How To Make Citizens Happy?

[TheGambler]

I started with 12 and now I'm down to 8 how do I increase the happy:D

[gamerINchief]

I don't know why but "how do I increase the happy" mad me laugh out loud. Improve nearby luxuries, produce buildings that provide happiness, or enact polices or religion beliefs that boost happiness.

[travisdead1]

It is not so clear to new players :) The games help files are extensive, and yet still often useless. Many times when you search a topic, it simply broadly defines the word, without giving you specifics on how to influence, change or control related game concepts.

that's why this forum is great :) It helps me understand more game mechanics, that haven't been clearly (to my mind) described.

[TheGambler]

Ok thx guys I started to make the citizens happy again:)

[n11360]

Most important thing to know about happyness is the 2 kinds of happyness i think.
Local and Global ....you can eliminate local unhappyness(from inhabitans) with the local happyness buildings like zoo and stuff. But now the important thing ...the happyness trap.
You can only eliminate as much local unhappyness/inhabitans with buildings like zoo as there are inhabitans, leaveing you with 3 unhappyness per town what you have to compensate with sources of Global happyness what much more rare than local ...you can get those frome lux. items and wonders and stuff ....hope that helps a bit ^

[sexgod69]

The more citizens and citizens you have, the happiness will decrease. There aren't really any downsides to having a semi-low happiness, as long as the number is green it's okay.

Anyways, use workers to improve luxury resources, AKA the ones that give you happiness. But they must be new luxury resources in order to provide the happiness boost. Create buildings in cities that increase happiness, especially in cities with a lot of people.

You can even build wonders that increase the happiness, if you want to go for them.

And the last thing you can do is choose religion beliefs and social policies that will either increase your happiness or get rid of some unhappiness.

[The Rock God]

Originally posted by travisdead1:

It is not so clear to new players :)

I dunno. Always seemed pretty clear to me:

Happiness

Happiness is a measure of your citizens’ contentment. As a rule, the larger your total population, the unhappier everybody gets. An unhappy population doesn’t grow very rapidly, and a very unhappy population will affect the fighting quality of your armies as well.
Your civ’s happiness is displayed on the Status Bar of the Main Screen (in the upper left-hand
corner of the game). Watch it carefully. If it reaches zero, your population is getting restless.
If it starts to dip into negative numbers, you’re in trouble. (Incidentally, you can get an excellent snapshot of your population’s happiness by hovering your cursor over this number.)

Starting Happiness
The amount of happiness that your civilization begins with is determined by the game’s difficulty setting. The moment you construct your first city, that number will begin to decline.

What Causes Unhappiness
The following cause unhappiness:
• Raw Population: As your civ grows, the people get increasingly unhappy and demand
more stuff to keep them amused.
• Number of Cities: As the number of cities in your civ grows, so does your unhappiness. In
other words, a civ with 2 cities each of population 1 is unhappier than a civ with 1 city of
population 2, even though they both contain the same total population.
• Annexed Cities: If you capture and annex foreign cities, your population doesn’t much
like it.

What Causes Happiness
The following increase your population’s happiness:
• Natural Wonders: Each natural wonder you discover permanently increases your civilization’s
happiness.
• Luxury Resources: Improve resources within your territory or trade for them with other civs.
Each kind of resource improves your population’s happiness (but you don’t get extra
happiness for having multiple copies of a single luxury).
• Buildings: Certain buildings increase your population’s happiness. These include the Coliseum,
the Circus, the Theatre, and others. Each building constructed anywhere in your
civ increases your overall happiness (so two Coliseums produce twice as much happiness
as one, unlike Luxuries).
• Wonders: Certain wonders like Notre Dame and the Hanging Gardens can give you a big
boost in happiness.
• Social Policies: Policies from the Piety branch provide a lot of happiness, as do a few policies
in other branches.
• Technologies: Technologies in themselves don’t provide happiness, but they do unlock
the buildings, wonders, resources and social policies which do.

[Polyester™]

git gud

[zxcvbob]

Improve all tiles that have luxuries. If you have 2 of something, you can trade it for a different luxury with another civ to gain extra happiness, or sell it for about 7 gold per turn.

A couple of wonders give big happiness boosts: Notre Dame and Forbidden Palace. Build circuses in any cities that have horses or ivory. They give 2 happiness and don't cost any gold. Build coliseums in every city once you can afford to do so, then build Circus Maximus.

If you ally a city state, they will give you any luxuries and strategic resources they have. Mercantile city states are the best for happiness, they have luxuries like jewelry and porcelain that you can't get anywhere else.

That should get you going until ideologies kick in. Then it gets interesting ;)

[ForevaNoob Wonemorturn]

The difficulty level counts as a great deal when it comes to happiness.

[travisdead1]

Originally posted by The Rock God:

Originally posted by travisdead1:

It is not so clear to new players :)

I dunno. Always seemed pretty clear to me:

Happiness

Happiness is a measure of your citizens’ contentment. As a rule, the larger your total population, the unhappier everybody gets. An unhappy population doesn’t grow very rapidly, and a very unhappy population will affect the fighting quality of your armies as well.
Your civ’s happiness is displayed on the Status Bar of the Main Screen (in the upper left-hand
corner of the game). Watch it carefully. If it reaches zero, your population is getting restless.
If it starts to dip into negative numbers, you’re in trouble. (Incidentally, you can get an excellent snapshot of your population’s happiness by hovering your cursor over this number.)

Starting Happiness
The amount of happiness that your civilization begins with is determined by the game’s difficulty setting. The moment you construct your first city, that number will begin to decline.

What Causes Unhappiness
The following cause unhappiness:
• Raw Population: As your civ grows, the people get increasingly unhappy and demand
more stuff to keep them amused.
• Number of Cities: As the number of cities in your civ grows, so does your unhappiness. In
other words, a civ with 2 cities each of population 1 is unhappier than a civ with 1 city of
population 2, even though they both contain the same total population.
• Annexed Cities: If you capture and annex foreign cities, your population doesn’t much
like it.

What Causes Happiness
The following increase your population’s happiness:
• Natural Wonders: Each natural wonder you discover permanently increases your civilization’s
happiness.
• Luxury Resources: Improve resources within your territory or trade for them with other civs.
Each kind of resource improves your population’s happiness (but you don’t get extra
happiness for having multiple copies of a single luxury).
• Buildings: Certain buildings increase your population’s happiness. These include the Coliseum,
the Circus, the Theatre, and others. Each building constructed anywhere in your
civ increases your overall happiness (so two Coliseums produce twice as much happiness
as one, unlike Luxuries).
• Wonders: Certain wonders like Notre Dame and the Hanging Gardens can give you a big
boost in happiness.
• Social Policies: Policies from the Piety branch provide a lot of happiness, as do a few policies
in other branches.
• Technologies: Technologies in themselves don’t provide happiness, but they do unlock
the buildings, wonders, resources and social policies which do.

It seems pretty clear to you, because you are experienced with the game. You didn't immediately understand it all after just reading that. You had to play to understand it. And it took more than 1 or 2 games for you to understand the dynamic clearly. But now, understanding that dynamic clearly, it seems far easier than it actually was. It was not so evident, but you may not remember not understanding it. The game is 5 years old.

I bought it 2 weeks ago, and have played 6 games. I'm not the original poster, btw, I just sympathize with him.

[#packwatch bozo-killer]

more cities mod :))))

[retjero]

Originally posted by Burnt Sienna:

The more citizens and citizens you have, the happiness will decrease. There aren't really any downsides to having a semi-low happiness, as long as the number is green it's okay.

One bonus to having high happiness (say +15 instead of +5) is that you will earn Golden Ages faster. These ages improve much of your performance for as long as the age lasts.

It is also good to have a cushion as many unexpected things can happen that will reduce your happiness. For example, a friendly civ might trade you spices for your oysters. But then they expand to a place that has oysters and improves them with a fishing boat. Now they do not need your oysters because they have their own and stop trading you spices. Through no fault of your own, you are now down in happiness.

You asked some good questions about a very important part of the game and got many great answers in the posts above.