@sirsmithy I've got 368k happiness with 0 cultural buildings. However, as I said, that's not enough to keep up with a glut of event prizes that provide population. For example, the Crow's Nest provides up to 14,910 population in SAM. That requires 20,874 happiness to balance out, or in GB terms a level 105 Hagia or level 34 Alcatraz. Far more achievable with the Alcatraz, but consider that this is just to balance out ONE building and you can only build a GB once. What if someone has two or more Crow's Nests? How about a whole bunch of Dark Doorways and Ships as well? I have a total of 265,077 population and about two-thirds of that is from event buildings.
You essentially did nothing but say that you haven't acquired enough event buildings yet to have a problem with happiness, because I have more happiness than you do and still have to rely on the tavern bonus to maintain enthusiasm because of how lopsided event buildings currently are.