.

P.S. 5 dollarydoos to the person who fills all of my empty statements with something solid. Sand, maybe?

G
 
Maybe it's because I'm not playing on 4/20 and only Emperor but happiness seems fine from me. I was in the industrial era with China 8 cities and 1 captured capitol from the Huns with 20+ pop in each city and my happiness was always positive. I was having money problems keeping up all of the buildings but to be expected with 9 high pop cities.

I think the biggest challenge is always the fact that you'll be doing fine on happiness and grow your cities accordingly then lose a few smilies for every new tech without necessarily getting a building to reduce unhappiness. I find shifting citizens around to specialties or tiles with extra gold, culture, science, etc. goes a long way to combat these unhappiness dips but that requires a lot of micro that not everyone will want to do. Maybe there can be a city management setting that's "counter unhappiness" at the cost of food and hammers or something.

Not a great way to think about it, but always beeline a couple of key wonders like oracle that can have empire wide happiness benefits and you should be fine on happiness.
 
Concerns about the happiness system can be directed to HR. Average wait time for HR response: 5-10 years.

In all seriousness, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here. The system works very well as-is, it just needs a few light tweaks (which it is in the process of getting).



It's different, but it is only difficult until you see what the mechanics are (as with any new system). Since many of you seem to have strong views as to how the system should be, I feel it would be prudent to remind you that the system is designed so that you should always have at least a little bit of each type of unhappiness. Why? For a few reasons:

First, it's a training tool: if you are always dealing with a bit of Poverty, for example, you're reminded of the importance of balanced growth and gold production in cities, and of the penalties of having all trade from just one city. This applies to all the sources.

Second, having a little bit of unhappiness of a type keeps it in your mind. If it is gone, you forget about it, feeding into the prior issue (and making players suddenly aggravated at their inability to predict the sudden emergence of unhappiness).

Third, it's easier to balance a scale with 100 small coins than 5 big coins. If we start stripping away sources of unhappiness and happiness (what some of you are asking for), you run into a situation in which singular objects (a belief, a policy, a monopoly, etc.) can drastically skew your experience from one game to the next. With the increase in unhappiness (and the subsequent changes to unhappiness need reduction buildings) earlier this year, we pushed towards this model in order to smooth the curve. I'm seeing far fewer reports of sudden shifts of unhappiness, which is good (it means that players have the time they need to deal with it in most cases). It's not perfect, which is why I'm increasing the value of luxuries. Luxuries are widely reported to be of better use in trade for GPT than their happiness value, which needs to be rebalanced. Injecting more positive happiness into the existing system will make it easier for players to generate a buffer of happiness, which will also help alleviate the spirals noted above.

I don't usually 'put my foot down' on things, but this is one of those situations where you'll either need to accept my expertise and argument, or get over it. Arguing from experience is a terrible fallacy, and I'm not saying that that is why I'm right, but I am asking you to have faith in my years of experience working with the VP system, in that we are circling towards a nice balance with each iteration. So, patience.

P.S. 5 dollarydoos to the person who fills all of my empty statements with something solid. Sand, maybe?

G
You are misunderstanding. Having local unhappiness is acceptable. What we were talking about was global happiness. You see, being at - 8 happiness is not fundamentally different from 12 happiness. Things go different starting from - 10 happiness, when settling is not allowed, and - 20 happiness, when the empire begins to revolt.
This means that, even if being happier is better, being over - 10 happiness is not that bad as the icon suggests. But new players angst for this.
 
You are misunderstanding. Having local unhappiness is acceptable. What we were talking about was global happiness. You see, being at - 8 happiness is not fundamentally different from 12 happiness. Things go different starting from - 10 happiness, when settling is not allowed, and - 20 happiness, when the empire begins to revolt.
This means that, even if being happier is better, being over - 10 happiness is not that bad as the icon suggests. But new players angst for this.

I will also say, it makes a difference militarily. When you have a big combat penalty and your opponent doesn't, suddenly units of your die in scenarios they wouldn't otherwise, and it definately makes a difference in war. When your a tradition player with a tiny army...that really matters.

But ultimately I think G is on the same page. We all have said happiness needs a boost, and its getting it. Its just a question of after the change if the issues are more manageable or still problematic.
 
Maybe it's because I'm not playing on 4/20 and only Emperor but happiness seems fine from me.

Honestly I felt the same way that happiness was easier on 4/20. Which is strange because I don't think there were any changes made to happiness in 4/30. Maybe its that I'm trying out more tradition focused play in 4/30 (because of the tradition buff)...but happiness has gone from "tough to manage" to "impossible to manage" for me in my last 3 games.
 
You see, being at - 8 happiness is not fundamentally different from 12 happiness.

I'll disagree. The difference is 18% to science, gold, culture, faith, growth.....and a -8% combat penalty. The difference in long term yields between a player that can maintain +10 happiness vs one who struggles in the -10 range is night and day.
 
I'll disagree. The difference is 18% to science, gold, culture, faith, growth.....and a -8% combat penalty. The difference in long term yields between a player that can maintain +10 happiness vs one who struggles in the -10 range is night and day.
Do you mean 20% or I am missing something? I agree with rest.

Maybe happiness should be just less impactful. Like you cannot settle with -15 or less happiness, revolts at -30 or less, every point of happiness or unhappiness between -30 and +15 influence science, culture etc. by 0.66%. These values should be tweaked for sure.
Or another way to achieve this is to calculate total empire happiness by Tanh function, so values closer to 0 are less changed.

However, I'd like to wait for the new patch and test it out first.
 
Just a heads-up: we're getting close to a new release, but have one or two outstanding (not in a good way) bugs to crush. Not to hype anyone up too much, but the performance improvements alone are...pretty impressive.

Cheers,
Gazongles

What sort of bugs are they? Maybe having people play it with a beta would help pinpoint the issues if that is what you're having trouble with, unless that is done and the only thing left is incorporating your solutions.
 
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