Happiness meter mechanic

i think there should be a happiness mechanic as well as getting your settlers food you have to keep them happy.to keep them happy you can build buildings like taverns for beers and ales and hospitals to keep them healthy also if you keep them feed,drunk and healthy that keeps there happiness meter up the more happy they are the more settlers will appear the less happy they are the more likely they will leave the settlement

It’s definitely something you could mod in…but I’m sorry to break it to you that Radiant won’t be implementing it. This has come up in the past and they’ve said that it becomes overly reliant on micro-management, something they want to avoid.

The example they standardly use is Sims - it is present in Sims which is great because that game is all about micro-management, and they have nothing against Sims, it’s just that it’s not what they want.

It will likely be modded in though, it’s an idea several people have had and wanted to see in-game, so I would be surprised if nobody created a mod for it.

That sounds quite good and could be interesting even if it would likely require a lot of balance testing to prevent some kind of exponential growth from rampaging along. Since you can rename the stat you suggested to something like attractiveness, then it’s things like building hospitals or inns which increase attractiveness while lots of invasions or something might decrease. Then just make attractiveness act as a modifier for the cost to get new people, high attractiveness will make it cheaper to get new citizens while a low enough value could make it nearly impossible.

Of course my description of seems completely different to how @Smokestacks described, mine being roughly equivalent to culture from civ as opposed to happiness from sims. Although if you made it macro enough a happiness value could work, just make it so it’s all automatic, if you’ve got inns they might go there at night or a hospital could negate more of the unhappiness from sickness/injury then just a healer might. So there’s two entirely different mechanics both of which could be good.

thank you for your opinions i think that players should have to work to get more settlers

Could you possibly elaborate on that with respect for what we said? That statement refers to something that clearly will be true so what do you actually mean?

probably that, as opposed to simply meeting some basic formulaic requirements (amount of food, available beds, etc) that the units might also have to meet some minimum happiness quota in order to attract new units…

In terms of a happiness meter, if it was on each individual settler then that would be far too micro for the game, and would make things rather complicated …

However, if you were provided with a simple settlement overview, I can see that working.

Now for a left field example:

This is from Zoo Tycoon on the Xbox - if you hold down the left trigger then that chart expands (it’s at the bottom left of the screen) showing you information on other areas (things like animal variety, entertainment, restrooms, animal hunger, animal cleanliness) - so we can see that people’s happiness is just over half full and I think that one above it is animal happiness which is empty.

So, perhaps some sort of visual information (I’d settle for text feedback) on certain aspects of your happiness or even ā€˜readiness’ would be awesome.

Things like:

  • Food Feedback - ā€˜You have enough food to last X days with current consumption’ (would come in handy during those winter months, or allow you to focus farming efforts on other things perhaps? Or so you know you can trade more food for other items you need?

  • Sleeping feedback - breakdown of what items you have for your settlers to sleep on, and which ones are being used?

This does turn things slightly more into that sim management aspect, but hey, this is all spitballing right?

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Why? My idea was more along the lines of tiredness, something that every unit tracks that is managed for you. Combine with the idea for infrastructure unlocking idle animations and it could be even better, link things like relaxing at taverns or flying kites to increased happiness. The advantage though of individual values over a city value is the variety across jobs, a soldier that sees a lot of combat would need to spend more time relaxing than a babtory foreman cobbler for example. Have happiness be a minor thing that allows micro for super results, like farming seems to be, it could also be used to make your villagers more diverse, Brom Gwarin over there likes flying kites while Leah Hunterton never drinks. Just little things to spice things up a bit.

It’s designed to not need micro, it could be managed at a level of high macro with just building a tavern or park or just making some toys when people start to get unhappy. At the same time you could make sure everyone has exactly what they like, Brom gets his kites and Leah gets her nonalcoholic beer.

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i would be ok with this… given my tendency to want smaller populations to begin with, managing the individual units happiness wouldnt be an issue, but i completely understand @Geoffers747 point (and its inline with Radiant’s desire to not have an abundance of micromanagement)…

so, having this option would make for a nice balance between micro and macro (again, as is the case in farming)…

I don’t actually think our points are dissimilar - when I said too micro I meant in terms of monitoring the levels of individual happiness and needs (similar to the Sims).

I meant that saying ā€˜Mer Burlyhands is unhappy, needs to relax, needs to sleep, needs to eat’ would feel far too micro especially when you have god knows how many settlers.

Of course, it is perhaps useful to have access to certain information so you know when certain units will be busy doing other things …

If the game keeps track of this (which I imagine it will, how else will our adorable citizens know when to sleep and eat?) then that’s great, and if we are then provided with a settlement wide overview of these things then awesome, I’m not sure if an individual unit based feedback would venture too much into micro territory, unless of course it focussed on important things like health, food, tiredness.

So yer, our points are probably the same, just a miscommunication at some point :slight_smile:

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I would like a happiness meter if it isn’t too complicated, maybe like Stronghold (more food =) ;
more taxes =( … ). If you have more than 50/100 happiness points new people will come to live in your town, the more points the faster they come (if you have enough food, water, space etc.).

I kinda like this idea. This seems to have a decent balance between micro and macro; you don’t have to make your citizens happy to increase the population, but increasing their happiness will add a ā€œbuffā€ to increase the population faster if your town has the resources and you’d prefer to build up your city faster.

Of course if you don’t want more people you have to stop your city from being so great, and who’d want to do that?! I want my citizens to be plump little pigs, gorging themselves and letting no one else in :smile:

My original post was simply whether we would see it in game or not. Of course it could be modded in, and that’d be fine. I personally don’t know if I would feel it necessary, however I’d have to play the game first to know. :stuck_out_tongue:

@Geoffers747 … honestly, the man has visions of a kakistocracy:

government by the worst

for a very thorough list of outlandish forms of ā€œgovernmentā€, take a look here… :smile:

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I must say I meant it as a ā€œWhy would I want to make my city rubbish?ā€, however coming to think of it, perhaps watching my citizens burn in a Diabolocracy would be fun.

Yes, yes, I see it now. Darkness, consume me. :fire:

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If we were to implement happiness, then my little jester here would be happy to help out!

Thing is with this game… anything you can think of will eventually be either in the game or in a mod. So any suggestion is acceptable as long as its not asking for cry engine 3 graphics and oculus rift space battles.

I just know that if I ever have a go at some happiness meter, it’s going to end like Sims. With blocks over settler’s heads. And attributes that are just absolutely weird.

i was thinking of more a citizen happiness metre bar at the bottom of the screen, if they have too little food or are always robbed it goes down and if it reaches the bottom say, they split into two groups, half are yours and half are hostile to you, so you aim to stay above the ā€œlineā€

meaning each unit would have to be selected, to determine his or her happiness though, correct? this would become a bit tedious over time (i would imagine)… i think it would be ok to have notifications from our units about their anxiety/unhappiness/ā€œteetering on the brink of anarchyā€ feelings though…

that way the player is alerted to the problem, and can react (if they have the means)… otherwise, you are at least aware that one or more units are about to go rogue on you, and you can try to plan accordingly…