I'm reluctant because, in testing, it threw things off depending on the mapscript, but I defer to the people on this one. If that's what you all would prefer, let's do that.
Adding +1 happiness to the Colosseum is a good step. It made me think about the state of VP’s happiness in general.
VP is not for the casual player, but it is also not mainly for the obsessives prominent on the forum. In that wide range, I think happiness is viewed by a majority as the single most complicated and unenjoyable aspect of the mod.
Responses to happiness tend to fall into three broad categories: those who have no problem with it; those who wrestle it to a draw, and those who complain it ruins their games. The ideal would be to ease the latter two groups’ dissatisfactions, while not dumbing down the efforts of the first group.
For those chronically complaining about it, the happiness system is still too punitive, if only in that it has periodic huge dives. No one likes that, and few think it’s fair. Why not smooth that out, even if it requires simplifying the system?
Even for those who wrestle with it, the happiness system seems more complicated than any other aspect of the mod — and it’s complicated to reduce a negative, rather than accentuate a positive. Tackling unhappiness with hammers or gold should be more direct, with the cost being expense (example: colosseums really, really help, but cost a lot more). But what should be viewed as unacceptable is literally being unable to pull out of a downward spiral.
Growth is one of the main causes of unhappiness. This is a mixed bag, because without a doubt, growth is
fun. Like everything else, it needs a counter, and unhappiness fits the bill. The ideal could be to effectively
tax virtually unlimited growth, so that the advantages incrementally head toward zero in most cases… but not to certain failure.
One of the problems of easing up on unhappiness is that positive happiness then explodes. As a simple solution, I’d propose limiting happiness… a ceiling of +50, say. After that, you get no benefit from it. (But if you hit a rough patch, that unaccounted cushion will keep you at 50 longer than it would someone else.)
I picked +50 arbitrarily, but the conceptual point is that a number beyond that is due to unfair AI or elite human advantages, and warps other aspects of the game — culture and science as well as happiness, by creating a runaway spiral. (The Maya’s 89 happiness feeds their cultural lead, and vice-versa).
Maybe stating the obvious, happiness heights could also be reduced if AI handicaps were reduced, as the mod grows closer to its ideal of a truly competitive AI. Warfare is the exception here to a degree, and starting promotions helps address the imbalance.
and 10+
for just 1
, 1
, 2
, all that without being truly free of 7% less tech/policy cost (the first puppet does increase costs from what I've read, but the next puppets after that don't). Sure, there's resources to consider, they might be useful to get that monopoly at a "cheaper" price, but that's very expensive. Imperialism's mandatory for any higher quantity of puppets which is perhaps okay, but at this point maybe the Puppets should start generating happiness from buildings and policies, together with perhaps a reduced maintenance cost. Razing seems preferable to keeping them.
.
for a while, the Cities will be improved eventually.
