How to keep pops happy?

[REC0N]

Please Paradox give an in-depth guide to this problem.

I´ve tried everything from Governor policies, to trade goods, low aggressive expansion, to forts, stationed armies, intergration, conversion and assimilation.

Which also leads me to question the last two; conversion and assimilation. How can i found the causes and effects of this.. there is no good info in the view pops window.

I'm utterly confused about this. thought i had an idea.. happiness cause = Culture/religion, Governor, AE ... but i give up. i know nothing. So please help..

 

[turokhalo]

You can get a good idea about this from the imperator wiki page about population.

However, it has not yet been updated for 2.0, so it is a little outdated.
In short: keep your stability high (aggressive expansion influences this negatively, but ae has no immediate effect on pop happiness), the war exhaustion low (though the impact from low stability is higher), your governors not corrupted and look for nice inventions for pop happiness.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Yes, the game does have a problem of not explaining its systems very well. Though this does tend to be a problem with most Paradox games. I can give you a few tips that might help you get some progress for now.

1. You don't need all your pops to be happy, just enough to avoid unrest province wide.
2. Each pop contributes unrest based on their political power share. The higher ranking pops have more, slaves have none. So you can ignore slaves.
   
3. That said, each point of happiness contributes to that pop's output. So each point up to 100 is always helpful.
4. Maintain high stability. Most other things are balancing acts or only apply to one pop or another, but high stability is always good and low stability is always bad.
5. Keep war exhaustion low.
6. Each pop has a base happiness value, with higher ranking pops having lower happiness with the exception of slaves.
7. Buildings are good ways to target improve the happiness of certain pops in cities.
8. Religious and culture conversions are long term ways to improve happiness and cannot help with immediate unrest problems.
9. Governor policies generally help with either long term problems or directly affect province loyalty rather than pop happiness.
10. Each of your deities adds +4% happiness to that religion.
11. You can go into the culture screen and add special laws or change citizenship settings if one particular non-primary culture is a major problem.

 

[REC0N]

As for the wrong/lack of info on screen. Take the city of Raphon in the Palestine region as an example (Antigonid Empire at game start): The 'province loyalty' bar is showing that the monthly change of province loyalty is -0,15 and if you place the cursor over it, it specifies the 12 settlements (all of them equals = -0,10) and the governor (+0,02)

The sum of this should therefore be -0,08 and not -0,15 !!!

Another example is if you hoover the mouse over the pops.. there are more +% than -% happiness factors.. because the settlement has trade goods positive for all pops except for slaves. Yets still they are unhappy.. probably because of Religion/Culture.. but i can't see that and therefore address the problem.




Thx TheDarkMaser and turokhalo. I think i have trid all of that. Didnt know though that I can careless about slaves.. nice info

 

[Dayvit78]

Please Paradox give an in-depth guide to this problem.

I´ve tried everything from Governor policies, to trade goods, low aggressive expansion, to forts, stationed armies, intergration, conversion and assimilation.

Which also leads me to question the last two; conversion and assimilation. How can i found the causes and effects of this.. there is no good info in the view pops window.

I'm utterly confused about this. thought i had an idea.. happiness cause = Culture/religion, Governor, AE ... but i give up. i know nothing. So please help..

It might be helpful to post a screenshot, because you say you're doing everything that we would recommend. Are you giving it enough time? I've had provinces go negative for a long time, but until it gets to 33% loyalty, it doesn't really matter. And by the time it starts getting that low, my policies and actions have already started turning it around.

One very important thing to add to DarkMaster's list: Governor corruption. High corruption is an absolute happiness killer. Fire them, throw them in jail, never let them near your people (put them in office jobs is ok).

 

[REC0N]

It might be helpful to post a screenshot, because you say you're doing everything that we would recommend. Are you giving it enough time? I've had provinces go negative for a long time, but until it gets to 33% loyalty, it doesn't really matter. And by the time it starts getting that low, my policies and actions have already started turning it around.

One very important thing to add to DarkMaster's list: Governor corruption. High corruption is an absolute happiness killer. Fire them, throw them in jail, never let them near your people (put them in office jobs is ok).

Sorry can't find the screenshot folder. Just launch the game and go to that settlement.. (or any one for that matter it doesn't at up).


Right I start a new game - I look at the pop opinion map mode - I find the unhappy provinces - so lets say i keep my AE low - I make sure to have a decent stability - a good uncorruptable govenor - If I have trade slots I'll go for trade goods that add to happiness of the given pop .... what do I start building? What G policy do I choose? (please don't say harsh treatment - that's a temporarily solution) ...

Make same example where you know its not my culture/religion... What do i start to build here? conversion/assimilate building??


Just give it step by step. I have tried a lot.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Please Paradox give an in-depth guide to this problem.

I´ve tried everything from Governor policies, to trade goods, low aggressive expansion, to forts, stationed armies, intergration, conversion and assimilation.

Which also leads me to question the last two; conversion and assimilation. How can i found the causes and effects of this.. there is no good info in the view pops window.

I'm utterly confused about this. thought i had an idea.. happiness cause = Culture/religion, Governor, AE ... but i give up. i know nothing. So please help..

If you're just learning it may be a decent idea to consider Major Syncretism. You'lll get +15% Wrong Culture Group Happiness but have to trade off a -90% conversion speed (meaning you will essentially never convert any pops). You should be able to hold land you take though, learn the game, and have some fun without blowing up constantly, etc...You can learn the religious game later.

 

[Roy1012]

Major Syncretism can be very overpowered paired with other religious ideas and strategies, but yes, just focusing on that and ignoring the religious stuff to learn the game may be a good idea to start off with.

 

[Dayvit78]

Don't worry about having your province loyalty always at 100%.
As an example, right now I'm doing a Maurya run. I have at least 10 provinces trending down, but only one has hit 33%. Sooner or later, the downtrend will be -0.1 which means the problem is almost gone. And eventually, once you have converted/assimilated some of the pops, along with a good no corruption governor and a few of the province loyalty techs, they'll be positive again.
Ok, we don't need a screenshot, but give us the country that you're playing so we can advise step by step.

 

[Hemothep]

Each pop contributes unrest based on their political power share. The higher ranking pops have more, slaves have none. So you can ignore slaves.

This is not true. Slaves have a political share, just a small one. This means that, it's almost always better to care of all other pops first, however there are cases where slave happiness is important:

100% slave settlements are determined solely by the slave happiness

50/50 tribal settlements get about a third of their unrest from slaves. Since it's very easy to keep same-religion tribesmen at >50% happiness this means that all unrest in such territories comes from slaves.

 

[REC0N]

So how does this equation add up? 12 settlements in total -0,10 and the governors +0,02 = -0,15 ????

How to read and understand this? 1 Hebrew citizen 31% happiness and lots of +++% yet negative.


How can I learn to play this when the information I get is so unintelligible.

 

[Hemothep]

View attachment 685571
So how does this equation add up? 12 settlements in total -0,10 and the governors +0,02 = -0,15 ????

View attachment 685572
How to read and understand this? 1 Hebrew citizen 31% happiness and lots of +++% yet negative.


How can I learn to play this when the information I get is so unintelligible.

The first one is due to rounding errors. Those +0,00 values are almost +0,01.

The second one is correct. Add up all modifiers and you'll get 31%.

 

[REC0N]

The first one is due to rounding errors. Those +0,00 values are almost +0,01.

The second one is correct. Add up all modifiers and you'll get 31%

Thx for opening my eyes to more +0,01's man.. And seeing the unlogical contradictions: "Govenor is Hellenic" as -6% and "Hellenic" is +8,00% as logical ;-)

Now that I understand that - is it better to centralize pops in these outskirt areas .. for then to concentrate buildings on them in one city? How do you best handle them in the Diadochi kingdoms?

 

[Hemothep]

Thx for opening my eyes to more +0,01's man.. And seeing the unlogical contradictions: "Govenor is Hellenic" as -6% and "Hellenic" is +8,00% as logical ;-)

Now that I understand that - is it better to centralize pops in these outskirt areas .. for then to concentrate buildings on them in one city? How do you best handle them in the Diadochi kingdoms?

"Governor is Hellenic" means, the Governor is of a different Religion than the pop.
"Hellenic +8%" is the inherent buff of Hellenic as state religion to increase citizen happiness by 8% regardless of the religion of the pop.

Yeah, they could do with additional nested tooltips to tell you where each modifier comes from.

 

[Todie]

is it better to centralize pops in these outskirt areas .. for then to concentrate buildings on them in one city?

This is one way to do it, wether you move slaves in manually or do it over time using centralizing policy. You need inventions to build theatre / temple though, and buildings cost a lot of gold.

If the province is costal you can also opt to push many of them to migrate to other ports, using hash treatment.

The ”easiest” thing you can do is probably to simply use conversion and assimilation province policies, but it costs influence to change these.
And they’re only guaranteed to stay in place as long as the current governor, so considerations of characters and familiess and their loyalties cone in to play, id you care about your influence.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

This is not true. Slaves have a political share, just a small one. This means that, it's almost always better to care of all other pops first, however there are cases where slave happiness is important:

100% slave settlements are determined solely by the slave happiness

50/50 tribal settlements get about a third of their unrest from slaves. Since it's very easy to keep same-religion tribesmen at >50% happiness this means that all unrest in such territories comes from slaves.

That's true, and with their -30% base happiness it's very hard to avoid there being some unrest generated. However, it's a very small number and can be ignored for extended periods of time. A single fort in each province will generally solve any province loyalty issues caused by slaves.

 

[Hemothep]

That's true, and with their -30% base happiness it's very hard to avoid there being some unrest generated. However, it's a very small number and can be ignored for extended periods of time. A single fort in each province will generally solve any province loyalty issues caused by slaves.

This is also not true for the cases I cited:

A 100% slave settlement will have 3,5 unrest at 0% slave happiness. To nullify unrest with one fort (-0,75) your slaves need to be at 39% happiness. You most likely won't get there just ignoring their happiness because you only get this case by disabling slave promotion (-24%).

A 50/50 tribal settlement with tribesmen at 50% and slaves at 0%, will have 1,17 unrest, again more than a single fort would cover. For that the slaves would need a happiness of 18%. This is far more realistic until you remember that migratory tribes spend most time far below 50% stability for doing the stuff they do.

You also create another problem with your one fort per province approach: Upkeep.
Let's assume you want to be a great power (it's a map painter after all). That's at least 1.000 territories. A province has 10 to 12 territories (let's say 11 on average). One fort costs 0,6 upkeep with the one in the capital being free. This means you have at least an upkeep of:

(1.000/11 - 1) × 0,6 = 54 gold a month

That's a lot of gold that could very easily be spend elsewhere if you just take care of the happiness of your slaves.