Really big maps, really big empires

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Couple of questions, relating to phenomena that seem to be cropping up in my games.

On gigamaps, it's fairly easy to develop sprawling empires of 100+ cities. I've noticed two odd things during the later stages of these games. The first relates to pollution. My understanding of pollution is that there is a 5% (or a similar number) per smokestack chance of pollution occurring in a city radius. However, I am finding that if there is even one smokestack in a city, there is a 100% chance of pollution occurring in that city's radius, every turn. Anyone seen this before, or know what might be changing the game's pollution formula?

The second issue relates to unhappiness. I'm playing with all the late-game happy wonders at this point - Mike's Chapel, Bach's Cathedral, CfC, WS, and the luxuries slider at 60% - and as a Democracy. And yet, many size 7 cities still have 2 unhappies. This wasn't happening earlier in the game.

The happiness analysis looks like this, for example:

start with 7 very unhappy citizens
1. luxuries make 4 happy
2. Mikes/Bach turn the remaining three very unhappy citizens into 2 unhappy and 1 very unhappy

(this is the part I don't understand - shouldn't the Cathedral improve the mood of the three very unhappy citizens to unhappy, and then Bach would make two of the unhappy folks content?)

3. CFC and Suffrage make one of the unhappy citizens happy, and the very unhappy into an unhappy.

(For a total of 5 happy and 2 unhappy citizens)

Now, I've never been an expert on the happiness rules - I always just turned up the luxuries or built a wonder/temple if I was running into problems. But I was pretty sure that no matter how big a democracy got, happiness wasn't affected by the number of cities. Now, I'm not sure.

Anyone have any insights?

[Verrucosus]

I haven't a clue about the pollution problem.

However, happiness under a Democracy is affected by the number of cities. If I remember correctly, on deity level and a standard map, very unhappy people start to appear once you have more than 24 cities. When you have 36 cities, each will have one very unhappy citizen. If you go over 36, second very unhappy citizens will start to appear, and so on. On larger maps, it will take more cities to create additional unhappiness.

What I have never actually tested, is what happens after all the citizens are "very unhappy". If we take your example of a size-7-city, going beyond 108 cities (again standard map, deity), the game might create additional unhappiness but be unable to show it in the happiness analysis. If that is the case, one or more of the "very unhappy" citizens you see, might actually be "very very unhappy" (for lack of a better term) and need to be converted twice before they become even just plain unhappy.

The second paragraph is pure speculation, but I'm quite certain about what I said in the first. I believe the only government where the number of cities does not affect happiness is Communism. (Under Fundamentalism the number of cities is a factor, but the problem only comes up when you want to celebrate.)

Another interesting aspect is the effect of the luxuries. I thought that it had been established that the maximum number of effective luxuries is twice the number of citizens. In that case you should have a maximum of 14 luxuries, which would be sufficient to turn two very unhappy citizens into happy ones and one additional very unhappy citizen into an unhappy one. Your result (4 happy citizens) contradicts that assumption.

Happiness calculation is always an interesting puzzle and I hope that others will comment.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Damn... of course, you're right. Democracy eliminates corruption, not unhappiness due to city numbers.

I must try playing without happy wonders... I'd probably learn more.

So essentially, I'm getting more mileage from my luxuries than I should be, but less mileage from my Cathedrals?

I really should post a screen shot of the city screen...

[Grigor]

If you have Michaelangelo's Chapel, you are getting no extra benefit from cathedrals you have not sold. Coliseums are an extra help regardless.

[Scouse Gits]

This sounds like a problem for SlowThinker ...
IIRC and as you guys know this is NOT my ussual sort of game so I may well recollect incorrectly!!!
red & black faces are handled correctly by Happy improvements & luxuries and incorrectly by happy wonders and martial law - but it might well be interesting to hear a definitive answer again.

Stu

[Scouse Gits]

Have you checked here??

Stu

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Grigor
If you have Michaelangelo's Chapel, you are getting no extra benefit from cathedrals you have not sold. Coliseums are an extra help regardless.

Quite so - I should have been clearer when I posted above. When I said I was getting less mileage from my Cathedrals, I meant, less mileage from the Mike&Back combo. I don't think I've built an actual Cathedral in years...

[ramses II.]

Happiness problem:
You need a temple a and a market place - and the people will celebrate.

[Scouse Gits]

Originally posted by ramses II.
Happiness problem:
You need a temple a and a market place - and the people will celebrate.

I think the problem is a little more comples than this...

Stu

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by ramses II.
Happiness problem:
You need a temple a and a market place - and the people will celebrate.

Yes - but they should be celebrating NOW. Earlier in the game, I had cities celebrate up to size 12 with neither.

[Elephant]

Post a SAVe and let us play with it...

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

It's ToT.

[Old n Slow]

When we played a few D+1, D+3 SXx games over at Cfc we discovered all sorts of new aspects about hyper unhappiness. One wonders if giga deity gets to the similar situation.

For us, Mikes was our first wonder & we discovered that it didn't seem to have the same milage -- instead of helping out with three unhappies to neutral, we had to deal with the very unhappies & iirc, the effect would be about 1 and a half, which might make sense. Ugly.

I think I picked up a copy of ToT (and have yet to open it.)

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Al righty... managed to get the file zipped:


(you need the no-limits patch to open it, I think)

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

This sort of thing compensates for the pollution and happiness issues, I think.



(Both source and target are democracies. Issus=size 20 with SH, Rouen=size 21.)