GAME CONCEPTS

City Happiness

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Each city keeps two figures: happinessHappiness, everything that keeps its people content, and unhappinessUnhappiness, everything that upsets them. A city is content as long as its happiness covers its unhappiness. Only the shortfall matters: the unhappy rate is unhappiness divided by happiness, minus one, capped at 100%. With 10 happiness and 7 unhappiness a city is fine; with 17 unhappiness it is 70% unhappy.

Sources of happiness

  • Every city starts with 10Happiness.
  • Buildings, wonders, policies and slotted artifacts that grant happiness.
  • Luxury trade goods the city holds, once per kind.
  • Your state religion: +5 in every city that holds it.
  • A road connection to your capital: +2Happiness and +2Gold for every city other than the capital.
  • High integrity: +2 in every city above 70%.
  • Some tile features, worked by a citizen.

Sources of unhappiness

  • Crowding: 1 per citizen. Buildings that relieve overcrowding only buy back the share above 10 citizens.
  • Empire size: every city you own makes every citizen in every city 0.2 unhappier, so in a ten-city empire a citizen costs 3 in all. Better governments remove part of it everywhere, and a building's share adds to theirs in its own city only (and only this; the empire size tier bonuses and penalties are not relieved):
  • Courthouse: Removes 5% more of the Happiness unhappiness from empire size in this city.
  • Rome: -25% Unhappiness from Empire Size
  • Democracy: -75% Unhappiness from Empire Size
  • Monarchy: -50% Unhappiness from Empire Size
  • Oligarchy: -25% Unhappiness from Empire Size
  • Republic: -50% Unhappiness from Empire Size
  • Theocracy: -25% Unhappiness from Empire Size
  • Imperial Cult: Removes 25% of the Happiness unhappiness your empire's size causes
  • No garrison: a city of more than 3 citizens with no military unit standing on it suffers 1 per citizen above that.
  • Disrepute: 5 per 5 points of integrity below your government's minimum, and 2 more below 30%.
  • Policies and other effects that take happiness away.

What unhappiness does

  • Unhappy citizens = population x unhappy rate, rounded down. They still work, but they do not grow the city.
  • Unrest: an unhappy city loses part of its food surplus, exactly as a sick one does (City Sickness). Nothing while it is content, rising to 90% of the surplus once it is 75% happy or less. Sickness takes its share first and unrest takes its share of what is left, so a city needs both health and happiness to keep growing. Unrest never starves a city.
  • More than 33.33% of the citizens unhappy: the city is Unhappy, a warning. More than 50%: it is Angry.
  • Corruption: an unhappy city loses 5% of every yield for each 20% of unhappy rate, up to 25%.
  • Riots: at the end of every turn an Angry city risks a riot. The chance is its unhappy rate minus 50%: a city 60% unhappy riots 10% of the time, one 100% unhappy half the time.
  • A riot lasts 0.4 turns per citizen (at least 1). A rioting city produces nothing and its food stands still. Afterwards it cannot riot again for as long as the riot lasted.
  • A captured city riots on capture, unless it is being liberated by a former owner.