Approval

Lower taxes, more entertainment buildings. Some early techs give a bonus without any buildings, and also certain wonders like the Harmony Crystals help. In extreme cases, a player may have to lower production (2nd slider) while lowering taxes. Planets below 50% approval may break off and form an independent state.

Oh, and also hold the mouse over the approval number on the planet detail screen. It will give a breakdown. If population crowding is part of the equation, build transports to take some people off.

... and if population is the reason, and it doesnt' seem that more entertainment buildings will be enough (BTW, stock markets give a 10% morale boost as well as boost to your economy and influence), you need to get rid of some of your food plants. Building a food plant on a tile that has more than 100% bonus to food production is probably pretty dumb unless you have enough tiles to build a lot of entertainment centers.

Hi!
A strange things are going on with approval.
My race mines two morale resources (37% bonus from each), has researched all approval/morale techs, has 2 wonders (+35% bonus), so the statistics says it has morale ability over 160%. That's nice, I could tax my pop at 69% and still have ALL planets at 100%. Well, not all.
One class 20 planet had big problems. I've put there a farm on a +300% food tile, and the pop there has grown over 20B. On that planet only I had approval 50% and decreasing fast. After I checked the break-down of approval there, it said the planet has only ~+50% from my natural ability. And despite having there 3 ZeroG arenas AND 4 Stock Markets (+190% morale) it also takes into calculation only ~60% of that bonus! Just for that planet alone I had to decrease tax rate to 64% to keep it over 40% approval, while the rest of my ~30 planets were 100% happy.

I know the morale is taken to the ~0.80 power, so the numbers quite match. However I find it is ridiculous to put there so many morale buildings, and still having such problems, just because the number of pop has so big impact on the morale. If I'd have built there a farm on a regular tile (only 11B pop), I'd lose ~30% income from pop (sqrt(21) vs. sqrt(11) )), but I could have there 3 more Stock Markets (+90% more income), and tax all planets well above 70%, while still having them all well above 50% approval.

Conclusion: DONT use +300% food tile for a farm, if you want to have a healhy overal economy. A small exception: if it is on a big colony world (not HW) build there only a basic farm, and NEVER upgrade it.

BR, Iztok

I've also found that once the population of any planet gets above 20-22B it gets much harder to control and usually isn't worth all the morale boosters required to keep it happy and growing. Of course the population will stop growing once approval reaches 40% so if you don't mind having a planet or two that low... I just try to keep my populations about even and under 21B so that I don't have to drop taxes for just a few planets crammed full because they house an econ capital or something. It's too bad that we can't turn those +300% food tiles into something more useful.

Iztok, build more farms. I'm being serious. There is a morale cap at 27bil, so if you get any more than that (You should be able to get 100bil at 20) morale isn't affected. Just chuck on 2 more farms and 4 more morale buildings, and then as many farms as you wish for free money.

Hi!

There is a morale cap at 27bil,

Negative morale from pop seems to be capped at -80%.

Iztok, build more farms.

Thanks for the advice, but I don't have te patience to sit and wait for my planets to grow to 100B. Even with the "negative-morale-from-pop-cap" there are diminished returns from each farm (like going from 35B to 45B pop gives only 13% more money (sqrt(45) / sqrt(35)), and I need to wait for that increase to happen fully for 50 turns (assuming ~200k growth). In my current game I had in that time wiped out two civ's, each having about 8 planets.

BR, Iztok

Thanks for the tips, ill give them a try and see if i can make it work, i was puttin about 4 farms on my home planet so i think the problem might have been overcrowding. We will find out soon enough, im goin to dive in!

Of course, it'd be nice if the game was consistent with what it calls Approval & Influence. When you see a bonus site on a planet, one type says "Any Cultural Site gets a bonus" - but the actual things you can build aren't ever called "Cultural Sites", but rather Influence. Similarly, "Approval" vice "Happiness" - there's these nice icons indicating what the sites influence when you look at the site, but those icons do nothing to help the player tell which sites get a bonus from it.

Not to hard to figure out which is which - but frankly, the gamer shouldn't have to. If the terminology was consistent, _or_ the icons were displayed when examining planetary improvements, they wouldn't.

There is a morale cap at 27bil,

Negative morale from pop seems to be capped at -80%.

To be more precise its at 25 Billion people with a penalty of -80%.


If you play on smaller maps it may not be worth the trouble to build to many farms, but if you play on gigantic maps with abundant everything its quite worth it to have some 50+ billion people planets. Not only for their money, but also for their influence, amount of soldiers they get and invincibility from invasions because of that. Also they give lots of points for the high score.

It's just 10 farms with the top farming tech as well, and I think ten farms, six morale structures, and a factory should be the staple of all pq +17. The cash is so worth it, especially if you transport people.

Hey! Why don't we have immigration in this game?

It's just 10 farms with the top farming tech as well, and I think ten farms, six morale structures, and a factory should be the staple of all pq +17. The cash is so worth it

Try 2 farms (keeping them at "intensive" so 21b max pop), 2 factories, & 13 Stock Markets if you want to maximise cash - you'll get much more that way.

Someone else on forums discovered that bonus you get with moral buildings is not added to the base approval, but is a bonus multiplied by rating of 100 modified with population penalty.

So at 5bil, penalty is 9, so morale bonus is mutiplied by base of 91.
But at 20mil people it's more like -60% or something, so it's not wonder that morale buildings are much less effective later.

Hi!

but if you play on gigantic maps with abundant everything its quite worth it to have some 50+ billion people planets

I see the point. I tried the gigantic map once. Tried, and ran away scared to death. It was soooo big. The minimap was pointless. My initial colonizer with best range could cover only an itsy-bitsy tiny portion of it. I closed the game. It was to freaking big to be fun.

I am a MM fan. Most of my Stars! games I've won also with meticulous MM. But there's a limit. In Stars I hit it twice - once as a newbie (where I blamed my lack of experience for turns lasting so long), and about a year ago, when I foolishly joined the 100 year forced gen game in huge uni, and got out of those 100 turns as the second with 110 planets taken. When the real play started, I needed 3-5 hours for each turn. Fortunately other player got the same problem, and after ~15 turns we quited playing that game. I re-wowed myself never ever again entering a Stars! game with more than 40 planets per player.

In GalCiv I too do quite a lot of MM, so some of my turns also take 10-20 min's, esp. when I'm preparing for a war, and when initial blows fell. However I still miss the convinience of Stars! real players about when the game is practically over. In my recent Stars! game I entered as a replacement at about turn 75, and when at about turn 85 the biggest alliance, that controlied about 35-40% of planets, has shown ships and weapons, for whose my alliance would need about 35 turns to get the tech for, all players quickly came to agreement the game is over. I only wish that could happen in my current GC2 game, where I own about two thirds of all habitable planets, have ships that the rest of players can only scratch the paint from them (large hull,speed 17, 35 missile attack, 16 beam defense, 10 missile defense vs. small/medium with 10-15 beam attack or 5-10 missile attack, and 0-4 defenses). IMO the game is for some time over. Now I need to wipe out the remaining three AIs to confirm that.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

Someone else on forums discovered that bonus you get with moral buildings is not added to the base approval, but is a bonus multiplied by rating of 100 modified with population penalty.

Now that would explain why on my big planet with 21B pop I only got 50% and 60% increases from "natural" abilities and from buildings, but on a class 5 one with ~5B they're almost "normal".

Damn Stardock! They've implied double penalities for having more pop.

BR, Iztok

Also, someone said that tax gained is depended from square root of poplation, so two worlds with 10mil will earn more taxes then one with 20mil.


Now, I do try to make worlds get pop in 15-20 range, but no more.

thanks for the help guys i figured out the approval and now i can get the game runnin nicely for me. now to up the difficulty and really have a challenge

I have also noticed that on high pop planets (20B+) the natural moral ability seems to start disappearin for some reason which I don't understand. I would nice to know if this is a bug or intended.

On high-class planets, I build 1 farming, 1 economy, 1 happiness building, no matter what I plan to do with it later.
Any peole who decide they're too good for their own planet get shipped off to the next planet. In a military troop transport for 10000 men. Works wonders