Info regarding Cities and Happiness

[thyrwyn]

Cities do not revolt any more. The details of unhappiness are detailed in the article: slower growth. If your civ is very unhappy (no indication of how unhappy that is): "your cities stop growing altogether, you cannot build any Settlers, and your military units get a nasty combat penalty."

In any significant empire (Rome, Britain) trouble in the far reaches of the empire did eventually cause issues at home - There is the substantial cost in resources and manpower required to administrate and assimilate the troublesome territory; there is the social unrest caused by an increasingly diverse and disparate population; and expansion and growth inevitably widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots (since the wealthy/powerful are better able to reap the rewards of new opportunities).

There are plenty of justifications for the Civ V happiness model.

[wodan11]

But no sillier than nations going to war to secure possession of the Grand Canyon.

An no sillier than (in Civ4) nations going to war to procure a source of dye. Maybe blue is the national colour and they were tired of wearing brown?

[Elok]

An no sillier than (in Civ4) nations going to war to procure a source of dye. Maybe blue is the national colour and they were tired of wearing brown?

Nations went to war over access to trade goods all the time. The fact that it's done in that case to make disgruntled people happy is less believable, but going to war over pretty much anything of value, certainly. Even then, market gewgaws do have a way of distracting the masses (case in point: CivV). I have less problem with that than I do with "natural wonders."

[Boris Godunov]

Okay, so you actually give a damn about verisimilitude. By my count, that makes two of us on this board...the idea of either all your cities being in revolt (or close to it) or else more or less content, simultaneously, strikes me as a bit silly. But no sillier than nations going to war to secure possession of the Grand Canyon. A bit less silly, actually.

Well, I view the new happiness model as an abstraction that certainly can fit with historical reality. Revolts in specific cities would usually be short-lived, so would it be realistic to have multi-turn revolts that equate to 20, 30, or 50 years for a single revolt? By making it empire-wide, I think they're shifting away from depicting local uprisings and more towards simulating nationwide upheavals and times of trouble (think 3rd century Roman Empire, for instance).

[campm@jor]

Well, historically correct or not, it will make the game more fun I think. In Civ III late game when you wage a war as democratic state it is rather annoying to have to go through all your cities to make them happy. If you can change that on macro level, it is a big plus!

[Provost Harrison]

Still, I hope that there are factors that affect individual cities rather than just the entire empire...sometimes where a city is particularly large it needs a bit of emphasis to prevent it from being incredibly unhappy rather than throwing resources at the whole empire that aren't required...