Sudden Unhappiness

[M45T3R5W4G3R]

Hello everyone, I am currently playing an Emperor game with China and since it was quite easy early -first time on the way of winning Emperor on vox populi btw- I started to playing for dominating game from all aspects instead of beelining for a specific victory type. And I had about... 25-30 cities... While I had the highest production line with high pop and high prod, I also was leading in science, culture and faith either with the strongest army in the game.

But as the game advanced, unhappiness has started to increase overwhelmingly. I usually was waving around 10 to -15 which was not quite good. However some sudden changes destroyed me. While not in a war, I was used to sudden 10 unhappinesses out of nowhere but could handle them back to positive and didn't question why they occured. But while in a war; while in a single turn I've fallen from -19 to -55! There were no plundered trade route, no ending aggreement, no blockade on a tile, no denounce, no golden age ending, no war weariness nor anything that could have an impact on my happiness. At that point my gpt fallen from ~700 to ~200 and my unhappiness was caused mostly by poverty. And since I had dropped happiness I couldn't produce gold which led me to -70s in following turns. I've had about nearly all buildings that could increase happiness in all my cities on my tech level while I was micromanaging many tiles for happiness. But the biggest issue wasn't crime, it was illiteracy, boredom and poverty (which came later with sudden drop). I had gone for Progress, Statecraft and Rationalism btw and was around t500s of marathon, beginning of industrial era.

I have Google'd the happiness system and some forums for this but I couldn't find anything on why that fall could have happened nor the sudden 10 drops I didn't care at first. I really like the happiness system in Vox Populi and I had around 180+ hours of games in VP and haven't encountered anything like this before.

So... Does anyone have an idea on what could cause those out-of-nowhere happiness drops and explain if there are variables not included on the wiki page, please? I'd really appreciate it.

 

[Enginseer]

You're snowballing too fast. You need to slow down. It's like saying America is leading in economical strides and power yet poverty still exist on a nationwide scale which is represented in Vox Populi.

 

[Matutin]

Could war weariness be a problem as well? If you are at war too often and too long, your people will become pretty unhappy.

 

[M45T3R5W4G3R]

You're snowballing too fast. You need to slow down. It's like saying America is leading in economical strides and power yet poverty still exist on a nationwide scale which is represented in Vox Populi.

Yeah, that is quite well-implemented and I love it tbh. But I didn't get the sudden -30 drop that occured out of nowhere, unfortunately.

Could war weariness be a problem as well? If you are at war too often and too long, your people will become pretty unhappy.

Thanks for pointing out but I wasn't in a war for too long, it'd reach 5 at max also had no War Weariness in the happiness section at all.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Discovering a new tech increase all the needs, so if you are unlucky, all your cities change from "I have just enough of a yield" to "I have just not enough of a yield" in just one tech discovery.
(Needs are computed from your tech level, and from the median of that yield generation on all cities in the game)

 

[Mad Madigan]

Yes, each individual city you control calculates Unhappiness for numerous categories (Gold, Culture, Science per turn etc.). How much of these yields per turn your city has to produce to not generate Unhappiness depends on the median of each yield produced by every city in your current game. This "need" value is also modified by the number of technologies you have researched, so if you're way ahead of the rest of the Civs in technology you have to really fight to keep your cities happy. Finally, the city population also acts as a multiplier for these needs, so the bigger a city's population gets, the more yields it will need to remain content.

And of course, the more cities you control, the more that Unhappiness will add up. If you only control 6-8 cities (pretty common for a peaceful Civ going for a Science/Culture victory) each city will only generate 2-5 Unhappiness if you don't combat its needs properly, so at worst you are only getting around 20-60 Unhappiness in total from your cities, which can easily be covered up with buildings, wonders, luxuries, and other bonuses that add Happiness. But if you have 20+ cities to manage, a single new tech research could change the Happy/Unhappy threshold for your entire empire, meaning swings in Happiness relative to the number of cities you control. You said you had about 30 cities, so that means a change of -1 Happiness to each city is a huge -30 swing all together. It might not have been you unlocking a new technology either. Maybe the median values for Gold/Culture/Science from the rest of the AI Civs in your game went up that turn, which combined with the multiplier of your tech lead could easily shift some of your borderline Happiness needs in your cities to the point where each city is now generating 1-2 more Unhappiness. But this is all by design. You have a huge empire, and you have the lead in technology, so your citizenry expect a lot in order to remain Happy.

One suggestion would be to look at some of the cities you've captured from other AI Civs and consider razing some of the worse ones in order to shrink your empire and cut off those extra sources of Unhappiness. That, and look at the Happiness UI readout at the top of the window and look at your top two sources of Unhappiness. Just focus on combating those first. If the main source is Poverty, look for your cities with the worst Poverty and move a trade route so that it originates from that city the next time you are able. Trade route income goes to the city the trade route starts from, so you can move trade routes to start in poorer cities to combat their poverty. Also take a look at your bigger cities (population-wise). Just how big are they? If they're beyond 20 population, headed towards 30+ maybe disable Growth for them until you can correct for their Unhappiness? Or shift their specialist and tile focus away from food and towards other yields. Or if the city has a lot of specialists and is generally Unhappy, try manually controlling which specialists slots are being used. If you lower the amount of specialists and let the citizens work land hexes instead, that should help lower your sources of Unhappiness.

 

[Legedi]

Maybe the median values for Gold/Culture/Science from the rest of the AI Civs in your game went up that turn

Wait, those values are based off of all civs/cities in the game? I always thought those were based off of just your own cities!

 

[M45T3R5W4G3R]

Discovering a new tech increase all the needs, so if you are unlucky, all your cities change from "I have just enough of a yield" to "I have just not enough of a yield" in just one tech discovery.
(Needs are computed from your tech level, and from the median of that yield generation on all cities in the game)

Yeah, that could be something like that. Thanks a lot.

Yes, each individual city you control calculates Unhappiness for numerous categories (Gold, Culture, Science per turn etc.). How much of these yields per turn your city has to produce to not generate Unhappiness depends on the median of each yield produced by every city in your current game. This "need" value is also modified by the number of technologies you have researched, so if you're way ahead of the rest of the Civs in technology you have to really fight to keep your cities happy. Finally, the city population also acts as a multiplier for these needs, so the bigger a city's population gets, the more yields it will need to remain content.

And of course, the more cities you control, the more that Unhappiness will add up. If you only control 6-8 cities (pretty common for a peaceful Civ going for a Science/Culture victory) each city will only generate 2-5 Unhappiness if you don't combat its needs properly, so at worst you are only getting around 20-60 Unhappiness in total from your cities, which can easily be covered up with buildings, wonders, luxuries, and other bonuses that add Happiness. But if you have 20+ cities to manage, a single new tech research could change the Happy/Unhappy threshold for your entire empire, meaning swings in Happiness relative to the number of cities you control. You said you had about 30 cities, so that means a change of -1 Happiness to each city is a huge -30 swing all together. It might not have been you unlocking a new technology either. Maybe the median values for Gold/Culture/Science from the rest of the AI Civs in your game went up that turn, which combined with the multiplier of your tech lead could easily shift some of your borderline Happiness needs in your cities to the point where each city is now generating 1-2 more Unhappiness. But this is all by design. You have a huge empire, and you have the lead in technology, so your citizenry expect a lot in order to remain Happy.

One suggestion would be to look at some of the cities you've captured from other AI Civs and consider razing some of the worse ones in order to shrink your empire and cut off those extra sources of Unhappiness. That, and look at the Happiness UI readout at the top of the window and look at your top two sources of Unhappiness. Just focus on combating those first. If the main source is Poverty, look for your cities with the worst Poverty and move a trade route so that it originates from that city the next time you are able. Trade route income goes to the city the trade route starts from, so you can move trade routes to start in poorer cities to combat their poverty. Also take a look at your bigger cities (population-wise). Just how big are they? If they're beyond 20 population, headed towards 30+ maybe disable Growth for them until you can correct for their Unhappiness? Or shift their specialist and tile focus away from food and towards other yields. Or if the city has a lot of specialists and is generally Unhappy, try manually controlling which specialists slots are being used. If you lower the amount of specialists and let the citizens work land hexes instead, that should help lower your sources of Unhappiness.

This has been an awesome read, this explains my issue from all aspects that I can imagine and I'm quite grateful for both your informing and advices, thanks a lot!!

 

[Haile Marriam]

On a related note, what can be done when war weariness is the leading cause of unhappiness but the AI won't negotiate peace? In my current game, it's around 1300 AD and I'm in the scoring lead as Ethiopia with a large tech lead. Recently, the Spanish, Indonesians, and English have all declared war on me. Spain is the closest in proximity to me so I began taking some of their cities during the initial stages of the war. I was thinking I'd score some puppets early and then make peace deals with everyone. However, the war has waged on and now my happiness (and gold) are dropping rapidly. The Spanish have a much larger navy and have wrecked most of my sea trade routes. My happiness is dropping around 5 per turn now, but no one seems interested in making peace. Can anything be done to get the AI to negotiate peace quicker? I would think the Spanish would want peace since they've lost some cities and are in danger of losing others, but they don't seem interested.

 

[SLGray]

Is Spain allied with the other civs which are warring with you, or a vassal of one of them?

 

[Haile Marriam]

Is Spain allied with the other civs which are warring with you, or a vassal of one of them?

I think Spain has DoFs with both the English and Indonesians. I'm assuming Spain bribed them into attacking me since I'm clearly more powerful than both and further away (Spain is/was stronger militarily and is closer).

 

[neo_arcadia]

One thing to consider is that you don't see what AI see. I think it's pretty cool to imagine that their objective of war is to reduce your happiness into oblivion with the cost of their cities. I'd like to imagine that AI also do that because sometimes I, as a human, take into account how to cripple other civilizations with any aspect related to war. In my opinion, the ultimate solution for crippling other civilization is to make them my vassal instead of removing them entirely. When in the game though, realistically speaking, it falls down to other objective, most of the times because I cannot support my army with such tall objective of making them my vassal.

In conclusion, yeah, making other empire becomes unhappy is also part of strategy.

By the way, if you want to know that other AI bribes another, check the diplomacy screen. If the "negotiate peace" button is not there it means that they are currently being paid by someone else to war you.

 

[arthurF]

I've had the WILD SWINGS of unhappiness too. This can be completely unmanageable, and I wish there were some way to smooth it out. It does indeed seem to be the result of a warmongering strategy, though which aspect of warmongering is the culprit is a question i have not seen an adequate answer to.
Some people say you need to slow tech. Um. Really? In a warmongering strat, you are usually up against 2 or 3 civs that are way ahead of you already in tech, and you cannot fall too far behind or it is tanks vs muskets....with you holding the muskets.

 

[tu_79]

what can be done when war weariness is the leading cause of unhappiness but the AI won't negotiate peace?

Make AI wish for peace.
1. Don't take any city. You can tear its walls apart, but don't capture it.
2. Keep fighting, focus on staying alive, kill their units, pillage their trade routes and tiles.
3. Cross your fingers between turns.

 

[Mad Madigan]

I've found that nothing leads the AI to wanting to peace out faster than killing most/all of their units around a city, pillage most of the tiles, and then leave it one attack from capture, but not actually capturing it. If the AI thinks it's about to lose a city, but hasn't actually lost it yet, it will be more inclined to end the war. However, actually CAPTURING the city will definitely rekindle their hatred for you and make them want to fight more to capture it back. In some cases I have purposefully not captured a weakened city for a couple of turns, and then the AI offered to trade me said city as part of the peace deal. If fact, if you capture a city, isn't the AI hard-locked from negotiating peace for at least X number of turns?

 

[arthurF]

Also, by "wild swings" i mean : in at least one game i was in, i saw my happiness go from +9 to -32 in a SINGLE turn. If anyone knows a way for me to mod the mod so that such wild swings no longer occur, please let me know.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Also, by "wild swings" i mean : in at least one game i was in, i saw my happiness go from +9 to -32 in a SINGLE turn. If anyone knows a way for me to mod the mod so that such wild swings no longer occur, please let me know.

When such a thing happen, you need to micro-manage the specialist of your cities. It is quite possible that something happened (era change, ...) and they are no longer optimally placed with regard to your happiness.
(Unfortunately, to my knowledge, the happiness system is not easily moddable)