One of the most common failures in Civilization 7 playthroughs is the inability to keep your settlements happy. An unhappy town, city, or capital may cause revolts, and you may lose the town or city.
Unhappiness may also have negative effects, indirectly slowing down your economy, science, or even culture. You must always strive to keep your settlements happy, so here are multiple ways to increase happiness in Civilization 7.
How to Keep Your Settlements Happy in Civilization 7
Switch a Town’s Focus to a Religious Site
While this change is more radical than other methods, there are times when you urgently need to increase the happiness of your town to avoid constant revolts. Soon enough, you’ll start losing those towns and cities.
This happened a few times during my first playthrough, and I could not understand how they automatically go to a different AI leader rather than becoming an independent state. However, switching the town’s focus to a religious site gives you a big happiness bonus if you have a temple, which you should also build.
Build Arenas, Altars, and Other Structures That Increase Happiness For Each Town
Apart from building temples, you can also build arenas and altars, buildings that make your town happier. These are easy to build in capitals or cities, but in towns, you should use gold since it’ll take a while before they finish, and you may be too late if the happiness is already low. This is also why you should always keep some gold for emergencies.
Most of these structures only offer a slight buff to your happiness, but they add up and can save you from revolts.
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Build Wonders Quickly
As in all Civilization games, Wonders are unique buildings where only one player, including AIs, can have a specific one. Some of these Wonders bring additional Science and Culture to your civilization, but some provide Happiness, like the Mundo Perdido.
Some of these Wonders have restrictions, such as you can only build them on tropical tiles. When you do have the option to get one, build it as fast as possible, since these are Ageless structures that will give you the benefits throughout the eras.
Look Out for Celebration Events
Occasionally, celebrations and events will occur in your towns, cities, and capital. You’ll receive a prompt where you can choose among three benefits. Most choices will have the Happiness buff after the celebration, which is usually massive. However, this is only temporary. It is useful when you need more turns to build buildings or even stop a war that will impact your Happiness.
Avoid Happiness Penalties
There are several kinds of penalties in the game, some of which directly affect your population’s Happiness. Generally, you want to avoid all penalties, but the ones that specifically affect Happiness are going above the settlement limit or having no access to fresh water.
During a game, you’ll see a tiny icon resembling a trio of buildings or structures in the upper-left corner. It will have a number like “6/11.” 6 means you currently have six settlements, while 11 is your current settlement limit. Building above 11 will incur a Happiness penalty of -5 per settlement. This is a massive penalty, especially if you already have a growing empire. Avoid this penalty at all costs.
As for the freshwater penalty, you just need to have a settlement with access to fresh water, meaning the settlement must be near a river or lake (freshwater) so they can use the resource. It doesn’t give any bonus Happiness; It just prevents the Happiness penalty.
Diplomatic Attributes
Another way to increase your Happiness is by allocating points to the Diplomatic Attribute tree. There are several different attributes, but you should look for the ones that offer bonuses to Happiness. However, some attributes are more powerful in the long run than Happiness buffs, so this should be a “last resort” situation if your settlements keep revolting.
Related: The Answer to the Papyrus Problems Question in Civilization 7
Technology Tree Bonuses
The Tech Tree is where you’ll do all your research, and you can even get bonus Happiness from specific tech. You can path through the ones you desperately need, and as long as you have decent Science being produced, you should be fine researching all this tech.
Overall, the main or biggest cause of a Happiness problem is a combination of a lack of Happiness buildings and an ongoing war with a different leader. A current war always makes the population uneasy, and resolving the conflict as soon as possible will help both nations grow. Even if you win a war and take over, that city won’t be happy about being annexed, either, further adding to the Happiness problems you may be facing.
If revolts are the main problem you’re currently facing, here’s how to prevent and fix revolts in Civilization VII.
Published: Feb 9, 2025 01:12 pm