One way to up approval is for a planet to get the game into their retail locations on or near the announced shipping date.

My taxes are very low, around 20%. I only get around -20% of disapproval about taxes from my population. The important part is when I am on the economic screen, the tooltip of the approval label tells me I have various bonuses due to the entertainment and the good atmosphere of my planet. But I get a '-70% population', which is not clear at all what it really means. Surpopulation ? How can I get this malus corrected, as it involves an overall approval of 38% !!! I already have entertainment such as stadiums on my planet.

Starve them, reduce your incoming food production, one way or another. Works for me .

If you are over populated you can recycle a farm and get it under control.

Unlike GC1 you cannot get enough people into a colony ship to affect moral and the population probably grows faster than you can build more ships

I posted this on another thread, but this thread seems good for it. My question: Where are the sliders to adjust propaganda on a planet? (you know, like GC1) That was on of the ways I kept my pop. happy in the original game. In the manual for GC2, on page 31 under "planetary Details," it talks about propaganda, but where is it?

I found out the propaganda sliders were taken out for the final. Controlling moral will be difficult without it. Hopefully it will make a comeback at a later date.....hint...hint....

Don't put too much investment in farming. Zeno farming gets you max 8 billion people + the 5 bill you start off with. 2 xeno farms = 8+8+5 million and they will be big time unhappy. One good farm is all you should have on a planet or you will be spending all you time buildling entertainment centers.

I this game. Other than taking down a farm or just building one farm per planet, no clue how to get population under control. But to yuo and word to the mutha.

There are rumors that the morale improvement tiles aren't working quite right as well.

StarJack:

I have entertainment networks on every planet, 2 food on earth and 1 on the others. I'm stunned at the population growth rate, it seems WAY, and I mean WAY too fast. Is there a way to turn it down? I'm a novice at this game, but I RTDM, and I played a lot of MOO and Space Empires, and I'm at a loss as to what I could be doing wrong. Talk of building transports and slaughtering millions of your own population isn't serious is it?

I had the same feeling. For one thing, my 2.0 Billion starting population grew (with no input from me) at a rate of 0.2B per week. Let's consider human physiology (2 genders, only the female reproductive, one baby per gestation period). There are 1 billion females, so they need a gestation period of 5 weeks... if there are no reproductive age caps. But since population growth is exponential, the next generation ALSO has to start bearing by the time the population has doubled. This requires puberty before age 5 weeks, and a gestation period of less than 5 weeks... something like 3.8 weeks for each, I think (or some other combination).

Now if you consider the social implications of life on such a planet (which I won't describe due to forum regulations), is it any wonder that everyone hates you?

On a more serious note, it seems that building farms before you have advanced entertainment structures is a bad idea. Otherwise, a single farm will force you to blanket your planet with low-tech entertainment buildings, leaving no room for productive buildings.

I've played a few games so far and every planet I try to increase the population over 15B my approval soon drops into the toilet. I have all the same problems over 10B too but not as drastic or quick to became rediculous.

I've realized I cant research farm upgrade techs cause I can't maintain approval on planets with that high a population. And building farms on bonus tiles...forget it.

I end up with half my tiles with morale bonuses and even with moral+ trade goods it doesnt seem too help much.

None of that seems right to me. What am I missing? Doing wrong?

Whatever the formula is, the population problem may be the most unrealistic part of this "Sci-Fi" strategy game, technologies included. I'm feeling some frustration over the combat limitations (I need research to put more than two hyperdrive ships into a fleet?) and results too (1 "fighter" can kill a Frigate!?!), but that's a story for another thread. My initial gush of enthusiam at the visual beauty and the concept has cooled to a hope that some things change over the patch life of the game. It IS a great looking game with a good interface. Here's hoping.

And Saber Cherry, I can see why the females would be hating life!

I found out the propaganda sliders were taken out for the final. Controlling moral will be difficult without it. Hopefully it will make a comeback at a later date.....hint...hint....

Actually, the key to morale is described above quite well but I will give my spin on it. Do not build farms in your initial colony in the first or even the second building effort on that planet, you do not need it. There is a population bonus (more taxpayers available) on your homeworld and that homeworld (although I can not testify to this) has a big effect on morale over your portion of the galaxy (could be due to more folks on it than other less important planets).

Second, a postivie income is required to maintain morale. You can have a positive morale with a negative income but the citizens will take up arms if your negative for to long and in the red. You can fix this income problem a couple of ways. One: Adjust the spending/production rate to a lower amount. Easy fix but hate to use less than 100%, why else build the buildings at all if your not going to use them at max?; Two: for example: On a standard level 10 world try building the following for a balanced approach Stardock = 1, Factory = 2, Trade = 1, Lab = 2, Morale = 1, Culture = 1. At this point you can decide if you want to have an extra tile left or just one for planet defense and possibly a superproject. I think you will find that you will max out at about 6 billion folks maybe a bit more or a bit less. Wait on building the food tile until you have gotten the planet to at least a 12 or 13 in PQ through terraforming as you will need another morale tile.

If you follow the above guidelines and can survive in the jungle of GC2 you should see a happy population with about an 80 to 90 percent approval rating and applicable bonuses.

W/R
Suralle Straykat
Kat Lord @ Large