I do not have any empirical evidence (I could be wrong), but I think since the 1.2.5 update the happiness balance is broken. Mostly because of the new building cost progression: you have less buildings and therefore potentially more happiness and also gold. Like I said I might be wrong here, but I am sure that the AI is basically not able to compete diplomatically from the start of the exploration age. All City States are basically easy to grab. Do you guys share the same observation or do you disagree?
#Happiness and Influence rework
brisk flame
proud pilot
From my observation both happiness and influence functions fine in Antiquity, but completely falls apart in exploration and modern. I assume that the reason behind AI diplo behavior is that it overprioritize endeavors and espionage, and as a result they have no influence left for City-states. I especially noticed multiple failed espionage attempts from AI, which on fail tanks their influence generation, sometimes in single-digit territory. I think in general influence system is fine but AI should definitely reprioritize some things like influence generation and spending priority.
Happiness however is indeed broken, but I don`t think new building system has that much weight in it: I think we just have too much happiness generation and too few happiness sinks in general. We have happiness from yields, resources, buildings, attributes, social policies, and only way thing that consumes them is very low building maintenance, and the only think happiness influences are celebrations. In my last few games, I was constantly in celebrations while completely ignoring happiness buildings and not having happiness civ/leaders – just happiness from yields and resources are often enough to guarantee constant celebrations if you actively settle to your settlement limit. We need scaling happiness maintenance on buildings per era, and possibly add happiness maintenance on some other things like population or units, or decrease happiness from resources, or increase happiness requirements on celebrations.
brisk flame
@proud pilot thanks for your thoughts! I think you have spelled out my suspicions better than me! I really like both new yields and the diplomatic system in general, but it is just not working at the moment!
vocal siren
It must be said that increased happiness has the sole advantage of unlocking new political cards. I would give happiness an additional effect, as happened in Civ 6: a certain amount of positive happiness should increase the yields of cities, while a certain amount of negative happiness reduces them.
vocal siren
I'm updating this post because I think the happiness resource needs to be given more importance. Currently, there's no incentive to have a lot of happiness in settlements, except with certain leaders. Even having unhappy cities isn't a major problem.
novel spruce
Agree with @proud pilot there are too much happiness in this game. I would suggest to scale up food and happiness maintenance for specialist s with age.
modest flicker
For influence, i suggest amend if-then statement to let AI use more Endeavor in the early stage while more sanction and bribe city states (during raging barbarian crisis) in the later stage of the game. Endeavor vs sanctions nature have significantly different meaning as the game progress. For happiness, develop need to make it slightly more significant to reflect its importance during later stage of the game. Otherwise, it let players ignored the importance of happiness.
novel spruce
Personally I don't feel there are an influence issue in this game - influence seems reasonably balanced - I think it is more an AI issue.
We are almost a year from the launch and AI still can not use a core mechanics properly.
vivid axle
In my opinion I think happiness generation is generally fine, but celebration costs are far too easy to hit past antiquity, it's rare I'm not in permanent celebration with no happiness building investment for the entirety of exploration and modern. I think changes to the costs of celebration to require investment into happiness would be a good buff to happiness generating civs and leaders that are currently pretty weak like Maurya and Jose Rizal.
grand marsh
To my knowledge, city park (among other buildings), are still not working as intended, allowing you to produce ridiculous amounts of happiness.. I feel like yields in general would benefit from a rework.
If generation feels good, it's because costs (drains on yields) are also out of whack.