(Un)Happiness Brainstorm

[usadefcon1]

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.

If unhappiness from non-puppet cities scales upward based on how many non-puppet cities you control, shouldn't unhappiness from puppet cities do the same—scaling with the total number of puppet cities you have? It's like the overextension that contributed to the Fall of Rome, where managing too many distant territories becomes a burden.

 

[Anarcomu]

Well, non-puppet happiness can be a net positive with enough infrastructure, you can remove every unhappiness source and get happiness from buildings/luxuries/policies.
Puppets, they only provide unhappiness, and no happiness. So with a puppet-only empire, you end up with no mean to counter unhappiness from puppet.
Note that Venice is an exception : they do get 1/4 of puppet pop as unhappiness, but their puppets can be happy.

 

[usadefcon1]

Well, non-puppet happiness can be a net positive with enough infrastructure, you can remove every unhappiness source and get happiness from buildings/luxuries/policies.
Puppets, they only provide unhappiness, and no happiness. So with a puppet-only empire, you end up with no mean to counter unhappiness from puppet.
Note that Venice is an exception : they do get 1/4 of puppet pop as unhappiness, but their puppets can be happy.

Where is that formula located? Would it possible to change the formula to

(1 + 0.1 n) / 4

Where n is the number of puppet cities?

I'd like to encourage tall and city burning strategies.

Edit: The formula is located in CoreDefineChanges.sql

 

[hokath]

civil works

Do you mean Public Works, the repeatable project that gives happiness? Or you mean building Buildings in general (as opposed to military units?)

 

[azum4roll]

Note that puppets also suffer from Urbanization, which you completely cannot control.

 

[MIS]

Is a bigger issue preventing specialization the much better value of cheaper buildings? For example, a monument is 42 hammers (quick) and 2 culture per turn. A research lab is 1340 hammers (quick), 7gpt maintenance, and 4 science per turn, with bonuses. Let's call it 16-20 science per turn. I can't imagine ever building a research lab before a monument, even without the happiness mechanic.

 

[CppMaster]

Is a bigger issue preventing specialization the much better value of cheaper buildings? For example, a monument is 42 hammers (quick) and 2 culture per turn. A research lab is 1340 hammers (quick), 7gpt maintenance, and 4 science per turn, with bonuses. Let's call it 16-20 science per turn. I can't imagine ever building a research lab before a monument, even without the happiness mechanic.

Yes, those early buildings are totally OP compared to the later ones. That issue was raised multiple times already, but we currently don't have a solution for that.

But how do you get 16-20 science per turn from 4?

 

[MIS]

Yes, those early buildings are totally OP compared to the later ones. That issue was raised multiple times already, but we currently don't have a solution for that.

But how do you get 16-20 science per turn from 4?

It gives 4 science per turn to some other buildings and strategic resources IIRC

 

[Vortok]

Guilds exist as a prototype of city specialization that isn't a national (aka, 99% of the time in the capitol) wonder while still having a limit. A tradeoff might be interesting but AI decision making could get messy. Could also have whatever building/feature automatically identify what to treat as the bonus yield and what is the low one to boost. Could just check the existing needs numbers, in that case.

Too many buildings to build tends to be an early game issue in the first few eras. Getting various yields rolling, tiles improved, etc. - and for me is usually a Tradition/Progress issue as a snowballing Authority tended to be on top of the fewer buildings it'd unlocked while focusing the bottom part of the tech tree. Mileage may vary.

The needs do feel strange, at times. I see them whining about Poverty early on but they have a Market and I'm like... what do you want from me? A Barracks? I know it comes from averages but there is a distinct feeling of only being able to do so much before being at the mercy of the game state. It eventually works out so this is definitely a "polish it further" area.

 

[fernandote]

To me the biggest shock is the change in playstile. "happiness has been completely rebuilt" implies you will have to play different, but is not that obvious when you come from thousands of hours playing vanilla, where growth is a must, particularty in the higher difficulties. It hurts stopping the growth of your cities; feels so wrong, but now I see the advantages of it. Moving happiness to local instead of global solves the tall/wide problem, and that is precisely the reason why I stopped playing vanilla: I got bored of the 4 cities strategy.
I still find the "build everything" too tedious: the micromanagement breaks the rythm of the game, and I would definitely simplify the purpose of each building, getting rid of the small print, but overall, I found the mod very inspiring. Allowing the workers to overlap with the military is such a relief; the idea of making the citadels navigable is brilliant; he relationship with the city states is no longer wallet-based; the combats are more interesting now... I think I can't go back to vanilla.

 

[fernandote]

Do you mean Public Works, the repeatable project that gives happiness? Or you mean building Buildings in general (as opposed to military units?)

Sorry, I missed your post. I was referring to buildings in general (colisseums, theatres, museums..). Problem one is that you spend way too much time on that, and because it´s pretty much irrelevant in the long term -you will end up building all-, is boring. Problem two is that you cannot specialise the cities. It is much more fun to see the potential for production, or for money, or for culture, or expect trouble and focus on the defense of one particular city. Instead, you have to balance each need, Ironing any nuances and making all the cities look the same. We should aim for exactly the opposite. That´s the only aspect where vanilla works better than VP, but is not a minor thing.

 

[azum4roll]

In vanilla, you build science buildings and nothing else. You're never going to specialize your cities in any other way. I don't expect this can be balanced (there's always one yield that's the best to have).

 

[CppMaster]

In vanilla, you build science buildings and nothing else.

You also build food builidings!

You're never going to specialize your cities in any other way.

Why?

 

[fernandote]

In vanilla, you build science buildings and nothing else. You're never going to specialize your cities in any other way. I don't expect this can be balanced (there's always one yield that's the best to have).

Not at all. After library and university there is no science building to make for quite some time. Then the obvious decision is to specialise the city to pile up bonuses for the same yield, including wonders. This strategy will give substantially more gold, production, culture and science than balancing the output of each yield in each city, and for what I know, is the common thing to do in Vanilla. In VP that´s not possible because unhappines would kill you, so the mechanics are literally the opposite.

 

[Fluffball]

Having "buildings that shouldn't be built" implies that they sometimes provide negative benefits. This is bad for AI decisions.

I think the advantage in this case is that happiness is essentially a human player issue and not an AI issue. In general something has to have gone majorly wrong for the AI to gain any noticable measure of unhappiness never mind a game affecting level of unhappiness, while it is a constant issue for the human player.

Using that imbalance as an advantage you could base specilisation around happiness rather than yields.

My rough thought would be something like having a happiness bonus for having more of the same building type and reduced bonus when other building types are built. e.g. you don't get any bonus for the first building but if you have two science buildings you get a 10% decrease in unhappiness across all unhappiness. If you build a culture building that is reduced to 5% but if you then build a 3rd science building it is increased to 15%. This bonus could be doubled if you build a science national wonder.

A system like this would reward the player for specialising cities while not providing any noticable negatives for the AI.


Another thought would be to lean into the great people side.

You could have a similar system as above where having two science buildings gives you a 10% bonus to great scientist production in that city but tha bonus is reduced to 5% if you have a different type of great person building. This system has the automatic advantage of removing military/defense, faith and food buildings from the equation. You could then have national/world wonders which provide great people points double the bonus and world wonders not providing the negative part.

 

[CppMaster]

This kinda makes sense for great people, but feels gamey for happiness. It doesn't make sense flavorwise

 

[Fluffball]

The happiness one was my first thought and the great people one was a secondary thought, where i probably prefer the great people version but i had already put down the happiness version.

Flavourwise, great people is obvious where it can be seen as experts flocking to that city as it is a focus for science/culture/economics. Think economic experts flocking to New York (Wall Street), Scientists flocking to Oxford (university) or artists flocking to Paris because they are seen as centres for their respective fields.

For happiness, people living in cities which are renowned world wide generally have more pride in their city and thus feel a bit better or at least a bit less unhappy. Bit more wooly, but at least as plausible as the current happiness system.

 

[4CV]

In my opinion, the biggest weakness of the VP happiness system is the role of specialists. I find it absurd that their use is so severely restricted. What is the point of having so many free slots for specialists if you are not allowed to fill them?
It makes no sense at all if measures to reduce dissatisfaction due to “urbanization” lead to a renewed increase. According to this logic, one could also punish the repetition of “public works” with an increase in unhappiness.
There is hardly anything more frustrating than when measures to combat a problem only make it worse. That happens often enough in real life, I really don't need it in a game as well.
For me, this is increasingly reason enough to completely disable the (un)happiness system. After all, what use are GA and WLTKD if growth only leads to unhappiness?
In my opinion, we should completely eliminate unhappiness through “urbanization”, control the number of specialists empire-wide, not city-based, and only based on their food requirements.

 

[usadefcon1]

In my opinion, the biggest weakness of the VP happiness system is the role of specialists. I find it absurd that their use is so severely restricted. What is the point of having so many free slots for specialists if you are not allowed to fill them?
It makes no sense at all if measures to reduce dissatisfaction due to “urbanization” lead to a renewed increase. According to this logic, one could also punish the repetition of “public works” with an increase in unhappiness.
There is hardly anything more frustrating than when measures to combat a problem only make it worse. That happens often enough in real life, I really don't need it in a game as well.
For me, this is increasingly reason enough to completely disable the (un)happiness system. After all, what use are GA and WLTKD if growth only leads to unhappiness?
In my opinion, we should completely eliminate unhappiness through “urbanization”, control the number of specialists empire-wide, not city-based, and only based on their food requirements.

Get rid of Urbanization except in Puppet Cites and change the name to Bondage.
Now, that's an interesting idea.

Edit: This is already doable by changing CoreDefineChanges.sql
Vox Populi devs are incredible!

 

[4CV]

Get rid of Urbanization except in Puppet Cites and change the name to Bondage.
Now, that's an interesting idea.

Edit: This is already doable by changing CoreDefineChanges.sql
Vox Populi devs are incredible!

Ah, thank you. I should really start trying to understand what all those files do...