What do you consider a really bad happiness score and how did you recover?

[crusader561]

After a long war of conquest I've had my happiness go as low as -28.

I hate to raze so I usually puppet conquered cities. The unhappiness from occupied cities plus high country-wide population makes my happiness really bad. Should I have razed low population cities? Razing just seems to make unhappiness worse.

Court Houses + Coliseums + Theaters + Luxuries + "Lots-of-Time" seems to recover it eventually...but it does take looooong time.

Sometimes I go the Piety social tree just to get the happiness policy but sometimes I've gone down Honor and don't have any social points to spend. Which tree is best for a war-monger?

 

[Perkus]

I was bribed with 5 or 6 cities in my last game as a peace settlement. I was already running in the red, having captured a few along the way, and just barely avoiding the combat & production penalty. After the "gift", I was around -40! Needless to say, I *had* to raze a bunch of cities. Was in the red until they all finished burning. It helps to run a mod that lets you view puppet cities in order to decide which are the best to keep. Those with luxuries nearby, happiness buildings, or useful wonders are worth keeping. You need to ditch the rest. Although next time I will consider selling these cities instead of burning them. Apparently the AI pays very well for cities, and its much faster than wasting several turns at 50% production to clear the unhappiness.

 

[aimlessgun]

If you're on a serious conquering spree Order with it's -50% unhappy from # of cities is quite good. If you then build the Forbidden Palance later it is huge. Order doesn't come that late either for a warmonger if you're being cheesy and beelining Rifles/Artillery: you should hit the industrial age right at the start of the AD's (game I'm in currently hit it at 50 AD and I doubt I'm doing it optimally). You get -10% building maintainence costs along the way too, which is great for all the useless junk your puppets build. However, the rest of Order enhances the rate at which your puppets build things, so it may be a mixed bag depending on how much you trust their choices.

I guess liberty with it's +1 happy per city would be OK and come earlier, but the stuff you get along the way is pretty worthless. At least the AI cities you conquer usually come pre-linked with road networks.

Patronage is always nice if you're liberating a lot of city states on the way, you can easily grab 15+ happiness from Cultural Diplomacy.

I have no idea how many specialists my puppets run so Freedom seems like a crapshoot.

-20% population unhappy from Piety would be a big saver but conflicts with Rationalism, which is essential for the Rifle slingshot, unless you're not doing that.

 

[}{ELL/\/()]

if you want a large empire you gotta take the right social policies, otherwise I burn any city that isnt a capitol or doesnt have a lux I dont already have. You can rebuild cities quick especially with the maritime food bonus

 

[wurstburst]

I've had my happiness as low as -31, on the turn I ended a war once. Razed a bunch of cities and I was good to go again.

 

[aimlessgun]

Update: in my current game with 30 puppets, Freedom gave me 15 happiness. Not bad at all. The puppet AI sometimes randomly throws around its specialists though so it goes up and down.

 

[durannarud]

Somewhere between -130 and -140, I forget exactly. I expected that number though. I would have been willing to go even lower for what I had done anyway.

To get rid of it:

- Raze useless cities.
- Put your cities in gold making mode (assuming you have a sound economy to begin with). Use that money to purchase colloseums.
- Ally with a city state (or more) that has one of the luxuries you're missing.

It took me about a dozen turns to break even in happiness again. It also helped I timed it very nicely with the discovery of the other continent on the map, so I got to +15 in the end.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

-1 happiness.

I try to prevent all growth at 0 happiness. It works until I can find some more happiness.

 

[edcrane]

I started a war with -50 happiness because I was concerned that the AI might have been making serious progress on the space race. The unhappiness was entirely attributable to a recent capitulation by the ottamans. I decided to raze the cities rather than sell them to another civ, solely so that I could preserve the score bonus associated with having a large amt of land. It took about 7 turns to get to 0 happiness, which is right about when I won.

I definitely noticed the combat penalty when it came to naval and air attacks--it took forever to sink enemy destroyers.

 

[Perkus]

Of course, there's a well-known strategy where you totally ignore unhappiness, annex all your puppets, settle / land-grab like crazy, sell all your luxuries, etc. in attempt to offset the 50% production penalty and combat penalty through a much larger economy. Apparently it works entirely too well, they should nerf it by making additional degrees of extreme unhappiness.

 

[pazmacats]

Really bad is -180, fortunately I was able to recover by winning the game.

 

[eric_]

-1 happiness.

Heh, I'm the same way. As soon as it dips below zero, I scan all my cities to see if any still lack happiness-producing buildings that are available, hit up other leaders to see what new luxury resources they have, and see if I can ally any city states with luxury resources I lack. I don't mind if it gets down towards -8 or -9, so long as construction of happiness buildings is underway or recently conquered cities that I'm not keeping are close to completing the razing process.

In general, if I'm on a conquering spree, I'll annex all worthwhile cities (those with great resources and/or production potential) until happiness dip to 2 or 3, and then immediately set them to producing courthouses.

I was bribed with 5 or 6 cities in my last game as a peace settlement. I was already running in the red, having captured a few along the way, and just barely avoiding the combat & production penalty.

Monty did this to me in my first full game (as America). I had conquered my continent (Iroquois, Russia, Egypt) and a second one (Songhai, Arabia), and Monty and Oda had battled it out on a third. I took out a City State as a beachhead on their continent, then DOWed Monty to take a city for some breathing room so I could deploy a larger army more tactically. He had a LOT of cities from his war with Oda, and when I negotiated peace to buy time to beef up my army, he offered me like 8 cities, many of them from Oda's empire. Not thinking, I accepted, and sure enough, my happiness *plummeted*. So, what did I do? I kept the cities that helped my approach to Tenochtitlan (the last remaining rival capital) and gifted the rest to Oda, who was only too happy to take them back. It was just enough to put me back in the green, and a few turns later I had my first win.