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How to Generate Happiness
In Civilization 7, Happiness is a strong yield that can have a big affect on your productivity that often goes underutilized. They are also gateways to Celebrations that can be foundational to your overall objectives of winning a game. On top of that, it also can help you supercharge your government with powerful policies. Here’s everything you need to know about keeping a smile on your people's faces.
Civilization 7 Happiness Overview
Happiness is a unique yield in Civilization 7. While it’s not part of a win condition on any of the Legacy Paths like Economic, Science or Cultural, it can provide massive benefits throughout a game that can set you up for wins later down the line.
There are many benefits to Happiness, as well as drawbacks for not maintaining a positive vibe around your Civilization. Celebrations are very powerful events triggered by Happiness that turbocharge your yields, and are something you want to be activating as often as possible. These help you accrue social policies that can have massive effects on your Civilization when stacked.
On top of that, having a real excess of Happiness can allow you to expand far beyond the limits the game sets for you. That said, if you have one Settlement that is really unhappy, you could be on the verge of losing it. So, as you can see, it benefits you too keep everyone smiling.
How To Keep Everyone Happy
To keep your populace happy, there are a few tracks you can take. Firstly, several buildings you can build in your Settlements can provide Happiness. For example, in the Modern Era, a Department Store can be a great source of Happiness, whereas in the Exploration Age, Altars help. Of course, another great source of Happiness is World Wonders such as the Colosseum.
The other easy way to up your Happiness is through resources. Things like Dyes, Furs, Wine, and others can all provide Happiness, so they are worthwhile to either grab through expansion or trade for.
Perhaps one of the best ways to generate Happiness is through Army Commanders. If an Army Commander is within the bounds of a Settlement, they provide Happiness for that Settlement. The more experienced they are, the more Happiness they produce too. This is an excellent choice to offset Unrest or Unhappiness if a Settlement becomes a problem, or you need to naturalise the Settlement after taking it over.
Also, Mountain tiles or Natural Wonders can also be organically occurring features on the map you can use to boost Happiness. Just be aware that you can’t work Mountain tiles for other yields, so they are a double-edged sword.
Other than that, basic tiles you work can also provide Happiness under the right circumstances.
Benefits Of Happiness
Here are some of the key benefits to having a happy population.
Celebrations
Excess Happiness will always contribute to progress towards Celebrations. Celebrations are a time of supercharged yields. When one is initiated, you will get to choose a buff that stays during it's duration. Possible examples are 20% Food or 30% Production toward certain units. The more celebrations you have, the longer you will be under the influence of these buffs, allowing you to pull ahead of the competition.
Policies
The other benefit to Celebrations is that for each one, you get to choose a new social policy. These are buffs that will stay with you as time progresses, which, when you start to accumulate many, will have noticeable affects on your yields and success as a Civilization.
Surviving Crisis
Towards the end of each Age, a Crisis will be initiated. These are randomly selected stress tests that will challenge your Civilizations foundations. The Revolt Crisis in particular can be tough as it will have you incur massive Happiness penalties that can end up sending your your cities into a riot. Having a big buffer of Happiness before this happens really lessens the blow if you run into this Crisis.
Ignoring Settlement limits
While not a stated benefit, if you have a real abundance of Happiness, you can even ignore your Settlement Limit. The only penalty for going over the limit is that you lose 5 Happiness, up to a limit of 35 happiness. If you can generate enough Happiness to outpace the Settlement limit penalty, you can start building as many Settlements as you want, which can be very powerful, as land and territory can really help decide the fate of your game.
Specialists
The more Happiness you have in a Settlement, the more you’ll be able to accommodate Specialists. When placing a Specialist in a City, the Settlement will incur a Happiness upkeep cost. So, if you want to utilize a lot of Specialists, you will need a reserve of Happiness to dip into.
Unhappiness In Civilization 7
Of course, the flip side of the Happiness coin is Unhappiness. While Happiness can have massive benefits, equally, Unhappiness can have a massive drain. That makes it a double loss, so you want to avoid it at all costs.
Some of the consequences of Unhappiness are you will get less yields. For every point of net unhappiness within a Settlement, there will be a -2% penalty to other local yields. If rampant across your Settlements, this can affect your Science, Culture, Food or Gold production, really hurting your overall goals in a game.
More so than that though, if Unhappiness is left to fester, especially after taking over a Settlement, it may boil over into Unrest. When in Unrest, the population can destroy buildings, which you will have to use Gold to repair.
If left too long too, you could be in danger of losing the Settlement altogether. In these situations, placing an experienced Army Commander at the City should help quell that Unhappiness so it potentially subsides.