The Happiness Factor

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Furyofposeidon

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I am playing as Darius I of Persia in Prince Mode (I don't care that someone said a dog could play that mode better than I could! :D) and so far, I am doing very well. The only problem is my civilization is getting very unhappy, and I fear my production shall be blunted if happiness goes below 0. Also, I don't dare to make more cities because that means more unhappiness! For a little more context, I am playing on the Continents map and know the Germans, the Indians, and the Iroquois (interesting!). India and the Iroquois likes me, but the Germans do not. None of them have luxury resources. It is the early Medieval era, and I still am not recovering from the happiness purge that we all enjoy at the start of the game. My happiness is a lone 1, which has been peeving me for many turns. I have gone far and wide to settle cities with luxury resources nearby! Still, my happiness factor is not improving. If things continue, by the next era I shall have -3 happiness, which is not good. What I want to know is: How do I raise my happiness, and what is putting it down? I have 2 Colosseums, 3 different luxury resources, and only 2 cities! Yes and another thing: I have put all of my latest social policies on Piety!
 
Wonders, wonders do wonders for happiness :)

But in general around this time frame your happiness starts to go down. I just finished a King game ans managed not to ever have unhappiness. I did not use Piety because i wanted rationalism. Yeah, when your neighbors don'r have lux, then it really sucks. but there are some interesting policies that allow you to reduce down the unhappiness in policies other than piety.....
 
Every city you have is 3 unhappiness, every citizen in each of your cities is 1 unhappiness.

Each luxury type you have is 4 happiness, each coloseum is 2 happiness.
With one of the piety policies then each monumens and temple gives 1 happiness.
Also the circus gives 2 happiness, but it require that the city has an improved horse or elefant tile.

There are many other policies that also improve happiness.
 
Furyofposeidon said:
... The only problem is my civilization is getting very unhappy, and I fear my production shall be blunted if happiness goes below 0. ...
Click to expand...

Don't fear about production if your happieness ist just below 0. The only effect ist, that your cities will grow slower.

Only if your happieness hits the -10 mark, there will be an additional production hit (and your population will stop growing).

(And only to be complete: if your happieness is -20 or worse, rebels (= barbarians) will uprise in your empire.)
 
And I agree with Mav, play whatever is fun for you :) and here is something that might help if you do not already have this setting. On the map, show resources. It made a huge difference to me in finding those resources and targeting the best places to build cities. that might help you :)
 
With Persia, it is good to play a max happiness strategy instead of hovering around zero. A typical game, it is okay to hover around zero and build happiness buildings as they become necessary. With Perisa, the UA really kicks in when you are in a GA. More happiness equals more GA! With Persia it is a good idea to prioritize the happiness buildings and wonders to have more GA and take advantage of the UA to its fullest.
 
Agreed, the worse thing about being in negative happiness as Persia is that your happiness counter towards the next Golden Age is now running backwards.
 
Happiness isn't really much of a problem, just build happiness buildings and make sure you have atleast one lux for each city. Also Aim for policies that add more happiness and acquire some lux through CS allies or other civs.
 
Trik said:
Happiness isn't really much of a problem
Click to expand...

Here is the reaction of the common foe here on this forums. :rolleyes:

Yes, Happiness is a problem, a major problem. That's the biggest problem of this game, as maintenance was in Civ 4.

I have been stuck a lot of time with Happiness, but finally I managed to control it.

First, do never build farms. (except on wheat) Build trading posts instead. Not only they prevent your population to grow too high and too fast, but they also give you good revenues.

Do not build the Hanging Gardens. Then you can focus on another wonder.

Settle in places with ressources you don't have. I know, there is not much ressources you don't have around, but if you can collect 2 or 3 it will be OK.

Raze the cities you conquer that do not have any ressource you don't have. Raze them also when their capital has those ressources. (you have to carefully explore them for this, of if you don't have/want to have right of passage and can't see all the land without, you can keep the cities and raze them later if the capital have the same ressources.

Build the wonder that needs a colisseum in every city.

That's a start, it's tough but I happened to manage happiness pretty goodly in my last Prince game. Had even 40+ of it with maybe around 10 cities.
 
sparkyal said:
Wonders, wonders do wonders for happiness :)
Click to expand...

The early Renaissance techs give you tools to manage unhappiness. Some specifics:
Education lets you construct Notre Dame = +10 happiness.
Banking lets you construct Forbidden Palace, which reduces unhappiness from citizens by 10%.
Printing Press lets you build theatres to remove more unhappiness.

If you have any puppet cities (and are willing to take the hit to culture costs for social policies and have the extra gold for purchasing and maintenance), then you can annex them and buy courthouses.

Find city-states with luxuries you don't already have, and ally with them. The Cultural Diplomacy policy in the Patronage track gives extra happiness from luxuries.
 
Furyofposeidon said:
I am playing as Darius I of Persia in Prince Mode (I don't care that someone said a dog could play that mode better than I could! :D) and so far, I am doing very well. The only problem is my civilization is getting very unhappy, and I fear my production shall be blunted if happiness goes below 0. Also, I don't dare to make more cities because that means more unhappiness! For a little more context, I am playing on the Continents map and know the Germans, the Indians, and the Iroquois (interesting!). India and the Iroquois likes me, but the Germans do not. None of them have luxury resources. It is the early Medieval era, and I still am not recovering from the happiness purge that we all enjoy at the start of the game. My happiness is a lone 1, which has been peeving me for many turns. I have gone far and wide to settle cities with luxury resources nearby! Still, my happiness factor is not improving. If things continue, by the next era I shall have -3 happiness, which is not good. What I want to know is: How do I raise my happiness, and what is putting it down? I have 2 Colosseums, 3 different luxury resources, and only 2 cities! Yes and another thing: I have put all of my latest social policies on Piety!
Click to expand...

Hmm, that sounds a difficult position - I was recently playing on the same difficulty and was heavily reliant on trade to keep my population happy. I think all you can really do is chase technologies that lead to happiness and invest in wonders like Hanging Gardens, and invest in happiness-boosting social policies (such as the one that increases happiness for each garrisoned unit if you're playing a militaristic game, or one that boosts happiness from Wonders otherwise). Remember that the Circus can be built with horses rather than luxury resources.

Also, limit the number of specialists you use, since specialists increase unhappiness (they're the 1%, you know...)

Phil
 
Most important thing to help happiness, especially in the early game, that I haven't seen mentioned yet- play with 'abundant resources' setting turned on in the advanced setup menu. There is no good reason not to, unless you are a pro player who likes to handicap themselves by being forced to play with lower happiness. I'm guessing you don't fit into that category.
 
With Persia, try to get to the satrap building ASAP - it generates both gold and happiness for each city. Make sure you have all the usual happiness building as soon as they come on line - the coliseum, etc....

You didn't mention the social policy you have chosen, but if can get mercantilism, build trade routes - with piety, build monuments and temples in every city - with honor, garrisons in every city. I'm assuming you haven't cherry picked a few policies in each branch and have gone deep in a one or two branches.

Persia one of the civs that you need to manage as big a happiness quota as you can to generate as many Golden Ages as possible. And if you start to dip below 1, you might consider using a GP to generate a golden age to try and get generate enough gold to buy the happiness buildings you need.

As far as the level your play, play what you enjoy. You brought the game, its yours.

Most of the really good players around here (and I'm not one of them) won't look down on you - they will offer you advice, are really good folks, and play the game to enjoy the challenge and share their opinions. They reach out and help people a great deal unlike a number of other forums - flame wars just aren't the norm here - good discussions are.

And the very few that that act like jerks - ignore them. They usually leave fairly quickly. People just don't care for them.
 
Yes, the main peeve is I am supposed to be the happy Persians in a continuos Golden Age!

In the last hours, however, the game has changed quite a lot:

I now have 18 happiness (WHOA!) and have 7 of my own cities, and am launching an invasion to those hateful germans. Yay!
 
You have three luxury resources and only two cities? How many people? You should be rockin'. But the Medieval period is the toughest because you can't get the printing press or other buildings later on that give high happiness. Also, Piety is great for culture, but I find taking it early on is a show stopper. There are plenty of buildings that can give you culture early on.

To get over the Medieval period (or rather immediately after I start the game), I always start looking for horses. ALWAYS! You can then build circus and has no upkeep, but gets you lots of happiness since you can theoretically build one in many cities (though you only have two cities so that's only 4, but then you get to build the circus maximus). Also, many science building have a +1 happiness. Don't build these JUST for happiness. But if you're going to build them anyways, keep that in mind.

Also, Chichen Itza or NOTRE DAME!!! Get one or the other or both. NOTRE DAME especially.

Then there's your policies. You can't realistically do well early on without using your policies to maximum effect. Since you have a small civ, look at Tradition. It gets you the culture you want right at the beginning. Also, the next two sub-policies should be Legalism and Monarchy. Just look at it. Four free culture buildings in your first four cities. Sure, it's just the monument, but it adds up. Being so early in the game, the free resources that you can use for something else and the increased time that you're pumping out culture all adds up. Look at Monarchy! That's what you want if you only have a few cities. I know this is perhaps too late for your game. But try it. Everything in Tradition rocks.

Also, later on, look at Democracy in the Freedom policy. The prerequisite is also a HUGE benefit. A must have IMO.

One more tactics that can be used at any time is that natural resources are free happiness. So keep one or two units searching the oceans and wherever else once you get the ability to cross oceans. I know that's in the early Renaissance era, but over time, it adds up. You can at least search shallow waters until then. I don't like using city states for luxuries because they can be taken over and then what? It's also very costly. But if you have the revenue, it could work. I tend to use city states only to mess with the AI players and to get aluminum, coal or whatever else I'm missing.

But once you're over the Medieval period, I go for happiness buildings and make sure I have plenty of gold coming in which oddly doesn't require ANY trading posts. As in ZERO. I go land resources that also give gold instead because there are buildings that will multiply those. This means you don't waste people on trading posts. BTW, when you click on a city, expand the first list at the top right. It will show on screen (not in the list) where your citizens are working what fields and you can adjust and move them around. Why this isn't made clear, I'll never know. Most important feature of the game.

edit: Oh yeah, trade routes. Build them! Gold galore. Railroads too later on for production. Faster movement, etc. It all adds up.
 
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