Happiness

[fpgui]

I have a 80k city in which people are happy. Yet I'd like to better understand why they're happy and how future development may influence happiness. Here is the current state :

• Mail +7. So easy to reach , it's the major source of happiness in my cities so far. I'm not sure that personally I'd be that thrilled by the perspective of receiving mail in my mailbox every day, but I'll take it as it is in the game.
• Wealth +5. I don't know if there are more levers than taxes which are at 10%, maybe I can lower taxes by 1 or 2 points and see the result.
• Abundance of leisure time +2. What can I do about it ? I certainly do not have the power to set the number of work hours per week, so what's the point ?
• Walking distance to Elementary school +2. I can do better easily, but I am startled by this very limited appreciation. How about high schools at this stage of the city and and how about educational system as a whole ? Chirper tells me people are delighted.
• Reliable Healthcare coverage +2. THis one is a hard one, I was in the green everywhere and people kept complaining. It went +2 after building an hospital which looks quite a lot to me given the price with respect to the size of the city (and yes deathcare was ok, 2 crematoriums and 1 cimetery). Much more difficult to keep people happy than mail service.
• Traffic -1. Well I guess it's a town and you can't do much better, can you ?
• Abundance of entertainment +1. Which entertainement ? All I can do is build parks. I have the leisure and venues DLC but does it make a difference ?Also when I build green areas with trees paths and fountains etc is it taken into account ? I'm puzzled.
• High noise pollution -1 : Should I keep commercial buildings downtown or put residential buildings with commercial floor ? I think I'll try this solution. But as for traffic it's a town, so...
• Spacious homes +1. Well if you say so. I have no lever over this parameter I suppose.
• Reliable internet service +1. Everyone says downloading is fantastic. I have towers everywhere. It's like mail services basically and yet it's only +1. Why ?

Thanks for comments/explanation/advice !

 

[Codraroll]

Happiness is so strange. We can see some of the bonuses that influence it, but not what the value itself is. You can stack up multiple bonuses like the above, yet end up with dismally unhappy cims because some hidden modifier detracts dozens of points. And even if we could see the value, there's no knowing what would be a good or bad value. Say your cims have a total happiness of 52. Is that extremely good, just mediocre, or terribly bad?

Granted, it's not the same level of annoying as the level-up messages of zoned buildings (the game explicitly tells us it's based on income, rent, and upkeep, yet doesn't give us any way to see those values), but it's certainly one of the most head-scratchingly bad instances of poor UX design in this game.

 

[TOMMIVS]

• Abundance of leisure time +2. You can also let people lose their jobs to increase it.
• Walking distance to Elementary school +2. Yes it only considers elementary school.
• Reliable Healthcare coverage +2. If a citizen has a health problem, it gets -20 on this item.
• Traffic -1. This means some citizens was teleported because their vehicles despawned. Avoid traffic jams or the No Despawn mod can help with that.
• Abundance of entertainment +1. Only the coverage of parks count.
• Spacious homes +1. This prefers low density homes, also levlling up will help.

 

[fpgui]

Thanks for the answers. I'm beginning to get the hang of it. It's a funny thing because when we have full modifiers etc. such as in other PDX games it feels like a spreadsheet, and when it's, let's say, "organic", we scratch our heads wondering what the levers and buttons may be.

 

[VentureIndustries]

• Reliable Healthcare coverage +2. THis one is a hard one, I was in the green everywhere and people kept complaining. It went +2 after building an hospital which looks quite a lot to me given the price with respect to the size of the city (and yes deathcare was ok, 2 crematoriums and 1 cimetery). Much more difficult to keep people happy than mail service.

Healthcare benefits from having both hospitals and clinics. From what I remember earlier after the game’s release, it’s supposed to model real-world healthcare systems, with clinics in small towns/rural places and hospitals closer to the downtown.