Universal Happiness

[Tabarnak]

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 .

This. Reactions of the AI principally turn around these points. It's far from perfect, but G&K might bring something better.

 

[GenjiKhan]

In G&K,the thing which will balance Tall/Wide/Conqueror Empires will be the limit on how many religions can be found and how the number of the cities would affect the spawn of Great Prophet . I guess that the Tall Empires will have more chance of founding religions than Wide/Conqueror Empires .

 

[historix69]

Universal Happiness
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.

For me, Global Happyness in the way it is used in Civ5 results in to many nonsense or unhistorical effects to be fun.

- Capital/Population is growing, people get unhappy and start to settle a new city (colony) to improve economical situation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonies_in_antiquity In Civ5 people become even more unhappy due to new city unhappiness. Ionic Colonisation in the antiquity would not have been possible. Economic reasons for colonies were : Independence, space, Food, Gold, Ressources (for trade)

- In WW2 the allies conquered Germany and Japan. The effect was worldwide happyness (for the allies) that WW2 was won and over. In Civ5 the allied countries would have fallen into unhappyness and depression, stopping population growth, reducing industrial production and making military units less effective due to massive unhappyness of puppeted cities.

(In my current game (continents, King) I am #2 in Tech. My small empire is attacked by Siam, the #1 in Tech (Future aera) with maybe 40 cities, Siams capital with size 50, the rest between size 20-30. Siam has taken over the 3-4 other nations on the continent and is a warmonger. I defend myself and conquer some of their cities in return to end the war and improve strategic positions. But conquering cities just increases unhappyness until I have to stop at happyness 0 while Siam has no such problem. Loosing cities usually removes unhappyness or is neutral. Going into unhappyness will also disable my +15% Science bonus form rationalism.)

- From Civ1 to Civ4 unhappyness was local unhappyness in each city. In Civ1 there were even unhappy, content and happy people. A city got problems if the number of unhappy people was greater than the number of happy people. (Relative Unhappyness in Civ1 compared to absolute Unhappyness in Civ5.)

- Absolute global unhappyness in Civ5 means : In an empire with 100 cities and 1000 population and balanced happyness (no surplus global happyness), the next born citizen will drop global happyness to -1 and will cause the empire (of 1001 pop) to become unhappy, reduce population growth, reduce military strength, reduce production ... in all 100 cities.

- In Civ1 - Civ4 it was possible to convert trade/commerce/gold to happyness.

- Modern people in industrial nations living in urban centres usually have reduced population growth probably due to city live, wealth and luxuries available. Cities grow by immigration, shifting population from rural areas (small cities) to urban areas (big cites). In Civ5 global unhappyness reduces population growth (probably due to immigration of new born people?) while balanced happyness gives normal growth and certain luxuries give a bonus to population growth.

- In Civ5 luxury ressources give 4-5 happyness. A 2nd luxury of same type does not improve happyness independent of number of cities or population.
If there are 2 cities with same luxury, you get 4 happyness if both cities are in the same empire but 2 x 4 = 8 happyness if they belong to different empires.
The first 4 people in your empire are happy with your 1st luxury. If you have 400 people in dozens of cities and dozens items of that luxury, still only 4 people in your empire are happy.

Civ5 Global Happyness and Luxury system are Game Design Decisions.
I do not enjoy Civ5 Global Happyness and Luxury system. For me the happyness and health system in Civ4BtS was almost perfect. I would even prefer Civ1 - Civ3 happyness system compared to Civ5.

I also do not enjoy Civ5 system of making a stable puppet empire. Even unhappy puppets without garrison do not revolt in Civ5.
I think, Civ3 had the most realistic system with mixed ethnic city population, local and ethnic unhappyness, war weariness, huge garrisons, supression, revolts, ...

Luxuries :
Make luxuries appear in quantities on map and let them have effects based on population size, e.g. 20 different luxuries, each luxury gives 1 happyness per 20 people. To get 5 happyness from a size 5 stack of one kind of luxury, you would need a total population of 81 or higher. The first 20 people would just get 1 happyness from the luxury (due to rounding up). Surplus Luxuries can be traded.

ICS :
Thanks to certain Social policies in Civ5 there seems to be no limit to ICS, only a limit to manageable size of cities. As far as I know the base-unhappyness per new city can be removed by road + garrison. Supported city size then depends on individual availability of happyness buildings for each city.

Is there a limit to ICS in human history?
China always had about 20-25% of world population during the past couple of thousand years. Today they have almost 1.400.000.000 people living in less than 2% of total earth surface.
Russia has only a tenth of China's population (around 142.000.000 people) but controls 4%.
The USA were founded by european (and other) immigrants and today have about 311.000.000 people and control 2%.

Earth : 510 mio km²
Land : 150 mio km²
USSR : 22 mio km²
Russia : 17 mio km²
China, USA : 9,6 mio km²

Probably there is no general easy, realistic, historically correct limit to ICS. Some nations unite and merge while others split in civil war or peacefully. The Roman Empire (Pax Romana) existed for almost 1.000 years and was destroyed. Russia today is stable while the Soviet Union (USSR) (290.000.000 people) was not stable and split in 1991.
( For old Russia see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Growth_of_Russia_1613-1914.png for russian expansion.)

Also since start of industrialisation, modern people concentrate in big cities with well paid jobs. Starting a new city is a good idea if you create new jobs but is a bad idea if people do not get good jobs there. No jobs, no people. People will move to existing centres of work. ((Im)migration)

 

[PhilBowles]

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.

The problem is looking at Civ V happiness from a Civ IV perspective. In Civ IV happiness was what people are describing here - a population growth limiter. And that was basically it. Civ V happiness is a trade-off - if you're just trying to minimise unhappiness to maximise expansion, you're missing one of the key motivations for the global mechanic. Excess happiness has valuable effects in Civ V, as it's linked to automatic full-length Golden Ages, and Golden Ages speed production and bring in cash. It's a risk-reward system rather than just a management mechanic (although it serves that function as well). Not incidentally, golden ages also require more happiness to initiate the more cities you have, in addition to the direct negative effects of city building on happiness.

Importantly, as a management mechanic it also serves the purpose of both the maintenance mechanic and city-scale happiness, as it limits the population you can have everywhere in your empire - so you can choose a few moderately large cities, lots of smaller ones, or a mix, but there's no more largely unrestricted growth to 30+ pop in every city you own.

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.

In terms of sizes of individual cities, pops 1-3 also had artificial population caps, which either couldn't be exceeded at all (no cities past pop 20) or by using aqueducts (and, in Civ III, later buildings in the 'aqueduct chain') to allow the city to grow beyond those limits.

Profitability in Civ V also largely applies to empty cities - unless you spam trading posts or have specific city locations, your city might only bring in the 2 gold from the city tile, as gold is now a 1-to-1 function of the commerce you get from working tiles. Almost all buildings have maintenance costs, including the generally essential granary and monument - don't disregard the cumulative upkeep costs of additional buildings, which can indeed make cities unprofitable in Civ V. You can also maintain fewer units without maintenance cost by default in Civ V, and have no early civics/policies that reduce this amount - you have to wait until at least the third policy in the Freedom branch (Free Speech) to reduce unit upkeep for anything other than garrisons (why does free speech remove unit upkeep costs? Who knows).

This wasn't an issue in Civ IV because buildings, despite apparently common misconception, didn't contribute to city maintenance costs, as I learned when searching in vain for the part of the maintenance calculation relating to building costs in the Civilopedia, the building entries themselves, and the individual city maintenance costs my cities were putting out throughout Civ IV games. Being able to duplicate every building in every city in my empire without restriction was not something I found strategically interesting, and I'm glad to see the back of that.

 

[PhilBowles]

For me, Global Happyness in the way it is used in Civ5 results in to many nonsense or unhistorical effects to be fun.

- Capital/Population is growing, people get unhappy and start to settle a new city (colony) to improve economical situation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonies_in_antiquity In Civ5 people become even more unhappy due to new city unhappiness. Ionic Colonisation in the antiquity would not have been possible. Economic reasons for colonies were : Independence, space, Food, Gold, Ressources (for trade)

All of these are reasons to expand in Civ. And they only generate unhappiness if the Ionians have no luxury resources, circuses, other happiness buildings or appropriate social policies...

- In WW2 the allies conquered Germany and Japan. The effect was worldwide happyness (for the allies) that WW2 was won and over. In Civ5 the allied countries would have fallen into unhappyness and depression, stopping population growth, reducing industrial production and making military units less effective due to massive unhappyness of puppeted cities.

The allies temporarily occupied several German cities and no Japanese ones, and liberated a large number of cities in Europe and Asia. It's not a comparable situation - on a Civ scale Berlin would have been puppeted for a turn (complete with unhappy German inhabitants) and then given back to Germany.

(In my current game (continents, King) I am #2 in Tech. My small empire is attacked by Siam, the #1 in Tech (Future aera) with maybe 40 cities, Siams capital with size 50, the rest between size 20-30. Siam has taken over the 3-4 other nations on the continent and is a warmonger. I defend myself and conquer some of their cities in return to end the war and improve strategic positions. But conquering cities just increases unhappyness until I have to stop at happyness 0 while Siam has no such problem. Loosing cities usually removes unhappyness or is neutral. Going into unhappyness will also disable my +15% Science bonus form rationalism.)

Yes, Civ V ought to have a mechanism to reflect the effects of war on happiness, but how to work it? In Civ IV if you lost a city you ended up needing to manage fewer unhappy cities, and war weariness was not influenced by how well or badly you were doing in war, only how long the war had gone on. So you run into exactly the same lack of realism there. Previous Civ games had no war weariness feature.

- From Civ1 to Civ4 unhappyness was local unhappyness in each city. In Civ1 there were even unhappy, content and happy people. A city got problems if the number of unhappy people was greater than the number of happy people. (Relative Unhappyness in Civ1 compared to absolute Unhappyness in Civ5.)

This is still in Civ V, if anything more so. Unlike the binary approach of past Civ games (if you have any number of happy people in excess of the number of unhappy ones you were happy, if you have any number of unhappy ones in excess of the happy ones, you were unhappy), in Civ V every point of positive happiness adds to the Golden Age count each turn and every point of unhappiness reduces it. Additionally, you suffer penalties at or beyond two unhappiness thresholds: -10 (reduced production, combat penalties) and -20 (revolts).

- Modern people in industrial nations living in urban centres usually have reduced population growth probably due to city live, wealth and luxuries available. Cities grow by immigration, shifting population from rural areas (small cities) to urban areas (big cites). In Civ5 global unhappyness reduces population growth (probably due to immigration of new born people?) while balanced happyness gives normal growth and certain luxuries give a bonus to population growth.

While, as you pointed out above, in previous Civs extra wealth and luxuries increased happiness, which ... increased population growth. Exact same lack of realism, resulting from the same basic mechanical structure: happiness as a control on population growth, with happier cities growing more quickly. It's not what happens in reality, but it's been what happens in Civ games since 1991.

- In Civ5 luxury ressources give 4-5 happyness. A 2nd luxury of same type does not improve happyness independent of number of cities or population.

Nor did it in Civ 4 (assuming a road network leading to all your cities), or from recollection in previous Civ games; each city gained +1 happiness from the same resource. And as in Civ 4 the quantity of each luxury resource is taken to be infinite, so you wouldn't expect additional effects from extra luxuries. Once again, it's unrealistic, but it's the exact same lack of realism that you find in previous games.

If there are 2 cities with same luxury, you get 4 happyness if both cities are in the same empire but 2 x 4 = 8 happyness if they belong to different empires.

Because the first luxury represents all the supply your citizens need of that luxury, while the second one represents a luxury the second empire doesn't have until you trade it with them - whereupon they get an unlimited supply of their own. Which is exactly the way trading luxuries worked in Civ IV, save that each luxury was worth only one happiness (plus any building-specific bonuses) rather than 4.

Civ5 Global Happyness and Luxury system are Game Design Decisions.
I do not enjoy Civ5 Global Happyness and Luxury system. For me the happyness and health system in Civ4BtS was almost perfect.

Despite having every single one of the same realism flaws? If that's the case it's not the lack of historical realism that's getting to you, just a subjective preference for one implausible system over another. And from a mechanical point of view, the Civ IV system simply didn't work terribly well insofar as its goal was to depress population growth - the simple fact that the game had two population management mechanics and yet was characterised by more cities with larger populations than any previous incarnation of the game testifies to that. Certainly it had other strengths - it allowed you to manage individual cities differently, with different trade-offs (depress growth in one, garrison another, regularly use slave labour in a third, generate happiness-producing culture in a fourth).

If you want to make a sound argument for favouring the Civ IV system, other than simply opining that you prefer it, it really has to be based on this latter, not on either claims to historical realism (which are spurious, and slavery tended to increase populations rather than depress them) or on mechanical effectiveness at limiting city growth/spread (which was limited).

I also do not enjoy Civ5 system of making a stable puppet empire. Even unhappy puppets without garrison do not revolt in Civ5.

I think if there's one thing I particularly miss from previous Civ games, it's civil disorder and the occasional prospect of civil war.

ICS :
Thanks to certain Social policies in Civ5 there seems to be no limit to ICS, only a limit to manageable size of cities. As far as I know the base-unhappyness per new city can be removed by road + garrison.

A new city has -4 happiness. With those two policies, it has +1 (road) and +1 (garrison), and the additional -10% unhappiness from the road policy. That doesn't outweigh the founding unhappiness.

But unlike previous versions of Civ, ICS isn't combated purely by penalising players who try it with maintenance/unhappiness penalties. It's combated by making ICS sub-optimal as a strategy - you can drop cities wherever you want, but given smaller maps with relatively larger zones of control within your cities, building maintenance costs, smaller tile yields that favour building at specific sites like rivers or resources and those which can provide sufficient food (and gold) rather than randomly across the map, buildings like libraries etc. which increase in effectiveness in direct proportion to the population size of the city, less lucrative trade routes from roads when your cities are so close to each other, and penalties to culture and Golden Age generation, you don't usually want the maximum number of possible cities since you can't usefully do anything with them.

Civ V rewards players who build more cities - but, unlike previous Civ games, only up to a point. Even if founding each new city cost 0 unhappiness, you still have the unhappiness you accumulate from every point of population in your empire, and a hundred 1-pop cities simply aren't going to be useful. If you overcome this with extra happiness buildings, you end up with an empire in which most of its citizens are engaged working gold tiles just to pay maintenance, with the result that you won't have any cities that are good for production, for specialist generation, for science, or for developing an economy that actually generates money rather than just covers its maintenance costs (and, at that, one that's unlikely to be able to support large unit maintenance costs, so forcing a small army).

Supported city size then depends on individual availability of happyness buildings for each city.

And the maintenance costs of constructing them the more cities you have that require them.

 

[MaximusK]

It takes time to learn how to balance gold/happiness and expansion/growth (whether tall or wide). Initially this was terribly frustrating but I've learned to strike a balance with the right set of SP, buildings, luxs, trades, etc . . . I've finally learned to also raze cities rather than keep em all as puppets. This is part of mastering the game.

 

[historix69]

A new city has -4 happiness.

In my version of Civ5 according to in-game-display a city costs -1,8 happiness (-3,6 for India).

 

[CoolLizy]

In my version of Civ5 according to in-game-display a city costs -1,8 happiness (-3,6 for India).

What difficulty are you playing at?

 

[Ajuga]

To me it seems possible to fix the issue, without removing the happiness from Civ5.


1) Give each city a local happiness with local effects.

Cities you found (at prince) have a base happiness of 4.
Puppet cities have a base happiness of 0 and annexed cities have a base happiness of -4, building a courthouse turns it to 0 base happiness.
Each citizen born reduces happiness by 1.
Each unique luxury that's improved in the area governed by the city adds 4 happiness.

(With all buildings you get 11 happiness in total, some civilizations have uniques to bring that up to 13.
Luxioury resources, wonders or policies need to add the remainder.)

Local effects for cities are:
Less than -10 = Very Unhappy = Military units in area governed by city get a 50% penalty in fighting. Citizens leave the city until back to being unhappy instead of very unhappy. City produces only 25% of the hammers, science, gold and culture it normally would.
-10 till -1 = Unhappy = Military units in area governed by city get a 25% penalty in fighting, city doesn't grow. City grow twice as slow and produces only 50% of the hammers, science, gold and culture it normally would.
0 till 10 = Happy = Military units in area governed by city receive no bonus or penalty. City grows and produces normally.
More than 10 = Very Happy = Military units in area governed by city receive a 5% boost in combat. City produces 5% more of the hammers, science, gold and culture it normally would. Great people generate slightly faster.


2) Global happiness has a smaller impact on the entire empire and decreases in a different manner.

The system is mostly the same but now every city adds it's happiness or unhappiness into one pool. In addition, every extra city you found will increase unhappiness exponentially.
(Amount of total extra cities ^ 1,35) + (Amount of puppets) + (annexed cities * 0,5) = Unhappiness from cities.
Instead of:
(Amount of total extra cities * 3) = Unhappiness from cities.

Spoiler :

Having 3 cities yourself =
(2^1,35)+(0)+(0*0,26)= 2,5 unhappiness from cities. (Instead of 9 as it is now.)

Having 15 cities yourself =
(14^1,35)*(0)+(0*0,25)= 35 unhappiness from cities (Instead of 45.)

Having 5 cities yourself and 10 puppet cities =
(14^1,35)+(10)+(0*0,25)= 45 unhappiness from cities. (Instead of 55.)

Having 5 cities yourself and 20 puppet cities =
(24^1,35)+(20)+(0*0,25)= 92 unhappiness from cities. (Instead of 95.)

Having 5 cities yourself and 20 annexed cities =
(24^1,35)+(0)+(20*0,25)= 77 unhappiness from cities. (Instead of 95.)

Global happiness effects for everything in your empire are:
Less than -20 = Very Unhappy = Can't found new cities or train settlers.. Cities produce 10% less of the hammers, science, gold and culture it normally would. Military units take a 10% penalty in combat.
-20 till -1 = Unhappy = Can't found new cities or train settlers.. Cities produce 5% less of the hammers, science, gold and culture it normally would. Military units take a 5% penalty in combat.
0 till 20 = Happy = Can found new cities and train settlers. No penalties or rewards.
More than 20 = Very Happy = Can found new cities and train settlers. Military units gain a 5% bonus in combat. Cities produce 5% more of the hammer, science, gold and culture it normally would. Great people generate faster in Happy or Very Happy cities.

Aside from that, happiness works the same for golden ages. More happiness equals golden age comes faster.

Noteworthy is that luxury resources now affect the city that it's located at and not global happiness. Multiple furs might add to your total happiness.
At the same time trading resources is now a bigger hit to your happiness if you only have 1 of each resource nearby a city. Give up happiness in one city in exchange for some cash? If you have enough happiness you might.


3) What this does:

Unhappy cities are harder to defend (local people revolt against you), making it easier for enemies to invade.
At the same time the unhappiness of these cities does not affect the happiness in other cities.

You are punished more for fighting wars and taking over cities than if you were to build your own cities. Larger empires are easier to make.
Domination on the other hand is slightly harder unless the one you fight against has unhappy cities.

A global unhappiness will make you unable to expand, reduce the power of your military and slow down the production of hammers, gold, science and culture in all your cities but only by a little.
Likewise a high happiness will make your empire work harder and boost the morale of your military.

Global happiness is all about being able to expand.
Local happiness is all about defending and producing.

This also limits runaway civilizations enough for other civilizations to catch up if they try.


Example civilization:

Spoiler :

Let's assume you have 5 cities, three you made yourself and 2 puppets as you just started a war.

Capitol has 13 citizens. (Stone works, Circus, Colosseum)(Incense, Gems)
City1 has 8. (Colosseum)(Gems)
City2 has 6. (Circus, Colosseum)(Silver, Ivory)
Puppet1 has 6. (Ivory)
Pupper2 has 4. (Circus)(Ivory)

Keeping that in mind as far as happiness goes, the happiness for each city would be:

Capitol (4-13+2+2+2+4+4=) 5 Happiness (Happy)
City1 has (4-8+2+4=) 2 Happiness. (Happy)
City2 has (4-6+2+2+4+4=) 10 Happiness (Happy)
Puppet1 has (0-6+4=) -2 Happiness (Unhappy)
Puppet2 has (0-4+2+4=) 2 Happiness (Happy)

Global happiness:
(4^1,35)+(2)+(0*0,5)= -6
5+2+10-2+2-6= 11 (Happy)

Only your first puppet is unhappy, giving a hefty penalty in that local area.
The other cities are all happy, so they function normally and your global happiness is also good meaning you can expand as you please.


Instead of:
13+8+6= 27
(6+4)*1.34 = 13

9 base happiness due to prince level
4*4= 16 from luxury
13 happiness from buildings
= 38 happiness total

40 unhappiness from citizens
(3*3)+(4*2)= 17 unhappiness from cities
= 57 unhappiness total

Global unhappiness of 19.

This post really ended up longer and more mathematical than I wanted it to be.
Too bad that they wont suddenly change the happiness system into what I just worked 2 hours on.

Source for happiness numbers: Wiki Happiness Civilization V

 

[Kaosprophet]

Profitability in Civ V also largely applies to empty cities - unless you spam trading posts or have specific city locations, your city might only bring in the 2 gold from the city tile, as gold is now a 1-to-1 function of the commerce you get from working tiles.
Almost all buildings have maintenance costs, including the generally essential granary and monument - don't disregard the cumulative upkeep costs of additional buildings, which can indeed make cities unprofitable in Civ V. You can also maintain fewer units without maintenance cost by default in Civ V, and have no early civics/policies that reduce this amount - you have to wait until at least the third policy in the Freedom branch (Free Speech) to reduce unit upkeep for anything other than garrisons (why does free speech remove unit upkeep costs? Who knows).

OTOH, you need far fewer units in general anyway.

This wasn't an issue in Civ IV because buildings, despite apparently common misconception, didn't contribute to city maintenance costs, as I learned when searching in vain for the part of the maintenance calculation relating to building costs in the Civilopedia, the building entries themselves, and the individual city maintenance costs my cities were putting out throughout Civ IV games. Being able to duplicate every building in every city in my empire without restriction was not something I found strategically interesting, and I'm glad to see the back of that.

It wasn't strategically wise either, even if you weren't directly punished for it.

 

[PhilBowles]

OTOH, you need far fewer units in general anyway.

While this is true, what makes the difference is when the effect comes into play - you want to build most of your units early in Civ V to maximise their promotion potential and see off early attacks. Not coincidentally this is also the game stage when you're under most pressure to expand and develop key buildings such as granaries and libraries. Later in the game the costs become trivial, but to a large extent unit maintenance was trivial in Civ IV as well by the time it kicked in - what matters is the early trade off that's forced between militarisation and city development. At these early game stages in Civ IV, your units are maintenance-free.

 

[jeffah3539]

To me, the Global Happiness mechanic is a backwards way of encouraging taller empires rather than wide empires. Instead of introducing a punitive mechanic on wide empires they could have just made tall empires more appealing. Currently, I just see no reason to have a tall empire in Civ V unless going for Cultural Victory. I would rather have ten 9 cities in Civ V than three 30 cities in any game except Cultural. The population add up to the same number of but ten medium-sized cities are just going to be way more useful than a few huge cities, especially when you consider that a wider empire will likely have more luxuries (both for happiness and to sell to AI).

I think the biggest problem with the system lies in there being diminishing returns in growth above about 10 in a city. Civ IV was hardly perfect but at least its cities weren't immediately productive like they are in Civ V. A new city in IV represented an investment because you had to endure a period before it would mature into a productive addition to the empire (hence all the talk about tanking your economy by acquiring a lot of new cities) but once it did you were rewarded for your patience (I will freely admit though that it got a little out of hand with having every city get huge near the endgame). In Civ V, new cities are just too useful too quickly. Every new pop, whether it is added in a huge, established city or a brand new city adds science and gold to the empire and it is much easier to add pop in small (or nonexistent) cities than in huge ones.

I think my ideal system would have: Civ IV's maintenance mechanic (or something similar in effect on the economy), local happiness (to determine local unrest and possible revolts and rebellion), and global population and health. Each of your cities could contribute food to a global granary, which, along with your health rate (which determines mortality rates), would determine your empire-wide population growth rate. Whenever you grew a new citizen you could choose a city to assign him to. This would simulate internal migration within an empire and how an agricultural region like the midwest US feeds an urbanized region like the eastern seaboard.

 

[PhilBowles]

To me, the Global Happiness mechanic is a backwards way of encouraging taller empires rather than wide empires. Instead of introducing a punitive mechanic on wide empires they could have just made tall empires more appealing.

The trouble is, this is much easier said that done. There are simply inherent advantages to a wide empire that have nothing to do with mechanical advantages and are a natural consequence of having more rather than fewer cities: you have more production slots, you can have more duplicates of buildings producing key resources like science, gold and culture, you control more territory and have access to more resources, you have faster population growth because two cities are necessarily going to grow faster than one given equal rates of population growth (and rates of population growth necessarily have to favour faster growth for smaller cities or no cities would ever grow to begin with). Anything you do to improve an individual city is going to be multiplied if you have multiple cities. And that's before considering mechanical features that really need to be in the game, such as trade routes, whose effects are likewise more effective with more cities. There really isn't any way around this which doesn't involve some form of "punishment" (more accurately, trade-off) so that there is a realistic way of building a competitive tall empire.

No Civ game has managed to overcome this problem - Civ IV ended ICS purely through the use of a punitive mechanic, without anything that favoured taller empires, with the result that you built as many cities as you could before running into a maintenance limit. The previous versions didn't manage even this. Civ V has to at least get points for trying, and while it's still not the case that tall empires are competitive with wide ones, you can at least play and win with tall empires if you so desire, and in a larger number of ways rather than using stereotyped one city challenge or culture city approaches as in Civ 4.

At the same time, Civ V's approach isn't wholly punitive - it tries to provide bonuses for tall empires, such as the Tradition tree, science buildings whose effects scale with every 2 population, National Wonders that are cheaper and require fewer buildings with small empires, certain Wonders and National Wonders that provide a bonus only to the city where they're built, which have maximum benefit when in larger, centralised cities, the Hanging Gardens, city-state friendship effects which apply only to the capital at lower cost than alliances that affect all cities, and so forth. But as you note, none of this can overcome the basic fact that in a game with resources distributed through a landscape, wider is going to give you more resource access quite apart from the inherent advantages to growth and production.

Currently, I just see no reason to have a tall empire in Civ V unless going for Cultural Victory.

Same reason you do anything in a Civ game - because you can. If you just play to win you can go the cookie-cutter route and win every time with the winning formulas pulled from the strategy forums. Civ V has tried, and generally succeeded, in providing multiple ways of realistically winning the game at most levels of play. There is still always going to be an optimal strategy that will beat all comers - that's the sort of game Civ is. And a wide strategy being inherently superior to a tall one, all things being equal, wide will always be the best way to go. The most any incarnation of the game is likely to achieve is to make tall a winnable alternative, it's never going to be serious competition for "the best strategy". Civ V has a long way to go to reach this ideal, but it's arguably closer to it than any of its predecessors.

In Civ V, new cities are just too useful too quickly. Every new pop, whether it is added in a huge, established city or a brand new city adds science and gold to the empire and it is much easier to add pop in small (or nonexistent) cities than in huge ones.

Ironically, I think this was a failed attempt to favour tall empires - linking pop directly to science means that you don't sacrifice any commerce production by having fewer cities with more access to resources/rivers, since one pop anywhere has the same effect on science whether in a pop 10 city or a pop 1 city. I do agree that gold is a bit too easy to come by - with the base gold production, any city is going to benefit from a market, even if not by much. I don't think it should be forgotten that it is also very easy to spend and without planning you can quite easily go into the red, but this is nonetheless a feature that generally favours wider empires.

 

[joncnunn]

Cities you found (at prince) have a base happiness of 4.
Puppet cities have a base happiness of 0 and annexed cities have a base happiness of -4, building a courthouse turns it to 0 base happiness.

Uh why would you ever NOT raze and replace if both a puppet has worse happiness than one you found as well as the annexed with a courthouse?

 

[HardRocker]

I find that you can balance city spamming by avoiding growth after 5-6 Pop or so in all but a few core cities and then continually expanding. With continually expanding usually comes a gold powerhouse, and then you just buy a Colosseum and a Theater and TaDa! the city is supporting itself happiness-wise. Then you find that, especially if you are in jungles, you become a science monster about halfway through the game and have nukes when most enemies are still shooting cannons at one another. And if you play smarter still and keep on steady terms diplomatically with all your neighbors (if they are on another continent, I will just irritate them for sport), you never fight any defensive wars and are superior in every way on almost any difficulty.

 

[historix69]

What difficulty are you playing at?

This seems to apply to any difficulties.

A -4 happiness per city for normal civs would mean a -8 happiness per city for India. Nobody would play india then.

Start a new game and check unhappiness report for your first and second city and verify the -1,8 resp. -3,6.

 

[CYZ]

I actually like the global happiness mechanic. It works very well to limit a wide empire, thus making tall empires actually worthwhile. Unlike in Civ 4, where expanding was always better.

What is really lacking is a local limit. If we had both a global and a local limit it would work better.

 

[The_Quasar]

This.

Almost any game mechanic that offers the player more choices has to be good... in Civ IV, you didn't have the choice of building a few tall cities, if you did, you'd lose.

 

[CYZ]

There have been brilliant suggestions to use bonus resources and health for a local limit. I'm highly in favour of that, everything that such a mechanic needs is already in game and it would fit perfectly.

 

[Ajuga]

Now if only they would grab the bits and pieces of the suggestions in this thread and change the happiness in Civilization V.
Is the company know for listening to the community regarding suggestions and complaints?
Some rare companies actually do that.