Hello and welcome back—I’m Bbo Jo. In this installment of our Absolute Beginner’s Guide, we’re diving into a detailed test designed for Season X, where I’m about to start building a new city. Today’s focus is on one burning question: Is the quality of flats (residential building quality) truly a soft limit to the happiness of your citizens?

In my experience, the quality you see on every residential building sets an upper ceiling on the overall happiness achievable in your city. In this test, I set up a controlled experiment to determine just how much that “quality” influences happiness over the span of one full year (from April 1 to April 1). Here’s how I did it and what I discovered.

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1. Test Setup and Initial Conditions

Before diving into the numbers, it’s essential to understand the framework of our experiment:

• Game Settings:
  • I turned off random building events and global events, which could otherwise impact happiness unpredictably.
  • Realistic mode and research were also disabled to focus solely on the residential quality factor.
• Test Variables:
  • The key variable is the “unsatisfied citizen reaction,” which I set in three test scenarios—labeled as Hard, Medium, and Easy.
  • Every building in the test city is fully provided with amenities: crime services, a radio station, trash management (including snowplows and a heating plant), a fire station, a small clinic, a shopping center, a school, and kindergartens. This comprehensive setup ensures that only the quality of flats drives the differences in happiness.
• Baseline Population and Overflow Management:
  • The city begins with all residential buildings maxed out with citizens, ensuring a uniform starting point in education, happiness, and other baseline stats.
  • An “overflow” mechanism is in place: additional factories (non-producing, to avoid pollution) have been built so that every citizen finds work—keeping unemployment at zero and ensuring that citizens aren’t left wandering, which could skew the happiness data.

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2. Residential Quality Settings Tested

I selected buildings from each residential size category (small, medium, and large) and tested three quality settings for each:

• Small Buildings:
  • Minimum quality: 55%
  • Medium quality: 77%
  • Maximum quality: 91%
• Medium Buildings:
  • Minimum quality: 60%
  • Medium quality: 70%
  • Maximum quality: 94%
• Large Buildings:
  • Minimum quality: 68%
  • Medium quality: 78%
  • Maximum quality: 96%

These percentages represent the “quality of flats” value displayed on each building. I then recorded the resulting happiness levels over the test period.

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3. What the Numbers Show

Let’s break down the key findings:

• Ceiling Effect on Hard Mode:
  On Hard difficulty, the data revealed a clear “ceiling” effect. For example, a small building with a quality rating of 91% achieved a happiness level of roughly 90%.
  • Medium and large buildings showed a similar pattern: a quality of 94% in a medium building correlated with about 91% happiness, and a quality of 96% in a large building resulted in around 93% happiness.
    This indicates that once your quality of flats reaches a certain high level, happiness approaches—and does not exceed—that threshold.
• Lower Quality Settings:
  When quality was set lower (e.g., 55% on small buildings), the worst-case happiness never dipped below approximately 71%. Similar trends were observed in medium and large buildings, with the minimum quality settings never reducing overall happiness drastically.
  This suggests that even “crappy” residential buildings don’t force your citizens into unhappiness; they tend to hover in a relatively narrow band.
• Baseline Hypothesis:
  I hypothesized that there is a baseline value—a soft limit—defined by the quality of flats. If your flats’ quality is near or above a certain threshold (around 75–76%), it acts as a ceiling for happiness. In other words, improving quality above that point doesn’t yield a proportional increase in happiness; instead, it merely maintains a high level. Conversely, if quality is much lower, citizens only lose a small percentage of that potential happiness.
  For instance, a building with 55% quality might still achieve happiness levels around 71%, meaning the drop isn’t as severe as the raw percentage might suggest.
• Effects Across Different Difficulties:
  On easier difficulties, the overall happiness numbers shift upward—blue bars (quality of flats) rise, and happiness ratings can even hit 100% in some cases. However, the underlying relationship remains: the quality of flats sets a ceiling for happiness. The gap between the quality figure and actual happiness becomes less pronounced as the difficulty eases.

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4. What This Means for Your Republic

The takeaway is both reassuring and strategic:

• Don’t Stress Over Perfect Quality:
  You can build residential buildings with lower quality flats without incurring catastrophic drops in citizen happiness. Even at lower settings, happiness stays in the 70% range, which is acceptable for a well-functioning Republic.
• Aim for a Balanced Baseline:
  If your buildings achieve around 75–76% quality, your city’s happiness will likely hover around that figure. Improving quality beyond that creates a ceiling effect, and you won’t see dramatic gains.
  This finding suggests that—especially in the early stages of Season X—you can focus resources on other areas without obsessing over achieving perfect residential quality.
• Data-Driven Adjustments:
  For planners and experimenters, this test provides a baseline to compare against. If you’re noticing that your overall happiness plateaus near the quality value of your flats, it’s a good indicator that your residential quality is functioning as a soft limit. Fine-tuning other factors (like amenities, worker distribution, or overflow management) might yield better improvements in citizen satisfaction.

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5. Final Thoughts

This test confirms that the quality of flats is indeed a soft limit to happiness in Workers and Resources: Soviet Republic. Your city’s happiness will generally not exceed—and is effectively capped by—the quality level of its residential buildings. This means that even if you opt for lower-quality housing, your citizens won’t fall into abysmal levels of unhappiness; they simply level off at a predictable baseline.

As you build your new city in Season X, keep these findings in mind. Balance your investments across housing, amenities, and infrastructure rather than focusing solely on achieving sky-high residential quality. After all, a well-rounded Republic is built on many factors, and sometimes “good enough” is perfectly acceptable.

If you have any additional tests you’d like me to run or if you have thoughts on these findings, please drop a comment. I’m always open to suggestions and new experiments.

Thank you for joining me on this deep dive into residential quality and happiness. Until next time, happy building and see you in Season X!