Seemingly simple question, yet I have a feeling the answer is much more complicated. I avoid building them when I can, as the happiness penalty never quite seems worth it - on large empires especially, whatever FIDSI boost I get from the extra exploitation tiles is offset by by the massive unhappiness penalty. I understand that the key is the get as many level 2 districts as possible, yet that takes quite a long time, esp. considering that a single level 2 district only pays for itself - there's still going to be an overall happiness penalty from the tiles surrounding it not being upgraded. I'm struggling to find a way to build up the city without sending it spiralling towards rebellion and inefficiency.

Take note that once you level up a district to lv2, it "changes" the -10 happiness penalty to a +5 happiness bonus (actually, a lv 2 district grants +15 bonus while still giving a -10 penalty), so only "badly built" cities grant excessive penalties that cannot be offset with researches and buildings.



As long as you build your cities "round shaped" (or mainly "triangle shaped", there's a topic buried around the forums talking about "best" city shapes) you're good to go; most "happiness buildings" grant you +25 aproval. Expanding grants you a decent amount of extra resources (even more if you enable anomaly exploitations) so expanding wisely is important.

Ah, thanks! Shortly after posting this thread I noticed the abundance of other threads on the same topic and I feel rather silly now. Thanks for the help, though!

Alternatively, it's extremely easy to buy out a city's happiness if you have the dust for luxury boosts.



I had a set of coastal regions on a Broken Lords run and I literally just did nothing but the coasts. Technically, could have been ♥♥♥♥ed sideways by a market ban, but the dust production from water tiles, otherwise, was phenomenal. I think I had enough luxury production in my regions to manage, though.



Also, as broken lord, your Empire happiness matters, not really your city happiness, so having one city that wants to rip out your throat and the rest of your empire think's you're the best dude ever, you still can ride happy and boost to fervent without much effort.