Why are my citizens unhappy after I make peace?

[Robert]

Todd HAwks: WarpStorm is right. You have to make peace with all civs.

That's not true.
You have to make peace with the civs you're actually fighting with. I have had 'state of war' with 3 civs, while I was only fighting one of them. (my neighbour)

The people became angry, and after I took enough of his cities, I just agreed on peace. From that moment my people were happy again, while I was still in war with 2 other civs.

The problem with that is that if there was something making them content that goes away they will not tell you

if they say "it's too crowded" they mean that they want a cathedral, temple, colloseum, etc. etc.
Against all the other types of sadness only luxerious works, or ending war.

[MrWhereItsAt]

The manual states that when you declare war, happines increases as a release to pre-war tension. As time continues under Rep or Demo, war weariness increases. I guess it is similar to the end of the war, when the tension returns.

[miike]

So then go to war and stay there until your people start to get angry? Talk about going to war for political reasons.

[Ribannah]

That is generally what happens in the real world though under democracy or republic.

[steven8r]

I have yet to see an unhappy citizen say, "We want to kick more a$$.", but I think if you're strong enough militarily and not using it, they will be thinking this.

Or I could just be imagining it.

I generally tell the city governors to handle happines. I don't see civil unrest very often. Happiness is the one job that the Gov'nor seems to be able to do fairly well.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by steven8r
I generally tell the city governors to handle happines. I don't see civil unrest very often. Happiness is the one job that the Gov'nor seems to be able to do fairly well.

Does anyone know how to tell governors to keep their cities in WLTKD? They do fairly well to prevent riots, but I can't get them make their cities celebrate...

Regarding the effect of ending a war... I did notice on at least one occasion that my people were "disappointed" about me ending a war. And I am quite sure that it was not just a coincidence... But if there is a boost of happiness following the declaration of war (I did not know that until reading through this thread) then it gives perfect sense, as the war was pretty short...

[seano1]

I think war weariness has a little bug in it. Mainly, it’s posable for a another civ to hold you in a war you don’t want. In one game I spent over 50 years kicking Rome’s ass all over the place while they refused may ambassador, all the while [b]my[b] goals were put on hold. I had to almost stop research, so I could put it all into happiness, and all I got were a bunch of super corrupt cites. Against other humans, someone is going to find way to exploit this.

There should be a way to unilaterally declare pace, for the purposes of war weariness.

[WarpStorm]

Seano1, in that case, change gov'ts. If you are in a long haul war use Communism or Monarchy (they each have their pros and cons, and no Communism doesn't suck.)

[Coracle]

Originally posted by seano1
I think war weariness has a little bug in it. Mainly, it’s posable for a another civ to hold you in a war you don’t want. In one game I spent over 50 years kicking Rome’s ass all over the place while they refused may ambassador, all the while [b]my[b] goals were put on hold. I had to almost stop research, so I could put it all into happiness, and all I got were a bunch of super corrupt cites. Against other humans, someone is going to find way to exploit this.

There should be a way to unilaterally declare pace, for the purposes of war weariness.

That's a very good point worth repeating.

We know the AI civs cheat in that one will often launch a hopeless attack on the human, or refuse to make a reasonable peace while losing, all to let their fellow civs pass the human who is bust fighting a war. But in a MP game this could casue some interesting variations.

I wish we could just pay another civ to go to war with a rival, as we did in Civ 2.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by seano1
Against other humans, someone is going to find way to exploit this.

There should be a way to unilaterally declare pace, for the purposes of war weariness.

So, in WW2 the Allies could have unilaterally delared peace with the Axis? How would this work? Would the Axis have stopped attacking?

If this is an exploit (and I don't think that it is), I already use it against the AI. I switch to a no war weariness gov and drag the Democracies down to my level before I end the war (this works best with a religious civ).

[JohnM2433]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
So, in WW2 the Allies could have unilaterally delared peace with the Axis? How would this work? Would the Axis have stopped attacking?

How would it work? Well, obviously, if you actually attack the other civ, in its own territory, your people get very unhappy indeed because the violation of your stance of non-agression. And if the other civ attacks you, or you attack it in neutral territory, they also get unhappy. But there is no unhappiness simply from the other civ having a declared war against you.

Not that I think it's a good idea. Even a cold war would likely make people unhappy, albeit not as much. Maybe such unilateral peace declaration could have a limited effect on war weariness, without eliminating it completely?

Regarding exploits: war is often waged for political reasons, which may include fermenting unrest in another country. So this does not strike me as particularly unfair.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by JohnM2433
How would it work? Well, obviously, if you actually attack the other civ, in its own territory, your people get very unhappy indeed because the violation of your stance of non-agression. And if the other civ attacks you, or you attack it in neutral territory, they also get unhappy. But there is no unhappiness simply from the other civ having a declared war against you.

John, I believe this is much how it currently works. If you are in the state of war, but no actual fighting takes place, there are no enemy units in your territory, no units of yours in the enemy territory, then the war weariness is very low (although there still is some), IIRC.