Multiplayer wish list

[Corbeau]

Yeah, that's of course not realistic. Then again, the whole thing with claimed borders is unrealistic – if one player builds a city no other player can build cities in the surrounding area, even if the player has no form of military control there.

I'd like to point you in the direction of the discussion about the realism of "restrictinfra". Basically, if units are not visible on the map, it doesn't mean "no military presence". If there is a city nearby, there will always be some kind of local militias, home guard, special police forces, Reserves, whatever, that have their influence in the field. This is what the boredr represents and this is actually what Zone of Control represents: you can't freely move adjacent to a military unit not out of fear that it will shoot at you wile you turn their flank at them (because the scale is tens, maybe hundreds of kilometres), but because the surrounding area is full of scouts, skirmishers, small special force units, potential ambushes, that hinder movement. Same goes for building a city. You simply do not build civilian infrastructure in an area that is still not 100% clear.

[cazfi]

Fortress must be within 3 tiles of a friendly city for the no-unhappiness effect to work.

Is this hard-coded or a ruleset thing?

Firstly, this is a server setting thing – if happyborders is enabled, I'd assume the distance doesn't matter, so long as the fortress is a border source.
Apart from that, I'd assume hard-coded, since I can't recall ever having seen a setting for something like that anywhere in the ruleset.

Yes, happyborders makes mood all the rules about how units inside fortress do not cause unhappiness.