Peasants Happiness?

Peasants are useful creatures. They hang around town, and are easily moved from job to job.

However, how do you keep them happy? It's a pretty simple formula once you understand it:

• Base: Everyone gets 75 for this.

• Taxes: This is really the easiest way to deal with temporary peasant issues. Lower taxes, and like good republicians, they get happier. I like money, so I always leave this at +3 or 4 gold/peasant.

• Housing: You need 58 houses for your peasants. Once you have them you are done and you get the 5 happiness. Anything less you take a penalty.

• Food: All you have to do is have enough on the nation screen for them to eat. Anything less you get them unhappy.

• Espionage: This is important in case you are getting enemies attacking you through espionage. But as espionage is capped at only a couple successes per day per unhappy nation, this shouldn't be a problem for your happiness unless you piss off the entire server.

• Combat: At first I din't understand how this worked, but now I figure it out. Every time you lose a battle this goes down. Any time you SURRENDER this goes down by about -.3, to a maximum of -30 happiness. If you lose ALOT, you should do some low level quests until you recover. It isn't hard to raise up. It maxs out at +20 for winning alot in succession.

• Total: Anything BELOW 90 happiness you peasants stop reproducing at +4.00 Population growth. You will also lose peasants slowly as they leave for a better city. Stay above 90, and you are fine. Anything over 90 really DOESN'T MATTER. At once point I left my happiness at 140, and it did nothing for me.