What's up with my citizens?

[Bloodwing]

Alright, I'm playing a game, but my citizens are getting very unhappy for some reason, and I don't know why. It's about 1000 BC, and I'm expanding my empire, and every time I build a city, that 1 citizen is unhappy. In order to do anything, I need to take away that one extra square and make an Elvis, so they can never grow past a 1.

I'm not at war with anyone, although I did somewhat recently break a treaty with the French, but we made another treaty 1 turn afterwards. I'm not even playing on Emperor difficulty, I'm playing on King. My government is currently Despotism, and I haven't changed it yet. I've got about 30 cities, and I don't know if that affects the people's unhappiness or not. The only thing that I could imagine the problem would be is that I have 4 chariots surrounding Paris, the French's last city, so that the French can't do anything. I tried removing my chariots from Paris' city view, but that didn't do anything.

I even get very unhappy (red) people when my city is a 3.
EDIT: I also have 0% luxury tax, but my dudes shouldn't be unhappy at a city size of 1, right?

Anyone know what the problem is?

 

[Tristan_C]

It's the number of cities. With every new city, "born content" citizens start incrementally disappearing in the final patch of CIV1. This was intended by Microprose, I am told, to introduce a scaling problem to the IMBA strategy of cityspam. Other factors with influence are the difficulty setting and government (emperor and despotism being the most restrictive, respectively). Eventually the redshirts, the double-unhappy citizens, will start showing up, too, if you keep spamming without taking measures like upgrading to Dem, building JS Bach, etc. Further explorations of the mechanic by some vets can be found here... and probably a lots of elsewheres, too.

 

[Bloodwing]

Yeah, I restarted the game and guessed it was the number of cities. I've got a good system going now. I've got 88 cities, and I only need 20% luxury tax to manage them all on King. I'm just selling a bunch of SDI Defenses for money, and all the rest is going to science to get 1 Future Tech per turn.

I've also gotta sabotage the Zulu's last city because they like building Ironclads to break our peace (and my +100 Peace bonus).

Only 40 more years to go...

EDIT: Without fast settlers, save-game cheat, etc, too.

 

[Theov]

Nice going. But with 88 cities the Zulus are still running for war?
I guess they are the Zulus...