Shocked, and suddently hating the patch

[Creepy Old Man]

So Siam surrenders to me, giving me a nice pile of gold. I was happy. Of course, I didn't even notice he was also giving me three of his cities. At first I thought this was even better. Then I found out the truth.

Three cities, total size 53.

Not one single happiness building.

They're all in revolt for 15ish turns. (Despite him giving them to me, not conquered).

Those are puppets, by the way. I'm not even trying to annex them.

Result: I plumet from +4 happiness to -61. I can try to raze his cities instead, but that takes 15ish turns. At least if I had conquered them, they'd be half size.

So seriously, how do you expand, when you cannot acquire cities without an immence happiness buffer?

 

[Sonereal]

I think it's more of a problem with the fact the AI flat out ignores happiness given their massive happiness boosts.

So....try rushbuying a lot of happiness buildings really fast?

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Can't rushbuild - they're in revolt. (And I already have every effective happiness building in all my other cities.) And I have all but one luxury. In fact, the only way I can gain happiness is through gaining policies.

And that might be the problem. I have actually reached the point where the only way to gain happiness is through more policies. And I do not have anywhere near what I would consider to be a "large" empire.

 

[Sonereal]

Damn that's horrible.

I'm seriously blaming the devs deciding that the AI should be able to cheat happiness as flagrantly as they are. It makes actually getting these cities through trade a very ugly prospect. Especially since, well, the AI doesn't have to build happiness buildings most of the time.

 

[MadRat]

Welcome to the wonderful world of the moronically broken happiness system. Solution - raze raze raze raze and raze some more. Just have some settlers always on standby. I have had so to rage quit so many games when after a successful war I finally get a peace treaty that essentially makes the the game unwinnable. You lose by winning and you win by losing.

History CiV V style.
(AP) May 8 !945, Nazi Germany Surrenders and The USA goes into a bloody civil war, in the UK London is engulfed in flames -Russia's economy collapses and everyone fondly longs for the past mass carnage and concentration camps and neutral powers have condemned the Allies for just brutal acts of conquest.

Rat

 

[bonafide11]

Yeah, receiving cities from the AI is worthless now. I was at war with the Arabs last night, had taken Mecca and Baghdad, so he comes and offers five cities for peace. I think "oh hell yeah, I'll take his cities." Then I get them and realize that no way can I afford to take five cities without destroying my happiness, whether I raze them or puppet them, I was looking at -30 to -50 unhappiness! So I decided to reload the game before I accepted peace and just proceeded to conquer his cities one by one. That way I don't have to take such a massive happiness hit all at once, plus I got a lot of gold for conquering each city (I was the Songhai).

So, in conclusion, I hope Firaxis includes something in a patch that allows you to take gifted cities without such a massive happiness hit because right now there's really no reason to accept peace instead of just conquering them. Making peace is not worth it if you can't get anything from him without it destroying your happiness.

 

[Vordeo]

Actually, even if this were, say, multiplayer, someone could simply just sell off all his happiness buildings before surrendering cities, there any chance that's what the AI is doing here?.

 

[Sonereal]

Actually, even if this were, say, multiplayer, someone could simply just sell off all his happiness buildings before surrendering cities, there any chance that's what the AI is doing here?.

If that's true, the AIs are truly magnificent bastards.

That's almost something I should try against the AI.

 

[Dralix]

History CiV V style.
(AP) May 8 !945, Nazi Germany Surrenders and The USA goes into a bloody civil war, in the UK London is engulfed in flames -Russia's economy collapses and everyone fondly longs for the past mass carnage and concentration camps and neutral powers have condemned the Allies for just brutal acts of conquest.

At the risk of starting a political discussion, things haven't exactly been all roses since the liberation of Iraq, either in Iraq itself or in the USA. But then again, I dislike any realism argument about game mechanics anyway.

Actually, even if this were, say, multiplayer, someone could simply just sell off all his happiness buildings before surrendering cities, there any chance that's what the AI is doing here?.

I was thinking the same. Not necessarily that the AI was doing it, but that it might pop up in multiplayer.


As for the actual situation described here, I had it happen to me pre patch as well. Bottom line is that you need to think before just accepting a peace offer. If you don't have the happiness to absorb that many citizens at once, then maybe you keep fighting to reduce/delay the effects. Also, don't forget that courthouses are much cheaper, and can be purchased.

 

[tnick777]

I have had the same problem and I've made a thread about it.

I was at war with France who had a 20 city empire... I conquered 4 cities and he offered another 15 (all of his cities but his capital) then all of a sudden my empire is in total disarray and my happiness was an ungodly -91.

For hundreds of years I was having to fight a bloody civil war that ended up pillaging my economy by destroying all of my plantations and mines.

Then Washington invaded.

I'm really not liking this patch.

 

[Ajidica]

If anything there should be an option where you can either give a city back or chose to turn an annexed city into a puppet.

 

[AfterShafter]

Doesn't fix the root problem, but it would help with the whole production issue. Maybe a return of slavery in some form is something they should consider? The ability to liquidate population for production would go a long way to helping control population/happiness and giving a general production boost the game could use. Though, that's a huge can of worms to open and would take some serious tweaking of balance in other areas...

 

[Buccaneer]

If that's true, the AIs are truly magnificent bastards.

That's almost something I should try against the AI.

Yeah, if we do it against the AI, we are clever. If the AI does it against us, the game is broken and the worst of all time.

 

[krunsh]

About AI deleting hapiness building... I'm not 100% sure but I though they were detroyed when turned into puppet or annexed.

Also, What they should add is a notification saying what your happiness is gonna be if you accept the gift. It's normal not being able to control such a large empire but a lot of people are gonna be in the same situation as the OP. Just reload your auto save and get the city out of the peace treaty.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

Prepatch, there were three differences:

(1) Cities in the process of being razed did not contribute to unhappiness. We can debate about whether this was a good change or not, but for this discussion, the change seems to make accepting surrenders unreasonably hard.

(2) Revolt. I'm trying to deal with this (as a result of my horribly high unhappiness), and it's really crippling. I think it's a good idea in principle, but I don't like that revolt is brought on by ending a war.

(3) Happiness buildings now do not produce more happiness than the population of the city. That means that as your empire grows, your fixed happiness (luxuries, etc.) become spread thinner and thinner. Which means you *cannot* accept large new cities into your empire.

The main problem is the maximum population limit imposed by the current happiness implementation. I'll go into this in more detail in a separate post once I've clarified my rant to myself.

 

[plesniak]

You don't have to accept all or even any of the "gifts" from the AI. Any one remember the "Trojan Horse" gift during the seige of Troy? You can pare thier offer down to just a straight peace treaty if you want. I remeber a game pre patch where a civ I had been beating on sued for peace and offered my about 6 or 7 small cities he had taken form a previous civ. I only took a couple that were close to me. The otheres were far far away and barren...he was dumping garbage.

 

[Buccaneer]

Prepatch, the game was ridiculously easy, exploitive and nearly un-playable. Postpatch, people (including me) are going to have to learn to play differently and better.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

The above comments are "It's ok that expanding your empire is bad ... no one's forcing you to expand."

Well, guess what. I play this game because I want a large, flourishing, dominant empire.

Oh, and for some perspective? This game where I'm having so much trouble keeping my "vast" population happy? Demographics rate me as 5th in population!

 

[Sonereal]

That's more a problem of AI cheating happiness than anything else.

 

[AfterShafter]

The main problem is the maximum population limit imposed by the current happiness implementation. I'll go into this in more detail in a separate post once I've clarified my rant to myself.

This is something I think they need to examine closely. As a huge/marathon player, happiness resources are getting stretched *so* thin across a huge map that my empire ends up reaching a maximum which is really quite tiny. This was also true of Civ IV on the high difficulty, since distance and new city penalties to the economy were so severe and increased in a non-linear manner, but you had more tools to fight it which weren't geographically located.

Not an insurmountable problem, even with global happiness as it is, but it is something that could use tweaking on larger maps.