Civ5 Managing happiness by SPM

[CanuckSoldier]

SPM has posted the second in his series of articles on Civ5 topics.

http://www.civplayers.com/index.php?sect...pic=9259.0

Everyone who has played any version of Sid Meier’s CIVILIZATION knows you have to be a very good multi-tasker. When you are in control of your Civilization you must concurrently manage your:

Economy
Population Growth
Science Output
Units – Military Power
Technology plan
Happiness
Resource Availability
Culture
Diplomatic Relations


While the challenge is to keep all these balls in the air at the same time, I think it’s helpful to separate these sometimes conflicting goals and to discuss them separately from a strategic standpoint.

In this, the first of several strategy articles about the major components of the game, I will explore HAPPINESS in depth, in terms of what you should do to have the optimal result and to keep your citizens as happy as possible.

CS

[Aretii]

For the record, annexed cities count for 5 unhappiness per city (in place of, not on top of, the 2 unhappiness per city base) and their population counts an extra 33% for unhappiness purposes.

Furthermore, "Very Unhappy" kicks in at -10 happy.

I'm surprised he didn't include those numbers in the article.

[Sullla]

Actually, I disagree with some of the information in that guide. I would not advise sticking at +10 happiness or greater; if you're that high, you can afford more cities, so go get them! You can always get more Golden Ages through Great People and some of the social policies. More cities are always good: more research, more gold, more production. Plant more cities any time you can afford them.

I don't advise turning on "Avoid Growth" ever. There's nothing wrong with going into unhappiness in Civ5. It cuts your growth by 3/4 and that's it. Not a big deal. I'll usually emphasize food until hitting the happiness cap, then swap cities over to break-even food and micromanage for maximum production/gold/research. I've found that my research is usually *BETTER* when my civ is unhappy, because it doesn't cost me anything to pull citizens off farms and stick them on library/market specialists for extra research/gold. Keep cycling back and forth between periods of growth and periods of teching, and always try to be pushing up against the happy cap.

Of course that's my style of play - aggressive, expansionistic, I want to be the biggest civ in the world - and if you're going for Cultural victory or something like that, things might be different. But I think in a fair game, my civ would beat one of those pacifistic cultural/social policy civs every time.

Elsewhere:

- If this is a happiness "guide", you should really list the non-Calendar happiness resources, because there's quite a few of them.

- At least mention India's completely altered happiness equation.

- Aretii's info from the last post should also be included.

[Aretii]

- If this is a happiness "guide", you should really list the non-Calendar happiness resources, because there's quite a few of them.

He actually did, but in a separate section near the bottom. Calendar got the limelight because nearly half (7/15) happiness resources require it.

[luddite]

I prefer the "ignore unhappiness" strategy: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=382812

[haphazard1]

That is a rather depressing thread, luddite, but thanks for the link. I had not seen this one before.

All the commenters, eagerly competing to top everyone else with ever bigger penalties that should be applied to anyone who dares to try to build (or conquer) a large empire. How dare you try to grow? Jon Shafer likes to play with only three cities, so you should not have any more than that and the game will penalize you if you try. Blech.

I think I was correct in what I posted back before Civ V was released. The game is all about thinking small. Small empires, small cities, small armies, small goals, small areas (1UPT)...small, small, small. I do not think I am the only one for whom this design approach equals small fun.

The only big things about Civ V are the system requirements and the bug list.

[Sirian]

Three things that are definitely not smaller than in Civ4:

1. Regions of terrain: Sweepingly bigger, more contrasting, more difficult to manage.

2. Civ counts: back up to Civ3 levels, for each map size, but with the City States added in. Bigger diplomatic field, and with much more going on within the diplomatic AI.

3. City footprint. The ability to work the third ring out from the city is hardly small or shrinkish. With tiles claimed individually, there is also tactical and strategic variety where none existed before. Used to be you pop one cultural ring and you're done expanding workable territory. Now it is more intricate and less of a no-brainer, how you acquire, improve and manage your cities' tiles. It also takes longer, being something that is not at all small in its duration of relevance.


If territory and population were all that mattered, Russia and China would rule in the real world. They are major powers, for sure, but not runaway snowballing victors. Why shouldn't Civ aim to reflect this kind of nuance?


- Sirian

[Krill]

Is that a realism argument to explain game mechanic Sirian?

Points 2 and 3 are the smaller point: cities with a larger foot print, but aren't bigger from a pop, production or beaker generation PoV. They just take up more land that isn't worked because it isn't profitable to work. Civs that you have much less to do with due to diplomatic options. City states that you ignore unless Maritime and then you throw gold at. It's smaller, because there is less that is relevant.

And 1? WTH is 1? The land is much less granular now so it is bigger than in C4?

3 is completely untrue - you needed to expand borders past the first ring so that you could more easily defend. And you could cram a city in close to another civs city to try and get a much easier route in to attack them, with a lot of nuance on how to approach the situation. Calling that a no-brainer is shortsighted in the least. You could use civics, specialists, build culture, run the culture slider...the only difference now is that you can pick tiles individually, if you buy them, and have limited control over the culture game in comparison to C4 because everything is so much smaller in value for culture production, and greater in cost.

And you call the city tile improvements not a no-brainer in C5? With the focus on needing production to the extent that maritime CS give you food, and then you rely solely on river grassland farms for food post CS?

Really, WTF Sirian.

[sunrise089]

I wrote a longer post, but I deleted it because it was too mean.

Basically, I agree with Krill. The maps look nice on Civ5, but settling well requires so much less skill now. Resources hardly matter now, so plains is just plain (ha!) better than grassland and river hills are the best. Terrain improvement management is basically gone.

Additionally while the 3rd ring workable tiles are interesting, the idiotic inability to pick what tile to expand to ruins it. And you've totally eliminated the vital role culture played in human vs human games. If you wanted 3rd ring culture look to the Kuriorites in FFH...after all if the Civ5 devs are going to steal FFH ideas they could at least do it well.

Finally, the diplo field is laughably simpler now. Befriend city states with gold. Then end.

I've tried to stop complaining about the release date and removal of "expert features" like a good build queue because you provided fair arguments against them in other posts. But it seems very obvious the developers didn't give a crap about MP in this game, and I'm curious about the justification of that within the "we have to find new players" model.

EDIT: All that said, I have to concede that Sirian is technically correct. I will trust him that the maps are physically larger, there are more civs per map size by default, and cities can work more tiles. But I don't think those things, taken in isolation, are what haphazard was really talking about.

[Bobchillingworth]

If territory and population were all that mattered, Russia and China would rule in the real world. They are major powers, for sure, but not runaway snowballing victors. Why shouldn't Civ aim to reflect this kind of nuance?


- Sirian

Thankfully there are no win conditions for Real Life. And if you really want to analogize the current geopolitical situation for Russia and China in Civ game-play terms, both have been historically stymied by a combination of frequent war declarations from other civs, and having half their turns played by someone's idiot kid brother banging away at the keys. And yet Russia and China are quite powerful anyway (particularly the later) despite numerous relatively recent setbacks in large part due to their massive amounts of land, resources, and in China's case population.


Oh also Civ is a video game that can in no way ever come close to approximating Real History, nor should it try.