Civil Disorder Control

[poppawoppa]

In most of my games, I can manage Diety, Raging Hordes, and whatever number of AI civs but, I find I lose a lot of production and have to constantly rearrange my citizens to take care of unrest in the cities. If I have 10 to 12 cities, I probably get an average of 2 civil disorders every 3 turns. So I'm losing a lot of shields, food and trade production. How do you experts manage to control this. Must you look over every city every turn? Can you use the Attitude window to find out which cities are about to go into disorder on the next turn and fix them with an elvis or scientist/taxman before starting the new turn? I'm sure some of you micro managers out there have the solution. What is the best way to monitor and control civil unrest?

[War4ever]

Poppawoppa.... well that is why this is such a micromanaging task......

I used to have this problem and i had 100 + cities.... its a ***** but patience is the virtue...... i still have problems with this as i rush many games against the ai.... which you can get away with....

In MP i am much more dillegent about civil disorder, and rarely have these problems....

only advice i can give is to slow things down and check each city... often you can make a scientist instead of an elvis so see if that helps

[Black Bart]

It is difficult. But you can scan your cities and see when the food box is near full. Then you have to look at those cities to determine if they are going to grow next turn. That's one feature of SMAC I like better. Is they tell you when the city is going to grow.

[Scouse Gits]

In the early game before you have the happiness wonders like MC and JSB, it is worthwhile halting the growth of some cities. (placing the workers on the production squares not the food tiles).

I think Dave V researched the benefit of high shield production against high trade. I believe his conclusion was - go for high shield output at the start of the game. In the beginning you have little gold and you want to build things quickly.

(Apologies Dave V if I have mis-quoted you!)
---------
SG (2)

[DaveV]

SG2 - a fair quote; except the technique remains valid throughout the game, not just in the beginning. In a nutshell: size 1 cities put their workers on high food squares; size 2 cities put their workers on high shield squares, then build settlers before they grow to size 3.

poppa - Communism can help a lot with unhappiness, since you get double martial law, no riot factor, and no corruption. If you're going to play the representative governments, the price to pay for those extra arrows is a lot of micromanagement. The lazy man's way to do it is to make sure you always have an extra happy face for each city on the F4 screen; that way, if the city grows it won't go into disorder. Note that the F4 screen may not be up-to-date - adjust the tax/luxury/science sliders to force it to update.

[inca911]

Governments and Max Number of Cities
Here is another great bit of info I found hidden in a caravan discussion thread....

Depending on the difficulty level (Emperor, Deity, etc.) you are playing there is a number of cities you can build under each government type in which the first citizen is content. When you exceed this maximum city number, in any additional cities you found the first citizen begins unhappy (note that this unhappy citizen may appear in a different city than the one you just founded).

There has been a formula proposed for this phenomenon (although my experiments suggest that it is a bit off):

Max Cities = Riot Factor - (Difficulty Factor*2) + (INT ( Government Factor/2) *2)

Where Riot Factor = 14
Difficulty Factor = 0 to 5 (0 for Chieftain, 4 for Emperor, 5 for Deity, etc.)
Government Factor = 0 to 6 (Anarchy=0, Despotism=1, Monarchy=2, Communism=3, Fundamentalism=4, Republic=5, Democracy=6)

To prove/disprove this, I started a Deity game, and toggeled on the cheat mode. I created a bunch of settlers, and founded cities one at a time, forcing all governments and checking the attitude advisor before building another city (note that the attitude advisor is not always accurately updated, so you must go into each city to verify happiness). Here is a matrix of my Deity level results, with the # of happy cities per government type based on total number of cities:

# Cities Anarchy Despotism Monarchy Communism Fundy Republic Democracy
1_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
2_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
3_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
4_______All_________All__________All__________All_ ________All_______All_________All
5________4__________4___________All__________All__ _______All_______All_________All
6________4__________3___________All__________All__ _______All_______All_________All
7________2__________2____________6__________All___ ______All_______All_________All
8________0__________0____________6__________All___ ______All_______All_________All
9________0__________0____________6__________All___ ______All________8__________All
10_______0__________0____________4__________All___ ______All________8__________All
11_______0__________0____________2__________All___ ______All________8__________10
12_______0__________0____________0__________All___ ______All________8__________10
13_______0__________0____________0__________All___ ______All________8__________10
14_______0__________0____________0__________All___ ______All________8__________10


(I can't get the table to post perfectly, but you should be able to decipher it!)

So the actual test results show that the formula does not predict the behavior of Communism very well, which makes sense since Communism is good for sprawling empires with large numbers of cities, but I do not have a proposed correction. Most importantly, note the non-linear unhappiness effect of additional city building! Build 7 cities in Monarchy and only one is unhappy, build 10 and now 6 are unhappy! The determination of a all-encompassing formula is not necessary, understanding the guiding force behind number of cities and happiness is!

Until you can build Mike's or Bach's, one way to quash unhappiness is martial law. In the early game you are typically a Despotism or Monarchy. Take advantage of the fact that you can use up to 3 cheap units (warriors are a good choice) to make an unhapppy citizen content. On Diety, if your city is going up from size one to two, be sure you have a martial law unit present. From two to three, have two units at home. And from three to four, have three units garrisoned. This tactic can delay the necessary temple building until the city is size 4. After that, the temple lets you get to size 5 without disorder and typically mysticism will be discovered soon enough to double the temple effect and let you hit size 6 without disorder.

On Deity, is can be dangerous to expand too quickly (in number of cities) since the happiness decline becomes greater and greater. If you build the Pyramids, it is important to make sure your cities do not grow so unreasonably fast that you cannot maintain happiness in them. I find use of WLT*D (We love the leader day) to grow population whilst in Republic/Democracy is much better than Pyramids, and why bother to build a Wonder to get an attribute that you can achieve via other means?

I typically keep my number of cities very very close to the number allowed by my government type (which gives me a little cushion to take a nice AI city if one is available) until I build something like Mike's/Hanging Gardens. Hope this helps!

[Carolus Rex]

I'm no happiness expert, but here are a couple of thoughts.

Pointing out the obvious: learning the causes of civil disorder and what it takes to curb it (no kidding, wasn't that the question?).

Trivial examples (I leave the tricky ones to others ):

i) The difficulty level you play at

Start a game in a large world, with three civs and easy on the barbs. Build one city in each of the levels and just let it grow. Don't build a temple, just units which you send away. Check at which size the city goes into disorder for each of the levels.

ii) Government type

-Number of cities you can build without the first unhappy face depends on it.

-Unhappiness caused by units away from their home cities depends on it.

-Unhappiness due to nukes (missiles too?) in your cities depends on it (not sure about this one, it's been a very long time since I built nukes in demo or at all).

-Unhappiness when in fundy depends on a bug, in this case upgrade to 2.42!

iii) Number of cities (I think)

You have your cities in Monarchy and everything is going fine. You build a new city with a content citizen and relax. The next turn one of your other cities that was OK prior to the building of the new city revolts! Worse, it's a size two city with a warrior, but still it goes into disorder. I have no clue about what causes this (or I haven't paid attention to the game).

iv) Improvements, the luxury rate and wonders

Which effect they have on unhappiness (can depend on the type of government) and when (if) they expire (the wonders)

v) Martial law

What is it, how and when it works (again, depends on government type).

Maybe some useful questions?

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

Didn't see the previous post, could have saved me half an hour (whining voice)...

Carolus

[DaveV]

For the benefit of CR and others, here's a quick symposium on riot factor:

Inca911 has the basic formula right:

Max Cities = Riot Factor - (Difficulty Factor*2) + (INT ( Government Factor/2) *2)

Where Riot Factor = 14
Difficulty Factor = 0 to 5 (0 for Chieftain, 4 for Emperor, 5 for Deity, etc.)
Government Factor = 0 to 6 (Anarchy=0, Despotism=1, Monarchy=2, Communism=*, Fundamentalism=*, Republic=5, Democracy=6)

There is also an adjustment for map size; I think it's +2 for medium (normal) map, +4 for large map.

There is no riot factor for Communism and Fundamentalism.

What this means: calculate your max cities for the map size, government type, and difficulty level. Call this number MC. Your base happiness in your cities will depend on how many cities you have in relation to MC.

1 to MC: base happiness
MC+1 to MC*2: base happiness -1 in some cities
MC*2+1 to MC*4(?): base happiness -1 in all cities; base happiness -2 in some cities

For example, if you are playing at Deity on a small map and are in Monarchy, Max Cities is 6. This means you can build up to 6 cities and have the first citizen be content. Once you build your seventh, some cities will have an unhappy first citizen. In my experience, the place where this unhappy citizen appears is random; it may be in the new city, or may be in one (or more) of your established cities. You will see more and more cities with a first unhappy citizen until, at 12 cities, all of your cities have their first citizen unhappy.

Once you build the 13th city, very unhappy citizens will start to appear. I'm not sure whether it's 18 (MC*3) or 24 (MC*4), but at some large number of cities, all of your cities will have a very unhappy citizen. Growing beyond this point will cause some cities to have *two* very unhappy citizens. And so on...

[rah]

Experience says the distance of the new city from the capital plays a roll in which city get the first unhappy citizen.
RAH

[Carolus Rex]

Hm...

Am I correct when calculating the MC for a communist at chieftain in a small world as

MC = 0-0*2+INT(3/2)*2 = 2, where the first term is the riot factor under communism etc?

And for deity, MC = 0-5*2+INT(3/2)*2 = -8

What am I doing wrong?

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

The first citizen in communism is never unhappy, is that it?

Carolus

[This message has been edited by Carolus Rex (edited February 22, 2000).]

[DaveV]

CR - yes, I phrased that poorly. The riot factor, and therefore the max number of cities, is infinity, not zero, for Communism. So no matter how many cities you have, you will have the base number of citizens content.

[inca911]

CR, to answer some of your previous questions:

Martial Law can be imposed under Anarchy, Despotism, Monarchy, and Communism. Each of the first three military units stationed in a city makes one unhappy citizen content, and this effect is doubled under Communism (so each unit makes two unhappy citizens content--very nice!).

Under Republic and Democracy, military units in the field that are not in a fortress within 3 spaces from a city you control also can cause unhappiness. For Republic, each roving unit beyond the first makes one citizen unhappy. For Democracy, every roving unit makes two citizens unhappy. This is why I build fortresses for my military before switching to Republic or Democracy.

Also, there are certain units that make people unhappy in their home city, regardless of where they are stationed. Under Republic, each Bomber, Stealth Bomber, Helicopter and Missle Units makes one citizen unhappy. This effect is doubled for Democracy.

The best way to wage war under Republic and Democracy is to build Shakespeare's Theater. By reassigning your military units to Shakes before sending them in the field, you can ignore the unhappiness effects.

Now that I really understand the unhappiness factors, I can effectively prepare for government changes throughout the course of the game. I hope this answers your questions adequately!
[This message has been edited by inca911 (edited February 22, 2000).]

[Xin Yu]

There are two levels of disorder control: global and local. Do the global first until most of your cities are OK, then deal with the few problematic ones.

First, choose the government. If most of your cities can grow using 'WLTKD' then obviously you should choose democracy or republic. The former is preferred since the courthouse gives one more happy citizen (crucial if you play deity and have a little bit more than a dozen of cities) and has no corruption. In other cases it's a trade-off between more trade vs. losing martial-law/free support and unhappiness due to troop out of city. Basically you add the increased trade for democracy/republic (adjusted for city improvements and trade route revenues), and compare with the total of lost martial-law luxuries (12 for commie, 6 for monarchy, 2xpopulation for fundy in deity), supporting shields (3 shields=6 taxs), and the out of city unhappiness (1 unhappy=2 luxuries). I would choose fundy or commie in the early ages but go to democracy when I can build superhighways. I may stay in commie/fundy if playing 2x production.

Second, decide the luxury rate. Since science rate can be set to zero (you use caravans to get sciences, hire one scientist), it's a split between tax and luxury.

Third, build improvements. For bigger cities, prefer marketplaces to temples, banks to cathedrals due to the following reason: a temple with mysticism keeps two citizens content, which is equivalent to 4 luxury. A marketplace increased both tax and luxury by 50%, so if you originally have 8 trade icons or more your total tax+luxury is better with a marketplace than with a temple. Same for banks vs. cathedrals. Of course wonders are different--they cost less and need no maintainence.

Fourth, use martial law.

Fifth, use Elvis if necessary.

Sixth, assign your troops properly in democracy/republic to reduce unhappyness. Two wonders can help: Shakespear and J.Bach. Actually the latter is better. If you have J. Bach, build a city on a mined hills and put a worker on another mined hills. Keep the city at size one, and with factories, hydro plant, and manufacturing plant it can support tons of units. It will not go riot due to JB's effect.