Poll: How much does the happiness system influence your gameplay?

[lunker]

I've been playing a little more without considering happiness, and I'm starting to feel that it's in a fairly decent state atm. It could stand to be a little more difficult, but I find that this is much better than past iterations which we've struggled to keep balanced and enjoyable.

 

[tommytoxen]

Always effects my decisions, I like my little people to be happy, I'm a benevolent dictator. If I can afford a building I'll build it for my little peasants. If they want a luxury and I don't have it but a neighbour happens to have plenty of it but won't trade fairly for it and I'm sure I can take them in a war then it falls onto the duty of my generals and admirals to make my precious little people happy...

But roleplay purposes aside.. I never have any trouble with happiness. My people are always happy. It'd be nice for it to be a little bit more of a challenge, not so much that it's so stressy it's unfun but a tiny tweak to make it a little more important outside of pure roleplay reasons would be nice.

Even though happiness is pretty easy right now it's still very important to me. I'm not a very gamey player, I have all victory conditions turned off, play on epic. I just like to build my nation and take care of my people and.. play. So more little things to do for happiness and things to do for my people in general would be nice.

 

[Questdog]

Industrial Era is still hard to stay happy for me with my 15 or so cities. In my current game, however, Denmark has 37 cities and has twice the happiness of anyone else....and twice the cities.

Edit: I had been struggling along for a while with a negative happiness between 0 and -10 (distress is rough and religious unrest is killing me with Monty's pressure being unbelievable - even my Holy City, which has 4 cities of mine between it and Monty is picking up believers of his religion)., and then I get the Baby Boomer Event. +1 pop in all cities and suddenly I am flirting with -20.... This will be my last game with Events on....

 

[TwoPodRay]

Right now, happiness seems to be an early counterbalance to extreme aggression or expansion, though it could probably do with a bit more influence. If you’re playing properly/balanced, as others have said, it shouldn’t be much of an issue. I have found that after my warring/expansion phase from late Ancient (i.e. once I get Horsemen) to Medieval, I don’t even look at happiness anymore. I haven’t seen any big swings at all, and always have excess. Perhaps I’ve just gotten a build order down such that I can keep all unhappiness sources in check?


As an example, I’m running a Byzantine empire on Immortal, Huge, Epic, 17 Civs, 24 CS, I’m running Progress, Fealty, going into Imperialism, I’m in Late Industrial era, I have 21 cities and I am sitting at 180 happiness. Perhaps my religion helps me shore up weaknesses (Inspiration for keeping boredom down)? Or maybe this is how happiness should be functioning?

As a note, I don’t build so many farms these days. I’m heavy on Lumbermills and villages, since they give balanced yields, but I only improve Luxuries and Strategics until I unlock those. Or build roads. With too many farms I found that my pop outgrew my yields and happiness started to become a factor.

 

[Gazebo]

Industrial Era is still hard to stay happy for me with my 15 or so cities. In my current game, however, Denmark has 37 cities and has twice the happiness of anyone else....and twice the cities.

Edit: I had been struggling along for a while with a negative happiness between 0 and -10 (distress is rough and religious unrest is killing me with Monty's pressure being unbelievable - even my Holy City, which has 4 cities of mine between it and Monty is picking up believers of his religion)., and then I get the Baby Boomer Event. +1 pop in all cities and suddenly I am flirting with -20.... This will be my last game with Events on....

If your empire becomes large enough, your own cities start to dominate the median, which can lead to what harald is doing. Nothing 'wrong' with it, but it is a positive side-effect of going super duper wide.

G

 

[tu_79]

I'm not a good example, since I've only finished two games. I never run into happiness problems. It might be because I inconsciously do it the right way, but probably it is my reticence to manage more cities so I end up with mostly puppets.

I really like puppets now, by the way.

If ever, I find happiness too easy. I remember that keeping my empire at 30 for the whole game used to be a feat in vanilla, now going to the hundreds sounds normal.

To make it a bit more challenging, I'd remove production from distress needs, and rename it to hunger.