(Un)Happiness Brainstorm

Another idea:
7. Yield buildings improve their respective processes. E.g. Science buildings improve science process by X%. That way it's worth to run science process in science focused city, culture process in culture focused city etc. It's also fits thematically.
 
Yes, processes are "boring" and should be left as the something you do when you run out of all other things to do, design-wise. It currently also ignores all city yield modifiers except production (by design), and all instant production is lost while you're running a process (this is up to change).
 
should be left as the something you do when you run out of all other things to do, design-wise.
I challenge that. Why only then? Why don't we make it a viable alternative when there are building to build, so it's an interesting trade-off decision?
 
While it's a lot of work, my personal favorite to help fix the issue would be to add a ton of buildings (or increase prices) that it becomes impossible to build them all. Without completely changing how the happiness system works, you still have a few options on how to "specialize" cities. Idea that just came to mind is having every building give a yield, and reduce unhappiness of another. For example, You have markets, caravansaries, customs houses, etc. massively increase gold income (and merchant specialists) but also have a bunch a flat reduction to illiteracy, boredom, and distress. The library, university, public school, etc. massively increases science yields (and science specialists) while giving flat reduction to boredom, poverty, and distress. That way the city makes a bunch of a yield, but still stays relatively happy. Granted, this requires going through every building in the game and readjusting it to work this way, it's probably faster/easier to make adjustments to the happiness system. I don't actually expect us to do this, but it was a neat enough idea that i needed to share
 
The ultimate purpose of a strategy game should be to make decissions: "which building should I erect here", depending on the map conditions and your strategy. If you have to build them all in order to keep unhappiness under control, it becomes a meaningless task; something to automate. I understand the purpose of the happiness concept to slow down the snowball effect, but when it forces you to spend most of the time building coliseums and baths on every city, to me seems a clear step backwards. I remember that feeling playing civ 2 (yes, i am old) and i thought we had got over it. There are lots of things that I love of VP, but that one -actually the hole happiness rework- puts me off quite significantly. I think it was good enough as it was in vanilla. In fact, my understanding is that the concept of luxuries/strategic resources was introduced precisely to encourage the players to expand in different ways than the typical -and quite boring- oil puddle. Now it matters less what land you control because we depend on building tons of things in the city, making all the cities the same.
I apologise for making a complain in my first post in this forum, but i would not bother if the mod wasn´t that good. Is "almost" there, but this bit needs a serious rethink in my opinion.
 
The ultimate purpose of a strategy game should be to make decissions: "which building should I erect here"
Nah, in VP's case it's "which building should I build first".
 
And the answer is often the same for most of your cities.
But everyone has a different order. Which sounds to me that either it doesn't matter, or it's so complex that nobody has figured out the optimal order, if there's any. Or the optimal order is different for each city after all, but it doesn't matter enough in the long run.
 
But everyone has a different order. Which sounds to me that either it doesn't matter, or it's so complex that nobody has figured out the optimal order, if there's any. Or the optimal order is different for each city after all, but it doesn't matter enough in the long run.
I'd guess that deity players building order is 80-90% the same.
 
The ultimate purpose of a strategy game should be to make decissions: "which building should I erect here", depending on the map conditions and your strategy. If you have to build them all in order to keep unhappiness under control, it becomes a meaningless task; something to automate. I understand the purpose of the happiness concept to slow down the snowball effect, but when it forces you to spend most of the time building coliseums and baths on every city, to me seems a clear step backwards. I remember that feeling playing civ 2 (yes, i am old) and i thought we had got over it. There are lots of things that I love of VP, but that one -actually the hole happiness rework- puts me off quite significantly. I think it was good enough as it was in vanilla. In fact, my understanding is that the concept of luxuries/strategic resources was introduced precisely to encourage the players to expand in different ways than the typical -and quite boring- oil puddle. Now it matters less what land you control because we depend on building tons of things in the city, making all the cities the same.
I apologise for making a complain in my first post in this forum, but i would not bother if the mod wasn´t that good. Is "almost" there, but this bit needs a serious rethink in my opinion.
Don't apologise! Such constructive critic is very much welcomed, so don't hesitate! And I agree with you. Welcome to the community!
 
Yeah, it's currently designed that way. It doesn't mean that it's better than "which buildings should I build and which I shouldn't.
Having "buildings that shouldn't be built" implies that they sometimes provide negative benefits. This is bad for AI decisions.
 
Having "buildings that shouldn't be built" implies that they sometimes provide negative benefits. This is bad for AI decisions.
Could be, but not necessarily. A reason not to build could also be, that it's not worth it given the cost.
And yeah, when there is a decision to be made, AI should also be able to. Balancing the game and fun around AI inability to choose is... not sth I'd consider as prefered.
 
Having "buildings that shouldn't be built" implies that they sometimes provide negative benefits. This is bad for AI decisions.
This is a very enlightening answer: so is not that the modders believe this is the best way to play civ, but is the best way they could figure out given the limitations of the AI?
That only reinforces my impression that there is too much weight on building civil works to keep happiness under control. If "which" is not feasible, because you have to build all, at least there should be the option of "when". Because at the moment, the answer seems to be "now" all the time. Not much space for strategy.
I am quite new at VP, so maybe I am missing something, but i read and read and can´t find what I may be doing wrong to be forced to spend most of the game building civil works instead of "playing".
 
Can someone tell me how puppet city unhappiness is calculated? Is it just linear or does it go up by a greater amount the more puppet cites you have?
 
Puppet unhappiness is 1/4 of the population. They also do not benefit from any happiness bonuses afaik.
The way unhappiness is calculated in non-puppet cities scale with the number of non-puppet cities in your empire, btw.
 
One thing I will note. Unhappiness adjustments are notoriously swingy. It took us a LOOOOOOOOONG time to get happiness to a reasonable place with this model, every adjustment would go from every citizen perfectly happy to revolts a dozen.

So if people want to try a mod mod to change out some unhappiness go for it, but I caution that changing it in the core mod is likely to require a long balancing period.
 
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