Triggering Celebrations and maintaining Specialists and Buildings are the main uses of Happiness in Civilization VII (Civ 7). Learn more about Happiness, what decreases it and how to increase it in this guide!

What Does Happiness Do?

What Does Happiness Do?
Needed for Triggering Celebrations Maintains Specialists and Buildings Prevents Civil Unrest

Needed for Triggering Celebrations

The most noticeable effect of Happiness is how frequently your empire will trigger Celebrations. These are events that occur when you accumulate a certain amount of Happiness and it will boost a particular yield for a few turns. Your chosen Government determines the available Celebrations you can choose from.

How to Trigger Celebrations

Maintains Specialists and Buildings

Placing Specialists in Urban Districts will reduce the City's Happiness. Not only that but some buildings also cost Happiness to maintain. Since these can't be removed normally, you'll have to place Happiness Buildings to prevent the City from going into unrest.

Some Bonuses Can Reduce Happiness Costs

Do note that certain bonuses that offset the Happiness cost of your empire. Some examples of these are Pachacuti, who eliminates Specialist costs when they're next to a Mountain, or the Constitution Policy, which halves Specialist costs.

Prevents Civil Unrest

Regardless of what the settlement's focus is, its Happiness should never drop below zero. Once it reaches a negative value, you will get a warning about civil unrest.

You should have several turns to build Happiness buildings or station a Commander to put it under control, but if it gets severely low, the settlement's population will start razing your tiles and ultimately revolt and join one of your opponents.

Unhappiness Also Decreases Yields

Having negative Happiness also affects the yields of a settlement. Be sure to always have extra Happiness just in case as decreased city yields is one of the worst effects of Unhappiness.

What Decreases Happiness

What Decreases Happiness
Maintenance Costs War Weariness Extra Settlements Crisis Policies

Maintenance Costs

The main cause of Happiness drops is the maintenance cost for Specialists and certain buildings. Keep an eye on the city's Happiness before placing either of these to avoid penalties.

War Weariness

Whenever you declare war on someone, you'll have the option to use Influence to gain War Supply. If the enemy has more War Supply than you, you will gain War Weariness which lowers your Happiness and your Units' Combat Strength.

How to Win Wars

Extra Settlements

Having settlements over the indicated limit incurs Happiness penalties on all of your settlements, which increases for each settlement over the cap. Most of the Civics increase the settlement limit as well as some of the Technologies.

How to Increase Settlement Cap

Crisis Policies

Crisis Policies, especially in the Antiquity Age, often brings crippling effects to settlement Happiness, which is why you should always have a decent amount of Happiness in your city as an Age comes to a close. Try picking Crisis Policies that will affect you the least to make the Happiness decrease manageable.

Crises and Crisis Policies Explained

How to Increase Happiness

How to Increase Happiness
Improve Tiles with Happiness Place Happiness Buildings and Wonders Study Civ-Exclusive Civics Leader Abilities

Improve Tiles with Happiness

Some tiles and resources naturally have Happiness as part of their yields. If you require Happiness, improve these tiles to add their yields to your settlement during your next Growth Event.

If you want, you can turn on the Yields display to know which tiles have Happiness on them, letting you plan your expansion accordingly.

List of All Resources

Place Happiness Buildings and Wonders

While certain buildings cost Happiness to maintain, there are also Happiness base buildings, improvements, and Wonders that you can place.

Don't forget to plan out your city's building locations so that you can maximize the Happiness adjacency bonus that you can get from Mountains, Natural Wonders, and Wonders.

Buildings and Improvements

Study Civ-Exclusive Civics

A good number of Civics exclusive to Civs can also help increase Happiness. Such Civics often belong to Civs with the Expansionist or Militaristic attributes, like Buganda and the French Empire, to manage the penalties of overexpanding and war weariness.

List of Civics

Leader Abilities

Leader	Attributes	Unique Ability
Ashoka (World Renouncer)	Diplomatic Expansionist	Dhammaraja
Charlemagne	Militaristic Scientific	Father of Europe
Lafayette	Cultural Diplomatic	Hero of Two Worlds
Himiko (High Shaman)	Cultural Diplomatic	Miko of Amaterasu

There are also Leaders with Happiness bonuses in their abilities, which means you will have an easier time maintaining a positive Happiness number by letting them represent your empire!

Leaders List and All Abilities

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