The Happiness Code - Appeal is back!

[JNR13]

I thought I had the tile yields figured out. Grass, Tundra, and Tropical provide 1 Food, Plains and Desert 1 Production. Vegetated and Wet don't add any yields, but Vegetated Desert turns the 1 Production into 1 Gold. So far so good, but the Happiness yield confused me. It seems that it required adjacent water. Except when it did not. Maybe this city has a building granting Happiness on tiles next to mountains? But then why is it outside the borders, too? And not all tiles next to mountains have it. Nearby forests also seemed to play a role sometimes.

Then I realized what water, mountains, and forests have in common: They provide Appeal in Civ VI! So I started counting.

Below is the largest yields-on picture we have. I marked all water, mountain, and vegetated tiles in green. I circled all tiles giving Happiness because the yield indicator is a bit small. Then I added the adjacency count for all tiles ("+" indicates that more tiles outside the frame could provide Appeal). I wasn't sure about world wonders, they could still grant Appeal, but no tile here requires its adjacent wonder to get over the threshold, so it's impossible to tell.

It turns out that exactly those tiles with an Appeal of at least 3 do yield Happiness.

So this is it, I think I cracked the code. Appeal always felt like a prototype feature in Civ VI to me. Interesting idea, but still looking for its identity. Is it beauty? Is it health? It seemed to represent different things in different contexts and this changed as new content was added, too. I think the devs were still trying to figure out what direction to go with throughout the entire development cycle of VI. So I'm curious about what they will do in VII beyond this. I'm expecting a return of preservation mechanics in era 3 for it. I think they dropped the whole health aspect that was in VI in the form of negative Appeal from Marsh, Rainforest, and Floodplains. Some tiles here would not reach the threshold of 3 if the adjacent Marsh reduced Appeal. I like this streamlining of a common complaint for VI and hope that it will enhance natural preservation mechanics, letting us include wetlands and rainforests into national parks or so.

 

[AriochIV]

You may be on to something, but I don't think you have the whole picture, yet... your model only works if you count adjacent tiles but not the tile itself, which doesn't make much sense.

 

[Ornen]

This is a great find. And it's very encouraging to see they're consolidating all their little currencies (such as appeal, which is not even visible except through a lens view, where it still isn't very clear).

 

[pokiehl]

You may be on to something, but I don't think you have the whole picture, yet... your model only works if you count adjacent tiles but not the tile itself, which doesn't make much sense.

That Is how appeal works in Civ 6 though, isn’t it?

 

[Zaarin]

Good find. I agree that Appeal always felt like an interesting idea that never quite found its footing.

 

[Atlas627]

Rivers also gave Appeal in Civ6 (but not stacking: either the tile got +1 Appeal if there was an adjacent river, or not), but your model doesn't have them giving "Appeal" here.

I'm not seeing a way to factor in those Minor Rivers while still having your model make sense, so either your model is wrong or they've removed the Minor River Appeal. Or I'm wrong, of course.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

I always liked the idea of Appeal in VI, it felt thematic with the whole play the map vibe, and later the climate mechanics, but it was a bit half-baked. Here's hoping for something more interesting here! Having it tied to happiness seems logical, and suggests we'll have some level of control over happiness at a micro level.

 

[Kjimmet]

Appeal felt rather underutilized in VI. In most games, I didn't even use the mechanic at all. Hopefully in VII it has more regular use in an average game.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I don't think I like it. Either you can't affect it (and without chopping there's not much you could do to affect it, other than building districts/wonders) or you could and this looks like Civ 6 micromanagement feature, instead of Civ 7 "meaningful decisions" stated approach. But let's wait and see.

 

[Krikkit1]

I don't think I like it. Either you can't affect it (and without chopping there's not much you could do to affect it, other than building districts/wonders) or you could and this looks like Civ 6 micromanagement feature, instead of Civ 7 "meaningful decisions" stated approach. But let's wait and see.

Well you can affect it by targeting those areas.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Well you can affect it by targeting those areas.

You mean by working them? That's not affecting, that's just using and that's ok. I found it a bit weird to be calculated based on adjacent tiles, but nothing wrong here. You just see tile output and use it.

But if you could actually affect this, that's really bad micromanagement, because there's a hidden threshold you need to calculate. For example, if urban districts decrease appeal of adjacent tiles, you need to calculate how much appeal each tile has and whether your new district will decrease them below the threshold. Similarly, if wonders increase it, you need to make the same calculations the other way around.

 

[UWHabs]

I'm sure we don't have all the adjacency rules, but definitely seems like a likely correlation. That seems like a decent bonus for higher appeal tiles. Although it's also possible that's the new version of like an Earth Goddess pantheon, and not an inherrent bonus. I don't think we have faith as a yield anymore, I wonder if a lot of the spots that used to give faith will give happiness instead.

 

[Nikolai II]

Very interesting theory, I look forward to whether it is proven or not by more information.

 

[Lord Lakely]

This would be a fairly big deal if true. Given how draconian the happiness malus is said to be for overexpanding, it makes appeal just as important as luxuries for where to go next, and for which towns to evolve into cities.

 

[bbbt]

But if you could actually affect this, that's really bad micromanagement, because there's a hidden threshold you need to calculate. For example, if urban districts decrease appeal of adjacent tiles, you need to calculate how much appeal each tile has and whether your new district will decrease them below the threshold. Similarly, if wonders increase it, you need to make the same calculations the other way around.

They seem to be doubling down on policy cards (and swapping them frequently); They have increased the number of bonuses by a significant factor (should I increase my leader bonus (which of 4 yields), upscale my civ abilities for those bonuses, or do a mastery in a civ for those bonuses); They appear to be expanding the number of adjacency combination calculation (different buildings in each district giving different bonuses based on terrain etc - oh this district is next to two navigable river tiles, three desert tiles, and one plains, what buildings maximize that), etc, etc.

So, I'm pretty sure they don't consider "make complicated bonus calculations" the micromanagement they are trying to decrease for this game. That frankly seems to be the entire direction they are going. I think they consider "unnecessary micromanagement" as "unnecessary unit movement/clicking".

 

[kaspergm]

They really need to do something about that hammer icon, though. All I see is a black blop.

 

[AntSou]

The really need to do something about that hammer icon, though. All I see is a black blop.

And the size of the dark transparent background looks about the same as in Civ VI, but the icons smaller within it. They should probably change that as right now it's not easy to tell yields at a glance like in VI.

 

[stealth_nsk]

They seem to be doubling down on policy cards (and swapping them frequently); They have increased the number of bonuses by a significant factor (should I increase my leader bonus (which of 4 yields), upscale my civ abilities for those bonuses, or do a mastery in a civ for those bonuses); They appear to be expanding the number of adjacency combination calculation (different buildings in each district giving different bonuses based on terrain etc - oh this district is next to two navigable river tiles, three desert tiles, and one plains, what buildings maximize that), etc, etc.

So, I'm pretty sure they don't consider "make complicated bonus calculations" the micromanagement they are trying to decrease for this game. That frankly seems to be the entire direction they are going. I think they consider "unnecessary micromanagement" as "unnecessary unit movement/clicking".

I see big difference between just gaining the adjacency bonuses for buildings and calculating ups and downs against hidden threshold.

 

[bbbt]

I see big difference between just gaining the adjacency bonuses for buildings and calculating ups and downs against hidden threshold.

I mean, to use 6 as an example, "this tile is currently -1 appeal, I need to chop two jungles and place a sphinx and get that one governor and place a city park to get to +3" seems in the same ball park as "I need to place my city there, and plan to place 2 more cities there and there, so I can build aqueducts there and there, and a dam there to have an IZ of +8 there by the industrial era. Oh and I'm the dutch so I need the IZ to be next to river as well..."

The later is going to be more complicated in 7, with more choices for each tile: instead of just a single district (or improvement) with bonuses, you can have multiple buildings which have can have bonuses from neighboring terrain, wonders, resources, other districts, tile appeal, multiple Leader and Civ abilities now (instead of one each). Which may or may not be apparent in the UI.

Similarly, I use the "Extended Policy Cards" mod in Civ 6, since otherwise you are choosing between 20+ policies who you don't know the actual value of, and it would be very difficult to calculate and choose. They seem to be keeping that approach with policy cards in Civ 7, with potentially even more 'hidden' math coming with the crisis policy cards you are forced to choose.

I'm not arguing in favor of this - I personally think too much of this everywhere has the danger of reducing everything to noise. I was basically stating that in the context, something like appeal is very much in-line with their design policy, and not what they think of when talk about "micromanagement".

 

[JNR13]

Rivers also gave Appeal in Civ6 (but not stacking: either the tile got +1 Appeal if there was an adjacent river, or not), but your model doesn't have them giving "Appeal" here.

I'm not seeing a way to factor in those Minor Rivers while still having your model make sense, so either your model is wrong or they've removed the Minor River Appeal. Or I'm wrong, of course.

Yes it seems that minor rivers no longer add Appeal. I can see this being a balance things, improving tiles along minor rivers is probably already quite good by itself, and the nature of rivers means that each river tile except for the source is already bordering two others, making them almost guaranteed sources of Happiness if they were to grant Appeal. Large rivers still provide Appeal though!