Shangri-La: Any sufficiently populated capital is unconquerable

[DarkSchneider]

That's no more realistic, not even in 2010. In fact I'm pretty sure that going to war and annexing cities causing unhappiness is more realistic than equalizing the viability of all settlement locations.

I think the War Weariness in Civ IV was already pretty much perfect. As for global food, a number of large, important US cities are built on deserts, something that would not be possible without national food.

The most realistic way to model it in the game would be effects based on the shortest trade route between cities. Cities with large food surpluses would gift them to cities with less food.

 

[DarkSchneider]

Why are you going to war when your empire is not happy? If you go to war when the empire is happy you have no problems. Also try targeting cities that have access to luxuries you don't, they pretty much look after themselves then.

This seems yet another 'It is not Civ4 and i only know how to play Civ4, therefore it is wrong/broken' threads. Try learning how to play the game, rather than expecting the game to be changed to suit you.

I've never gone to war when my Civilization is unhappy, but it often becomes so over the course of a war. At any given time at least 40% of my non-puppet cities are building happiness buildings, but even the first happiness building runs around 30 turns to build without an active golden age. So if I start with +5 happiness, and I conquer what becomes a size 5 capital and puppet it, I am already down to -2 happiness until I get it connected to my capital at which point it goes back up to -1 due to the Representation Policy. In the early game capturing a new city also means capturing a new luxury resource. But after the first six cities you generally have 10 of them or so, so that's only 5 left to acquire.

I think it will be easier to manage once I get the -20% unhappiness social policy, and I've already built the Forbidden palace which kept my happiness positive for a number of turns.

But regardless of how its managed I still think global happiness/unhappiness is unrealistic. Certainly there are happy and unhappy towns in every empire that are happy/unhappy for a variety of reasons. I think the easiest to model in Civ would be health (modeled in Civ IV), overcrowding (modeled in Civs I-IV) and unemployment, which has not yet been modeled, but would be a reflection of how many buildings were built in the city in relation to its population.

 

[Ogrelord]

Correct.

Civ0.V is a game of punishment.
You are successful in wartime? You get punished.
You are successful in creating a big empire with many inhabitants? You get punished.
You get one unit more than what your "empire" shall be able to support? You get punished.

Even the rewarding system does not work.
You've won? You get... hm... what exactly?
You've built an inspiring world wonder? You get.... hmm... a picture?

You want to look at how you've mastered the past 6000 years? You.... can't.

This is funny 'cause the Dev said that players (who are these players?) don't like "bad" events happening to them. They took out all the "negatives" such as unhealthiness, random events, and bad stuff from the ruins (goody huts). Except now.... you get bad stuff for being good.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I actually thought the OP was going to go on a different tangent from the title of the thread. I assumed he meant that any sufficiently large city would have such a high defence that nothing could do any damage to it.

Now I haven't been paying that much attention to city defence numbers in my games (as they don't matter since they fall so quickly anyway), but I've noticed that they seem to be higher for more populated cities. Is this observation correct?

I've also noticed that after a certain point, weaker units will no longer do any damage against cities with sufficient defence. So extrapolating those two assumptions (assuming they're correct), one would assume that at a certain point a city's innate defence through population becomes so high that no unit can do any damage to it. Of course, that point probably cannot be reached in a realistic game.

I don't think it'll ever get that high. Newer units do more damage. I'm sure Rocket Artillery could punch a hole in even the best of cities.

But it is a nice mechanic to prevent unpromoted Archers from damaging them after the beginning of the game.

 

[Rocknocker]

I'd like to add something to the happiness discussion:

Isn't it true that in history some leaders chose to go to war because they had problems to deal with domestic politics? If done clever, you can distract your population by starting a war, unifying your nation against a common enemy (you just need a "good" reason to go to war).

Over time, of course, losses might hamper happiness created by war. Continiously beeing successful in a war, on the other hand, should create happiness at home and weariness in occupied cities. The longer I think about it, the more unsatisfied I am with the global "happiness system" we have now...

 

[Louis XXIV]

I think you all are thinking about happiness the wrong way. Think of it more as overall order and the administrative costs associated with that. Sure, internal happiness is one big factor in ensuring a functioning society, but the costs of dealing with a new belligerent population is involved as well. It's not war weariness, it's an entirely different mechanic.

 

[Flavorable]

I just think mild unhappiness should influence culture and extreme unhappiness should be what influences production.

 

[Slowpoke]

Personally, I think a lot of the complaints stemming from global happiness are resulting from everyone being new to the game and not knowing how to deal with it. Unless you're india, you do NOT let your cities grow high in population.

I think a lot of people are falling into the pit of "bribe every maritime CS I see." You should have one, maybe two tops. Which is better? Having as may cities as you like with 9-10 pop each with colloseums and theatres? Or having a maximum amount cities of about 4 or 5 with 12-13 population? I'll take the whole world any day. And if you're having trouble with courthouses, just raze and resettle! People were brutal back in the day, no reason you shouldn't be.

 

[Nutteria]

I get the OP but at the same time I havent seen any AI get a City beyond level 20.Few times Ghandy made 22-23 size but thats it.So I don`t see the real problem.

Btw what is the city size cap? I made 29 size Capitol with Monty but I think there was room for more.

 

[Bandit17]

Completely wrong. Utterly wrong. Wrong in any possible way.

US citizens didn't become unhappy due to Baghdad being conquered, they became unhappy because of the war itself and the losses of (in terms of Civ0.V only, just to make this clear) very small numbers of soldiers.

Yet, in Civ0.V you can slaughter the enemy eternally without having have it any impact on your happiness situation, as long as you do not occupy foreign cities.
Even losing own units doesn't contribute a bit to your happiness/unhappiness ratio.

In Civ0.V, the US could have fought in Iraq for 10 years with literally killing each and everybody as long as they would have stayed outside of the cities.
Now tell me, how this ever could be "realistic"?

I totally concur. Civ5: Total War has really taken a turn away from realism and one towards fantasy. They might as well added dragons and trolls and claimed it was to improve gameplay.

The pursuit of happiness in Civ5: Total War actually leads to war which leads to unhappiness which can lead to more war for more happiness resources in the early stages. Later on your buying/building happiness buildings to create a surplus to support a large war. I like the idea of local happiness, especially for the early stages where Fuedalism and local government had more power. As govt became more centralized than shifting to a more general nation wide happiness would make more sense. Since we are dealing with walls/castles, trapping huts, barbarians and trading posts for the entire game I'm surprised they didn't focus more on local happiness. They did put in their Hobbsian take on diplomacy sadly...FFA.

 

[Rocknocker]

I think you all are thinking about happiness the wrong way. Think of it more as overall order and the administrative costs associated with that. Sure, internal happiness is one big factor in ensuring a functioning society, but the costs of dealing with a new belligerent population is involved as well. It's not war weariness, it's an entirely different mechanic.

You are right, maybe it should be called "overall order" or be seen as something like that. (the function of the courts supports that view)

Still, public order is different in different regions. We still can't explain why a colosseum far away increases happiness/order in all other (occupied) regions. Or can we?

But anyway, I think it's not "wrong" to think about happiness as it is in REALITY, right?

 

[lschnarch]

I totally concur. Civ5: Total War has really taken a turn away from realism and one towards fantasy. They might as well added dragons and trolls and claimed it was to improve gameplay.

Actually, they did. They just called it GDR.

 

[Louis XXIV]

You are right, maybe it should be called "overall order" or be seen as something like that. (the function of the courts supports that view)

Still, public order is different in different regions. We still can't explain why a colosseum far away increases happiness/order in all other (occupied) regions. Or can we?

Bread and Circuses in Rome mean the Emperor can move his troops to frontier cities to prevent them from rebelling.

But anyway, I think it's not "wrong" to think about happiness as it is in REALITY, right?

It's not wrong, I just think it's only part of the equation. If you want to think about what it really represents, start with actual happiness to some degree, but then expand on it. Then again, it never actually represented "happiness." Whether or not some scribe in Nineveh was depressed or not isn't factored into the game. When it was temples and the like, it was still ways to keep the masses from rising up against you. One way is entertainment. Another way was religion. A third way was improving their living conditions by importing exotic goods that make them feel happy living in this area.

 

[dannythefool]

We still can't explain why a colosseum far away increases happiness/order in all other (occupied) regions. Or can we?

The colloseum is an allusion to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

That's why it's a colloseum in all civ games and not some other form of antique theatre.

 

[Marshall Thomas]

The only thing "unhappiness" (1-9) does in CiV is limit growth (by 75%). In this thread we're trying to figure out just what "unhappiness" is an abstraction for. So what in history would limit population growth like this? It might just be some sort of administrative cap; reflecting the fact that your civilization or government can only handle running or governing a society with a limit on it's population. The limit can be increased, but if the population grows faster than the administrative limit (rather than the other way around) -then the population growth slows drastically.

Maybe The Roman Empire eventually hit this "administrative limit." But this is all just a possible interpretation; just speculation, really.

In game terms, just how bad is normal "unhappiness" anyway? It hurts population growth, but nothing else. And by the time you get to normal "unhappiness", haven't you probably just had a good deal of population growth anyway? Couldn't you just shift your focus away from food and focus instead on hammers and gold (or even specialists) for a while? You'll eventually not be "unhappy" and start growing again. So why not just see "unhappy" as the time to maximize hammers and gold? Should the "unhappiness" penalty be more severe? Or is it already a lot worse than I'm making it out to be?

"Very unhappy" is, of course, really serious because even if you're not at war to feel the effects of the combat penalty, the -50% production prevents you from just focusing on hammers -like I do when at normal "unhappy."

also: WWII Germany certainly had a few of the autocracy social policies which make conquest and military occupation more managable.

 

[DarkSchneider]

I hit the -50% production in my second game, despite switching all of my towns to happiness buildings and razing all of my non-capital conquest cities. I strongly feel it should only apply to non-happiness generating buildings. How else do they expect you to come out unhappiness if you can't buld the buildings to do it.

 

[Lord Parkin]

Indeed. Makes sense that your unhappy populace should be unhappy to construct anything EXCEPT stuff that will be of personal benefit/entertainment to them (like a Colosseum or something). I wouldn't mind this being fixed.

 

[aMoralAtheist]

Yup. If you can't handle an extra city to have no business being at war. You have to prepare your civ for war. Build up a buffer of happiness as well as your troops.

You go to war with the civ you have. Not the civ you wish you had. Thanks Rumsfeld!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well, on the OP.

You can conquer the city, and it will give you unhappiness... but it still contributes to your empire (see "Ignoring Happiness")

Secondly, what the penalty of unhappiness Should be
at -10, no Growth, no Settlers, No Annexing cities

Ditch the -50% production, and -33% combat bonus.

Of course you also need to change it so that
Puppets-> 0 benefit and 0 cost to your empire (except the territory)

 

[Lord Parkin]

Secondly, what the penalty of unhappiness Should be
at -10, no Growth, no Settlers, No Annexing cities

Ditch the -50% production, and -33% combat bonus.

I'm not sure I agree. To me the production and combat penalties, while harsh, seem necessary. Otherwise, there's no real penalty for mass conquering whatsoever.

No growth? Not a problem, just work hammer and commerce tiles, growth's already so slow in Civ5 that it hardly matters in the short-mid term.

No Settlers? Doesn't matter, you're away conquering new cities anyway.

No annexing cities? That's really not much of a penalty for a marching army, especially if you ditch maintenance for puppets as you suggest.

If anything I think the penalties for unhappiness are actually a bit on the light side as they are now. It doesn't really matter that much when your civ becomes unhappy, only when it gets extreme.

I do think the balance of happiness options needs to be better in the game. Right now there's too little happiness and it's too expensive to get. Luxuries need to scale with empire size, and happiness buildings need to cost less in maintenance (and be cheaper to build).