What are all the detailed effects of unhappiness?

[Berrern]

Playing a new game as Khmer on the new 1.2 patch (Immortal difficulty, tiny map), I had an interesting development as my neighbour Ada Lovelace declared war on me just as I had 1 turn left until Masonry - which means I could produce the powerful Yuthahathi (Khmer unique cavalry unit).
Her military was unimpressive to say the least, and so I started pumping out Yuthahathi and before long I was able to conquer all her 7 settlements (2 were city states). This meant I had 11 settlements and my settlement limit was 4, so obviously the unhappiness was rife! In fact, here's the unhappiness for each settlement: -22, -35, -45, -30, -26, -28, -31, -38, -23, -46, -48!

I haven't had to deal with extreme unhappiness like this in previous games, and I wanted to understand how this impacts my empire.

My observations so far:
- The sum of the unhappiness of my settlements is a massive -372, yet somehow my empire is making +9 happiness every turn.
- Every turn after conquering Ada's empire, I got 10 notifications (1 per settlement - seems the capital isn't affected) that the inhabitants were rioting and having destroyed an improvement/building.
- Every turn after conquering Ada's empire, I got 10 notifications (1 per settlement - seems the capital isn't affected) that my settlements were on the brink of revolt, and if they stayed unhappy for 9 more turns they may revolt.

This leads me to the following questions:
- How is my empire yielding +9 in happiness when the settlements' total happiness is -372?
- What happens when a settlement eventually revolts? Ada is dead, however Harriet of the Songhai has 1 settlement in the middle of my empire and one just south. Will those settlements revolt and join her empire?
- How does unhappiness affect yields? Obviously the destruction of improvements/buildings has a considerable effect, but is there anything else that's affected? I did notice I suddenly started losing -9 gold every turn (could be from destruction of improvements, mind you!).

2 turns after destroying Ada, the age ended, so I wasn't able to see what happens after 10 turns.
I'm now tempted to go after Harriet of the Songhai, who's got 2 settlements on my continent + some settlements on islands just south of me. However the unhappiness is now under control (using legacy bonuses I managed to increase my settlement limit to 10 - so only 1 above the limit), so I don't think I can get any more answers if I attack her.

Please share your own unhappiness stories! I'd be interested to hear if you can answer any of my questions.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Please share your own unhappiness stories!

Oh buddy, I don't think you want to hear

 

[evonannoredars]

This leads me to the following questions:
- How is my empire +9 in happiness when the settlements' total happiness is -372?

Not sure, what does it say on the yields summary page?

- What happens when a settlement eventually revolts? Ada is dead, however Harriet of the Songhai has 1 settlement in the middle of my empire and one just south. Will those settlements revolt and join her empire?

I think they go to the nearest civ, not necessarily who originally owned them, so yeah they'd likely go to Harriet.

- How does unhappiness affect yields? Obviously the destruction of improvements/buildings have a considerable effect, but is there anything else that's affected? I did notice I suddenly started losing -9 gold every turn (could be from destruction of improvements, mind you!).

-2% for a settlement per each point of negative happiness, up to -100% at -50 happiness. Very possible with that much unhappiness that your gold income is reduced to barely anything and the expenditure to support your army was way higher.

 

[Krikkit1]

A few things
1. Settlements with negative happiness don’t affect empire happiness…the 9 happiness you have is from some non settlement sources

2. Unhappiness in a settlement gives -2% to all yields (probably excluding happiness)

3. The revolt making them go to another civ is a bad idea…it means during the Happiness Crisis, cities ping-pong back and forth from one unhappy civ to another….they ought to become hostile CS (maybe unless there is a neighboring civ that founded them and is happy)

 

[evonannoredars]

A few things
1. Settlements with negative happiness don’t affect empire happiness…the 9 happiness you have is from some non settlement sources

Interesting, didn't know that, but suspected something like that might be the case - makes sense to prevent negative happiness yields to allow some slight progress towards a celebration.

 

[Berrern]

Thanks a lot for your help, this clears up everything!

One think, @Krikkit1 , you say "it means during the Happiness Crisis, cities ping-pong back and forth from one unhappy civ to another", this conflicts with my experience. It states that it takes 10 turns for a city to potentially 'flip', so either you have really long ages for them to flip back and forth, or perhaps they flip quicker during the Crisis? Any light shed on this would be very helpful indeed. Luckily my age ended way before any of them could flip!

 

[Yzman]

Thanks a lot for your help, this clears up everything!

One think, @Krikkit1 , you say "it means during the Happiness Crisis, cities ping-pong back and forth from one unhappy civ to another", this conflicts with my experience. It states that it takes 10 turns for a city to potentially 'flip', so either you have really long ages for them to flip back and forth, or perhaps they flip quicker during the Crisis? Any light shed on this would be very helpful indeed. Luckily my age ended way before any of them could flip!

Cities can only flip during the crisis. After 9 turns of unhappiness, they MAY flip. I find if another civ isn't close or if you have a commander in the city they dont flip.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Cities can only flip during the crisis. After 9 turns of unhappiness, they MAY flip. I find if another civ isn't close or if you have a commander in the city they dont flip.

If forget if it's Riots or Revolts, but if a settlement reaches -50 Unhappiness it's not good.

 

[Yzman]

If forget if it's Riots or Revolts, but if a settlement reaches -50 Unhappiness it's not good.

They riot with any unhappiness and start to burn everything.

 

[VCVC]

From my experience at least whenever I hit the unhappiness crisis and all my unhappy cities started rioting, none of them ever revolted. Granted I play on Marathon mostly but even after 30 turns nothing happened. I think I was Shift-Enter’ing for about 100 turns on a failed ICS attempt because there was nothing left for the rioters to burn, but because I was playing on massive (YnAMP) and took out my nearest neighbor, all the other Civs were so far away, so that might’ve stopped them from flipping? Really funny in retrospect tho, I gotta try that out again. Also they never rioted until after the crisis started, even when some of them were at like 40 unhappiness (35 from 7+ over limit, 5 from no fresh water).

Sidenote, but is the happiness penalty like ‘100% - 2%*Unhappiness’, or more like ‘100%/(100%+2%*Unhappiness)’? I remember there was a Civolopedia page talking about something never being able to go below 0 due to an efficiency model, but I wasn’t sure if it was the happiness article.