New Version - February 17th (2-17)

[dylansan]

@dylansan If you don't get actual unhappiness from illiteracy then illiteracy isn't the problem you should be focusing on primarily. Ideally you want to get rid of all unhappiness, of course, but that's not going to happen in normal games, so you should focus on the yield that causes your current unhappiness and once you've mitigated that to a sufficient degree the UI will tell you what the next priority should be. It makes no sense to build libraries solely for illiteracy mitigation if your citizens are all suffering from distress and poverty, because your unhappiness won't decrease despite you taking action (since it's the wrong action); so, the UI communicating to the player what causes unhappiness should focus on what actually causes your current unhappiness; anything else would confuse people to much, because it might make them think that, in my example, by focusing on illiteracy they will reduce unhappiness when they won't. If you want to plan ahead for when you dealt with distress and poverty, you can check the additional info that is being added to the tool tips now.

Unless my understanding of the system is incorrect, you seem to be making the error in logic that the tooltip suggests.

Take the example he posted:

Pop 4 city

• 3 distress (max 3)
• 1 poverty (max 4)
• 0 science (max 6)

Total: 4

You're suggesting the correct strategy is to focus on reducing distress, but what happens in that case? Let's reduce it be one.

• 2 distress (max 2)
• 2 poverty (max 4)
• 0 science (max 6)

Total: 4

How did that improve things? There's still 4 unhappiness. Let's get rid of all the distress.

• 4 poverty (max 4)
• 0 science (max 6)

Total: 4

Hm, okay. So we'll fix poverty then!

• 4 science (max 6)

Total: 4

Am I totally wrong here, or did focusing on distress not help any more than focusing on anything else? The truth is, you will never reduce unhappiness unless you reduce the total potential unhappiness below the population, and it doesn't matter how you do it.

 

[Rekk]

The big thing about focusing on basic needs and poverty first is that those two actively help you get the others, via production and gold investments. However, this isn't something that needs reducing builds can manage, but gold and production buildings will.

Building an aquaduct reduces poverty, but doesn't actually help the city dig itself out of its happiness hole. Building a constabulary helps with distress, but won't remove any unhappiness either. The player needs to be building workshops and banks.

On the other hand, building science buildings to deal with illiteracy before you've built gold and production buildings to deal with distress and poverty makes the problem worse, as this results in increased technology modifiers while the city is still in a production and building deficit.

Arguably, boredom is a more important need than illiteracy, since accumulating culture doesn't increase needs while accumulating science will. Policies will also often provide yields without requiring more building construction, while technologies rarely do so.

 

[civplayer33]

The tooltip is correct BUT there’s a hidden 10% modifier that shouldn’t be added. It was getting added by accident as of this version. I’m removing it for the hot fix. Hopefully this evening.

G

It's off by way more than 10%, though, for poverty and illiteracy, but I'll happily test it again with the Hotfix. I did get instant yields (Gold and Science), though; could it be that they somehow snuck in to needs calculation?

At the same time, building constabularies to reduce distress doesn't reduce unhappiness either. The person who was unhappy about basic needs just shifts to being unhappy about poverty. In this situation, it doesn't matter what need reducing buildings you queue up; the city is stuck in an unhappiness=population state until you can reduce the total unhappiness to below the population.

Unless my understanding of the system is incorrect, you seem to be making the error in logic that the tooltip suggests.

Yeah I made an error in judgement; I would still tend to focus on production first, though, FWIW, in the above example, because that's probably going to help me get out of trouble the fastest.

 

[dylansan]

The big thing about focusing on basic needs and poverty first is that those two actively help you get the others, via production and gold investments. However, this isn't something that needs reducing builds can manage, but gold and production buildings will.

Building an aquaduct reduces poverty, but doesn't actually help the city dig itself out of its happiness hole. Building a constabulary helps with distress, but won't remove any unhappiness either. The player needs to be building workshops and banks.

On the other hand, building science buildings to deal with illiteracy before you've built gold and production buildings to deal with distress and poverty makes the problem worse, as this results in increased technology modifiers while the city is still in a production and building deficit.

Arguably, boredom is a more important need than illiteracy, since accumulating culture doesn't increase needs while accumulating science will. Policies will also often provide yields without requiring more building construction, while technologies rarely do so.

That's all a matter of strategy that will vary depending on the situation. Yes, production is important for getting buildings to reduce other yields, but science can get you to a technology that unlocks an important production building.

Wouldn't an aqueduct reduce distress, not poverty, and also provide little if any help to getting other yield buildings? In fact, if you prioritize distress, you might build food buildings, at a time when any growth is guaranteed to produce more unhappiness.

Also, since needs are based on your civ's median, you could actually have plenty of production overall, especially if you get a lot from instant yields, so focusing on production might not be necessary if you have science or culture buildings to build.

What if you haven't unlocked any more food/production buildings to build? Your city might tell you you've got 4 distress and nothing else, so what do you build? You don't have any illiteracy (despite 6 potential illiteracy), so how about popping out some units instead of libraries. Then later when you fix the distress, you're hit with a ton of illiteracy you neglected.

I thought the point of the happiness system was to discourage specializing cities too much, to encourage evenly spreading yields over your empire. That's why it was just changed. If you're saying it's also meant to encourage you to focus on the yields you need the most (which will not always be production/food), then it makes more sense to actually figure out which yields are lacking and focus on those, rather than assume production is always the priority. And the old system based on global yields would have actually allowed you to see where you're falling behind the most, while the current system doesn't.

If I have a city with 6 population, and I'm getting 3 distress, 3 poverty, and 0 illiteracy, but there's a potential 10 unhappiness from illiteracy because I haven't built a single science building, are you saying I should focus on production so I can build science buildings faster? I think that would be a huge lapse in strategy.

 

[tu_79]

Thanks @civplayer33 , now I understand the tooltip. I was fooled by the subtitle 'Total need modifiers'. When I read 'total', I expect the sum of all the above, positives and negatives.

I think it can be more clear to do this

Local unhappiness: 4
* 3 (max 3 ) from Distress ( + per )

Making 2.62 of 6.06 (4.63 +31%)​

* 1 (max 4 ) from Poverty: ( per )

Making 1.75 of 6.06 (4.63 +31%)​

* 0.28 above Need.
* 0.28 above Need.


Global factors that affect needs:
* Empire Size: +5%
* Basic Needs: +22%
* [Other Needs: +22%]
* Policies: -5%

Local factors that affect needs:
* Is Capital: +15%
* City Size: +4%
* Buildings: -10%

 

[civplayer33]

Thanks @civplayer33 , now I understand the tooltip. I was fooled by the subtitle 'Total need modifiers'. When I read 'total', I expect the sum of all the above, positives and negatives.

I think it can be more clear to do this

You're welcome; I assume that with "Basic Needs" you mean all 4? Are we sure that those percentages are always the same? If so, one line should suffice, for sure, but I wouldn't use the Food symbol, as it may confuse people potentially; either no symbol or all 5 symbols would be better IMO. If they're not always the same then we should keep them as separate lines.
And of course the growth estimation at the bottom and the little note at the top should stay.

 

[BiteInTheMark]

Thanks @civplayer33 , now I understand the tooltip. I was fooled by the subtitle 'Total need modifiers'. When I read 'total', I expect the sum of all the above, positives and negatives.

I think it can be more clear to do this

Local unhappiness: 4
* 3 (max 3 ) from Distress c5food:+ per )

Making 2.62 of 6.06 (4.63 +31%)​

* 1 (max 4 ) from Poverty: c5gold: per )

Making 1.75 of 6.06 (4.63 +31%)​

* 0.28 above Need.
* 0.28 above Need.


Global factors that affect needs:
* Empire Size: +5%
* Basic Needs: +22%
* Policies: -5%

Local factors that affect needs:
* Is Capital: +15%
* City Size: +4%
* Buildings: -10%

You cant stick the decreasing effects together, cause they can differ from each other. (-10% distress / -20% poverty / -40% illiteracy / ...)
But I think your Local unhappines Interface is hitting the nail.
Something I really ask me a long time is.... why is there a negative effect to needs by technology but none by social policies? I know, its now this way a long time, but I didnt see a real reason why technology should give a penalty but policies not.

 

[tu_79]

You cant stick the decreasing effects together, cause they can differ from each other. (-10% distress / -20% poverty / -40% illiteracy / ...)
But I think your Local unhappines Interface is hitting the nail.
Something I really ask me a long time is.... why is there a negative effect to needs by technology but none by social policies? I know, its now this way a long time, but I didnt see a real reason why technology should give a penalty but policies not.

I didn't mean to stick them together, it was just laziness.
I think it was tied to technology for two reasons: techs unlock buildings, so having too many technologies with too little infrastucture is punished, also because tech is required for all victory conditions while policies help but are not required (except now for cultural victory).

 

[Rekk]

Aqueducts reduce poverty.

If I have a city with 6 population, and I'm getting 3 distress, 3 poverty, and 0 illiteracy, but there's a potential 10 unhappiness from illiteracy because I haven't built a single science building, are you saying I should focus on production so I can build science buildings faster? I think that would be a huge lapse in strategy.

Yes, I would. You've got to cover 16 unhappiness, and you know that building science buildings won't actually help with that unhappiness until illiteracy and poverty and distress are taken care of. So, focus on getting the buildings that help get everything quicker. If you have decided to focus building based on needs, that looming 10 illiteracy isn't the most immediate problem. It's the fact that the city is underdeveloped.

I don't generally see unhappiness overflow except in underdeveloped cities, so I can't really comment on what to do if your entire population is so unhappy that it's hiding illiteracy even though you've built all the basic needs buildings you can.

 

[tu_79]

So, focus on getting the buildings that help get everything quicker

You are not running now against AI, but against yourself. Hammers will give you buildings, but culture will give you policies earlier and science will give techs with potentially better buildings earlier, so it's not that clear that focusing on production is the answer. I tried a game where I focused on science and I had tons of unbuilt buildings, but I was building them rather quick once I got to next age. This allowed me to discover all city states faster, which in turn made diplomatic victory easier.
But I had to limit my expansion to keep happiness manageable, which I guess it's the intended behaviour.

 

[Rekk]

In this case you're essentially ignoring needs fulfilment to pursue a different strategy, which is fine. However, racing ahead in tech will not help with needs fulfilment. Sure, progressing an era helps build the buildings you've ignored faster... but now you have a whole new set of buildings that need to address an increased needs threshold (because of technology) and you still haven't dealt with the previous era's buildings.

This strategy will create high city-level unhappiness that needs to be mitigated through ways other than needs fulfilment (because you'll never be able to catch up that way). For example, you mitigated this by limiting your number of cities to keep pace with external sources of happiness.

 

[tu_79]

In this case you're essentially ignoring needs fulfilment to pursue a different strategy, which is fine. However, racing ahead in tech will not help with needs fulfilment. Sure, progressing an era helps build the buildings you've ignored faster... but now you have a whole new set of buildings that need to address an increased needs threshold (because of technology) and you still haven't dealt with the previous era's buildings.

This strategy will create high city-level unhappiness that needs to be mitigated through ways other than needs fulfilment (because you'll never be able to catch up that way). For example, you mitigated this by limiting your number of cities to keep pace with external sources of unhappiness.

Exactly. You have several ways of addressing unhappiness, not only gaining more infrastructure, which is the point.

 

[Rekk]

Exactly. You have several ways of addressing unhappiness, not only gaining more infrastructure, which is the point.

It's perpendicular to the conversation about the city unhappiness tooltip and how to go about fulfilling the needs that the population is complaining about.

While "ignore needs, fix your unhappiness in other ways" may be an answer to fixing unhappiness, it's by definition not an answer on how to fix unhappiness by fulfilling needs.

 

[saranwali]

Is it feasible to have the tool tip tell you how the current building a city is building will affect happiness once built, similar to the way we get a preview of how the next birth with impact happiness?
If it tells me that the barracks is -1 Distress, but +1 Poverty, it can help me know my hammers might be more effective on a different building right now.

 

[dylansan]

...However, racing ahead in tech will not help with needs fulfilment. Sure, progressing an era helps build the buildings you've ignored faster... but now you have a whole new set of buildings that need to address an increased needs threshold (because of technology) and you still haven't dealt with the previous era's buildings.

Who said anything about racing ahead in tech? I described a city with zero science buildings. Should I build a factory when I haven't built a council?

If you have to get rid of all types of unhappiness to see a benefit, then whichever yield you focus on will help towards that, but some will also help you increase the yields further. You're arguing that increasing production is always the most efficient way to fix the other needs, but that's nonsense. Gold allows you to reduce the build time of buildings by half. Culture allows you to take policies which not only sometimes reduce needs directly, but some of which make buildings cheaper or provide free ones. Science unlocks buildings that reduce other needs.

I'm not saying you should beeline science and try to brute-force the needs away by relying on tech, I'm saying there's a balance to be struck, and what to prioritize depends on where you're lacking. If your city has decent production and gold, and has completely neglected science altogether, the solution is not more production.

Not to mention, you could solve distress by focusing on food yields, at which point you'd have a city with abysmal production and no distress. Would you focus on science and culture buildings then? Or get that production to get the other yields faster?

 

[Rekk]

Who said anything about racing ahead in tech? I described a city with zero science buildings. Should I build a factory when I haven't built a council?

tu_79, to whom I was replying .



We're still talking about a city that is size 6 with 3 poverty, 3 distress and 10 illiteracy, right? And you want a clearer picture as to what the correct path is to fulfill the needs of that city? Well, the city is undeveloped and pouring gold and production into the city is the most immediate way you can start alleviating unhappiness. The wrong answer is science, considering how far it is behind the rest of your cities (hence the 10 unhappiness and not something more reasonable). It's not going to be contributing much as a percentage of your total any time soon, especially since you haven't even built a council. Which means it'll take a long time before that city meaningfully affects the time until the next technology (at which point you will have new buildings that you lack the production to build).

Only once you've actually managed to build all the buildings for a non-science need does more science even help to further alleviate that need.

 

[tu_79]

tu_79, to whom I was replying .



We're still talking about a city that is size 6 with 3 poverty, 3 distress and 10 illiteracy, right? And you want a clearer picture as to what the correct path is to fulfill the needs of that city? Well, the city is undeveloped and pouring gold and production into the city is the most immediate way you can start alleviating unhappiness. The wrong answer is science, considering how far it is behind the rest of your cities (hence the 10 unhappiness and not something more reasonable). It's not going to be contributing much as a percentage of your total any time soon, especially since you haven't even built a council. Which means it'll take a long time before that city meaningfully affects the time until the next technology (at which point you will have new buildings that you lack the production to build).

Only once you've actually managed to build all the buildings for a non-science need does more science even help to further alleviate that need.

We'll need to see that city. Getting extra production will get you more buildings built faster, if we accept to limit research due to unhappiness. But even then, there could be other options. Say that you can build a building that gives faith, and you are yet to found your religion. Would you say that it is better, happiness wise, to not found your religion by a few turns? Say that you have some nice tiles just outside your city borders, maybe the arena, or getting extra gold from the market could allow you to get to that resource faster. Do you still think that building a forge will get you to that yield increase faster? You are only seeing buildings, look around.

 

[dylansan]

tu_79, to whom I was replying .



We're still talking about a city that is size 6 with 3 poverty, 3 distress and 10 illiteracy, right? And you want a clearer picture as to what the correct path is to fulfill the needs of that city? Well, the city is undeveloped and pouring gold and production into the city is the most immediate way you can start alleviating unhappiness. The wrong answer is science, considering how far it is behind the rest of your cities (hence the 10 unhappiness and not something more reasonable). It's not going to be contributing much as a percentage of your total any time soon, especially since you haven't even built a council. Which means it'll take a long time before that city meaningfully affects the time until the next technology (at which point you will have new buildings that you lack the production to build).

Only once you've actually managed to build all the buildings for a non-science need does more science even help to further alleviate that need.

I don't think you've considered that if you've underdeveloped in science, the science buildings you need can probably be built faster than newer production buildings. That won't have an effect until you reduce the total potential unhappiness below 6, and obviously you can't do that with just science.

Things change when you consider growth. As is, every new citizen will increase unhappiness until you're at -16. But if you were to eliminate illiteracy, even though there's no immediate effect, you can now grow without ever getting worse than 6 unhappiness (assuming yields/pop remain about constant).

Reducing 2 illiteracy is better than reducing 1 distress. There may not be an immediate effect, but it reduces the upper limit of unhappiness when you grow.

We can debate strategy all day long, but to suggest that focusing entirely on production whenever there is distress is always the most efficient way to reduce unhappiness, is just ridiculous. If your city has neglected science, you need to increase science. Sure, go ahead and build a workshop first if you know there's a bunch of buildings you want, but that "potential unhappiness" is no less real and important to fix than the "actual" distress, and if you can fix that faster than the distress (which is likely if you've already focused on production), then you can guarantee yourself less unhappiness as your city grows. It's not about the science getting you closer to a tech. It's about the needs themselves.

Regardless of what you think is the ideal strategy for needs, the current UI makes it look like your city lacks production/food or gold even when it's even further behind in science. Just because you think production is the best strategy, it doesn't make sense to tell the user that production is the only thing they need to worry about. Actually, right now it tells the user that production or food will solve the issue, which is worse because growing without fixing the other yields is shooting yourself in the foot. In fact, food is probably the worst yield to focus on when you have unrealized unhappiness, so how does highlighting distress help with that?

EDIT:

Yeah I made an error in judgement; I would still tend to focus on production first, though, FWIW, in the above example, because that's probably going to help me get out of trouble the fastest.

I just want to add that this misunderstanding is a perfect example of why the UI is misleading. It makes it look like you only have a few unhappiness to resolve, when you actually have to do much more to see any difference. Not to single you out, @civplayer33. But I guarantee you're not the only one who's thought this way. I honestly had no idea it worked this way until this discussion.

 

[tu_79]

Regardless of what you think is the ideal strategy for needs, the current UI makes it look like your city lacks production/food or gold even when it's even further behind in science. Just because you think production is the best strategy, it doesn't make sense to tell the user that production is the only thing they need to worry about. Actually, right now it tells the user that production or food will solve the issue, which is worse because growing without fixing the other yields is shooting yourself in the foot. In fact, food is probably the worst yield to focus on when you have unrealized unhappiness, so how does highlighting distress help with that?

I wouldn't be really worried about this, because it is rare to find your cities with 100% unhappy citizens from needs. It may happen right at the beginning, but later I think you will only find this in new founded cities after Classical age, and such cities develop pretty fast, so you really must not care about that.

 

[civplayer33]

I wouldn't be really worried about this, because it is rare to find your cities with 100% unhappy citizens from needs. It may happen right at the beginning, but later I think you will only find this in new founded cities after Classical age, and such cities develop pretty fast, so you really must not care about that.

Exactly; this is likely the reason no one noticed before...it used to be that unhappiness was less of a problem in the very early game, too, just a few versions ago, but even now 100% unhappiness really only happens in the first two dozen or so turns.