Episode: 4670
Title: Playing Civilization V, Part 13
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4670/hpr4670.mp3
Transcribed: 2026-07-31 16:16:27 (official HPR transcript)

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4670, for 2026-06-26
Today's show is entitled, "Playing Civilization V, Part 13"
The host is Ahuka and the duration is 00:15:09
The flag is Clean, and the license is CC-BY-SA
The summary is "We continue a sample game of Civilization V"
Hello, this is Huka, welcome to you to another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio,
and we are continuing our look at computer strategy games in this case Civilization 5.
And last time we started with a sample game, and just to remind you, we're playing as Austria.
We're going for a diplomatic victory, that means winning the vote in the world Congress or United Nations.
And at the end of the last episode, we saw that in our game, we were running into a happiness issue.
You've got to be careful, because if your people become unhappy, they can turn on you.
Now, what that means is in the game.
First, they just get a little bit unhappy, and what happens is they stop working.
You know, your production starts to get down and stuff like that.
If they get even more unhappy, they even start rebellions.
And what that looks like is all of a sudden you have, you know, what looks like barbarians, in other words, read units, popping up in your territory and attacking everything.
And that is a big pain in the butt to deal with.
You know, it can basically deny you a victory if you don't handle it.
I prefer not to get into a problem in the first place.
So, take a look at this.
I'm going to put a link in the show notes to section of the civilization wiki that goes into this in a lot more detail.
But you have some options.
So what are your options to increase your happiness?
The luxury resources, that's the best way to get a quick hit of happiness.
And trade is the best way to do this quickly.
But to trade, you have to admit the other sieve or city state.
So, my drive to explore it pays off here.
Every luxury resource I can obtain adds plus for global happiness to my empire.
Now note that only the first unit of the resource adds happiness.
So if you have multiple copies of a luxury resource, you should keep one and trade the others if you can.
Now the next thing you can do, takes a little bit longer is to build buildings.
Buildings like the circus, which adds two to the happiness of the city that builds it.
Coliseum adds two to the city that builds it.
The zoo adds two to the city that builds it.
And the stadium adds four.
Now that still gets added to your total happiness number.
But the thing with local happiness, which is happiness for a particular city,
you can't have more happiness than you have population.
So if you have a city with say five population, building a circus, that's two, and a Coliseum, that's two.
It makes sense. You can get four happiness, and that's not greater than your population of five.
But building a circus and a stadium, now you've got six happiness, but a population of only five.
So, you know, some of the happiness would not count.
Buildings also take longer than trade deals.
So if you need a quick hit, start with trading for luxuries.
And next thing you can do, wonders, and that takes even longer than buildings.
In general, Chichenica is worth four, global happiness.
Notre Dame is worth ten.
So, real good one to get if you want to get some good happiness going.
Taj Mahal, plus four, life will tower, plus five.
Noise fronstein adds one for every castle you have.
So if you've built castles in your cities, building noise fronstein is a wonder.
It's going to give you some more happiness.
The prora gives you plus one, an additional plus one for every two social policies you have adopted.
And then there's the CN Tower, which gives you plus one per city you have.
Now wonders are even harder to build, and you may not get them since you're competing with other players.
But there is a national wonder worth getting the Circus Maximus that is good for plus five global happiness.
Now social policies is another way you can look.
In the policy tree, most of the policy trees, you're going to find policies that can add to happiness or decrease unhappiness, which is really just as good.
Natural wonders.
Each natural wonder grants plus one global happiness to each empire that has discovered it.
So for this, exploration is again the key.
So you've got a couple of reasons why exploration shows up here for natural wonders and for trade.
You just want to be exploring, don't let up on that.
Finally, mercantile city states will grant plus three global happiness to each empire that is at least friends with them.
And getting to be friends is not hard.
So you have a lot of options here, and they're listed roughly in the order of how you should pursue them.
Trading for luxury resources can be done quickly and provide an immediate boost so you should be actively trading on a long.
Buildings and wonders should definitely be pursued, but here you'll probably be balancing demands for other investments as well.
Natural wonders are nice, but you need to explore the whole map to max that one out.
I was able to trade one of my whales to putch a kudi for one of his ivory, which I'll push my app in this up.
Then with Oskia, I traded one spice for one copy, copper.
I also made a small gift to the city state of Manila to make them my eye.
Once five turns of elapsed, I can take them over via diplomatic marriage.
And I have started on Coliseum's in several of my cities to push up my happiness further.
Meanwhile, I continued my explorations, and became the first to discover all of the other empires in the game.
Now, that makes me the host for the world council, which is good for one additional vote.
I will keep exploring, since there are probably some natural wonders out there worth finding.
And indeed, on the next turn, I found Mount Fuji, pushing my happiness to 24.
Man, I puppeted Manila and over a couple of turns that dropped to 18.
But a Coliseum got built, I found a natural wonder, you know, back up to 21.
I'm still not the leader in this game, but I think I can afford to puppet another city state.
For now, I'm avoiding doing this to mercantile city states since they can add to my happiness.
But there's lots of city states in this game.
I picked Kathmandu from my next target, but also dropped 250 gold on Redusa to become friends with them.
You have to plan for the future sometimes.
I'm currently pulling on 144 gold per turn, so I can afford it.
Now, at turn 267, my happiness was up to 30, but as soon as I puppeted Kathmandu, it dropped to 22.
This is why you need to manage your happiness carefully.
Now, this pushed me another 100 points up on the leaderboard, so I'm in good shape.
But with 22 happiness, I can probably afford to start on puppeting Redusa.
At turn 272, I have 5,766 gold, and I'm earning 163 gold per turn.
My happiness is a 27, so I'm in pretty good shape.
I puppet Redusa, and my happiness falls to 18.
But my status on the leaderboard goes up another 100 points.
Now, firmly in the lead, and 200, ahead of my nearest competitor.
A few turns later, my happiness is back up to 24, so I'm starting the process to puppet boocharist.
At turn 280, I have 6,584 gold, I'm earning 179 gold per turn, and my happiness is 26.
Then I puppet boocharist and my happiness drops to 16.
But I'm nearly 300 ahead of my nearest competitor on the leaderboard, so not so bad.
Also, we're getting near to the first world council where I am the host.
I put a proposal on the agenda to enact a world's fair.
The number 2 player has put a proposal on the council to ban whales as a luxury resource.
And I have a lot of whale resources.
I suspect the world's fair will pass without my votes since many other players supported it.
So I will put my votes into denying the whale ban.
We'll see how it goes.
I have the most votes, but if everyone else gangs up on me, they can get it passed.
And as I expected, the world's fair passed without my votes, and the whale ban was defeated.
I tabled a proposal to enact arts funding for the next council.
It looks to be very popular.
Right now, I'm starting to snowball.
Snowball is what we call the process where you're just, you're in the lead, and you're lead just keeps increasing.
On turn 287, I now have 6476 gold.
I'm earning 231 gold per turn.
I've puppeted 60 states and my happiness is at 31.
I can now start to pop it another.
In the world council, I have 4 votes and every other player has 1.
My main strategy right now is to keep on friendly terms with the other players because everything is going really well for me right now.
But I'm also starting to build factories to improve my production capacity, which in turn will help me to update my military.
I picked up a great scientist and used him to construct an academy to boost my science output.
And every city next to a mountain has got an observatory which adds to the science.
Observatories can only be built in cities that are adjacent to a mountain.
Then I constructed the leading tower of Pisa and got one free person in my choice.
And I chose a great scientist and constructed another academy.
And I hit a golden age good for 10 turns.
Well 10 turns later my golden age ended, but on the very next turn I finished the Taj Mahal, which in addition to giving me plus 4 global happiness.
Just me another 10 turn golden age.
And I use some of my big cash balance to upgrade my military units.
Because in this game the best way to keep the pieces to have a strong military.
And one of the advantages of a strong treasury is you don't have to build new units.
You can simply upgrade the ones you have.
Now on the next turn I was able to choose an ideology.
So that also comes in the civics area.
I picked freedom for my ideology.
And for my two policies I chose universal health care and capitalism, each of which added happiness.
I have earned a couple of great artists.
And I plan to use them to create more golden ages.
Since accumulating culture is not part of my strategy at this point.
On turn 309 I puppeted Brata Slava and started on Wittenberg.
And now that I've explored the entire map I don't need my caravills any longer.
So I deleted them.
Then on turn 314 my closest competitor Japan denounced me.
But then Japan was denounced by Brazil.
I have been building up my military, so I'm not worried.
Basically Japan has realized I'm opening up a bigger lead.
And that is why they denounced me.
I'd like to win without going to war, but if he attacks me I can handle it.
Meanwhile I'm also building up my science to open up a lead there.
On the next turn I built the red fort, which improves my defensive strength.
Brazil approached me to join a war on Japan, but I declined.
I am not seeking a military victory in this game and I don't want to be distracted.
However I just puppeted two more cities.
And looking at the map I now have three cities on the border of Japan, so maybe there will be a war in my future.
I got another policy to choose and pick universal suffrage, which increases the length of golden ages since I plan to have a few.
And I'm starting to build more military units, starting with riflemen, which are good for defending cities.
If I'm given time I will ship them to my puppeted cities near Japan.
But if he attacks me before then they are still worth having.
And I think that's enough for this episode, so this is a hookah for Hacker Public Radio signing off,
and it's always encouraging you to support free software.
Bye-bye.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at Hacker Public Radio.org.
Today's show was contributed by a HPR listener like yourself.
If you ever thought of recording podcast, click on our upload link
to find out how easy it is.
Hosting for HPR has been kindly provided by an AnHonestHost.com, the Internet Archive,
rsync.net, and our mirror network.
Unless otherwise stated, today's show is released under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
