Universal Happiness

[Shmike]

Does anyone else not like it? I don't want to come off as a whiner, but I think it's the worst part of the game. I stopped playing for the longest time because of happiness, long turn times (they need to fix that) and it being a hollow game.
Although I didn't play hours of civ 4 to become a deity player, I enjoyed civ 4's system way better. If they don't want to bring back health that's fine, I'm just hoping that happiness won't be a universal thing anymore.
Also if the don't fix the loading times this time around, that would be the biggest disappointment ever. Enough time to optimize the game I think.

 

[skyclad]

Well the problem is that without global happiness they would need some other way to limit city spam. In civ4, new cities cost more gold than they brought in, but in civ5 a city is always profitable.

But I agree it's a dumb unrealistic and hollow system.

 

[GenjiKhan]

Well the problem is that without global happiness they would need some other way to limit city spam.

This other way is also know as Social policy increasing cost and increasing military force,to make sure other Civs won't dow you because you have a weak army .

In civ4, new cities cost more gold than they brought in, but in civ5 a city is always profitable.

Not always . It depends if your priority is to develop the city or building trading posts to compensate the maintain cost of buildings . Depending on the city's location,the city becomes profitable only with Markets .

 

[Ashwind]

If a new city with no buildings cost nothing, how is it even not profitable?

 

[prince_caspian]

In previous Civs the strategy was always spam more cities = better. Sure founding a city always had a cost but you could offset that either by growing it to work more gold tiles or sending it caravans from cities at the other corner of your empire which always resulted in insane gold gains. And the cycle repeats itself, found more cities, send caravans, more gold, found yet more cities. If your religion spreads to your new city, oh great even more gold.

I think Civ 5 at least rewards players who do not want to have a large, spread-out empire which is more equitable.

 

[TyBoy]

Obviously they wanted a system where it was possible for a smaller, very well developed civilization to be competitive with a sprawling, less developed one. I wouldn't say they nailed it (global sources can cover a couple of large cities, but large cities are very happiness negative while modest sized ones can often cover themselves), but losing global happiness would be a step in the wrong direction. I don't think army size is a limiter at all; a larger empire makes more money and has an easier time supporting a larger army, even if its army is smaller proportional to its borders (which doesn't figure in much). Using social policies as a limiter turned out to be fairly bad gameplay and they've largely rolled it back so that a couple culture buildings usually offset the cost of the extra city. I think the problem with SPs as a limiter was that it's a very discrete effect when what is needed is a more continuous one (like happiness).

I suppose its a bit difficult to define exactly, but I think 'hollow' better describes the civ 4 limiting mechanic. On the surface it appeared to make you think twice about spamming out cities. In reality with the upkeep reduction effects and the amount of commerce a city could bring in compared to its cost it really only limited you from building civ3 style settler factories from the beginning of the game. Once you were over the hump where you could tank your economy so hard you would shut off research before you got the essential economic techs it was always better to get more cities. It had the appearance of being a mechanic to limit city spam, but once you dug into it a little it didn't have much effect, like it was hollow.

 

[CoolLizy]

I like it, but I don't necessarily like how they implemented it. I'm having trouble managing happiness since the last time they overhauled it in a patch; before that I could generally keep it under control so long as I paced my expansion properly.

 

[Ashwind]

While that is nice for players who enjoy that, empires are generally built by growing bigger, having greater influence in the affairs of the region, and later the world. An empire of three cities isn't much an empire IMO. But then again, civ is not an empire building game, no?

 

[TyBoy]

Do they though?

My sense is that growing big is almost always immediately followed by a hard crash, historically. No doubt the growing big is the biggest thing some civilizations are known for. It's flashy, but most of the great stuff for civilization seems to be generated by civilizations that have been stable at their size for quite a while, whether that be greece sized or china sized.

 

[CoolLizy]

Not to mention Great Britain, which practically ruled the world from a tiny island.

Historically, an empire's strength did not come from the amount of land they controlled. Acreage does not bring wealth in and of itself, after all. It came from the value of that land: its resources, its population, and the wealth of its people. Not to mention any technological advances they might have, which is what gave tiny European nations to ability to topple much larger American empires come the Age of Discovery.

 

[GenjiKhan]

Right now that's the way they found to balance Tall empires,Wide Empires and Conqueror Empires . But I'm guessing that in Civ6,they might try to use another way,which can't be applied in Civ5,because it would change the game too radically .

 

[Kaosprophet]

Not to mention Great Britain, which practically ruled the world from a tiny island.

Technically, all their holdings were part of the Empire. Which made them much bigger than just the 'tiny island.'

Historically, an empire's strength did not come from the amount of land they controlled. Acreage does not bring wealth in and of itself, after all. It came from the value of that land: its resources, its population, and the wealth of its people. Not to mention any technological advances they might have, which is what gave tiny European nations to ability to topple much larger American empires come the Age of Discovery.

Actually, Smallpox did most of the work for them.

And while raw acreage is not directly responsible for the wealth and power of an empire, it strongly correlates to also having more of the resources, population and wealth that is responsible for imperial strength. The issue has always been in managing it, such that the fringe territories don't decide "hey, the empire's not doing squat for us so we're seceding."

 

[SHaW1986]

yeah i do have to say that the happiness system has to be my least favorite aspect of CiV, but i like building insanely large empires

 

[Singulare]

In previous Civs the strategy was always spam more cities = better. Sure founding a city always had a cost but you could offset that either by growing it to work more gold tiles or sending it caravans from cities at the other corner of your empire which always resulted in insane gold gains. And the cycle repeats itself, found more cities, send caravans, more gold, found yet more cities. If your religion spreads to your new city, oh great even more gold.

I think Civ 5 at least rewards players who do not want to have a large, spread-out empire which is more equitable.

I think you're mistaking, civ5 still rewards players for spamming lots and lots of cities, however it limits the speed at which you can do it very effectively by introducing global happiness which in effects stunts your vertical growth if you decide to over expand. Exception is of course going for culture victory.

On the other hand maybe my problem is simply not playing enough on huge maps. But i'll try that tonight to see if I have problems with decent expansion there.

 

[Ajuga]

With some social policies, at least 2 happiness buildings and limiting the size of the site before it hits the 10's you'll be able to grow large pretty fast.
Sometimes I'll create a few bigger cities for the production of armies but most of my cities only produce some gold and that's it.

 

[CoolLizy]

Technically, all their holdings were part of the Empire. Which made them much bigger than just the 'tiny island.'

Which is why I say they ruled from a tiny island. Other than India later in the empire's life, the majority of their resources and power came from the British Isles. Keep in mind that the "tiny" island had a large, industrialized population and that it was fairly rich in resources.

Actually, Smallpox did most of the work for them.

Smallpox helped things along, certainly, but it was not the single pivotal factor that decided the Americas' demise.

 

[sc0tsman33]

I like 5 because you can win a game with only two cities. With happiness i will go even further ex: 1 lux resource with 6+ cities give -0.5happiness per/lux re , 9+ -1per/lux res, 12+ -1.5, 15+ -2, 18+ -2.5, 21+ -3, 24+ -3.5

 

[headcase]

I like the NiGHTS version where global happiness is eaten up both by cities (20) and units (5). It also gives 1 happiness for each of the first 10 population in a city which I neither like nor dislike.

Even in vanilla, I like what they tried to do with happiness but like most of us here don't feel that they nailed it yet.

 

[joncnunn]

Universal happiness is the current main limitation on city size in Civ V

For historic record the limits were:

Civ II: Corruption / waste [Pre Democracy/Communism] after which none at all

SMAC: None (after reaching +4 efficiency)

Civ III: more severe Corruption / waste.

Civ IV: Escalating city maintenance cost.

Civ II, SMAC, and Civ III models were all totally ineffective. (REX was king.)

Civ IV though was highly effective at slowing down initial expansion. But if you built the Great Lighthouse, pretty much any coastal city would be profitable immediately. Without this wonder, the combo of a marketplace & courthouse would make just about any spot profitable as well.

If all they did was move happiness back to cities with no other changes; we'd actually be back to the REX days of Civ II & III.

 

[prince_caspian]

I think you're mistaking, civ5 still rewards players for spamming lots and lots of cities, however it limits the speed at which you can do it very effectively by introducing global happiness which in effects stunts your vertical growth if you decide to over expand. Exception is of course going for culture victory.

On the other hand maybe my problem is simply not playing enough on huge maps. But i'll try that tonight to see if I have problems with decent expansion there.

It's like what you say, now it's a choice between vertical and wide. It was never the case in civ 4 - you could have 20 cities all grown to size 30. Fun yeah, but you know what, I better spam more cities in case I get outgrown by others. Not so attractive for people who just want to play small eh?

Happiness penalties are what limits humans from spamming way too many cities in a short time. If you somehow have tons of happiness then sure the feeling is like in civ 3/4. The question is how did you get so much happiness - playing settler level, having all available luxuries, taking all happiness wonders, etc and what it takes to get there. On the other hand, civ5 does not stop civs from taking cities because of puppeting and courthouses. So if you wanna war, fine go ahead but if I just want to defend my own turf I can still do so.