Why does this game punishes expansionism so much?

django86

Chieftain
Joined
Sep 27, 2010
Messages
12
This is one of the new things that i dont like.The expanding penalties in this game were clearly done to prevent settler spamming,which i agree is an annoying tactic,but imo it needs some re-balancing.

Its 500-600 a.c. in my game and im struggling to maintain my people happy with just 6 cities.Maybe i just still suck at playing the game,but i dont see how anyone would be able to go the expansionism way,unless you get extremely lucky with starting position,and natural wonders.Which only happened once to me.


And also,from a realism point of view,i dont see how having more cities would upset the population :rolleyes:
 
need luxuries

happiness buildings are ok too, but they're slower than luxuries
 
How many luxury resources do you go for? Do you interact with city-states that have them? Do you trade with other civs for them? Do you take away any excess luxury you have (anymore than one) and use them to buy other luxury resources?

For me, it really depends on what part of the game. Sometimes you have to sit with -1 to -3 happiness for a good chunk of game before, suddenly, you jump to +10 because you finished a few buildings or got some really nice relations with a city-states.
 
But please explain to me why winning cities in a war causes so much grief? You'd think that some of the anger of the new population would be balanced by the happiness of your own people at victory? And sometimes they should figure in that the people of that city might actually be better off with the new civ... they might have been a border city and they would have wanted to come join the beautiful shining Civ on the horizon. Kind of like border encroachment in Civ IV. I miss those creeping borders :(
 
Make your first initial expansions next to (or near) luxury resources. It's all about the luxuries. Also, the Liberty policy tree helps a bit too.

A bit later, once you start trading luxuries for others, building happiness buildings, acquiring happiness policies, allying with city-states, etc... then you can expand wherever you want.
 
But please explain to me why winning cities in a war causes so much grief? You'd think that some of the anger of the new population would be balanced by the happiness of your own people at victory? And sometimes they should figure in that the people of that city might actually be better off with the new civ... they might have been a border city and they would have wanted to come join the beautiful shining Civ on the horizon. Kind of like border encroachment in Civ IV. I miss those creeping borders :(

Not sure if you're already doing so and you're just upset about the mechanics of the game, but...

Have you been converting them to puppet states initially? You can always annex them later on.

Nobody likes war, not even the "winning side" after a while... be thankful there's no war weariness in the game. :bowdown:
 
But please explain to me why winning cities in a war causes so much grief? You'd think that some of the anger of the new population would be balanced by the happiness of your own people at victory? And sometimes they should figure in that the people of that city might actually be better off with the new civ... they might have been a border city and they would have wanted to come join the beautiful shining Civ on the horizon. Kind of like border encroachment in Civ IV. I miss those creeping borders :(

The empire-wide unhappiness you get from conquering cities basically serves the same function that war weariness did in the prior Civ games. The concept is, if you want to go steamroll your way across a continent, you're going to have to deal with the domestic repercussions. When you think of it that way, it is realistic. For the purposes of the game, it means you have to have a lot of surplus happiness stored up before you go city conquering (the equivalent of "political capital" if you're looking for a parallel in the real world). When I say a lot, I mean 30-50+ happiness at the least before you go on a real conquest binge.
 
The basic difficulty is that building a new city to collect a new resource doesn't make your people happy. The extra city eats up all the extra happiness and just gives you an extra city that you need to work, defend, and grow.
 
Yeah,i tried both settling near new luxury resources and trading with other civs.

My problem is,i can get a boost from 2-3 luxury resources,but after that,i cant find any new resource to boost my happiness.

And i dont know if it just me,but trading with other civs is not working,i ask for ONE resource and they want THREE + money O_O

As for city states,to get the resource you need to be friends with them,and i have yet to figure out an efficent way to keep them friend to me.

The only way i found to gain some influence is to kill barbs,i am failing at every other way(they want GP,they want a luxury resource,they want me to conquer another city state.....too much for my poor growing empire),and bribing is not an option,costs too much. :-(
 
The basic difficulty is that building a new city to collect a new resource doesn't make your people happy. The extra city eats up all the extra happiness and just gives you an extra city that you need to work, defend, and grow.

But if you have that luxury resource in the radius of your new city (or you have enough gold to buy a few tiles), you should only be what, like 4-7 turns away from +5 Happiness from that luxury? I know you're literally correct that more cities and more population = more unhappiness, but assuming you place your cities near at least one luxury (in the very early game), that shouldn't be a problem for long at all.

I also manage my overall expansion more carefully in Civ 5... I don't build Settler after Settler in the early game in a land-grab like I used to. I usually get 3 or maybe 4 cities up and running and then chill for a while, improving tiles, adding buildings, connecting trade routes, accumulating (and spending) culture, gaining city-state influence for more luxuries, trading with the AI for cash or more luxuries, etc. After those initial 3-4 cities are doing well, I add a couple more and repeat the process.

I wouldn't say the game punishes all expansion... but it does punish rapid, indiscriminate expansion.

Yeah,i tried both settling near new luxury resources and trading with other civs. My problem is,i can get a boost from 2-3 luxury resources,but after that,i cant find any new resource to boost my happiness.

And i dont know if it just me,but trading with other civs is not working,i ask for ONE resource and they want THREE + money O_O As for city states,to get the resource you need to be friends with them,and i have yet to figure out an efficent way to keep them friend to me.

The only way i found to gain some influence is to kill barbs,i am failing at every other way(they want GP,they want a luxury resource,they want me to conquer another city state.....too much for my poor growing empire),and bribing is not an option,costs too much. :-(

1) Are you making sure you improve the tiles with the luxury resources near your cities? If they're not in your immediate city radius, are you buying tiles to bring the luxury within your borders, and then improving that luxury tile? Are you directing your early-game research toward techs that enable you to build those improvements, like Calendar to build Plantations?

2) If befriending city-states and trading with other great powers is problematic, try and look closer to home to resolve your happiness problems. Make sure you don't neglect social policies - the Liberty tree can help, and one of the Honor tree abilities can reduce unhappiness as well.

3) If you're having money problems early on - are you being careful about adding new buildings and creating new units? Maintenance costs can be a huge dead weight if you build too much too fast. If you're selective about your buildings and only create military when you need it, cash shouldn't be so hard. Also, don't necessarily garrison every single city all the time - since cities can protect themselves, the old days of 'ungarrisoned city = barbarian city' are gone.

4) If you can't trade with the AI for their luxuries, sell them your extras. You should be able to get a few hundred gold for your second source of gems, dyes, furs, etc. OH! Be sure you're not trading away your ONLY source of a given luxury too - that took me by surprise in my first game, that I my only source of Pearls was available for trade. I thought only extras showed up in the available trade window.

Hope this helps, good luck!
 
I actually managed to have a huge empire with positive happiness in the game i finished today. But it required me to have :
- The forbidden Palace
- The social policy to reduce unhappiness due to amount of cities
- The piety social policy which reduces unhappiness due to amount of population by 20%

And obviously lots of luxuries , happiness increasing improvements and some other happiness increasing policies
 
Make sure your trade networks are connecting all your cities as well. I was having a terrible time with unhappiness until I realized my city with the most luxury resources wasn't connected to anyone else...

It's worth it, too, to clear out the barb camps for some gold when you can, and use it to buy off city-states which have access to luxury resources.
 
Imo, the big problem with having large civilizations, is that many of the happiness benefits we're used to have been adjusted. In previous Civs, luxury goods & wonders were counted on a per-city basis. So if you had 12 cities, and 5 luxury goods, you received 60 happiness, in a manner of speaking. Same affect with wonders.

In Civ 5, it's a set amount, meant to cover all your cities.
 
I think the point is that you need some reason not to go and conquer half the world as early as possible. If you could actually do that with no penalties whatsoever, the game would only become easier.

(Note that you can ignore happiness and still have a functioning empire, but it's the thought that counts.)
 
I think the point is that you need some reason not to go and conquer half the world as early as possible. If you could actually do that with no penalties whatsoever, the game would only become easier.

(Note that you can ignore happiness and still have a functioning empire, but it's the thought that counts.)

Yes but i preferred the previous system which would punish you through maintenance or war weariness . But that's personal
 
I much prefer happiness as a cap than the economic issue of Civ4. So many games I'd be racing forward and wiping out the world ... then I'd run out of gold. My science output would be a dozen or two beakers, tops. Ugh.

I actually managed to have a huge empire with positive happiness in the game i finished today. But it required me to have :
- The forbidden Palace
- The social policy to reduce unhappiness due to amount of cities
- The piety social policy which reduces unhappiness due to amount of population by 20%

And obviously lots of luxuries , happiness increasing improvements and some other happiness increasing policies

That sounds like it's exactly as intended. Just as having a huge army is going to be hard if you just have one city founded in the middle of the desert, compared to multiple cities with production resources.

Of course having a very expansive empire is going to require the buildings and social policies aimed at controlling happiness.
 
This game doesn't punish expansionism, it rewards more prior proper planning, which is why I still fail to see how anyone can call this game "dumbed down" compared to Civ 4, and do so with a straight face. In Civ 4 i could spam endless cities and build whatever I wanted in them with little or no thought as to the consequential effects on my empire as a whole...I can't do that in Civ 5, and to me, that's a definite improvement.
 
I agree with the OP that the new happiness constraints in Civ5 are an annoyance - especially for those of us with prior Civ experience who have been used to blasting and annexing everything on the map.

But I've found ways to balance it out, and in only 1 game where I won two major wars with the AI and had annexed a couple of their cities (puppeting the remainder) did I ever fall below 1 happiness, and then not for long.

So my strategy usually is this:

Luxuries - see the other posts. City states are a great source of luxuries that don't require over-expansion on your part. Consider the Patronage policy line which will reduce the costs and extend the expiration of your city state relationships.

Wonders - there are only a few wonders I consider worth building. Here are 4:

Hanging Gardens +3 happiness;
The Forbidden Palace 1/2 unhappiness due to number of cities
Notre Dame: +5 happiness
Eiffel Tower: +8 happiness

Social Policies:

For example, Meritocracy (Liberty); Piety (+2 happiness immediately); Planned Economy (Order), -50% unhappiness caused by cities; Humanism (Rationalism) and Protectionism (Commerce) also increase empire-wide happiness.

An indirect way to use Social policies is to take Patronage and keep your city state relationships high, especially with city states that have luxuries you need.

City Buildings:

Coliseums, Theaters and Stadiums are great for large empires, but they are a trade-off considering the maintenance expense compared to luxuries, wonders and social policies. If you're pinching pennies late in the game, that 8g maintenance for a Theater (per city) has to be weighed against how important the +4 empire-wide happiness is to you.

Like everything else in this game, the best way to cope with unhappiness is to plan ahead for it and to factor in the penalties against the advantages of every avenue.
 
There's 15 luxury resources, and each gives +5 happiness.

That's 75 happiness if you manage to collect them all.

+9 for starting happiness, for a base 84 happiness.

That's about 7 size 10 cities (77 unhappiness) with no happiness buildings. If each of them had a coloseum...

It's entirely possible to have a large empire. It just takes a little more work than building settlers.

(BTW, if they're not trading with you, it's cause they don't like you, or see you as weak)
 
Oh, and as for conquering: if you capture several cities in quick succession, puppet them all, and slowly annex them one-by-one, as happiness allows. This lets you 'digest' their empire without the huge up front hit to happiness. And those puppets will be building useful cultural/happiness buildings to start.
 
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