martial law limits?

[defrancoj]

So I was playing on a normal sized premade map that was simply 100% grassland with about a dozen river squares scattered throughout (for irrigation purposes). I spent most of the game in Monarchy ("chronologically" speaking) and noticed that after i had a certain number of cities, martial law stopped affecting happiness in many of my (newer?) cities, and wasn't even appearing in the happiness displays for those cities. What gives?

[Peaster]

Not sure, but I'll take a stab at it... I'm guessing your civ was so big that the first citizen in your city was not just unhappy (red) but was VERY unhappy (black). According to the online manual under Monarchy:

Up to three military units in each city institute "martial law". Each of these units makes one unhappy citizen content.

I guess this means they have no effect on the VERY unhappy guys.

[Elephant]

I believe they should turn a black face into a red face, but won't turn it to content. You need to use something else in addition to martial law when you start getting black faces - HG and some Lux works well.