Temporary Happiness from Events, etc

[Fafnir13]

This started in another thread, but I didn't want to derail it. I made a comment about the uselessness of temporary unhappiness. Nikis replied:

Like being in a long war? I had generous WW in all my cities last game, and a temp +1 came in handy.
I probably wasn't playing optimally, but for what it's worth I found the temp happy useful.

That would be a the one use that I could see getting "regular" use out of. Unfortunately, those of us who tend to run more builder style games get less frequent use. And even if there's unhappiness to be taken care of, that's usually one extra tile being worked for 10 or so turns(I've seen as little as 5), then it's back to being unhappy. I know we need events that have marginal impact, but I feel like that's all I ever get to see these days, even with living world turned on. I was ecstatic when I had an event spawn a werewolf outside one of my towns.
The best fix I could think of would be making temporary happiness giving a larger amount (to be more useful when WW is getting out of hand) and to have more options available. For example, let's take the witch burning event. It's one of the biggest offenders, in my mind, as I see it most often and usually towards the beginning of the game where WW is extremely rare. A third option of "Throw a mock Trial" that costs some amount of gold but would give permanent happiness. The gold cost might often end up being prohibitive, but just having the extra option in existence would make me feel happier.
Anyone else have other similar thoughts? Contrary thoughts?

 

[Senethro]

Whats the problem? Its not like you're losing anything. I often find temporary happiness quite useful before I've got calendar resources.

 

[Zechnophobe]

It's kinda nice here and there. It's sure better than not having it.

 

[psychoak]

As long as you remember to reset the pop allocation and starve the bastard off later, and aren't trying to build a worker/settler at the time...

If you're not lazy, it has marginal use. If you are lazy, well, it's worse than not getting it.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

nah, if you're lazy you probably already have unhappy people there, or else can't expand. It's the people that are motivated enough to micromanage but nonetheless frustrated by it that may be (very minorly) screwed.
Which is an understandable sort of person to be, mind, but not the same as lazy.

 

[Skippa]

I'm a builder type player and I find it mostly useless in my games. I do micromanage like crazy though, so all of my cities population are reshuffled for hammers and coin once the population max is reached.
That said I like the fact that it is in the game and have very little to complain about the events in game. I would like more variety of events though. It seems that I always have witches, wild apprentices in my elder council, special dedicated obelisks and mushroom patches surrounding my cities

 

[xienwolf]

At the very least your ratio of Happy to Unhappy affects your score, so you are getting more points during the time of extra Happy people in the city which you do not intend to instantly fill with another population point.

 

[Wits]

First post; I've been a stalker for a few years already, but absolutely have to stand up for Fafnir on this one.

I play a builder, and never-ever have I found the temporary happiness boost of the slightest use. This is OK as such, and I guess warmongers might get the occasional bit of use out of it. It's the frequency of the happiness reward that bugs me. Seems to me like every other event rewards temporary happiness. Considering it is useless at least 90% of the time for, I dare say, any kind of a player (I doubt even the micro-managin'-ppl-starvin'-baneoneighbors get more out of it), it's a bit too frequent of an occurence.

I would keep maybe half of the current temporary happiness rewards. Even some of them could use a boost; some to their durations (two- or threefold), and some to their reward levels (number of happy faces). This would keep them marginal as intended, but make them play at least some kind of a role in most games.

The other half I would give temporary or almost temporary (100 turns) effects. This would make them not-quite-so-minor events, but +1 happiness in one city is still pretty negligible.

These changes would make said events more of a factor and less of an annoyance, I think.

 

[xienwolf]

Would definitely enjoy seeing more of them changed to be small boosts to culture, research or gold myself. Or the "We Love the ___ Day" celebrations instated as a reward from events instead of being based on happy level (I swear I haven't ever seen them happen in FfH though)

 

[Fafnir13]

I like that idea. Tangible rewards like an extra 5 gold, 3 hammers, or whatever's appropriate would definitely make the events feel like they are having more of an effect. Make the bonus about the same as an average plot might give and it's both fulfilling the roll that the temporary happiness does for people willing to grow and starve and being useful for people who don't have that as an option.

 

[AdRealist]

With civics being switched around from before this isn't such an issue before, but there's quite a large slow down in the beginning game while everyone's racing for their first important techs. Having a high frequency of events that gave hammers, then later on have tech tier 2 and 3 focus more on events that give gold would help keep the game from bottoming out.

 

[Perkin Warbeck]

I dislike the temp happiness so much I never burn the witch or anything else like that to sort it out. For ages I used to think I was doing the 'right' thing but now I just dislike starving someone off in a few turns. The suggestions here are really good though- something useable instead of temp happiness that just causes problems 10 turns later. Speaking about the witch event, didn't I hear this was part of a chain though? If it is I've never seen future events based on my reactions.

 

[xienwolf]

I've probably been the one spreading that rumor the most. I don't think that any of the follow-up events have been created yet, but the original event posted in the Community input thread was for a chain of events.

 

[Sekerah]

Would definitely enjoy seeing more of them changed to be small boosts to culture, research or gold myself. Or the "We Love the ___ Day" celebrations instated as a reward from events instead of being based on happy level (I swear I haven't ever seen them happen in FfH though)

I've seen the "We love the _ " events occasionally in FfH. Doesn't happen very often, certainly much less than normal Civ, but they do occur sometimes.

 

[Jie]

I think the temp happiness is useful. They stack with each other, and it's helpful I find especially when another civ picks up republic, giving me a buffer to find a source of permanent happiness. Or when I'm about 10 turns or so away from building an improvement or building that will give that happiness, it's a nice little buffer.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I dislike the temp happiness so much I never burn the witch or anything else like that to sort it out. For ages I used to think I was doing the 'right' thing but now I just dislike starving someone off in a few turns. The suggestions here are really good though- something useable instead of temp happiness that just causes problems 10 turns later. Speaking about the witch event, didn't I hear this was part of a chain though? If it is I've never seen future events based on my reactions.

I've kept an additional tile worked for a good percentage of the early game through multiple hits of witch burning. Seems generally worth it to me.

 

[deadliver]

I've kept an additional tile worked for a good percentage of the early game through multiple hits of witch burning. Seems generally worth it to me.

Bah I get that event every time I play a game but probably only once or twice. What would be funny is if burning the witch would encourage your subjects to find more "witches" because you were so accommodating the first time!

 

[Nikis-Knight]

But what do we burn apart from witches?

...


More witches?

 

[Fafnir13]

I've kept an additional tile worked for a good percentage of the early game through multiple hits of witch burning. Seems generally worth it to me.

I don't know how you manage it. Would this be early game when you've only got one city? The odds of getting multiple temp happiness hitting the same city aren't that great once you get a couple of them.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

I've seen the "We love the _ " events occasionally in FfH. Doesn't happen very often, certainly much less than normal Civ, but they do occur sometimes.

I think I've only ever gotten it in Tower of Complacency, Unyielding Order, or elven Guardian of Nature cities. Oh and Infernal cities.