Happiness, is it that important?

[Enlon]

I've been playing the campaign, and at the beginning, I was always trying to make sure I was in the positives on my happiness bar. I'm now at the point where I don't even care about it anymore, as it does not seem to have any bearing on game play other than an item sink.

I guess people are lazier and things take a little more time, but there is no real consequence for not prettying up the caves. I generally wait until I've excavated a large area, and then just carpet the entire dungeon in wooden floors/walls. Maybe use some masterwork stone in the king’s chamber, but that's about it.

Anyone else get the same feeling?

PS. The reason why I'm in the negative happiness to begin with is that I tend to have 4-6 beds supporting my 17 dwarves because I’ve been selling the wood for money and only use carrots then radishes.

 

[ShadowTani]

Happiness isn't important at the moment, but its been many suggestions about how to improve it and giving it importance already posted, so I'm sure the developers will look into it soon. :3

If you have any ideas of your own how it could be improved feel free to share. :3

 

[Illanair]

Unhappy dorfs should drink and eat themself into depression - or snub other dorfs down mineshafts to prove their point.

 

[City Builder]

Personally, I think that when the dwarfs get too unhappy (like maybe 1/3 or 1/5th happy bar) they start to leave the settlement and I also believe that we should have to pay gold to buy new dwarfs and then when happiness is that low it would cost us even more gold to buy those new dwarflings.

Anyway, at the moment happiness levels seem negated by simply speeding up our game to compensate for the current punishment which as far as I can tell is only a slower rate of getting new dwarflings and possibly the current dwarfs working slower, but when on high speed it's not noticeable to me at all.

 

[Enlon]

I like the idea that the dwarves will start to desert until the happiness evens out. Losing the dwarflings first, and then the rest will randomly desert except 1 from each category. That way you can recover, and not lose all workers/warriors/crafters as those are needed.

 

[City Builder]

I like the idea that the dwarves will start to desert until the happiness evens out. Losing the dwarflings first, and then the rest will randomly desert except 1 from each category. That way you can recover, and not lose all workers/warriors/crafters as those are needed.

Excellent addition to the idea. I, much like many people hate playing games that don't have some sort of an out somewhere to prevent the game from being so punishing that it's just game over, well... Except for games that are designed in that fashion like rogue like games.

 

[lordboy54]

Just like to add that I think happiness is way to drastic in its changes. For me my dorfs have either been suicidal or euphoric. Full happiness should be a more difficult goal to achive, and bring more rewards. Standard effort should bring happiness to a pretty stable middle ground. ATM it's like the dorfs got bipolar disorder, which I don't really endorse too much.

 

[Danarca]

Just like to add that I think happiness is way to drastic in its changes. For me my dorfs have either been suicidal or euphoric. Full happiness should be a more difficult goal to achive, and bring more rewards. Standard effort should bring happiness to a pretty stable middle ground. ATM it's like the dorfs got bipolar disorder, which I don't really endorse too much.

I agree, right now we got the numeral bar which is either at max or minimum, and the slider which we try to influence.
The numeral bar serves no purpose whatsoever, do away with it, the slider is much more interesting.

 

[ShadowTani]

I'm more in favor of dwarfs striking or ignoring/refusing work than deserting I must say. ^^;

And yeah, the happiness gain/loss needs to be better balanced and have more factors before considering possible effects. Temporary drops or rises from recent events could be added too (like when a fellow dwarf dies).

I particularly liked a suggestion I read somewhere else, to have the dwarfs happiness be affected by the decorations in their current area and any recent events (slept in a nice bed etc.), basically what they see and experience, rather than gain a huge overall happiness boost from a couple statues placed in a random dwarf-empty location. But that might also over-complicate things, just adding it in here because it was a pretty decent idea on this subject. :3

 

[Illanair]

Haha - Dorf strikers walking around the throne room with big wooden signs with their demands.

We must have this - Precioussssss!

 

[City Builder]

I'm more in favor of dwarfs striking or ignoring/refusing work than deserting I must say. ^^;

And yeah, the happiness gain/loss needs to be better balanced and have more factors before considering possible effects. Temporary drops or rises from recent events could be added too (like when a fellow dwarf dies).

I particularly liked a suggestion I read somewhere else, to have the dwarfs happiness be affected by the decorations in their current area and any recent events (slept in a nice bed etc.), basically what they see and experience, rather than gain a huge overall happiness boost from a couple statues placed in a random dwarf-empty location. But that might also over-complicate things, just adding it in here because it was a pretty decent idea on this subject. :3

I only wonder if it wouldn't be just the same anyway. What I mean is that in general my dwarfs congregate in certain places like where food tables or beds are located so the player would simply build the huge stone statues that provide something like +8 happiness and just fill in the room where food tables are so that they gain the maximum happiness bonus from when dwarfs are eating their food which all dwarfs have to do in the game.

I do however agree that it would actually be best to have the dwarfs go on strike (first) and then if happiness drops to an unbelievable low amount, then the dwarfs leave the settlement. At least in this way the player has a chance of preventing the desertion.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

I agree, right now we got the numeral bar which is either at max or minimum, and the slider which we try to influence.
The numeral bar serves no purpose whatsoever, do away with it, the slider is much more interesting.

Happiness bar is probably linear now, it should be logarithmic so it really takes extraordinarily large/small amounts of per-capita happy to get to the extremes.

 

[HandofBane]

I'm more in favor of dwarfs striking or ignoring/refusing work than deserting I must say. ^^;

And yeah, the happiness gain/loss needs to be better balanced and have more factors before considering possible effects. Temporary drops or rises from recent events could be added too (like when a fellow dwarf dies).

I like both of these ideas, they would add quite a bit more depth to the happiness concept than just changing how fast we get our dwarflings (which face it, most of us only see a couple times a game at most).

I particularly liked a suggestion I read somewhere else, to have the dwarfs happiness be affected by the decorations in their current area and any recent events (slept in a nice bed etc.), basically what they see and experience, rather than gain a huge overall happiness boost from a couple statues placed in a random dwarf-empty location. But that might also over-complicate things, just adding it in here because it was a pretty decent idea on this subject. :3

I think this really would overcomplicate the mechanic, and depending on how it was put it, may even slow the game down dramatically. If every single dwarf had to constantly fire off a script checking the local environment for X blocks in every direction around them to determine the happiness value of everything nearby, and you had 24 dwarves doing that nonstop, it could very well lag the game to a nearly unplayable degree depending on the player's PC.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

I think this really would overcomplicate the mechanic, and depending on how it was put it, may even slow the game down dramatically. If every single dwarf had to constantly fire off a script checking the local environment for X blocks in every direction around them to determine the happiness value of everything nearby, and you had 24 dwarves doing that nonstop, it could very well lag the game to a nearly unplayable degree depending on the player's PC.

That was my suggestion from a thread a few days ago, as a programmer I can assure you that it can be done at a very low overhead. If each dwarf is dropping a ping every 10 seconds (very fast) and you have a big population of 30 dwarves (very big) that just 3 ping a second, if each ping is checking a 10x10 area that 300 tiles per second being counted which is just trivial compared to the cost of doing even a short path. What makes is simple and easy is that your not trying to get individual dwarf attitudes so a sparse random sampling is adequate to get the overall average, some are off in the mines, some are in the throne room etc etc.

Also note that this is really the only way to figure out if dwarves are over-crowded (nodes too close to each other get a penalty) which would be a good factor to include if your doing this kind of direct-contact happiness so as to counter the natural tendency to cram everyone into tiny ultra-lavish areas.

 

[Enlon]

Here are some things I've observed when it comes to the happiness.

Each dwarf requires x amount of happiness, therefore, the more dwarves that are in your kingdom, the more that is needed to sustain them.
Lack of sleep seems to apply a penalty to happiness, and possibly how close they are living to each other. So perhaps each time a dwarf fails to path to food/bed a penalty is applied?

Each exposed raw tile seems to cause a penalty to happiness, so as you expand your mine, they become more and more unhappy. Thus if you add a floor/walls, you remove the negative, and replace it with a positive; a double bonus to the happiness.

So one of the fastest/cheapest ways to make my dwarves happy is to just dig out a large area, and then carpet the entire cave in wood. Except when I just began, or need to because of an objective, I rarely build any non-purposeful item. (Then again, I'm only playing the campaign right now.)

As for the beer tree, it has an effect that I have seen, though it’s mostly a temporary boost and so my happiness keeps fluctuating.


~~~~~

As for your ideas, I like the protesting, as long as they do some work, as I would hate to have my people starving themselves to death, or my crafter stop working so I can't build happiness items.

As for the people deserting, after each one leaves, the "required happiness" would lower and thus your people would be happier because they wouldn't be as crowded. At some point, the meter would reach equilibrium, most likely before you lost half of your people.

 

[HandofBane]

That was my suggestion from a thread a few days ago, as a programmer I can assure you that it can be done at a very low overhead. If each dwarf is dropping a ping every 10 seconds (very fast) and you have a big population of 30 dwarves (very big) that just 3 ping a second, if each ping is checking a 10x10 area that 300 tiles per second being counted which is just trivial compared to the cost of doing even a short path. What makes is simple and easy is that your not trying to get individual dwarf attitudes so a sparse random sampling is adequate to get the overall average, some are off in the mines, some are in the throne room etc etc.

Also note that this is really the only way to figure out if dwarves are over-crowded (nodes too close to each other get a penalty) which would be a good factor to include if your doing this kind of direct-contact happiness so as to counter the natural tendency to cram everyone into tiny ultra-lavish areas.

I see. I would wonder though, should dwarves also factor in any happiness modifying improvements/decorations that may be within their range of sight but not on the same dungeon level? By that I mean in cases where we dig out a room 2-4 levels deep and pave up the walls to the ceiling (we have all done it, if nothing else than to spam the extra happiness points in starting rooms, near undigium walls, or to decorate massive throne rooms). How much should such variables be factored in beyond simply keeping their check two-dimensional?

 

[Xerkis]

The Devs didn’t want to overly “punish” the player when Dwarves were unhappy. So the main noticeable thing is really the slowdown on the time it takes to get a new Dwarfling from Hemfort. This is also the same basic reasoning behind why there isn’t things like water or lava in the game. The Devs don’t want to punish us players for the hard work we put in to the game. Not saying this is a right or wrong idea – just giving it so that there is an understanding.

I like the idea of Dwarves leaving with these points added or restated.
1) There should be a very visible warning that Dwarves are about to leave before that begins to happen.
2) Never take the last Dwarf of a Class.
3) Take the lower level first of a Class.
4) As when you fire a Dwarf, the graphic of a leaving Dwarf should have some sort of “picket” sign as he walk off to the spawning pool.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

I see. I would wonder though, should dwarves also factor in any happiness modifying improvements/decorations that may be within their range of sight but not on the same dungeon level? By that I mean in cases where we dig out a room 2-4 levels deep and pave up the walls to the ceiling (we have all done it, if nothing else than to spam the extra happiness points in starting rooms, near undigium walls, or to decorate massive throne rooms). How much should such variables be factored in beyond simply keeping their check two-dimensional?

The check could be a flood-fill out to a predetermined number of PASSABLE tiles (~100 would be more then enough), so the check just flows around un-mined areas, undigium etc etc. A flood-fill is a bit slower then a raw rectilinear space search (2 or 3 dimensions makes no difference) but far more efficient then most pathing because you don't need to run prediction heuristics and you cut off at a predetermined amount, a typical pathing search under A* will check many hundreds of tiles once you have an even modestly sized fort.