Warmonger happiness

[andersw]

I play on emperor and struggle with happiness so much.
When you play domination, how do you deal with happiness?
I tend to have an endless struggle with the occational peaks above 50%.
On the rare occation where I can secure faith of the masses it gets easier.
How do you do this? do you raise every city you capture? do you puppet everything? Just stop growth?
My typical policy choices are authority > progress (been experimenting on going progress before I finish authority, both left and right side) > rationalism (its so strong for wide).
I like to get a lot of cities and thats detrimental to happiness so ... maybe I should just go for more public works?
How do you manage this on emperor, immortal, diety?
Or dont you and see the barbs spawn as extra resource?

 

[TheHatOnTop]

Hmmm, well I tend to struggle a bit with happiness (on deity) when going wide and warmonger compared to something like tradition but its never impossible. A few good steps:

- puppet cities that have nothing good around them (lux, GP improvements and the like)
- Probably a mistake to go progress, stuff like artisty/statecraft/fealty have quite a lot of ways to combat unhappiness whilst simultaneously giving way more flat yields. Its better to fight unhappiness directly through getting better yields than just adding happiness. Fealty is the natural go-to with wide warmongering (something like 7 culture/6 science per city, -2 unhappiness from culture per city, +other yields etc). Religion choices/buildings can help fill out the yields your cities arent getting in the mid game.
-The defense buildings all lower unhappiness from empire size if youre not building them
-Public works are obviously good go to's aswell. Depending on who I'm playing on warmongers I build 0-3 per city by late game.
-Often I stop growth at 3-5 pop mark in the earlyish game, until I build buildings and get improvements online. If unhappiness is ever getting a problem just stop growth in all cities for a bit till your buildings and luxes can catch up. Trade luxes with people that actually like you enough to do so.

 

[Legen]

How do you do this? do you raise every city you capture? do you puppet everything? Just stop growth?

Depends on how fast you want to conquer cities, and what contribution you want from the conquered cities.

Puppets are the easiest for happiness management and ideal for conquering a large number of cities as fast as possible, since they don't require a Courthouse, nor increase City Needs across your entire empire; the unhappiness they generate is usually small (1 per 4 citizens) and local. If you don't mind the massive yield penalty (-80%) they endure, or if you plan to go for the Imperialism tree, then mass puppeting is an option to consider seriously. Naturally fits a Tall playstyle (i.e. 5 or 6 core cities), and Tall tends to have an easy time with happiness as well; if you can keep your civ Tall, you can afford very fast conquests without issues. Ideal for cultural civs, mainly France and Japan, since Tall is the best playstyle for this type of victory.

Annexation taxes your empire's happiness considerably in the short term (resistance equal to the city's entire population, requiring a Courthouse to fix it) and has the long term disadvantages of going Wide (including higher Empire Needs in all cities). Either you are very selective on which cities you annex, or you pace your conquests around your ability to set up infrastructure and new happiness sources. Going heavy on annexation implies going for a Wide build, so you should plan ahead for more happiness sources anyways, but with an addition of sudden peaks of unhappiness.

Vassalization is also an option, should you manage to achieve 75 War Score. Vassals provide 20% of culture/science/faith yields they produce to you, can add happiness to your empire (instead of costing you some), and Capitals they still own (including ones they conquered from someone else) count toward Domination as if you had conquered them. In a way, Vassalization can be thought as an advanced form of Puppeting for Domination purposes.

Or dont you and see the barbs spawn as extra resource?

That would mean fighting major civs with a -10% or -20% CS penalty on my units. So, never.

 

[andersw]

Hmmm, well I tend to struggle a bit with happiness (on deity) when going wide and warmonger compared to something like tradition but its never impossible. A few good steps:

- puppet cities that have nothing good around them (lux, GP improvements and the like)
- Probably a mistake to go progress, stuff like artisty/statecraft/fealty have quite a lot of ways to combat unhappiness whilst simultaneously giving way more flat yields. Its better to fight unhappiness directly through getting better yields than just adding happiness. Fealty is the natural go-to with wide warmongering (something like 7 culture/6 science per city, -2 unhappiness from culture per city, +other yields etc). Religion choices/buildings can help fill out the yields your cities arent getting in the mid game.
-The defense buildings all lower unhappiness from empire size if youre not building them
-Public works are obviously good go to's aswell. Depending on who I'm playing on warmongers I build 0-3 per city by late game.
-Often I stop growth at 3-5 pop mark in the earlyish game, until I build buildings and get improvements online. If unhappiness is ever getting a problem just stop growth in all cities for a bit till your buildings and luxes can catch up. Trade luxes with people that actually like you enough to do so.

Yes I should probably stop growth at times.
I've had better results with progress , more happiness and culture than fealty, it also means I can faith buy writers but you are probably correct in less tile yields, however with cities at size 5 that is not so big.
I prefer teocallis (massive faith, +xp and -distress) and cathedrals (always need gold and -poverty) I also like the religious buildings for more pressure.
Big issues tend to be poverty and boredom.

 

[TheHatOnTop]

Yes I should probably stop growth at times.
I've had better results with progress , more happiness and culture than fealty, it also means I can faith buy writers but you are probably correct in less tile yields, however with cities at size 5 that is not so big.
I prefer teocallis (massive faith, +xp and -distress) and cathedrals (always need gold and -poverty) I also like the religious buildings for more pressure.
Big issues tend to be poverty and boredom.

If ya do the maths it isnt more culture, at least on the most recent version where fealty got a substantial buff.
Progress has +20 culture (in medieval, +30 in renaissance which are roughly the times of taking it as a second policy) when building buildings per city and +30 for researching, up to +180 with full policy (+45 in renaissance, up to + 270).
Say you build a building in a city every 8 turns thats 2.5 culture /city/turn. Say you research a tech every 8 turns thats a flat 22.5 regardless of the number of cities. Compared to + 4/city from organised religion, +1/ 4 population of non speicialits from serfdom and + 3 culture/city from finishing the whole tree thats around 9-10 culture per city.

The happiness from progress is substantial and probably the best part about it, roughly 3-5 happiness per city but theres also 2 happiness per city in fealty which combined with the better yields make it more appealing imo.

 

[andersw]

If ya do the maths it isnt more culture, at least on the most recent version where fealty got a substantial buff.
Progress has +20 culture (in medieval, +30 in renaissance which are roughly the times of taking it as a second policy) when building buildings per city and +30 for researching, up to +180 with full policy (+45 in renaissance, up to + 270).
Say you build a building in a city every 8 turns thats 2.5 culture /city/turn. Say you research a tech every 8 turns thats a flat 22.5 regardless of the number of cities. Compared to + 4/city from organised religion, +1/ 4 population of non speicialits from serfdom and + 3 culture/city from finishing the whole tree thats around 9-10 culture per city.

The happiness from progress is substantial and probably the best part about it, roughly 3-5 happiness per city but theres also 2 happiness per city in fealty which combined with the better yields make it more appealing imo.

As happniess been my main problem you see why I like progress, it is an issue with fealty that a lot of culture comes from finisher.
No writer purchase is also a downside, there is glory of god but that is no guarantee.
Artists arent horrible but there are other ways to get golden ages/golden age points.

 

[statusquo]

I think to make war, you basically have to be able to affort it. And the way to affort it, is to have healthy cities and some happiness buffer.
Cities in bad location, just for sake of securing some area, without any good combination of food+production, to secure good initial growth and buildings, kinda holding you back
since they are usually behind in terms of building and bring "net negative" in terms of happiness, so cities you make should always have some healty starts including some effective
2-3 food and production tiles.
Also the real happiness often comes not from buildings and tiles, but flat sources of happiness, that is why i very often prioritize Stoupas in terms of religious buildings, since, the unhappiness
of a city cannot exceed number of citizen regardless of needs met (except urbanization), so +1 happiness basically is very hard to compensate with the right amout of prodyction/gold/science/culture.
Also very important is i think to keep track which cities will be unhappy fastest, and decide which are your main cities, and click prevent growth on cities that are not strategically important.
And for me strategically most important are usually a capitol, and first cities in really good locations and many improved resources.
Also, for example, if you just build Circus, you can growth city by 1 without any happiness complications.
To judge value of cities i kinda look on every working tile, and try to judge the value it brings couting the values as gold=1, food=1, science=2, production=2, culture=2.5 or 3.
If you dont have some unique tiles, with some resource or good impriovement, simple +2 food on unimproved grassland, then maybe its worth to just prevent it from growth and use scientist,
until you have some better value. Like, using above values scientist is 3 sicence -2food, so the value is 4 instead 2 for 2 food.
Also, important is to not make too big cities that are your main source of unit production, since production penalty is not worth it.
Kinda just thought about it, but maybe some cheet would be to make a settler in a city to decrease its size, but then again usually at the point you realise you need
it, it usually have penatly which make it not very effective.
Dont have exact math, but if needs are based on global median, then you kinda basing on your neigbour unique abilities and buildings judge, which resources you will be usually behind.
Like if there is china, they usually have good amounts of science, so you should prioritize those buildings, since it is obvous you will lack them more then other very soon.
You can also decrease gold needs in a city by sending some gold caravan from it.
Usually after taking 1-2 max 3 cities, you almost always need some period of stabilisation. It is good idea to save one caravan for each anexed city and immediatelly send production to such city
and build courhouse asap, so the city start contribute with its happiness.
Also, if you can secure some random great people, you coud use great musician, since now beside bonus tourism it gives +1 happiness in all cities..
Funny thing, there is a quest after building baths, that you can choose +1 happiness in all cities and +3 cost to baths, but at the same time Great musician tour will give u the same but without the
bath costs
Also, as soon as you research infrastructure project, you can try bo build it asap, before it gets +100 cost next era, besize one happiness, it resduce number of cities penalty and -10% all need, it kinda, tripple dips on reducing unhappiness, and usually the build time is like 1.5 - 2 building, so considering how few there are pure happiness buildings, it is worth it.
Also, very important is to manage your friends, you should always, make your likes and dislikes based on long term strategy, whom you conquer first, there is not relation booster like fightning common war, and if you have frined you too much to refuse to help, they are displeased eventually. Securing friends will give you a strable trade partner for luxuries, not to mention, the more wars they have,
the less partners hey have to trade their excess luxuries. Also, you should always buy exces luxuries, as they become available to trade, since if they sell them, hey will not be available for long time.