Is Spamming Happiness a Competitive strategy?

[TreborTheTall]

Yo,

So I have a shorter video for you all this week. Here is a link to my video discussing spamming happiness:

Here are the notes that I used for this video:


This conversation on steam messages a couple months ago inspired this video idea:

AnemoneMeer:
Decided to check happiness event numbers. By turn 30 running Syndicate Heritor, I was able to achieve happiness events every turn in every city but my capital, and said events were giving values of 200 research, 400 production, 17 influence, 200+ energy, and 150 food. It's variable based on the city, but well... that was every turn from every city.
70+ happiness/city
WinSlaya:
geez, thats sounds like something I need to play around with, how many pops and sectors did you have in your colonies?
AnemoneMeer:
capital was 16 pop, and hit 100 cost per happiness event, so every turn with a break every now and again
rest were 70 or less, so every single turn
you get stronger happiness events at larger thresholds and more base resource generation though
but yeah, it is *explosive*
AnemoneMeer:
it's based on what yields the city *can* have, combined with being a massively boosted version of its yields that turn the other nice part is because bread & circuses and pulse beam are on the same tech, you can laser spam early



What does Happiness do?

1. Triggers happiness event once thresholds are passed, kind of like how food grows a new population when it crosses a threshold.
- Food, research, prod, energy, cosmite and influence.
- Always gives at least +50 basic resources, like food or research, or +10 for cosemite or influence.

2. Effectively allows you to have bigger colonies (each pop has a upkeep of 1 happiness)


Thresholds:

40/-40 happiness for colonies with 1-6 population
70/-40 happiness for colonies with 7-12 population
100/-40 happiness for colonies with 13+ population

Negative happiness events lead to rioters, which are pops that don’t generate an income. Sectors with Hazards and volcanic terrain heavily reduce happiness. Material law = fixes the unrest in larger colonies

Unlike food, and research, happiness doesn’t roll over past the threshold. (50 happiness per turn has the same result as 98 happiness per turn when the threshold is 100. Therefore happiness is incredibly easy to waste)


Stadium Arcadium:
Gives +10 happiness, which is really useful in the current version of the game. Requires 0 tech to get more happiness. Only requires a fight or buying an npc faction off for influence (there is also an anomaly that spawns a Stadium). Therefore its accessible in the early game


Popular Support:
Can boost or reduce happiness income by 10%, 20% or 30%, depending what level it is on. Just wars = happiness populations -> more happiness events


Racial Happiness (racial relations):
Effects your happiness gain in a colony of that race (friendly(+450) gives + 4; neutral (-199 through 199) gives nothing; distrusted (-200) gives -3)


City of the Awakened:

• gives +20 happiness to all cities, and reduces the food required togrow a new pop by 20% in all cities!
• The operation cost 200 energy and 15 op points.
• If you have more than 4 cities, this pays for itself quite quickly.

Bread and Circuses:

• Gives +12 happiness to a single city, and boosts happiness event income by 50%, for an upkeep of 10 energy.
• The operation cost 60 energy and 8 op points.
• Good on safe cities, but kind of costly (in op points), so difficult to put on every colony quickly. I may recommend try to unlock it a bit earlier than I did in my example, just keep in mind that if you get it too early you risk losing the cities you put this on to marauders and greedy enemy commanders.

Colony Wellness Buildings:

• Can reduce thresholds by up to 50% and increase the bonus resources by up to 150%!

Colony District Buildings:
The new colony district buildings allow the oathbound, and kirko to get more happiness through that route. The return on the immaculate level bonus of the syndicate Colony District Buildings is pretty bad. The other two levels are good, but getting happiness for spending influence on enemy commander is just not competitive (Which I covered in last weeks video)


Pursuing Negative Happiness:
I know the assembly can apply negative happiness to their own pops, so there are special interactions there that I am not very familiar with (maybe I will explore this more in a future videos) Let me know if that sounds like a good video in the comments below!



If you enjoyed reading the tips, maybe consider watching a bit of the video. Even just a couple minutes of watch time really helps the channel out

 

[coodav]

This is an incredibly effective approach to the game no matter what. I tend to focus on this quite often, unless happiness is just out of reach. That said, a handfull of happiness operations or tech, and you can get some incredible effects. Sharkarn are good with this too as they have the propaganda towers. There are great ways to make this work with them too, though not quite so much.

Oathbound are incredibly good at this too, and have some amazing bonuses with their heroes, even when they are remote.

Note that a few of these effects are incredibly hard to manage on PVE games. You will NEVER have an operation stay up in PVE because you get hacked every single turn, sometimes twice a turn, by every single opposing player. That will never work. It has to be doctrines, buildings, or units.

That said, if you get 150 production on this every 3 turns by shifting to happiness, and it takes 5 population in happiness to do that, know what that means. 5 x 5 x 3 = 75 production IF they have good production bonuses (5 production per person). That is DOUBLE the return. Do your own math. Happiness is a GREAT investment, it is just random, so unpredictable.

 

[atord/Nordos]

Missing the note about having a random Oathbound Hero skilled on food and reducing happiness treshold (by 30%) and the Syndicate T3 racial building, which means that you get an event each time you compliment/insult due to Wellnes (50%) stacking with it to reduce a happiness event down to 20.

 

[coodav]

Missing the note about having a random Oathbound Hero skilled on food and reducing happiness treshold (by 30%) and the Syndicate T3 racial building, which means that you get an event each time you compliment/insult due to Wellnes (50%) stacking with it to reduce a happiness event down to 20.

This is my next game, I think. I have got to try that. Getting a T3 building though... ugh.