Two questions relating to influence and morale:

1. In my most evil game to date I had the pleasure of acquiring a Mind Control Center (as you will recall, this apparently forces foreign colonies to rebel "nearly instantaneously" when their influence is exceeded by a factor of four). Having a natural predilection for the power of Influence I immediately set about building starbases to try out my new toy. Unfortunately it didn't work as well as I'd hoped; though my influence over one enemy colony was over 7, it stubbornly refused to revolt. Until the end of the game it sat there with its skull-and-crossbones and absolutely did not assent to my (obviously) superior culture. This seems to be the modus operandi in influence takeovers (or rather, lack thereof) -- my enormous influence and their colony that just doesn't revolt.

Now, considering the possibility that the Mind Control Center is not a gigantic paperweight, there must be another factor that I failed to consider; and what I came up with is this: planetary Approval. Could it be that foreign influence has to contend not only local colonial influence but also native morale and approval? Thus, though the "other culture" might be very strong, the local populace is just so damn happy that they don't consider switching sides...

2. Speaking about approval, I'm having some trouble with unhappy planets. Generally all my planets tend toward 100% approval, but even when the majority are in ecstacy, I still find three or four with approval ratings of less than 40%. I theorise that this has to do with the size of the local population; generally, those colonies of 6 to 12 billion are happier than those 12 billion and above. One of my planets produced 24 mt/w in food, had a population of 23,9 billion and an approval of 36%. The problem is I nearly covered it in morale boosting improvements, until it had a morale bonus of 390% -- but the approval would not go above 36%. So, could overpopulation really affect one's approval so severely?

Ta for any input.
J.