Odd happiness

SandMonkey · August 4, 2000, 13:05

I should probably post this in the ToT forum, but I know more people frequent this forum, soo...

I am playing the SciFi game in ToT. My largest city (size 13, so far), has an odd happiness thing going on. The first pic (loacated here), shows the city as it naturally grew, with two happiness improvements (I'm playing it on Chieftan to learn the tech tree, and to see what I have to do and all).

The second pic (located here), shows the city with one worker being used as an entertainer (that's the ugly green guy). But the wird thing is, if you notice, that the neither the taxes nor the science were decreased, and the entertainment increased, but I lost a happy citezen!

What's the deal with that? Anyone have any htoughts?

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SandMonkey

"Shut up brain or I'll stab you with a qtip"
-Homer Simpson

"Ecky ecky ecky!"
"It's just a flesh wound!"
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Check out my 1602 A.D. site

Shadowstrike · August 5, 2000, 19:58

Arrrrggggghhhh!

I dispise that siphoner of happiness (both mine and my citizens) Luckily opening the city window of the affliced city usually solves the probem for me... but my copy also has this wierd bug that prevents me from playing non-Microprose scenarios.

myrlyn · August 5, 2000, 22:21

Well for starters your data went down by one point. The point lost must have been the treshold for the extra happy citizen.

SandMonkey · August 5, 2000, 23:01

Yeah but raw data has nothing to do with happiness. The entertainment went up by one, and the taxes didn't change. I dunno, must have been a glitch or something.

SCG · August 7, 2000, 08:57

Don't know much about ToT, but i've noticed similar things in Civ II 2.42. If you check your happiness info, you'll probably see that by picking up a worker, you have 1 less content citizen initially (before luxuries/improvements/wonders kicks in). The entertainer is being counted as your other content citizen for calculation purposes. As for the data remaining about the same - you lost 1 inaccuracy and one regular data (which apparently was being counted towards luxuries). The entertainer then creates 2 new luxuries (as per the manual) and everything now seems accounted for.

hope that helps

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

The Mad Monk · August 7, 2000, 17:27

Sandmonkey, the citizen on the far right (pre-entertainer) is an unhappy citizen; when the entertainer is added, he disappears too. What government are you in? I can see that one of the city's supported transports is out, but I've forgotten if the symbol is for unhappiness, or for the one 'free' unit the republic-type government gets. If entertainers are applied after unhappiness-causing units, that may be the source of the loss.

Smash · August 7, 2000, 18:30

I don't have ToT but it looks very familiar.

I think the riot factor may be the reason.

Do you have lots of cities or whatever they are called in ToT?

In civ2, every government, cept Commie, has a riot factor.Might have been helpful if we could see the "happy" screen.

Shadowstrike · August 7, 2000, 18:59

Communism doesn't have a Riot Factor????????

Time to rethink my ICS-like strategy (no I don't play ICS, I repeat I don't play ICS)

Smash · August 7, 2000, 19:17

Here is what is reads in the rules.txt

0 ; Communism is equivalent of this palace distance.

0 distance effectively eliminates the riot factor from Communism.It also makes units and cities more expensive to bribe.

SandMonkey · August 7, 2000, 21:24

Mad Monk - I was in the Republic equivelent at the time.

Smash - I don't know about riot factor. Like I said in my first post, I was playing it on Chieftain just to get the hang of how this one would play out. I didn't have way too many cities at the time. Heck I have a lot more now and I still am now suffering from unhappiness due to all the cities. At least a noticable amount...

It wasn't a lasting problem with that or any other city. I am now in the Democracy equivelent, and am growing all my cities using WLTPD.

SCG · August 8, 2000, 07:53

I get the feeling following posters didn't understand what I said in my first post. What I said applies to every city and every government on every level of every civ II games I've seen. (heh, sounds like an ATT comercial

)Its harder to see on large diety civilizations since you can often get the first citizen unhappy in a city, but it applies to any city with an initial content citizen (even fundamentalism, since this is before -any- modifiers kick in)

In the city display, click on the happy button to get the happiness chart. The first row is the happiness of the city before anything is used to modify it (martial law, luxuries, improvements, govt type etc). If the city has at least 1 content citizen, you can see what I'm talking about.

pick up 1 worker on the resourse map and watch the change on the first row of the happiness chart. The number of unhappy citizens will remain the same, and the number of content citizens will appear to decrease by 1. That is because an entertainer is considered a content citizen for happiness calculations. If you still have a content citizen on the first row, you can pick up another worker and the same thing will happen. The number of unhappy citizens stay the same and 1 more content citizen is made an entertainer. Because entertainers can't be made happy or unhappy, all the later modifiers don't affect them. This means you will need to make an unhappy citizen happy instead of a content citizen happy to have the same number of happy people. Creating an entertainer will create 2 luxuries, but if you picked up a trade producing worker, you may have reduced the luxuries otherwise being generated. This is the case in Sandmonkey's example. He picked up a trade (or data) producing worker and decreased his luxuries (entertainment) by 1. The entertainer then produced 2 new luxuries for a net increase of 1. If the city had been producing an odd number of luxuries, that would have been enough to keep the same number of happy people (it takes 2 luxuries to affect 1 citizen, and if there is 1 leftover it is discarded).

If a city has no content citizens, then picking up a worker has the effect of producing a "free" content citizen. You can take advantage of this especially at higher difficulty levels. Picking up several workers when the city has no initial content citizens produces a lot of content citizens. With enough luxuries, you may find that you can change several or even all of the entertainers into taxmen/scientists and still keep the city in order, or even celebrating WLTxD. I have had many cities of all sizes on diety that were in disorder with all the workers placed on high-trade squares, and yet were celebrating when I picked up 3-6 workers and made them taxmen or scientists depending on the need of the turn.

Well, this is a lot longer than I anticipated, but the moral of it all is that understanding _how_ happiness is calculated, you can take full advantage of your cities resourses without spending a long time trying to micromange them

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

Xin Yu · August 8, 2000, 14:35

Only half of the citizens can be made happy. Generally speaking, if you have 11 citizens in a city then only 5 (i.e., half rounded down) can be made happy.

If you have Hanging Garden, Cure of Cancer, or democracy+courthouse then you get extra happy citizens.

Or, if your first citizen is content or double-unhappy before any other factors are considered, then you can have 6 happy citizens out of 11 (i.e., half rounded up). This happens if you have too many or too few cities. Hiring a specialist definitely eliminates this possibility.

SCG · August 8, 2000, 16:13

Good point about the 1/2 citizens. Any luxuries over 4x the number of citizens (or 2 goblets per citizen) are wasted, and with double-unhappy citizens funny things can happen. Of course on chieftan, double unhappy or no initial content citizens are probably impossible to get

And with even sized cities, entertainers are quite useful for celebrating.

One little thing i sometimes do if i have a bank or marketplace coming in but not before an even city grows naturally, is to hold the food just below the full storage and then finish the improvement so i can celebrate to odd-sized and grow back to even sized a turn or 2 later and celebrate again. Of course that is a limited use strategy, but a size 3 growth is nicer than a size 1 growth

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April Cantor: Sire, in order to expand further we must first gain favor of the King

SCG: darn, I've never really got the hang of that tribute thing, guess it will be a long time until i make prince

*goes off and starts gifting gold and techs*

Xin Yu · August 8, 2000, 16:55

Follow up to my previous post: sometimes you can have multiple double-unhappy citizens, thus increase the maximum number of happy citizens

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