forum.freeciv.org

Something about Empire Size and Happiness doesn't make a lot of sense for me.

I am playing at Freecivweb.org, with a huge map (size = 38) and 63 AIs, and they spread like the plague and build many cities. My goal is to win the game through military conquest, not the space race.

My government is a democracy, where in the classic ruleset:

• "Empire size at which only three workers per city are content" = 14
  "How many more cities make an additional worker unhappy in each city" = 16

Theoretically, a big democratic empire should be hard pressed to manage unhappiness, because of that size. I have played games where I had 220 cities and I had to check tax rates constantly every time I added 16 new cities to my empire.

My empire right now consists of 650 cities (total craziness, yeah, and there many cities to be conquered yet). Every turn takes a lot of time but I am enjoying it.

I have built all the wonders that affect happiness (Cure For Cancer, Michelangelo's Chapel, J.S. Bach's Cathedral, Women's Suffrage, Shakespeare's Theatre). I am building temples and colisseums in every city above size 3, and markets (even banks) where there is enough trade. In a few cases, cathedrals.

BUT!

My tax rates are 30% luxury and 70% gold. Isn't that weird?

650 cities and "16 more cities make an additional worker unhappy" mean 39 additional unhappy workers.

Happiness is clipped at every happiness processing step (I don't remember if freeciv-web client shows them like native one does), i.e., no more than 100% of the people can be unhappy after applying empire size factors. Following steps need to improve happiness from that situation only, not from "of my 10 citizens, 40 are unhappy".

Thanks, cazfi.

So that means that, after a Democracy has reached a certain size (number of cities) where 100% of citizens would be unhappy (before applying luxury tax, wonders, etc.), increasing the empire size is not going to contribute more towards widespread unhappiness. That is, I don't have to worry more with 1200 cities than with 620, happiness-wise.

Yes.

Those rules should be unhardcoded to make it at least possible for rulesets to adjust the behavior.