Poverty Issues

[0x2953]

Getting back into VP recently after a while not playing, currently on Emperor difficulty. I'm having a lot of issues with poverty unhappiness - it's always by far the biggest source for any of my cities (usually double the next biggest source), even if I prioritize trade routes and village improvements. Is this intended, or a bug with the current version? And if intended, how can I deal with Poverty?

 

[Drakle]

Cathedrals and golden ages are really good at Poverty reduction. Cathedrals because of the flat poverty reduction, and adding 1 gold to a lot of tiles, and then Golden ages enhancing those tiles and others by another gold.

But yeah, the Poverty unhappiness can still be brutal, particularly if you are unlucky with resources. No plantation luxuries can really hurt your cities with poverty, even if you are empire wide raking in a lot of cash.

 

[CrazyG]

Poverty is tough, I think it's intended as it's a historical problem.

Consider taking Cathedrals or Thrift as a religious belief.
Banks + caravansaries + custom houses give a lot of gold.

Which eras are you having poverty trouble? Late game hospitals can help, you can get them for free in every city from a Freedom policy. Order and industry have big poverty reductions.

 

[a3kov]

As said before, Cathedrals.
Build a Market + Library, then work the merchant slot.
Then villages on roads.
If it's very tough settle a GM for town - these help greatly.
And as last resort, send a caravan out of the suffering city.

Usually it's enough to fight it. And of course don't settle crap cities without gold sources. I find the hardest starts is tea monopoly - there you really need something like Open Sky pantheon and/or Cathedrals.

 

[stii]

Yeah I think it is intended, or at least impossible to reduce fully. It is fine to have a bunch of unhappy from poverty if you can reduce all the other ones. In general you are better off increasing production then gold and using the production to make more buildings. Most buildings produce one happy one way or another.

Even with no gold resources you should be able to build stuff that will keep your unhappy less than your happy.

 

[Stalker0]

The two sleeper buildings: caravansaries and chanceries. They tend to scale and give a lot of gold later in the game...so it can be easy to forget them when thinking about poverty