I have been enjoying "very happy" popularity from all three castes in my hometown Lubeck for as long as I can remember. Then, I started "optimizing" :D. Recently, I have noticed my popularity tanked. In the case of the poor I have somehow went from "very happy" to "annoyed" in a few short months. I would like your help analyzing why this happened.

I have three suspects, and I really hope it's not the third one:
1. Being too greedy and releasing only limited quantities to Lubeck market each week (to keep profits high).
2. Winter, where I was not able to provide needed amounts of staples and city was experiencing shortages.
3. Selling goods through administrator somehow does not count for popularity?

Ad 1: I used to sell beer above 45, meat above 1400, grain above 120. Then I realized I probably don't have to supply ~80% of city's consumption, I might rake up enough "popularity" points by selling say ~20% of weekly consumption, as long as city does not have shortages. So I bumped the min sell prices to 50/1600/130. Was this what caused my downfall, or is this a reasonable strategy?

Ad 2: I did not stockpile enough beer and grain before winter. The prices then jumped above my max buy price in my beer/grain towns, so I did not bring any to Lubeck. Obviously this was a popularity hit, but I wonder what you do in winter. Do you ignore winter and take the popularity hit and then just recover from it in the spring...or do you manually re-calibrate the buy prices in the fall to make sure you don't have shortages throughout winter?

Ad 3: Does the game care who sells goods to the city (captain, administrator, you manually)? I have a sneaking suspicion that my troubles started when I started relying exclusively on Lubeck administrator to sell my goods (that bastard also pays himself lofty 107 gold per day!). I figured I never want the captains to sell the goods to the town directly because they need to eventually leave and might not get the best price (or haul the goods back). If I dump everything to the warehouse, the administrator can sell it 3/7/26 days later for a guaranteed price. If the administrator is not bugged, that is. Anyone had issues with the administrator?

How big are your towns? At 5000 and 10000 citizens they suddenly get a lot whinier.

50 for beer might be a big part of your happyness problem, are the rich less unhappy than the rest? They barely drink beer. Charging 50 can work if the rest is cheap and plentyful, they forgive you some prices just not all of them. (Iron goods don't affect mood at all if you want to get greedy with something very profitable) Produce your own beer year round, even sold at 41 its good profit from the sheer amount the hansa guzzles. Adjusting buy prices does barely help, you might get a few more units that would otherwise stay in the market hall, but that doesn't increase production. Make sure the beer towns have plenty of grain so they don't stop brewing.

Lack of wood in winter also tanks the mood, they don't use all that much, but without it's getting cold.

Sounds like a typical first winter overall, not enough of everything and in the wrong places. Supply fleet dumping into warehouse and admin selling is indeed the way to steady supply once you have the goods. Producing more next year so you are less reliant on npc brewers will help.

Doesn't matter who sells stuff, the amount/price in the market hall is all they care about. Aim for 1-2 weeks of goods always in the market for optimal happyness (that looks like awfully low prices, it's a longterm goal once your production gets going)

I set my prices at the start of the game and don't touch them again, for emergencies like "Lübeck needs beer NAO, screw the rest" I go higher when buying manually. Suggested sell prices for max happyness and profit per trade difficuly level in the attached file, I don't remember why some have an * instead, they don't matter much iirc. Sorry its in german.

In general you are mixing up two things here, popularity and happyness. Popularity comes in local and global flavor, it wins you elections and building permits, easiest way to boost that is killing pirates, supplying goods helps locally.. Happyness gets you new beggars who turn citizens if there are jobs or at least prevents them from leaving. Your post talks about happyness only. Steady supply of goods at restrained prices makes ppl happy and the other things they complain about when you click on them.

Thanks for the advice. The town indeed just hit 5000.

I do not produce beer, in fact I only focused on producing iron goods, bricks, fish and timber in Lübeck (and that was enough supply chain headache for my first game). I was buying everything else. Now I see I need to focus on beer as well, so I don't rely on NPC brewers.

I am definitely mixing up the popularity and happiness, I did not even know they are separate indicators. What I care about is that I am advancing in the ranks, particularly getting elected as Lord Mayor.

So if I understand correctly people don't have to be particularly happy, as long as I sell x amounts of goods to the town each week my popularity will keep climbing (or at least not erode)? Where do I check the popularity? City hall with 4 candidates for Lord Mayor is one thing, but what about before hitting councillor rank?

Happiness is only important in preventing the poor being angry and leaving my factories then? To maintain happiness I avoid shortages. I can see a scenario where I supply just enought for a given week to maintain my popularity, but not quite enough to avoid shortage. So I'm getting more popular (and rich) yet people are getting angry.

Thanks for the table (Deutsh ist kein Problem), I am surprised at the high prices, these exceed my greediest dreams (well, except beer)!

Ok popularity then (good thing I didn't delete that paragraph for sounding too nitpicky)

You can see a very coarse indicator on the personal tab in your counting house. But it's bloody useless, mine almost always says sinking even if it's clearly rising. The election list is the only real one, get on it and don't worry before.

Local popularity comes from providing jobs and goods (not sure about housing, probably that too). Building infrastructure is a small permanent bonus as well, donating for church deco is short term and wears off. And obviously don't get caught doing illegal stuff.

Killing pirates gives popularity everywhere. Keep an eye out for the tavern backroom missions "I need to leave town" as those come with a guaranteed attack, sinking or capturing the ship makes no noticable difference so do what you like there. That's my main source of popularity (and ships) anyway, the local stuff is small in comparison.

You don't *have* to brew your own beer yet if you only care about one town, no one good is irreplacable happyness-wise, plenty of everything else and they forgive you these shortages.

That table came from some serious minmaxing, the high prices are assuming you produce everything and don't want the AI to have raw materials at all. I.e. don't use those hemp prices unless you produce all the fish you need. I'd use the yellow ones and experiment with the rest, storage costs add up and slightly less profit is still better than never actually selling the thing because an AI trader already did.

How much you supply to the town relative to it's needs is completely contained in the prices (given you have enough stock), with only one town you don't even have to look at the consumption numbers. Happyness also affects immigration, available sailors and how fast your factories refill after siege (and popularity makes them work for you instead of the other guy when everyone has jobs open). Pave some roads when you have cash to spare, a high percentage of unpaved ones makes folks unhappy.

Rather than micromanaging one town's happyness I'd rather expand to another. Maybe not production yet if it sounds overwhelming, just slowly start caring about another place, bringing them goods too. The admin charges per building you own there, so he's cheap when you're new in town. But whatever works for you, the complexity of how much everything is connected and depends on each other allows for so many playstyles. Damn now I want to play p3 again.

Thanks again, very helpful. I am getting better at this every day. I am still playing pacifist as I don't want to learn combat yet, but I'm sure the time will come once I get bored micromanaging the trade...