Happiness

[dumbstude]

I wish for this thread to be solely devoted to issues concerning happiness and citizen morale within empires in Call To
Power 2 (CTP2). I've been playing Civilization 2 for a few years now trying to perfect a strategy of developing the optimal happiness for my empire on the easiest level. For example, in my most recent game (perfectly designed map, etc.), I had a republic with all cities having "We Love The Consul Day" by 3300/3200 BC.
Now I just bought CTP2 almost two weeks ago and I find that there seems to be limits. Can food rations be set above 10kg to enhance happiness? Can wages be set above 20 gold/worker to further enhance happiness?
In all these types of games (Master of Orion is no exception), a big part of my strategy is optimizing industrial productivity. Therefore, I find it less profitable to enhance happiness by cutting work hours (especially pre-Industrial Revolution, before that revolution, much work needs to be done!). I was wondering if there is any way to get cities to celebrate in CTP2. I have read through the entire instruction manual and through several of these threads and have seen only very vague references to city celebrations. Are such celebrations even possible in CTP2? If they are, then do their effects vary from gov. type to gov. type as they do in Civilization 2? Is there any government type in CTP2 for which a city celebration would generally result in a rapid population increase with minimal food surplus as in Civilization 2 under their republic and democracy governments?
I really do prefer the macromanagement aspects of CTP2 (when I actually do have time to play it). And, like Alpha Centauri, one can build cities on the ocean too!

[Locutus]

In the first place, welcome to CtP2 and Apolyton!

More to the point, celebrations do exist in CtP2 but their effects are minimal. I think the only result is that the city grows slightly faster, but I'm not entirely sure about that (I'm sure others know more about this though).

The best happiness strategy in CtP2 is probably to keep happiness as low as possible, but high enough to prevent (massive) riots and revolts. Lower happiness means less entertainers, longer working hours, etc; in short, that more resources are being collected. So the net result of low happiness (compared to high happiness and celebrations) is in most cases faster growth, higher production and more rapid scientific advancement.

So, as crude as it may be, it is in CtP2 the responsibility of you, as leader of your nation, to keep your citizens as unhappy as possible without making them angry enough to depose you Very realistic model, if I may say so myself

(Yes, I agree celebrations should give stronger advantages, but at this point this is simply not the case)

[Dinner]

Yes, if the people are happy then that means you are feeding them to much and giving them to much time off. You must start to think like a dirty capitalist and begin to squeeze them for everything they are worth. Aim for a happiness rating of around 72.

[TheArsenal]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Yes, if the people are happy then that means you are feeding them to much and giving them to much time off. You must start to think like a dirty capitalist and begin to squeeze them for everything they are worth. Aim for a happiness rating of around 72.

My thoughts exactly. I arrange my cities in the National Manager by descending happiness, that way when I'm squeezing them I can tell at a quick glance which cities are getting shaky with my rule. If there were a more tangible result for keeping an empire happy over long periods, I may have played it differently, but at the end of the day, I get no real reward that my people were so happy they were "green".

[Bluevoss]

For all my griping about the current corporate state, I play CTP2 the same way. As long as my citizens arn't bouncing bricks off the militia, I'll do everything I can to screw them.

Its like I once said about corporations providing stress classes. They only do it for the same reason you sqwash leaves into a trash bag - so you can get more leaves into it.

You need to play Cradle - there sure isn't time for happyness there - you are too busy with all the fighting.

[centrifuge]

In Civ2, happiness did seem a lot more important, than in CTP2. In Democracy especially, happiness would make your civ grow like a weed. In CTP2 I have yet to find any real benefit other than to keep the cities from rioting. Therefore, I usually put my slider bars as far over as possible without making the people pissed.

Can anyone tell me, does happiness of the population effect the final score, the way that it did in Civ2? I haven't really paid attention I guess.

[Cookie Monster]

I've been playing the CTP series for quite sometime now and I never thought of pushing the envelope of making my people unhappy! Great concept!

[Dinner]

I'm not sure. Is there even an WLTK day in CTP2? For all the time I've played the game I've never once tried to make my people happy.

[child of Thor]

Yes i squeeze my poor people to the brink of revolution too......i just never really think about it. Makes me a bit sad on reflection, maybe we should have Unions to represent the people and take the Goverments(us) to court for Human Rights breaches!!! Viva La revoultion! - i hate having to sweat to make a living......

[Locutus]

Originally posted by centrifuge
Can anyone tell me, does happiness of the population effect the final score, the way that it did in Civ2? I haven't really paid attention I guess.

I *think* it does, but I'm not sure, never really pay attention to it either. Means very little though as only the last turn of the game counts: you can have very unhappy citizens throughout the game and only make them happy in the very last turn and get a huge bonus for happiness

Oerdin,
Yes, there is a WLTK day, but, as I said before, it doesn't do much...

[Bluevoss]

Technically, happy cities should grow faster, and unhappy cities should shrink.

Is there a mod in the wind for this...?

[DeanToth]

Well, there are some advantages to great happiness...

Firstly, as mentioned, very low happiness leads to riots, and if low enough for long enough, to a revolting city which becomes another empire (albeit a mini-empire of one city)... Rioting cities don't grow at all and don't produce at all.

Secondly, with several extra points of happiness on your side, you can "push" a city beyond it's normal limits - for instance kicking up the production to very high levels when you want to produce something in an emergency or finish a wonder quickly during a wonder-race. (sometimes you have a specific city located near mountains and has a high production output or sometimes a huge city on production-poor grasslands or desert)

High pollution from population or production can also be outweighed by general happiness. As can "empire size" or "capitol distance" unhappiness.

All these instances have occured to me when I've been behind the curve for research and need to expand, yet haven't discovered new gov't types with larger max city ratings or different pollution tolerances.

A final advantage of high happiness which I find I often use is this: to overcome "war discontent" as I am often at war with one nation for a long time.

In all these cases, I usually try to have the national happiness high enough to avoid the use of entertainers since they sap an individual city's labor/science efficiency quite a bit. And I am pretty fastidious about having plenty of shrines/basilica's/movie palaces, etc. to help boost happiness.

To answer the original post's question regarding pushing wages/incomes over the limit.. well this can't be done strictly speaking, but you can change the scale of the slider with different governments. Some governments have a higher max wage/ration.

[DeanToth]

Final thoughts:

Higher happiness also protects against spies inciting revolution, which you will usually need when playing against me ;-)

It also protects against cleric conversion (again, I use this tactic a lot...)

In CTP1 i seem to recall points for number of celebrations but haven't seen this in CTP2. However, isn't there a negative hit for rioting?

Also, there are certain feats of wonder and certain wonders that give your empire a happiness bonus for a few turns... is there NO advantage to this aside from the ones I mentioned earlier?

Locutus thinks you may grow faster. Another way I just thought of is when you get a (for instance) +5 happy bonus for 10 turns, you can use these 10 turns to crank down your empire wage/ration greatly for the duration - and get 10 turns of bank!

So, in summary, a crafty application of strategies can yield good returns on happiness.

I've never tried Locutus' suggestion of keeping people nearly-unhappy. Is the increased production simply a function of turning down your rations/wages so you bank more? Or are "unhappy" citizens actually intrinsically more productive in the game engine?

[djpsychonaut]

War Discontent

Sometime early on during the Ancient Age, I conquered the Cuban civ. I'm now in the Genetic Age and I'm noticing that all of the cities I've taken from other civs STILL HAVE WAR DISCONTENT affecting them!! How is that possible? I have excellent relations with all nations and haven't been at war with anyone for a good number of turns...

Aside from that, I wiped the Cuban civ out of existence hundreds of years ago. How is it that they could still be pissed off about this? If this was Civ3, then the citizens of the old Cuban civ would now all have converted their nationality to my own (American). This is quite a lengthy process in Civ3, but it looks like in CTP2 there is simply no way to keep a conquered city and have them as happy as cities I originally settled.

I'm playing unmodded and with the latest official patch (albeit still through Modswapper). Do any or all of the mods fix this stupid oversight on Activision's part?

What's up with that?

[djpsychonaut]

This is also affecting other cities I've taken from other civs over the years that are still on the map.