Questions and concerns about "Distress"

[George Zhang]

Hi there,

I installed Vox Populi a few months ago and have played through about 6 or 7 games since then. In every single one of them, I've noticed a running theme: My distress levels in my cities would go from being perfectly fine to suddenly skyrocketing somewhere in the Medieval era. This is such a problem that I end up instantly beelining Banking for Constabularies a great majority of the time.

Distress is still a problem even after Constabularies too, so here are my questions/concerns:

1. What exactly causes distress? And what are some ways to fix it other than constructing buildings/wonders, or getting synagogues? (Distress relieving religious building)

2. What exactly are key "events" that raise distress levels? There seem to be quite a few throughout the tech tree/timeline but I can't seem to pinpoint them exactly.

3. Distress feels rather OP as a negative modifier for happiness. My late Renaissance era cities usually look something like this:

-8 distress
-2 poverty
-1 from religious division
-1 from boredom

Does anybody else feel that or am I just doing something wrong?

4. And like I said earlier, synagogues are the religious building that reduces distress. I feel like the fact that distress is always so prevalent is an indirect buff to it and nerfs all the other religion buildings.

I might add some other stuff if they pop into my mind, but this is the general gist of it. Replies are greatly appreciated

 

[TranceBlossom]

Seeing a screenshot of a city where distress is a problem might help. Distress is the one problem that you're likely to always have a little bit of, but having 8 seems like it's a problem with your play.

 

[Stalker0]

You mentioned play a few months ago. Recent versions have made several adjustments to unhappiness, so that may be your issue right now

 

[George Zhang]

Seeing a screenshot of a city where distress is a problem might help. Distress is the one problem that you're likely to always have a little bit of, but having 8 seems like it's a problem with your play.

I'll post a screenshot tomorrow, I'm actually down to -30 global happiness right now lol

You mentioned play a few months ago. Recent versions have made several adjustments to unhappiness, so that may be your issue right now

maybe, I haven't updated the mods since I got it. I'll remember to update after this run

 

[tu_79]

1. What exactly causes distress? And what are some ways to fix it other than constructing buildings/wonders, or getting synagogues? (Distress relieving religious building)

Sum up your city food and production and divide it by your city population. For example, if you produce 35 and 42 in a 12 city, your productivity is (35 +42) / 12 = 6.41. Then the game checks up the productivity of other cities in the game and puts them in order. Suppose that the city that occupies the 40th position has a productivity of 7.25. In this case, the productivity of your city is below the median, so you get some distress in your city. This value is increased further when your city population is high and your tech level is advanced.

First way to fix it is increasing your productivity. Each of your citizens should be working on excellent tiles. Your cities should be gaining yields from policies, beliefs, buildings, great people improvements, trade routes and friendly city states to help rising your productivity. The more the better. And you should try to avoid unnecessary growth, by making your citizens work on fewer food and more production yields. (By unnecessary, I mean that there's no good places for your new citizens to work on).

Next way is to build wonders and buildings that reduce unhappiness, such as the barracks, which reduces distress.

Final way is to accept that some unhappiness is unavoidable, and try to gain some extra happiness by other means. Trade for luxuries, expend great admirals for voyages, use great musicians for concerts, build circus, unlock policies that grant more happiness, sfsf.

2. What exactly are key "events" that raise distress levels? There seem to be quite a few throughout the tech tree/timeline but I can't seem to pinpoint them exactly.

When your cities grow, the unhappiness scaler can be rough. You can check how much your city is going to be unhappy on next citizen by hovering over the unhappiness tooltip in the city banner. Other than that, if more than 50% cities in the game improve their yields better than you do (maybe they built a lot of villages and mines, while you just focused on farms), then it will hurt you sooner than later.

3. Distress feels rather OP as a negative modifier for happiness. My late Renaissance era cities usually look something like this:

-8 distress
-2 poverty
-1 from religious division
-1 from boredom

Does anybody else feel that or am I just doing something wrong?

It looks like november version. Please update to Dec 18 or Jan 15.

4. And like I said earlier, synagogues are the religious building that reduces distress. I feel like the fact that distress is always so prevalent is an indirect buff to it and nerfs all the other religion buildings.

I find the belief that gives raw production much better at fighting distress. It increases your efficiency, plus it improves your city development faster.

 

[Stalker0]

I'll post a screenshot tomorrow, I'm actually down to -30 global happiness right now lol

maybe, I haven't updated the mods since I got it. I'll remember to update after this run

If that's the case, than ultimately we should drop this, mainly because several key changes were made to happiness in the last two versions. In other words, we already troubleshooted your concerns

 

[George Zhang]

Sum up your city food and production and divide it by your city population. For example, if you produce 35 and 42 in a 12 city, your productivity is (35 +42) / 12 = 6.41. Then the game checks up the productivity of other cities in the game and puts them in order. Suppose that the city that occupies the 40th position has a productivity of 7.25. In this case, the productivity of your city is below the median, so you get some distress in your city. This value is increased further when your city population is high and your tech level is advanced.

First way to fix it is increasing your productivity. Each of your citizens should be working on excellent tiles. Your cities should be gaining yields from policies, beliefs, buildings, great people improvements, trade routes and friendly city states to help rising your productivity. The more the better. And you should try to avoid unnecessary growth, by making your citizens work on fewer food and more production yields. (By unnecessary, I mean that there's no good places for your new citizens to work on).

Next way is to build wonders and buildings that reduce unhappiness, such as the barracks, which reduces distress.

Final way is to accept that some unhappiness is unavoidable, and try to gain some extra happiness by other means. Trade for luxuries, expend great admirals for voyages, use great musicians for concerts, build circus, unlock policies that grant more happiness, sfsf.


When your cities grow, the unhappiness scaler can be rough. You can check how much your city is going to be unhappy on next citizen by hovering over the unhappiness tooltip in the city banner. Other than that, if more than 50% cities in the game improve their yields better than you do (maybe they built a lot of villages and mines, while you just focused on farms), then it will hurt you sooner than later.


It looks like november version. Please update to Dec 18 or Jan 15.


I find the belief that gives raw production much better at fighting distress. It increases your efficiency, plus it improves your city development faster.

Fantastic explanation, ty very much. You are correct, looks like I have massive deficits of productivity in pretty much all my cities, when it comes to food and production. I am about 9-10 techs higher than the 2nd highest tech leader, so maybe that's why? My cities' tile assignments honestly look pretty decent to me...I will update my Vox Populi mods before my next game.

And I promised screenshots, so here they are:

This first screenshot is my overall empire, with my capital being covered by the mini-map/next turn button, and 1 more city further off in the bottom right. You can see I now have -30 happiness, so I'm absolutely hemorrhaging GDP and barbarians are randomly spawning. I am at war, but that was only declared last turn and I don't have any war weariness yet. I have 10 turns left before Adrianople flips and joins Byzantium lol.

This is my capital's city overview screen. As you can see, I have a deficit of over 80 productivity despite working some pretty great tiles. I have only 2 citizens assigned to engineer slots (because global science initiative). But yeah. I might just give up on this playthrough (King difficulty) and start a new one later with updated mods.

Thanks for the help everybody