Unhappiness from Urbanization

[Dawnpromise]

Most games it seems that the single greatest cause of unhappiness in my empire, regardless of policies chosen, is urbanization from specialists.. Currently the only way to reduce urbanization is to either take the one policy in Freedom Ideology, or to manually adjust specialists in cities. You can't leave it on auto as the AI will always work specialists in the late game due to the simple fact that specialists are just straight better that tile yields late in the game. This leads to tedious city management and AI civs drowning in unhappiness.

Is this the intended system of things or does it need to be changed?

 

[Starrynite120]

It seems fine to me. Because specialists are obviously better, they should have a penalty associated with them. And really only 4 specialists produce 1 unhappiness. The seems easily manageable to me. And for Tradition players that rely on specialists, they have the happiness policy in Freedom to deal with it. Other styles of play don't depend on specialists as much and the unhappiness isn't as big of a problem. I don't think a change is needed, it seems well balanced to me. I also think its intended that it becomes a large source of unhappiness late game, since other sources become more manageable. Its also entirely within your control, and its not that tedious since you can just tell cities to never automatically assign specialists.

 

[Dawnpromise]

Specialists also have the penalty of consuming food and producing none, so you can't grow a city while working specialists. I'm not saying specialists need to be free but they seem overly costly. Preferably I'd like to see minor adjustments in Tradition and Aesthetics to reduce unhappiness from specialists since currently Tall play seems to be at a steep disadvantage compared to Wide.

At the very least Tradition could maybe have less specialist unhappiness in the capital? Tradition seems to have the steepest fall-off compared to other policies right now.

 

[tu_79]

Maybe we are used to it, but the system works pretty well, in my opinion.

 

[Starrynite120]

Specialists also have the penalty of consuming food and producing none, so you can't grow a city while working specialists. I'm not saying specialists need to be free but they seem overly costly. Preferably I'd like to see minor adjustments in Tradition and Aesthetics to reduce unhappiness from specialists since currently Tall play seems to be at a steep disadvantage compared to Wide.

At the very least Tradition could maybe have less specialist unhappiness in the capital? Tradition seems to have the steepest fall-off compared to other policies right now.

I go tradition and tall almost every game, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. I think if anything they already have the strongest happiness policy.

Specialists aren't meant to be worked in cities that need growth desperately. They are a reward for having strong food and growth (which tradition gives). They are also unique in that they provide great people, which are very powerful. The cost should be great. But I should also mention I've never had any problem running out of food to work specialists when going tradition. If anything I stop working specialists to get more production. You will face the problem if taking progress and going wide, but you should have a problem with that. Specialists and great people are what makes a tall strategy viable. I would be heavily against any changes to the current system, as it seems to be working very well.

 

[ElliotS]

I'd like to add in that Freedom is insane for happiness. Not just the fact that the specialists policy is like 1 happiness per city, but there's also the actual 1 happiness per city policy, and the + city CS which reduces crime. I was pleasantly surprised by it in my Aztecs game. (Where Egypt+China forced me to go freedom before I killed him.)