Notice that it was suggested that minor civs could be introduced to help with this.I think this is a very good idea.
[...]
There were a couple of threads rather relevant to this, about a year ago.
Argetnyx's Empire-Crashing Idea
Rebellions, Civil Wars and Civ Disintegration
It seems to me that the option of a specialist economy was intended in civ4. That is, focussing on specialists of cottages seems to have been one of the core choices offered by the civics system.Interesting suggestion. I agree that "ignore happiness" exploits should be fixed - though I could also see the strategy itself kept viable, as long as it's balanced with other approaches instead of being clearly superior. In Civ4, the "specialist economy" (or later, "espionage economy") weren't intended by the devs, but evolved out of the system. Specialist economy is a good example for an unintended strategy that fit well into the game and that was balanced with the "conservative" approach (cottage economy). Espionage economy arguably didn't fit quite as well (though it still does to some extent), and was a bit overpowered in high difficulty games. I think "ignore happiness" strategies might enrich the strategic options available in a similar way as EE did in Civ4. Therefore, I think that balancing the strategy (instead of fixing the exploit) might be an even better option.
It seems to me that the option of a specialist economy was intended in civ4. That is, focussing on specialists of cottages seems to have been one of the core choices offered by the civics system.
Note that anarchy effects shouldn't be TOO terrible, since it will take AT LEAST several turns for you got get out of it. In other words, you have to give the player enough leavy to get out. Happines buildings take time to construct.
I agree to the overall idea of this thread, I especially like the term "dark age".
However we should consider how it came to the negative happiness and what are the possibilities to go back into positives. There should be a constructive way back.
Just an example from my current game. I played very peaceful and was around +10 happiness. Then Monty attacked me very hard and managed to conquer one of my minor cities. He gave me no chance to peace for fair conditions. So I switched to unit production, fought him back and conquered two of his cities including his capital and made them puppets. That brought me to -4 happiness (including the pop grow during this quite long war). Then he offered me peace and gifted me all of his cities except one. I took them all as puppets and have now -23 happiness. Now I have -50% production and it will take a very long time to produce all needed happiness buildings.
Of course I could raze all this cities or gift them to someone, but from my feeling this is also an exploit. How could elimitating a whole region of humans enhance your happiness?
I would prefer something like:
- I get no production malus if I build happiness buildings even in the darkest dark age
- all puppets concentrate on happiness buildings exclusively as long as long as the happiness is negative
- or puppets do not count at all for (negative) happiness
- There should be enough time after end of war to react and build the necessary happiness buildings bevor a dark age begins
- Maybe the end of a war should even trigger a small period of "we love the king" that give a happiness bonus and/or prodcution bonus to buildings (not units)
For the game to be fun, the penalties for unhappiness should have the side effect of making the empire happy. If not, you risk death spirals.
Historically, unhappy people didn't just vanish into thin air; they usually decided they would be better off themselves.
How about incorporating this into the game? If your happiness bucket goes to zero and you are still negative happiness, your puppets (and annexes w/o courthouse) will start breaking away and forming NEW city states.
They don't go back to your enemy; you don't lose everything you just accomplished in that last war, but you also don't get to keep everything if you can't support it.
I want to see empires expand and contract several times through the game as a part of normal gameplay, with the world getting more and more populated.
Which is why the best solution for the Unhappiness issue is Very Unhappy gves a Food Production penalty, so your cities starve out. (prodctivity collapses and people abandon your civilization for the hinterlands)
But that would have the effect of a killer blow, and would be hard to get out of...
If a food penalty has the effect of lowering production, then it doesn't really allow you to get out of the situation anymore than simply lowering production does.