Episode: 4450
Title: HPR4450: Playing Civilization V, Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4450/hpr4450.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:48:55

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4450, for Friday the 22nd of August 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Playing Civilization V, Part 2.
It is part of the series' computer strategy games.
It is the 340th show of Ahu Ka, and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, we continue our look at the game mechanics of
Civilization V.
Hello, this is Ahu Ka, welcoming you to Hacker Public Radio
in another exciting episode.
In our ongoing series on computer strategy games,
and we're now in Civilization 5.
Continuing our look at some of the mechanics of this one.
The first thing we want to take a look at in this episode
is the topic of happiness.
Keeping your population happy has always been a feature
in Civilization games, but it takes a turn here.
In early games, it was more of a city by city issue,
and given city might have a happiness issue,
but it didn't affect other cities that much.
And a common strategy in early versions of Civ
was to just make as many settlers as you possibly could,
pump them out, build as many cities as you possibly could.
In Civ V, that strategy has been decisively nerfed
due to the happiness mechanic.
Now, to begin, you can see your happiness level
at the top of the screen.
There is a smiley face icon with a number next to it,
which represents your current level of happiness.
As long as the level is zero or greater,
in other words, positive happiness,
the icon will be the usual yellow smiley face.
In this condition, your empire grows as normal,
and each turn, the happiness number,
is added to the golden age counter,
which is also visible at the top of the screen.
Accumulate enough points on that counter,
and you enter a golden age with bonuses.
But if the happiness level falls below zero,
your empire is unhappy.
In this state, your production falls by 2% for every point below zero,
and your gold revenue falls by 2% for every point below zero as well.
Also, your units have reduced combat strength
that falls 2% for every point below zero.
Finally, your food accumulation,
which feeds growth, falls by 75%.
Now, if the happiness level falls to negative 10,
it's worse. You are now very unhappy.
Population growth stops completely,
and you can no longer train new settlers.
In addition, rebellions break out in the form of barbarians
suddenly appearing in the middle of your territory,
who will have your most advanced units,
that your technology allows.
Meanwhile, the reductions in production,
gold revenue, and combat strength continue.
If, for some reason, you let it go until you hit negative 20,
some of your cities, particularly border cities,
may revolt and join another empire.
Now, this does not mean that falling to a negative 1 or negative 2
for a few turns is all that serious,
but what you need to watch out for is the gradual decline over many turns.
You should be paying attention to the happiness level at all times,
and plan to take action and deal with it.
Now, if you want to know more about the factors that affect your happiness level
at any given time, just mouse over, the happiness icon,
and a pop-up window will give you details.
You will see that some things add happiness,
and other things produce unhappiness,
and the happiness level you see is the net of those two.
The things that add happiness begin with luxury resources.
Chances are you will have access to one or two near your first city.
Getting those resources developed through a mine or a plantation,
whatever, and working them with a citizen will add happiness to your empire.
Now, only the first copy of the resource adds happiness,
but if you have a second copy, you can develop that and use it in trade
with another empire to get a copy of one of their luxury resources.
So, right from the very early stages of settling your first city,
you'll be on the lookout for luxury resources you can develop.
Building relationships with the independent city states
can also bring you luxury resources that they have.
There are many other sources of happiness.
Every natural wonder you discover adds happiness throughout your empire,
so exploration is important.
For this reason, you'll find that most experienced civil players
will make training a scout to explore.
Sometimes two scouts, they're very first production in their first city.
Finding natural wonders is not the only reason to do this, of course.
Learning more about the terrain and finding good places for another city
and searching out the goody huts, which in this game are called ancient ruins,
are other good reasons, but it does make sense.
Some buildings add to happiness as do some wonders,
and there are social policies and religious beliefs that can add to happiness
or equivalently remove unhappiness.
But when we look at the causes of unhappiness, two things stand out,
particularly in the early game.
The first is how many cities you have and the second is your population level.
Growing too fast too soon can kill you in this game.
This explains why when we looked at citizen management
there was an option to stop city growth in a city.
If that would push you to a negative happiness level,
it might be better to stop the growth temporarily,
then maybe build a circus or something to increase happiness,
and then let the growth continue.
And it also explains why you might be better off not going to the Liberty policy tree route,
at least early on, because it is designed to make you grow faster.
For a beginning player,
I would suggest the objective for the early game,
say up to turn 120 or so,
would be to have four good cities,
build a library in each of them, then build the national college.
Note that the national college requires you to have a library in each city before you can build it,
and indeed most national wonders work similarly,
which means if you keep building more cities,
you never get to those national wonders until very late,
and you will miss out on the benefits they give.
The national college, for instance,
gives the 50% boost to the science output of the city that builds it,
and adds three science and one culture to the output of the city.
If you get that 50% boost early in the game,
it can propel your science throughout the game.
If you don't get it until the industrial or modern era,
you've given up a lot.
Generally, by the time you get to turn 350 or so,
happiness is not likely to be a problem,
simply because you will have done enough things to add happiness.
I find in my games that by this point,
I may be comfortably in the plus 20 to plus 30 range,
but in your early game, it matters a lot.
Now, we mention eras,
and that's another key concept.
Eras unlock new policy trees,
but they also unlock the World Council
and the United Nations in complicated ways.
And starting with the Renaissance era,
you get a new spy every time you enter a new era.
So these are some of the ways eras can matter in the game.
Well, what are the eras?
Well, we start ancient.
You know, 4000 BC, that's ancient.
Following that, you get to the classical era.
You know, think of that as like Greece and Rome, that's classical.
Then there's Medieval.
Following Medieval, you have Renaissance.
So, you know, Medieval, think Charlemagne.
You know, Renaissance.
Now we're starting to get to, you know, 14th, 15th century.
Then the industrial era.
Then the modern era.
Then the atomic era.
And then the information era.
Now, in the game, these eras are defined by the technologies you have researched.
And to be clear, different empires can be in different eras at the same time.
The game will notify you when another empire has moved into a new era.
So you're going to know where you are vis-à-vis the other players.
You know, and if there are two eras ahead of you, you're in serious trouble.
Now, see how this works.
Open the technology tree by clicking on the science icon on the upper left.
And you'll see that the tree is divided into sections along the top header.
You can move from one era to the next when you either research all the technologies from the previous era,
or research your first technology from the next era.
From this, you can see that you can advance through eras pretty quickly by skipping over technologies.
I'm not saying you should necessarily, but the game does allow it.
And it might make sense in some circumstances.
For instance, if you want a science victory, you'll want to unlock the rationalism policy tree ASAP.
You know, get there as quick as possible.
So rushing to the Renaissance era would make a great deal of sense.
And then you can go back and pick up the ones you skipped.
And given the way the text tied together is prerequisites, you'll end up having to do it at some point anyway.
And another benefit to rushing eras is that the text from the early era become cheaper to research when you have moved up an era.
It's kind of micromanaging to do all of this, but it is an available strategy.
So, this is Hookah for Hacker Public Radio signing off and is always encouraging you to support Free Software.
Bye-bye!
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