Problems with happiness

[oPunchDrunko]

I'm the kind of player that likes to expand and take over cities and civilizations. Domination and happiness just dont mix. If you go too far into unhappiness, you get a severe military penalty, forcing you to sign a peace treaty or watch your army get dwindled down by counter attacks.

How can I manage this? I build all of the happiness buildings, get luxury resources, and adopt most of the happiness social policies.

 

[PhilBowles]

I'm the kind of player that likes to expand and take over cities and civilizations. Domination and happiness just dont mix. If you go too far into unhappiness, you get a severe military penalty, forcing you to sign a peace treaty or watch your army get dwindled down by counter attacks.

How can I manage this? I build all of the happiness buildings, get luxury resources, and adopt most of the happiness social policies.

Raze enemy cities you capture, or annex them when you can afford to build a courthouse rather than leave them as puppets forever more. It's also better to either expand or conquer, rather than to do both. The key thing is not to overstretch all at once. Because you can annex and build courthouses after a few turns, you'll be more effective if you take the cities you can manage, and then stop expanding until you're able to invest in courthouses and gain a happiness boost.

This is very deliberately built into the game engine; war is a trade-off, and you're essentially asking how to avoid trade-offs. At the most fundamental level, you can't - if you're getting all the happiness structures/wonders/policies and you still can't control happiness, the solution is to change your playstyle.

 

[vhhawk]

Expand more slowly. Take one city every few turns as happiness allows. Raze the conquered cities down to a low population. Puppet first, then occupy when you have funds to buy a courthouse. It is a difficult and slow dance.

I've learned to take only the cities I feel I must have. Sometimes just beeline to the capitals and raze everything else unless there's a resource you need. Or want to take out of the AI's hands (uranium, oil).

Woops, beaten to the punch by Phil.

 

[gozpel]

What the guys said, but if you can afford CS, buy them asap.

Or trade your 5 horses, some gold and open borders to a friend for their excess lux. Usually works for me

 

[Agent Cooper]

1. Use your SP points wisely - worthwhile policies generating/modifying happiness has been spread out over 3-4 different trees - Piety, Honor, Order...

2. For a wide empire with a lot of annexed cities, the Forbidden Palace is huge. For a +20 cities empire (own/annexed/puppet cities mix), the wonder built or captured, can easily generate happiness in the +30-40 range as it did in my latest Rome game. Notre Dame is great as well.

3. Always puppet conqured cities and when you have a happiness surplus, annex those worth annexing with regards to growth/production etc. Build/buy a courthouse in these as the very first thing. Conqured capitols are usually the first puppets you should annex. Build/buy colluseums everywhere and build the Circus Maximus wonder as well.

4. The AI plants cities everywhere on Immortal/Deity. If you conquer any of these fringe/garbage cities, raze them immediately - they will never become worthwhile. If you are granted a bunch of AI garbage cities in a peacy treaty settlement, do likewise. Accept and raze them right away.

It's certainly doable to have a huge empire and positive happiness - also on harder levels, but you absolutely have to plan for it. If you just go mad with conquring cities with little planning of how to administer your empire, you'll usually find yourself with a huge but fatally crippled empire with no growth, weak production and combat penalties for your units. Not recommended.

 

[ferzen]

When you adopt Autocraty->Militarism->Police state conquered cities with courthouse can be more happy then your native cities.

 

[joncnunn]

Happiness while conquering:

1. Have your core cities build the happiness structures.

2. Whenever you have the gold for it, annex a puppet and rush a court house. That city will now be happier than a base city (even without the police state policy). In addition, move the tiles worked more to bump up production. It will now also be possible to either slow build or cash rush happiness structures in this city as well.

3. Also note that every social policy tree has something in it that improves happiness. If you've gone Liberty, be sure to get the conquests into your trade network. If you've gone Honor, be sure to build Walls everywhere (and then Castles).

4. Some of the AI cities are garbage and should be razed. This is especially the case when there is a different landmass in the area, but sometimes occurs even on the same landmass. (AI founding at the minimum allowed spacing but all the resources were already within range of other cities.)

 

[Starhemberg]

I'm the kind of player that likes to expand and take over cities and civilizations. Domination and happiness just dont mix. If you go too far into unhappiness, you get a severe military penalty, forcing you to sign a peace treaty or watch your army get dwindled down by counter attacks.

How can I manage this? I build all of the happiness buildings, get luxury resources, and adopt most of the happiness social policies.

i know what you mean.
when you have much money just buy a courthouse and then the buildings to increase hapiness.
there is not much you can do... or you expand more slowly.
i would say... just overrun them, even with the combat penalty it should be no problem.
kill everything, secure the cities, deal with the unhappiness afterwards ;]

 

[chazzycat]

When you adopt Autocraty->Militarism->Police state conquered cities with courthouse can be more happy then your native cities.

Annex + Autocracy can be very, very powerful. However, the bonus is a few policies down in a tree where you have to be in the industrial age just to start. So, it comes pretty late and is best suited for later warfare (late industrial or modern domination pushes). Germany, America, and Rome are the best civs for this IMO. Germany & US for the late game military, and Rome because of their UA makes annexing cities very strong.

If you do your fighting earlier and have already conquered a wide area when you get to the industrial era, you may be better off with Order, since you get the happiness policy first instead of third. Order has some other good policies as well so it's not a wasted pick. If I am not playing one of those three civs I will probably end up taking Order instead of autocracy most of the time.

In that case I would also puppet cities more often than annexing, only annexing really good cities like capitals. To manage my puppet happiness, I restrict their growth by putting TPs on hills. Also, I will almost always have the happiness policies from honor and piety. Those are the best ones to manage puppet happiness, because the puppets will build walls/castles/monuments/temples anyway.