Happiness deficit on transition to modern age

[godonbassguitar]

So I kept all my cities (x7 including cap) from the exploration age only to find that every single one of them except my capital is suffering from negative happiness (anywhere from -14 to -53) and the penalties to literally EVERYTHING from that negative happiness is absolutely tanking my yields.

[jariel]

is it because of specialists? or what..

[Bandit17]

I have never seen that. Maybe in a couple of cities but not that bad.

It has to be a lot of specialists and/or not enough happiness buildings to offset some of the building and specialist costs. Taking the left path in Diplomacy Attributes just to grab more happiness or the Scientific path that adds 20% happiness and gold to maintaining buildings is something I try to aim for.

[DadouXIII]

Originally posted by jariel:

is it because of specialists? or what..

Specialists, happiness deficit from some buildings, and the fact that the social policies disappear, and you could have had some that raised your happiness that vanished.

[Amethyst_Cat]

I just transitioned to the Modern age and my capital ended up with -35 happiness. With only one city it's not like I could swap resources around. Set immediately upon building a City Park but that only provided +16 happiness.

[Rhapsody]

50 unhappiness sounds extreme, even in modern age. Did you forget or skip the whole overbuilding thing? Aged buildings need to be replaced as soon as possible to maintain overall productivity.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

50 unhappiness sounds extreme, even in modern age. Did you forget or skip the whole overbuilding thing? Aged buildings need to be replaced as soon as possible to maintain overall productivity.

Just play as ahsoka with an early age civ happiness bonus. Once you change era, your happiness goes all negative.

The era system sucks. This is just one of many symptoms. The era system needs a major overhaul where you stack the civs you chose rather than resetting everything. You know, rome still has the coliseum, and it even makes more people happy nowadays (tourists) than it made when it was new (bread and games audience).

Firaxis designed a bad implementation of the era idea. They need to either pull the ripchord on that "feature" or redo it from scratch.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by schmonz:

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

50 unhappiness sounds extreme, even in modern age. Did you forget or skip the whole overbuilding thing? Aged buildings need to be replaced as soon as possible to maintain overall productivity.

Just play as ahsoka with an early age civ happiness bonus. Once you change era, your happiness goes all negative.

The era system sucks. This is just one of many symptoms. The era system needs a major overhaul where you stack the civs you chose rather than resetting everything. You know, rome still has the coliseum, and it even makes more people happy nowadays (tourists) than it made when it was new (bread and games audience).

Well, what you're describing is a mere skill issue. Aged buildings lose adjacency and are no longer eligible for forming of quarters. That's why overbuilding exists.

Let's try to stay on topic. What is in question here is how a settlement can even reach 50 unhappiness. It would take a combination of 25 aged buildings and specialists (like 15 aged buildings and 10 specialists) at the beginning of modern age, and practically zero happiness bonuses from improvements, wonders (Colosseum needs up to date quarters to retain its full effect) and resources. Playing Ahsoka would explain a large drop in happiness to an extent, but not the final tally of -50.

We can't really learn the source of unhappiness by guessing, and without knowing the source, we cannot present any solutions either

[Bandit17]

Originally posted by schmonz:

The era system sucks. This is just one of many symptoms. The era system needs a major overhaul where you stack the civs you chose rather than resetting everything. You know, rome still has the coliseum, and it even makes more people happy nowadays (tourists) than it made when it was new (bread and games audience).

Firaxis designed a bad implementation of the era idea. They need to either pull the ripchord on that "feature" or redo it from scratch.

Comparing the Coliseum of today to the one back in it's heyday and favoring the one today means you haven't had your coffee yet. Sit back and think about the one of the kind unique experience/structure in the center of the known world and it's importance on it's people that it had compared to today's and it's importance on it's people. Just because something get's more views does not make it more important. It just becomes one more tourist attraction among many. We are also talking about comparing tourists, in your scenario, to the importance on it's people of the region of today and Ancient Rome.

The Age system works fine for what it was intended for. Your idea sounds like a great game of snowballing.

[DadouXIII]

Originally posted by Amethyst_Cat:

I just transitioned to the Modern age and my capital ended up with -35 happiness. With only one city it's not like I could swap resources around. Set immediately upon building a City Park but that only provided +16 happiness.

I recommend going straight for the civic that unlocks the "Modernisation" policy. That should almost completely solve that early modern happiness issue.

[wcbarney]

Originally posted by schmonz:

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

50 unhappiness sounds extreme, even in modern age. Did you forget or skip the whole overbuilding thing? Aged buildings need to be replaced as soon as possible to maintain overall productivity.

Just play as ahsoka with an early age civ happiness bonus. Once you change era, your happiness goes all negative.

The era system sucks. This is just one of many symptoms. The era system needs a major overhaul where you stack the civs you chose rather than resetting everything. You know, rome still has the coliseum, and it even makes more people happy nowadays (tourists) than it made when it was new (bread and games audience).

Firaxis designed a bad implementation of the era idea. They need to either pull the ripchord on that "feature" or redo it from scratch.

We are just discussing ideas and strategies here -- you don't need to make this thread yet another platform for yet another rant about the game and its developers.

[godonbassguitar]

What I've discovered is that basically this amounts to buildings having their yields significantly nerfed while still incurring the same maintenance penalties at the change of the era. Kinda seems like if you're going to reduce one, you should reduce the other, but what do I know.

In the case of the city with -53 happiness, as with other cities, the amount of specialists and buildings with happiness maintenance did suddenly present a major deficit when yields were decreased, but it was exacerbated because I was somehow able to build like 7 or 8 bridges on navigable rivers. I wasn't paying attention to the upkeep cost because I was so distracted by the fact that each new bridge was supplying an ever-increasing gold yield. The last one I built had something like a +27 gold yield. I feel like something in that whole equation might be off, or might be a bug or something, but again, what do I know. Suffice to say, it was a learning experience.

[Bandit17]

Originally posted by godonbassguitar:

Suffice to say, it was a learning experience.

Which is what these 4X games will do to you. We all have been humbled at one point or another in learning hard lessons from our mistakes.

[Rhapsody]

Originally posted by godonbassguitar:

I was somehow able to build like 7 or 8 bridges on navigable rivers.

Whoa! You building Osgiliath there or what? Well, mystery solved, I guess... I never even thought of bridges having maintenance cost, but of course they do, they are buildings. They are not easy to overbuild either so at least in this case, the overbuilding feature is absolutely no good. The maintenance of bridges should probably be slashed.

[schmonz]

Originally posted by wcbarney:

We are just discussing ideas and strategies here -- you don't need to make this thread yet another platform for yet another rant about the game and its developers.

Then you should begin discussing my solutions rather than ranting about the fact i criticize the game for being bad designed.

[wcbarney]

Originally posted by schmonz:

Originally posted by wcbarney:

We are just discussing ideas and strategies here -- you don't need to make this thread yet another platform for yet another rant about the game and its developers.

Then you should begin discussing my solutions rather than ranting about the fact i criticize the game for being bad designed.

Well, actually, I can't discuss your solutions because I don't have the education or experience to be a game developer. I could post a snarky wise-azz response, but you do have valid points; it would be nice though to be able to discuss ideas and strategies in an intelligent manner without someone posting a rant about the game and the devs. There are dozens of threads that invite such rants as their raison d'etre.