[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12905) RFC: normalizing the effects of happiness buildings

["Peter Schaefer" <peter.schaefer@xxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12905 >

Well, the reasoning/game idea is to make it not too easy to keep your
city content even if you have lots of "content" buildings. It also
keeps cities from looking all the same.

The civ client shows you the exact sequence in a dialog, so players
could understand how it worked. Since this dialog isn't very popular -
I myself must have opened it only about half a dozen times- it follows
that players don't understand what is happening. If the effect was
simplified, I guess the AI code would get a little simpler too. (But
then, human players wouldn't be smarter than the AI ;-)

However, I am not sure you can completely simplify this into just one
value, luxuries, since military units might make people "content", but
not "happy", which makes sense, doesn't it.

You could try to break up the happiness calculation into two groups
though, into one "content" modifier, which would include military law
and the "luxuries" modifier.

So you might get away with 4 steps(city status' ) instead of 5 as they are now:
- get initial unrest and determine military unrest
- calculate luxuries and content modifiers and include wonders in these.
(steps)
- set up city for initial unrest
- apply content modifier
- apply luxuries modifier
- apply military unrest starting from lowest content citizen

This might simplify the wonders calculation and allow it to be cached.
I'm not sure this is worth all the work you will have to put into side
effects - I heard there is lots of smart code around somehow related
to happiness. Not to mention that that window in all clients would
have to be fixed, too.

On 4/27/05, Per I. Mathisen <per@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12905 >
> 
> On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, (Eddie Anderson) wrote:
> >   What does everyone think about normalizing the effects of the
> > happiness modifier produced by happiness buildings (Temples,
> > Colosseums, Cathedrals)?
> 
> I'm for it. Make it all be luxuries. Neat and elegant. However, this idea
> is not very popular, IIRC.
> 
> >   Besides being inconsistent, this difference produces counter-
> > intuitive results that are occasionally reported as bugs. E.g.
> > consider a player with Michelangelo and a temple, unhappysize=4,
> > a size 6 city, and a Democracy gov't.
> >
> >   He builds one bomber (or cruise missile) or sends one aggressive
> > unit across the border and his city falls into disorder.He wonders
> > why.He's got all kinds of excess happiness modifiers.  He wants to
> > know why those excess modifiers can't quell the unhappiness caused
> > by one military unit.
> 
> But as far as I can tell, they will...
> 
> IIRC, and I take this from my spurious memory:
> 
> unhappysize=4 causes 2 unhappiness (size 6)
> Bomber causes 2 unhappiness (under Democracy)
> Michelangelo quells 2
> Temple quells 2 (with Mysticism)
> 
> The end result is no unhappiness.
> 
>   - Per
> 
>