******** Unhappyness

[pat a cutie]

Okay so I've been at war with the Japanese for like 4000 years and every 100 years or so they made outrageous demands of me handing over control of cities and what not.

They tried to take everything away from us and now that our troops are marching all over their homeland my people are seriously UNHAPPY because I burn down Japanese cities and finally bring the fight into their territory.

This is seriously un-fun and I just want to dump the game ...

 

[Brichals]

Did you read the tooltips? Burning cities causes your unhappiness to drop by 1 per turn until the city is gone. You might have to take your opponents cities slowly to absorb the unhappiness shock. It's actually designed that way for a reason so that you can't overtake a civ in 1-2 turns without paying for it.

 

[pat a cutie]

My people do not care.
If anything, burnt Japanese should give bonus happyness.

 

[Brichals]

My people do not care.
If anything, burnt Japanese should give bonus happyness.

Not really. Either you are a genocidal maniac or you have to absorb tons of refugees into your state. Both will cause unhappiness. Anyway its a 'war weariness' mechanic, I can't quite remember how that was implemented in Civ4 but it was also very restrictive in Civ3.

 

[pat a cutie]

"Genocidal" needs to be a new social policy then. Aren't they supposed to customize your Civ ? ...
All I know there was no such BS in Alpha Centauri. "Shrivel and die .."

 

[Camikaze]

You'll get unhappiness whilst you're razing a city, but it'll go away as the population reduces, until the city is completely razed. You are also going to get unhappiness from annexing and/or puppeting cities. The trick is in managing that unhappiness, whether you do so through courthouses, stadiums or social policies. It's simply a balance thing to stop an otherwise unstoppable juggernaut.

 

[Brichals]

Well the autocracy can give you a policy where courthouses give 3 happy faces and they build faster. Honour can give you 1 for garrisons. I think that's about it. Probably anymore and it would be imbalanced to favour just annexing 1 hundred cities. And I don't want to micromanage that (it's not Civ 3 anymore lol).

 

[General Tso]

Here's what works for me:

1. Make sure you get the honor policy that gives +1 happiness for a garrison and the piety social policy that gives +1 happiness for monuments, temples, and monasteries.

2. If you are keeping your captured cities and you are past the point where you are trying to get social policies at the absolute fastest rate possible and you have plenty of money then annex one or more cities and buy a courthouse for each. You get +3 happiness for each. Then keep a garrison unit in the city and build a monument and temple.

3. If you are taking enemy cities and your happiness is approaching 0 slow down for a few turns and work on your happiness problem by either using step 2 above or let your razed cities burn to the ground. The other option is to make peace with the enemy and extort as much as possible from them. Then wait 10 or more turns until your happiness is at a good level then attack again.

 

[Man vs Civ AI]

Another solution: go after the Democracy policy in Freedom that gives half unhappiness per specialist, then when you raise a city, remove workers from all tiles, which cancels out a lot of the unhappiness due to that city's population. Also, don't forget to sell a building each turn.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Cami, it's only there to stop HUMAN juggernauts though, the AI's happiness boosts just absorb the hit, just look at the massive puppet empires they can create and still be at 50 happiness.
It's just another player penalty to compensate for a terrible AI, which is the theme of the entire game.

Imagine what trouble we'd be in if the AI found out it could annex cities.

As far as dealing with the unhappiness problem, just rush for the right wonders, policies, raze all useless cities and buy courthouses and colloseums with the money you get from crushing your enemies.
As far as policies go, unless I play Aztec I will start with Tradition, Piety, a couple of Liberty and as soon as possible Autocracy for Policy State, which will solve your happiness problem FOREVER.
Wonders should be pretty obvious, I personally like to get a lot of culture wonders as well for more policies, usually I will go 'henge/GL into Oracle into HS into ND and try to fit in the CI somewhere (you can also get the PT, if you want to use RA abuse to win).

 

[omnishakira]

It's just another player penalty to compensate for a terrible AI, which is the theme of the entire game.

Amen.

Imagine what trouble we'd be in if the AI found out it could annex cities.

80% sure the AI can make units from puppets ;P

 

[nightshade253]

The logic is that while razing that city it is part of your population no?
So of course, since you are razing the damn city they are going to be pretty pissed until dead.

People make the mistake when considering this game of relating the happiness stat to the happiness level of every city in your empire when it would be better considered as an average. No razing the city may not effect people in other cities (besides thinking you are a maniac, can you imagine if a civilization today just razed an entire city to the ground? killing everyone in it? it would probably start a world war and many of its citizens would likely immediately leave the empire) but because that new city is now part of your empire until destroyed the people in it are going to bring down the average level of happiness in your empire dramatically as they are dying. And if your empire wasn't all too happy to begin with that average may drop into unhappy.

Similarly when people ask "why does founding another city affect my happiness? other cities shouldn't care if I found a new city" The other cities may not care if you found another city but that new city has just added thousands of people to your population whereas now all of your resources are more stretched and you have more people to provide luxuries to and such.

Aside from being a mechanic to stop rapid expansion it does make sense when you consider the stat an average and not a sure level of happiness of every city in the empire. If that new city has no access to luxuries or anything fun to do (I.E. theaters, colloseums, etc.) then that city is unhappy. Which would be the same in the real world.

 

[jjkrause84]

Similarly when people ask "why does founding another city affect my happiness? other cities shouldn't care if I found a new city" The other cities may not care if you found another city but that new city has just added thousands of people to your population whereas now all of your resources are more stretched and you have more people to provide luxuries to and such.

Aside from being a mechanic to stop rapid expansion it does make sense when you consider the stat an average and not a sure level of happiness of every city in the empire. If that new city has no access to luxuries or anything fun to do (I.E. theaters, colloseums, etc.) then that city is unhappy. Which would be the same in the real world.

I don't think you're quite right. People who were willing to move out into the hinterlands to join a new community were not going to start marching in the streets because of a lack of luxury resources. They knew that when they moved out into the West (as an example) that life was going to be hard, and that they would not have the creature comforts of more civilized areas. These were typically down-trodden, hard-scrabble people, whose lives were pretty miserable. They were moving out of desperation, hoping to improve their lot. Having them be pansies who cry because they can't get the best dyes or spices in Dodge is just silly.

 

[marvelharvey]

I was just playing a (very fun) domination game and was receiving the following from my policies alone...

+1 per city connected to my capital
+1 for walls
+1 for castles
+1 for arsenal
+1 military base (not many though)
+1 for garrisoned units
+1 for monuments
+1 for temples
+1 for monasteries (not many either)
+3 for courthouses

At one point, I had +89 happiness! All of the above are added to the global figure, regardless of city size; only buildings like the colosseum have their happiness limited to city pop. Remember, plan for happiness before a war, going in with +7 will cripple your empire.