Why does this game punishes expansionism so much?

[Zenstrive]

Civ V is not about happiness. It's about exploring the map, getting a crowssbow, and spamming warriors, archers, and horsemen to clear other civs from your maps and babysitting the ever whining city-states. Once your map is cleared of those, you still have barbarians as your target practice/gold source. Once you can sail, you go to other continents and repeat.

Happiness? What happiness ?

 

[SJSerio]

Every Civ game has tried to reign in expansions since ICS was discovered. This was one of the huge early complaints about 3 and 4! People have no memories...

I have made 80% of my resources trades on a 1 for 1 basis.

If you are getting poor offers you are probably war mongering and people won't like you.

The thing is... you attack one civ and you are warmongering. Though, they seem to be able to warmonger all they want without penalty.

 

[Thormodr]

The thing is... you attack one civ and you are warmongering. Though, they seem to be able to warmonger all they want without penalty.

Sad but true. I'd love to see an AI Civ ask for a pact of secrecy or a defensive pact because a certain Civ was warmongering and actually state that.

 

[Becephalus]

The thing is... you attack one civ and you are warmongering. Though, they seem to be able to warmonger all they want without penalty.

That is simply untrue...I have attacked people several times without get a bad rep.

Now take out 2 or 3 civs...

 

[Celevin]

This game greatly rewards expansion. I don't know how to say it any other way. The two things put in place to slow expansion, happiness and culture, can be countered with buildings.

My general rule of thumb is if there's a luxury, expand there. The city will pay for itself. Alternately, you can also sell the luxury for 450 gold (on epic speed), and with some extra gold, buy an appropriate building.

 

[RobAnybody]

Weird, I've often had simple 1 for 1 deals with the AI... just don't ever ask them for their single source of resources, then they'll ask a 5:1 deal.
Never had any really beneficial deals with the AI though, not sure if that's even possible.

Why would they ask for a 5:1 deal (I know they do, I'm asking why they do)? All Happy resources are the same, so 1:2 should always be accepted. The fact that they ask for more is just dumb. What would you do if an AI offered you 2 of their Happy resources you didn't have for 1 of yours? You couldn't accept fast enough, right?

 

[Ex Mudder]

Are you playing on a Huge map by any chance? I've found luxuries to be so spread out on Huge maps that it is nearly impossible to get more than a few of your own... and the AI rarely has many either, so trading with them is out. And local CS tend to have duplicates of each other. When I play on Large, I find luxuries much easier to find.

But I do feel that Civ V's Happiness is a poor mechanic. I think it was designed to even out MP games, by requiring each player have more or less the same size empire.

 

[hecubus]

The thing is... you attack one civ and you are warmongering. Though, they seem to be able to warmonger all they want without penalty.

Caesar referred to me as "the bloodthirsty one" after I assisted him, at his request, in a war against Bismarck.

 

[dannythefool]

Keep in mind that Civ IV players expect to run huge empires by the middle ages. You can build a functioning empire and grow it organically in Civ V, but it's hard to do that in 500 turns and still do something else with it. It's more realistic (there is an estimate that in 1000 AD, world population was around 270 million, 1 billion in 1800, 2 billion in 1927, 7 billion now, estimate for 2050 around 10 billion) but it's completely different from what Civ players have come to expect.

 

[daunt]

I am quite confused: people used to whine that Civ5 is dumb and easy, and yet there are complaints about how harder than before it is to have an early large empire? If it was made easier, wouldn't the game be less complex?

The mechanics are clearly made to penalize early expansion, just like all the ancient big empires collapsed on themselves. As techs are discovered, expanding becomes easier. If you want to have a large empire soon, then you have to think about a way of supporting it. Which is what we expect from a strategy game.

 

[kaltorak]

Settling near 1 luxury resources you don't have >>>>> settling on any spot full of cows or whatever.

 

[Anakior]

Every Civ game has tried to reign in expansions since ICS was discovered. This was one of the huge early complaints about 3 and 4! People have no memories...

I have made 80% of my resources trades on a 1 for 1 basis.

If you are getting poor offers you are probably war mongering and people won't like you.

Same for me. I have made mostly at the same ratio.

In my recent game (in prince), i had only one city (by choice). This was a big city for culture (21 people in it with a long long range for the city) and i had a lot of luxury. I can make really good trade with it and i earned with it at least 100 gold by turn almost exclusively with my trade.

In the new diplomacy system, you clearly have to watch at what you do (having a good army to defend yourself), at what you say and how you expand (and where).

 

[EmpireOfCats]

This is not Civ IV, where you could just storm out and build giant empires without much thought and just culture-bomb the worse offenders into happiness. You have to work on it, with the right social policies, for instance. Which is why they have helpful little notes on the top with things like "good for great empires". And my experience is that the conquer-consolidate cycles are a lot more important in this game: You have to take a break after so much land grabbing to sort everything out. Practice on tiny/quick for a bit until you get the hang of it. Oh, and don't try world domination as Gandhi.

Methinks the OP is frustrated that Civ V is not Civ IV. True. But this is one of those Buddhist "craving makes you unhappy" things -- they are different, because Civ V makes you work for your large, majestic empire. It is harder and more frustrating, yes, because it has been "clevered up". But this in my book is a Good Thing.

Now if only my computer could handle the Huge Maps at passible speed ...

 

[Folket]

I find that Civ 5 is much more balanced regarding expansion. I was playing France on immortal and I tried a spam city strategy and it works great. Got meritocracy then the merchant navy. France culture bonus helped nicely. If you want many cities you have to accept they will be small so I build them as close as possible along the cost. When I won in 1917 I had 560 happiness from buildings. Won a diplomatic victory with 12 allied city states.

 

[delra]

Settle your 2nd city somewhere nearby where there's food and hills for military production, maybe third somewhere with a lot of space for trade posts for a trade city - and that's it. Don't found any more cities unless they provide you with a luxury you don't have yet - or multiple luxuries of the type you already posses for sales to AI.

Expansionism is warranted only if you pursue new resources. Otherwise it's pointless and harmful.

 

[SJSerio]

This game greatly rewards expansion. I don't know how to say it any other way. The two things put in place to slow expansion, happiness and culture, can be countered with buildings.

My general rule of thumb is if there's a luxury, expand there. The city will pay for itself. Alternately, you can also sell the luxury for 450 gold (on epic speed), and with some extra gold, buy an appropriate building.

Of course, the problem with constructing all those buildings to counter the culture and happiness comes when your treasury dwindles down to nothing.

Caesar referred to me as "the bloodthirsty one" after I assisted him, at his request, in a war against Bismarck.

That happened to me too... England urged me into a war against France and once I finished them, England suddenly hated me. So far, it just appears to me that they ruined practically ruined diplomacy instead of improving it.

This is not Civ IV, where you could just storm out and build giant empires without much thought and just culture-bomb the worse offenders into happiness. You have to work on it, with the right social policies, for instance. Which is why they have helpful little notes on the top with things like "good for great empires". And my experience is that the conquer-consolidate cycles are a lot more important in this game: You have to take a break after so much land grabbing to sort everything out. Practice on tiny/quick for a bit until you get the hang of it. Oh, and don't try world domination as Gandhi.

Methinks the OP is frustrated that Civ V is not Civ IV. True. But this is one of those Buddhist "craving makes you unhappy" things -- they are different, because Civ V makes you work for your large, majestic empire. It is harder and more frustrating, yes, because it has been "clevered up". But this in my book is a Good Thing.

Now if only my computer could handle the Huge Maps at passible speed ...

You are right, it is NOT CIV IV... but it is CIVILIZATION. Part of the fun of Civilization is building vast empires and having that crippled by the mechanics robs me of that fun.

 

[Fistalis]

To OP.
Cause thats how they designed it. Its one of the many design choices they decided to implement in this version of CIV. Will patches change it? maybe to balance it. Will mods change it definitely. If thats your only issue with this game then get cracking with those XML files.

 

[EscapedGoat]

Rex'ing is still the way to go, but you cannot rex indiscriminately - you need to rex on luxuries! and when I say ON i really mean on - either settle on top of a calendar resource or right next to, with a worker comming in on the turn of settlement to hook up the resource. Waiting to build a worker in your newly founded city is not going to cut it.

Yeah it's nice to have wheat or sheep or whatever, but it's ultimately irrelevant if there is not a luxury there. The golden rule is that each new city must get an immediate luxury (because a new city costs 2 + 1 unhappiness immediately, and at size 3 (happens fast) it causes 5 unhappy total.

My current starting strategy is simply a couple of warriors/scouts to grab ruins, kill barbarians and steal workers from a city state (seems to have little consequence) then full settler production while researching the happy techs i need, settling ON calendar resources (for instant hookup), alternatively using stolen workers to hook them up. Cash comes fast for a maritime ally.

So far working really well on prince + king, not sure about higher difficulty but if the happy penalties are still 2 per city and 1 per pop there is no reason it shouldn't.

 

[dorn]

Open your city and click avoid growth.

Stop building farms.

Stop leaving cities on default and focus on production or money.
Let the govs use specialists or it will still cause growth.
Trade for luxuries.
Get happiness social policies.

In summary it's very easy to have a huge expansionist empire. If you want the borders to go all over the place too then role as Napoleon and get the Angkor Wat. You don't even need happiness buildings if you do everything properly.

The game isn't punishing you. It's just making expansionism a choice that you have to work towards. You're complaining about happiness but an expansionist empire with happiness buildings can actually be made to pop out golden ages left and right.

 

[Tutkarz]

After playing few games i can see few problems with happiness system.

- currently im settling my cities only at places where they can grab new happines resources. Which leads to gaps in my territory making it somewhat not realistic. And because i will always conquer someone, that swatches of land will be probably empty for the whole game. I would like to have better shaped country.

- there is a cap of how many cities you can have - which is wrong. Especially easy is to see this at larger maps. Why its not scaled? At larger maps you have the same count of types resources like on smaller maps but you have them more. So why they didnt do happy resources like they do with strategic ones? That way you could make your population happy while having more of the same resource.

As an example i can bring my last game, where i was playing on large earth map: i had almost whole europe, half asia and one city in empty africa at the end of the game, where north america was all covered by Aztecs, and south america was French. I simply could not build more cities in order to fill europe at last, because i was stuck with -3 happines. I had all happy buildings in all cities build, all courthouses, every policy and world wonder i could possibly take and all possible resources. Its wrong to me.

I hope they can change this, so they dont penalize larger maps, because it simply makes no sense to me. If i have 1 source of lets say marble, it shouldnt make the same for one 10 population city and for ten 10 population cities. Like its with strategic resources. A simple solution to this would be to simply allow people be happy from more than one resource (but ideal would be to redo it like strategic ones)

And btw Hanging Gardens maybe add +3 happy faces but it incrases your population so sometimes you can actually lower happines.