Some (crazy) ideas for unhappiness

[Milae]

Been doing some thinking about how it could be changed as I really like the concept of unhappiness based on yields in Vox Populi but to me it feels like it doesn't live up to its potential right now.

1. Needs modifier contributions could be affected by tourism percentage from each civ (with your own Civ counting as 100%). I'll just give an example as that's the easiest way to explain what I mean.

Say I am in a game with 1 other Civ. For science they have an average of 10 science per citizen and their tourism is 20% influential with me. My science per citizens is 4.
Global average for illiteracy for me would be (4 * 100 + 10 * 20)/ (100+20) = 600/120 = 5 per citizen
If they had 100% influential tourism with me:
Global average for illiteracy for me would be (4 * 100 + 10 * 100)/ (100+100) = 1400/200 = 7 per citizen

This would make tourism more meaningful beyond just the victory condition and civs with high tourism would force other civs to try and be like them or face unhappiness problems. Also needs modifiers wouldn't then be affected by civs you've never met/have very little contact with.

Now for the more crazy stuff:

2. Instead of illiteracy, boredom and poverty caring about yields per citizen, make it instead yields per production.
To me this makes much more sense that rather than just being unhappy for existing, citizens would become unhappy if you are expecting them to actually build things for you (like wonders or large armies) and would require more compensation in terms of science/gold/culture. Think this could make empire management quite interesting as other cities could become jealous of the capital and never really get going if not managed well.

EDIT - (I just want to clarify here that what I'm proposing means that:
higher production in a city = higher unhappiness
higher gold/science/culture in a city = lower unhappiness)

This would also make food/growth much less of a negative thing so I would probably add in a period of unhappiness each time a city grows and some extra unhappiness from famine slightly before food goes negative to compensate for this and make overpopulation still a potential issue.

3. Perhaps slightly different topic but if the global average for gold/production was calculated this could be used to modify the costs of gold purchases.

This means if there is a lot of gold per turn and low production per turn globally there would become inflation where gold becomes worth less so everything costs more. This could also be seen as some sort of global recession.

Sorry for long post, what do you guys think of these?

 

[CppMaster]

I like the 1st idea Makes sense and indeed tourism would me more influential.
I don't buy the others 2, though

 

[Revolutionist_8]

I really like the tourism one and I could see it work

The other two not so much, not just balance-wise (gameplay, AI, etc.) but also because seems unnecessary and not really bringing much to the table. If you can't have enough production gold helps mitigating it somewhat, punishing it doesn't make much sense for me.

 

[Stalker0]

So can you give us your same example but with a standard 8 civs? How does it work when some civs are influential to you, and others not, would be good to see that example

 

[tu_79]

2. Instead of illiteracy, boredom and poverty caring about yields per citizen, make it instead yields per production.
To me this makes much more sense that rather than just being unhappy for existing, citizens would become unhappy if you are expecting them to actually build things for you (like wonders or large armies) and would require more compensation in terms of science/gold/culture. Think this could make empire management quite interesting as other cities could become jealous of the capital and never really get going if not managed well.

This would also make food/growth much less of a negative thing so I would probably add in a period of unhappiness each time a city grows and some extra unhappiness from famine slightly before food goes negative to compensate for this and make overpopulation still a potential issue.

This is basically turning distress to only care about food. It was considered when we made the last rework, but was discarded since there are a few civs that just thrive on food (ehem, India). It doesn't make sense to not consider food for happiness.
Maybe it could be tested a distress with only food per citizen.

3. Perhaps slightly different topic but if the global average for gold/production was calculated this could be used to modify the costs of gold purchases.

This means if there is a lot of gold per turn and low production per turn globally there would become inflation where gold becomes worth less so everything costs more. This could also be seen as some sort of global recession.

I see a lot of potential for failures.

1. Needs modifier contributions could be affected by tourism percentage from each civ (with your own Civ counting as 100%). I'll just give an example as that's the easiest way to explain what I mean.

Say I am in a game with 1 other Civ. For science they have an average of 10 science per citizen and their tourism is 20% influential with me. My science per citizens is 4.
Global average for illiteracy for me would be (4 * 100 + 10 * 20)/ (100+20) = 600/120 = 5 per citizen
If they had 100% influential tourism with me:
Global average for illiteracy for me would be (4 * 100 + 10 * 100)/ (100+100) = 1400/200 = 7 per citizen

This would make tourism more meaningful beyond just the victory condition and civs with high tourism would force other civs to try and be like them or face unhappiness problems. Also needs modifiers wouldn't then be affected by civs you've never met/have very little contact with.

Would it not be much easier to just consider global tourism per citizen as a bonus for your global happiness? Something like +1 global happiness every 10 tourism per citizen in your empire. If you had 270 tourism in a 90 million people empire, that would yield +3 global happiness. This would reward with happiness the empires that cared about tourism.
EDIT. Well, maybe it would need higher figures to mean something, but anyways, civs that push for tourism tend to do pretty well with happiness. Happiness usually is only a problem for aggressive warmongers who like to expand very fast.

 

[CppMaster]

So can you give us your same example but with a standard 8 civs? How does it work when some civs are influential to you, and others not, would be good to see that example

I would see it as a weighted sum, where weight would be dependent on influence.

 

[Cokolwiek]

It doesn't make sense to not consider food for happiness.

I don't agree on that. But I would like to hear out why. Maybe I forget about something balance-related. I once proposed redesigning distress which is very strange and obscure mechanism and concept into much simpler to understand and calculate unemployment which would be just single, production, yields-base, like boredom and poverty are now. It would be more realistic and punish overpopulation. And starvation deals with the food as it deals now.

@Milae The second proposition is very interesting but won't gather any support. Increased empire managed and more realistic economics is my agenda also but most of the players don't even lock tiles themselves and understand how most of the happiness works. There's also growth-potential gap between difficulty levels, with food becoming less and less useful and more of a trap the higher difficulty you choose. That is more or less also why the third one will fail to pass in this world congress.

 

[Milae]

So can you give us your same example but with a standard 8 civs? How does it work when some civs are influential to you, and others not, would be good to see that example

Yea weighted sum. I'll do an example with 4 civs for poverty.
I am Civ 1 with 5 gold per citizen, (100% weighting with myself)
Civ 2 has 8 gold per citizen, 25% influential with me
Civ 3 has 10 gold per citizen, 40% influential with me
Civ 4 has 12 gold per citizen, 100% influential with me

The global average from my civs perspective for gold per citizen is:
(5 * 100 + 8 * 25 + 10 * 40 + 12 * 100) / (100 + 25 + 40 + 100)
= 2300 / 265
= 8.679

Each civ would have a different global average from their perspective depending on other civs' tourism influence with them.

This is basically turning distress to only care about food. It was considered when we made the last rework, but was discarded since there are a few civs that just thrive on food (ehem, India). It doesn't make sense to not consider food for happiness.
Maybe it could be tested a distress with only food per citizen

Yea my proposal was kind of just to remove distress but having distress be just food per citizen is like when I mention having famine start causing unhappiness before food goes negative.

I agree food needs to have something stopping you from going too crazy with it but right now food obviously has uses, but also has huge downsides with causing unhappiness.
Whereas production is obviously also very useful, but has absolutely no downsides and even reduces unhappiness from distress. So my idea is to try and make food a bit better by punishing it less, and production worse by punishing it with unhappiness somewhat.

Also for what it's worth when I first came across distress I thought it was saying I had too much production compared to food and my citizens were mad at me for making them work too hard. Which made sense in my head but obviously my attempts to reduce it by reducing production didn't end too well lol.

 

[Milae]

I really like the tourism one and I could see it work

The other two not so much, not just balance-wise (gameplay, AI, etc.) but also because seems unnecessary and not really bringing much to the table. If you can't have enough production gold helps mitigating it somewhat, punishing it doesn't make much sense for me.

Fair man that seems like what others are saying too. Just to clarify though if you have low production under my second idea that would give you more of your yields per production so you would get less unhappiness.

I see a lot of potential for failures.

(Talking about 3rd idea) Fair enough, errors that wouldn't be fixed by putting in a min and max cap on how much gold costs are affected?

 

[tu_79]

I don't agree on that. But I would like to hear out why. Maybe I forget about something balance-related. I once proposed redesigning distress which is very strange and obscure mechanism and concept into much simpler to understand and calculate unemployment which would be just single, production, yields-base, like boredom and poverty are now. It would be more realistic and punish overpopulation. And starvation deals with the food as it deals now.

@Milae The second proposition is very interesting but won't gather any support. Increased empire managed and more realistic economics is my agenda also but most of the players don't even lock tiles themselves and understand how most of the happiness works. There's also growth-potential gap between difficulty levels, with food becoming less and less useful and more of a trap the higher difficulty you choose. That is more or less also why the third one will fail to pass in this world congress.

One food per day may be enough to survive. Three meals a day is required for being healthy. You are more alike to be happy when you are healthly fed than just surviving.

 

[Cokolwiek]

One food per day may be enough to survive. Three meals a day is required for being healthy. You are more alike to be happy when you are healthly fed than just surviving.

I don't buy it. For most of the times VP represents central governments paid no attention if peasants, who constituted around 80% of population in any pre-industrial revolution society, die or not of famine or are well fed, it was also technically impossible to. They however paid a hell lot of attention if they are paying their taxes (also paid in grains) and work productively and couldn't care less if the wheat sack they are taking away was the last for that family or not. The nature's natural cycles and food scarcity was accepted as a normal part of life.
Also are you saying that the world's biggest economy didn't grow to its current position out of third world status on a bowl of rice? Because it kinda did and in no other country people are as proud of their achievements and confident in their rulers as in China now, you can check that in any documentary or academic publication about China, even economists and sociologist from the ever greedy West admit that. Public confidence in the government will never come close to this in Western nations.
The only results of increased food availability in western nations tend to be epidemic of obesity. How about nearly 70% of U.S. being overweight? And 40% of adults worldwide? With all diseases that it brings and trillions in future medical care. Some official data.

 

[tu_79]

I don't buy it. For most of the times VP represents central governments paid no attention if peasants, who constituted around 80% of population in any pre-industrial revolution society, die or not of famine or are well fed, it was also technically impossible to. They however paid a hell lot of attention if they are paying their taxes (also paid in grains) and work productively and couldn't care less if the wheat sack they are taking away was the last for that family or not. The nature's natural cycles and food scarcity was accepted as a normal part of life.
Also are you saying that the world's biggest economy didn't grow to its current position out of third world status on a bowl of rice? Because it kinda did and in no other country people are as proud of their achievements and confident in their rulers as in China now, you can check that in any documentary or academic publication about China, even economists and sociologist from the ever greedy West admit that. Public confidence in the government will never come close to this in Western nations.
The only results of increased food availability in western nations tend to be epidemic of obesity. How about nearly 70% of U.S. being overweight? And 40% of adults worldwide? With all diseases that it brings and trillions in future medical care. Some official data.

Well, maybe Chinese people are content precisely because they are not starving to the point of just surviving, but they fulfill their basic needs.
Happiness curve is said to increase as the needs are fulfilled, but it decreases once wealth is well over the point of needs fulfillment.

A fair point is that happiness mechanics are not happiness in the real sense, but the ability of the state to rule over people without much complaining. Either way, my point stands, no government system can persist if it can't provide what people need.

Now the real question. Do we really need to feel productive? I get that people need to feel realized, and working is a way to realization. We need to be employed at something, even if it is for free. But, does it really makes us happier to produce more things in less time? Assuming our basic needs are already fulfilled, what gives us in terms of happiness, the excedent production?
More productivity is useful when our needs are not met, so we can produce more to have more needs met. But what if there's nothing more that you need? More productivity is just more stuff we don't need or, less likely, fewer working hours. In the long run it might be beneficial, but in the short term, it does nothing for our contentment.

 

[glider1]

Well, maybe Chinese people are content precisely because they are not starving to the point of just surviving, but they fulfill their basic needs.
Happiness curve is said to increase as the needs are fulfilled, but it decreases once wealth is well over the point of needs fulfillment.

A fair point is that happiness mechanics are not happiness in the real sense, but the ability of the state to rule over people without much complaining. Either way, my point stands, no government system can persist if it can't provide what people need.

Now the real question. Do we really need to feel productive? I get that people need to feel realized, and working is a way to realization. We need to be employed at something, even if it is for free. But, does it really makes us happier to produce more things in less time? Assuming our basic needs are already fulfilled, what gives us in terms of happiness, the excedent production?
More productivity is useful when our needs are not met, so we can produce more to have more needs met. But what if there's nothing more that you need? More productivity is just more stuff we don't need or, less likely, fewer working hours. In the long run it might be beneficial, but in the short term, it does nothing for our contentment.

Good points. Happiness from productivity is not about physical productivity but the psychological need to be in a progressive society since progressivism is a modern secular religion and should be represented as such in the game as a late game religion. The player shouldn't be founding corporations. Corporations should found themselves under capitalism and the player attracts them to his civ to create progressivist happiness (EDIT see Caveman2Cosmos mod civ4).

 

[Cokolwiek]

Now the real question. Do we really need to feel productive? I get that people need to feel realized, and working is a way to realization. We need to be employed at something, even if it is for free. But, does it really makes us happier to produce more things in less time? Assuming our basic needs are already fulfilled, what gives us in terms of happiness, the excedent production?
More productivity is useful when our needs are not met, so we can produce more to have more needs met. But what if there's nothing more that you need? More productivity is just more stuff we don't need or, less likely, fewer working hours. In the long run it might be beneficial, but in the short term, it does nothing for our contentment.

Well, if you look closely, it is hammers what provides the jobs, so also the purchasing poverty. It is production that clothes them, that is giving them a roof above their heads, and sense of stability and security. And yes, it gives them their food, because they can afford more of it through raising productivity and hence wages. Production happiness in my eyes does not come from psychological factors, but their rising living standard and stability of job market.
Another thing is what food yield represents? Direct food, actual food? No. It's arable land or more directly yields from a unit of arable land. And you need less and less of it as you progress through the eras, you have more food from less tiles. And why? Because food yield? No! Because of production and science. Science gives you new projects and understanding of biology through techs, then production gives you enough factories and craftsmen to produce enough tools, enough tractors, enough irrigation, enough fertilizers, enough buildings like granaries, aqueducts and agribusiness that represents productivity of human labor. In fact you produce more food because increases in productivity per acre kicks in. So more production gives you more food, no more food gives you more food. More food gives you less food, as new citizens are not granted good production tiles (good jobs and productivity) but are another mouths to feed. That's why I think production should be the definitive yield to transfer into happiness. It is also production that directly leads to more consumer goods that people wants to buy. The food that you produce is already an excess, your citizens have enough to live and be happy.
And again, food has its own happiness system with starvation. Maybe we can just introduce happiness hit for stagnation or locking growth down.

 

[Milae]

@tu_79 Okay we've gone philosophical here so the way I see it is that yes production means you can build things to make people happy and fill their needs better in the long run (markets, lib/unis, agribusinesses for food etc). But the short term result of production is that people are being forced to do hard work which will make them unhappy. So running a civilization well would involve a balancing act of getting people to do stuff so that you progress in the long run, whilst not pushing them too hard that they are all miserable and rebel against you in the short run.

Also I'm not really an expert on what the food situation was like ages ago, but my assumption was always that having a consistent supply of food would be one of the key things to maintaining public order. Also being close to having 0 excess food would mean probably some people wouldn't be fed well as ruling class would take the most, and due to the variability of food supplies this could also mean occasional famines as there wasn't refrigeration or good supply chains.

From a game balance perspective, I feel that the level of food you need is pretty easy to come by in VP at which point more doesn't really help you and may actually hurt you. So either making more food less harmful so you are incentivised to try and go beyond the normal amount would help. Or alternatively making food harder to get so you can't get to the amount you need so easily.

Maybe we can just introduce happiness hit for stagnation or locking growth down

The penalty for locking would be one of my suggestions as well but only alongside my other suggestions as this would only make food cause even more unhappiness than it does right now.

On the other hand Production always good atm (which is one of the reasons that as you mention on deity discussion @Cokolwiek , authority is generally very good for players even without warring) so giving production a potential downside could be quite interesting.

 

[tu_79]

@tu_79 Okay we've gone philosophical here so the way I see it is that yes production means you can build things to make people happy and fill their needs better in the long run (markets, lib/unis, agribusinesses for food etc). But the short term result of production is that people are being forced to do hard work which will make them unhappy. So running a civilization well would involve a balancing act of getting people to do stuff so that you progress in the long run, whilst not pushing them too hard that they are all miserable and rebel against you in the short run.

Also I'm not really an expert on what the food situation was like ages ago, but my assumption was always that having a consistent supply of food would be one of the key things to maintaining public order. Also being close to having 0 excess food would mean probably some people wouldn't be fed well as ruling class would take the most, and due to the variability of food supplies this could also mean occasional famines as there wasn't refrigeration or good supply chains.

From a game balance perspective, I feel that the level of food you need is pretty easy to come by in VP at which point more doesn't really help you and may actually hurt you. So either making more food less harmful so you are incentivised to try and go beyond the normal amount would help. Or alternatively making food harder to get so you can't get to the amount you need so easily.


The penalty for locking would be one of my suggestions as well but only alongside my other suggestions as this would only make food cause even more unhappiness than it does right now.

On the other hand Production always good atm (which is one of the reasons that as you mention on deity discussion @Cokolwiek , authority is generally very good for players even without warring) so giving production a potential downside could be quite interesting.

I agree. You are not content because you can produce many things, but because the things that you produced were enough. For example, if you produce more movies than you can possibly watch, the excess do nothing for your culture.

So, from a philosophical perspective, it makes sense to not consider productivity for the needs. Employment makes sense, but this is already represented by red laborers, who are angry by default.
From a game perspective, I think that production was mixed with food because there were a few technologies that increased food so much that it created spikes in worldwide happiness. You see, a few civs got to fertilizers and suddenly half of the world became angry for not having that much food. And that didn't make sense either. Why would you complain about not having ten times the food that you need just because some people in the other side of the world are producing so much food. In other words, you don't need more food just because there's more food available. You only need more food when you were not getting all the food you needed.

Currently, there's a starving mechanic. Getting less than 2 meals per citizen makes your people starve. The city becomes unhappy and your population slowly decays. Anything greater than that will just affect the growth of the city.

I think we could just get rid of distress but include a third growing state. Anything less than 1 meal per citizen stays starving the city, people are angry and population degrow. Between 1 and 2 meals per citizen people are content but growth is zero. Any excess over 2 meals per citizen adds to growth.

 

[Gazebo]

Tourism is not used in such a way as it scales poorly with the number of civs. This is why most tourism systems are locked not by number of civs, but by number of trade routes or number of great work slots, as those are player-count-agnostic.

G