How does happiness work?

[Stars-N-Stripes]

When you look at a planet you can see the population happiness, same if you expand the population I can see individual people in jobs and what % of happiness they are. Most right now are 75-85% happy but how do I know why they are not 100% happy.

It shows a breakdown such as 50% bade happiness then some modifiers which bring it up to around 85% happy.

Does it tell me anywhere what they are missing to get them to 100%
Is 100% the maximum or does it go higher than that
What is considered a good happiness level

[Jey]

Every pop is part of a faction. If you have a high approval for this faction, then the pop is happier.

The life conditions of the pop also matters. Using something like Utopian Abundance will make pop happier, whereas being Slaves will drastically reduce it.

The Nutritional Plenitude edict slighly increases happiness, as well as some civics, some events,...

I don't think happiness "matters" a lot. I would say keep your main factions happy, try to use a high standard of living if you can afford it, and that's all you need. 85% seems good enough to me, as going higher will probably be too costly for what it gives you.

[HappySack]

Happiness isn't very important at all and is mainly only used to determine the stability of the planet the pop is on and is based on the pop's political power and that itself depends on the pop's citizenship and species rights.

But you can make it to 100% happiness if you stack enough modifiers.

[leigh]

I have seen happiness over 100%, I think because of world benefits.

[titanopteryx]

The Eridanas patch notes say all pops living on a gaia world are happy. There's a few ways to change your worlds to gaia depending on what dlc you have, but if you can do so terraforming all your worlds to gaia makes everyone happy.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Stars-N-Stripes:

Does it tell me anywhere what they are missing to get them to 100%
Is 100% the maximum or does it go higher than that
What is considered a good happiness level

50 is the baseline. 100 is the cap, 0 is the floor. Production goes up as they get happier, which is the main incremental bonus it provides.

Faction approval is one of the largest influences, so supporting the faction you're keeping happiest and suppressing the unhappiest factions is one way to keep it boosted. There are edicts that give straight percentage bonuses and the Festival of Worlds from the Artisan Troupe gives you 10% for a pittance, so that's an easy bonus to get,

Habitability can influence happiness too, though the level of micromanagement to keep everyone on a world that's perfectly adapted to their needs is not worth the payoff you'll get from it, in my opinion.

Generally as long as they're green, all is good. Yellow is a problem you might want to look into. Red needs to be fixed unless you've decided to go a different route (slaves don't need to be kept happy, for instance).

[Geoff]

Originally posted by leigh:

I have seen happiness over 100%, I think because of world benefits.

I've never seen that. But you prompted me to double check the documentation. It seems consistent with my observations:

Each pop in an empire has a rating. It ranges from 0% to 100% and has a base level of 50%.

Source: https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Population#Happiness

[Stars-N-Stripes]

Thanks Geoff and everyone for the answers that helps to make sure I was not missing something somewhere. Agree it's not as important as stability but just wanted to make sure I understood what I was seeing.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Stability is what's important but stability is directly related to the happiness of the pops multiplied by their political power.