New Version - June 21st (6/21)

[Elhoim]

Plus I see what's happening to him as an awesome scenario. I wished the game took me out of the comfort zone more often.

 

[TeeInKay]

Yeah, I have tried to replicate...

 

[Gazebo]

Technically, the resolution was passed on the previous turn (when everyone voted). I've only seen the results on the next turn.

If, at any point in the past, your happiness dipped below 'rebellion possibility' (i.e. -20), the countdown goes down. If it happens again, the countdown continues. It doesn't reset until the barbs are triggered.
G

 

[Strigvir]

I'm pretty sure I only mentioned that once, and later pointed out that you can't really expect the game to be balanced around adding extra civs. Which is still a valid argument as adding extra civs pretty much broke vanilla as well. going outside the standard settings have always been on your own risk, in pretty much every game.

What are those mythical "standard settings" in civ games you are referring to?

Plus I see what's happening to him as an awesome scenario. I wished the game took me out of the comfort zone more often.

This is a result of several bugs actually:
1) Specialists slots resetting on mouse hover over a city, so I had to set all cities to manual spec assignment and micro all of them in case of happiness dips.
2) Isolation unhappiness even though I had cities connected to cities with harbor. That gave me around 40 of unremovable unhappiness
3) level 2 order tenet removing free public schools from all cities (I didn't really check, but it seems also removing public schools bought with faith). That contributed to ~50 illiteracy (mostly caused by puppets).
4) AI not sticking to the ideology at all
Mind you, I still won through the diplo victory, even though I wanted to get a science one. Apparently, AIs didn't spam diplomats as much as they should, so I quickly allied with all city-states (the ones which are left at least) with zero policy investment.

I don't get why you're complaining about the CBP's changes when you already know the problem is World Ideology. I understand why you're upset, putting so much time into a game only to see things crash around you sucks.

Happiness dips aren't only caused by world ideologies. I don't do screenshots of every turn to show it, that one was just the closest I had.
Just check this post http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13875260&postcount=2298 to see it in the play. Btw that game is on so beloved "standard" settings and is more peaceful than even my game, yet it still experienced -80 happiness dip out of nowhere.
Also there WAS some change to happiness in one of the latest paches.
Basically in the older versions the main source of unhappiness were big cities, while puppets and smaller cities provided a minimal impact. Now it's other way around, 10 pop city gives 10 unhappiness, while 30 pop one - 0.

 

[Funak]

What are those mythical "standard settings" in civ games you are referring to?

That's the settings you get when you start the game without going into the advanced settings window.

1) Specialists slots resetting on mouse hover over a city, so I had to set all cities to manual spec assignment and micro all of them in case of happiness dips.

That's a EUI feature, not really a bug.

4) AI not sticking to the ideology at all
Mind you, I still won through the diplo victory, even though I wanted to get a science one. Apparently, AIs didn't spam diplomats as much as they should, so I quickly allied with all city-states (the ones which are left at least) with zero policy investment.

I don't see why you would call this a bug.

Also there WAS some change to happiness in one of the latest paches.
Basically in the older versions the main source of unhappiness were big cities, while puppets and smaller cities provided a minimal impact. Now it's other way around, 10 pop city gives 10 unhappiness, while 30 pop one - 0.

Do you mean older versions of vanilla or CPP? Because I don't remember CPP ever being that way.
Improved specialists have made happiness-management of bigger cities easier, But I don't remember big cities ever providing higher unhappiness/citizen than smaller cities (not counting the extremely small one because they are usually immune to unhappiness).

 

[Delekhan]

I've played the latest version into the Modern Era and have run into zero happiness issues, outside of some medieval era oversettling which was totally expected and managed.

I knew I'd be going domination or diplomacy early on, both of which benefit from wide builds, so I planned ahead and pre-emptively started focusing on happiness boosters early on like:

- The Oracle, which reduces illiteracy in all cities

- Religious buildings like the Mandir (reduces poverty), Pagoda (reduces boredom), or if the Pagoda is taken the Synagogue (reduces disorder). Completing Piety also gives +2 happiness per city from this. Happiness is a big early goal if I plan on having cities from conquest or to go wide for paper and diplo units for diplomatic victory.

- Since I'll be conquering some cities I ensure that my core cities are of AAA-quality, and only settle prime locations for them. I only go really wide once that is in place. Quality over quantity for your core cities before exploding outward, even if that leaves some gaps in your territory.

- Have plenty of gold available to buy luxuries from everyone in the game. The bigger the map, the more players in the game, thus more luxuries to buy. It's a self-regulating system

- When reasonably possible, I'd really rather someone else control territory for me through vassalage and capitulation if they have a lot of "meh" quality cities. I'll only keep really juicy capitals with lots of wonders, and let others deal with their crappy cities through vassalage. Here again lots of gold income helps, vassals cost gold but solve the happiness problem in spades. In your screenshots I saw a lot of captured cities, especially from the Persians, in fairly marginal locations. I would have dumped those on a vassal in a heartbeat, and maybe have kept Persepolis if it had at least a couple good wonders in it.

And more. Happiness is just never an issue for me after Renaissance. Just plan ahead.