Excellent points about the happy buildings and slav warriors, katank. There are also units like Swiss Pikes which are only a little more (0.50/unit) but way more effective than peasants. My unit & building info is from before VI - what other VI units are .37/man, do you know? (hmm, I should check the lib... is there an updated unit info spreadsheet there?)

Happy buildings are the gift that keeps on giving, since they need no upkeep. Here's a little table, again, for MTW buildings. Churches and mosques are most cost-effective for happiness (i.e. loyalty) at 10 per happy point. This compares with peasants (37/turn for ~16.5 loyalty) which are 2.24 per happiness (37/16.5) but the peasants are an ongoing fee whereas the church is a one-time charge, so the church is the better deal after 4 turns (10/2.24=4.46; 8 turns including build time). That makes it a great deal, given the long MTW time scales. Other buildings are not as good a deal, but still, they're one-time charges so they're better in the long run. Like you're saying though kat, provinces get better over time, so it's good that the game has ways to deal with both the short-term, high loyalty needs, and the long term lower needs.

On my old spreadsheet, I didn't see a happiness bonus for fort, town watch, or tavern... is this a chnage in VI? or is it some other type of bonus. Oh and - any idea how much the agents help happiness? I wonder how they'd do on a cost-effectiveness basis. Then again some are harder to quantify, it seems.

And another thing... does anybody know for sure that the buildings' happiness and morale increases are additive or just replacing previous values? That is, if you build a church, a monastery, and a reliquery, will new troops be +4 morale and the province +60 happy, or is it the highest and thus just +2 morale and +30 happy?
Keep on conquering Hey it's Friday