GAME STRATEGY - The Approval Rating.

No. The consequence is that at 31% your growth rate is appalling, and every other empire will be able to crush you because you simply can't defend your planets.

It's always best to keep approval high, I generally try and maintain 100%.

You might want to check out the GalCiv wikia site (galciv.wikia.com) for exact statistics. I believe it says that your population will decline below about 40% approval. Also, there is the risk of revolt. And if you are attacked, invaders can use the Information Warfare tactic to recruit your citizens during planetary invasion. At 30-40% approval, that would be a lot of people.

Think your advice is pretty dodgy tbh Marcathonas.

Approval rating doesn't really mean squat.

To maximise your economy increase your taxes until the lowest morale on any planet should be 41% (42 if you have too). At 40% your colonies stop growing. If your lowest morale planet hits its pop cap (farm or artificial) you can increase taxes so its morale go's as low as 31%. At 30% the colony will rebel so don't go that low!!

By following this advice all your colonys will grow in pop and your economy will go through the roof.

I have never lost an election using this strat although it is conceivable under very excceptionable circumstances.


Lenius.

I prefer the growth strategy whereby I keep morale high--lots of planets at 100% to get the pop growth bonus.

While this sacrifices some tax income in the short term, the advantages (as I see it) to having this type of growth strategy are appealing:

1) Long term tax revenue is larger, even given a lower tax rate because of a larger population

2) I can better support either colonization or invasion by keeping my planets growing fast.

3) Higher population planets are more resistant to invasion forces (more cannon fodder).

3) I have lost elections when my overall approval rating gets below about 70%, which entails loss of my political party bonuses.

This is supply side economics at its best! Lower taxes yields bigger growth. I also have a personal and philosophical preference as my civilization's leader to keep my people happy--Whether as Dregnan crushing my opponents or Torians loving my opponents.

Fact is your not going to be able to keep your all your planets at 100 morale for long. The only time I would keep taxes low is if I were running low on homeworld pop on a colony rush, pointless otherwise your just slowing your economy. Better to use my strat and get a pop growth abily bonus.

You only need to reach 2.6 bill on a planet to reach its max amount of pop growth each turn.

If your planets are being invaded your doing something seriously wrong already so high pop wont really matter.

I've run approval as low as 47% and never lost an election in 21 games even if you did lose an election the political bonuses arern't worth much compared to a much larger income anyway.


Lenius.

I usually have lost elections when my approval rating was at or below 60%.

I always play my games with the intention of wiping out every race (it is just how I enjoy playing...) if you don't have a decent approval rating it gets very hard to fill those transports without tanking your economy. Especially if you fill enough transports to finish your opponent off in one turn like I usually try to do.

Lenius: Wrong. Approval is very, very important. If it's at 31%, you WILL NOT have the population to fight a war or get income. Because it's not growing.

Your strategy is flawed, you're losing up to 40% of tax money for no bonus by not keeping morale as high as possible.

100% morale = 100% pop growth bonus. If you're getting 31% population, you're doing something VERY wrong yourself. Invasions happen in the game, and since I play with as little military as I can be bothered with, I can say that morale that low is bad.

For the record: I, and a fair few others here I know of, are perfectly capable of maintaining 100% approval rating at 79% taxes. It's your advice which is dodgy, tbh.

Thank you everyone for the various different strategies and outlooks on approval rating.

I'm wondering if it would possible to implement both of your strategies. Start the game off by playing 100% approval until your population is very large and then going down to 41% later in the game in order to amass a large attack fleet to annihilate your neighbors?

I'm totally new, as you can tell. But do you think this strategy will work. I'm about to try it and I'll post my results here.

Peace.....

I personally don't think maintaining 100% is that worthwhile. (except perhaps the first 20 turns of the game)

I tend to pick +20 to 30% pop growth, and then for the most part keep average morale over 75, with the lowest around 50%.

For me, this is a good balance. You get solid growth out of most planets, and good tax income overall.

I have never had a need to tax morale under 50%. For me 75 or higher is the way to go. No rebellions, and you win the senate every time.

Another point to mention is effiency. You shouldn't be quick buying too much stuff. Let your production and research chew up the money you're pulling in.

If you can afford 100% morale, it is probably the way to go. (you build up your population quickly.) However for me, it's just easier to build up with higher taxes.

As of 1.31, I believe, I was able to sustain a 79/80% tax (No higher than 80%, or the population suddenly doesn't want me in power, despite the people absolutely loving me at 80%. I raise it 1% and suddenly their opinion of me jumps?) while keeping 70 or higher approval in one game. And at least 70% is still pretty good - it is still 'green' after all. May not be getting the 100% bonus, but the 'green' bonus isn't something to laugh at, right?

I'm wondering if it would possible to implement both of your strategies. Start the game off by playing 100% approval until your population is very large and then going down to 41% later in the game in order to amass a large attack fleet to annihilate your neighbors?

Actually the limiting factor for me in conquering other civs is filling up transports with troops. So keeping the population growth bonus thru the whole game works well.

I work my way up to 80% taxes and then work my way up to 100% approval.
Then when a planets approval drops below 100%, I fill up a transport with troops, usually 3K troops works good for me.
Then when I have enough transports ready, I attack.
It also helps to get 2-3K population as soon as I conquer a planet so that it doesn't drain the economy for too long.

Prior to 1.3, I usually tried to start with 100% approval but with the changes that came with 1.3 I think it is best to keep the taxes high and work up to 100% approval.

Of course all this depends on ones playstyle and how everything times out for you.

Did you even read my thread Marcathonas or just the bit were i questioned your advice.

Lenius: Wrong. Approval is very, very important. If it's at 31%, you WILL NOT have the population to fight a war or get income. Because it's not growing.

If you read my post properly I stated that I only have planets below 41% morale when they have reached their pop cap. If its impossible for them to grow further they don't need to be within the growth rate morale range ie 41% or more you'd just be wasting money.

If your being invaded your doing something wrong. Probably your economy is poor because your taxes are so low. The quicker you reach and afford 100% spending and a good manufacturing base the better, it's much more important than having a slightly higher pop and a useless high approval rating. Also small military makes you a target and is an obvious flaw in your gameplay.


Lenius.

So... how about if you are part of the War Party (hypothetically- I tend to prefer Technologists or Federalists) and you are in the yellow or red for Approval and an election comes along? Micromanage so that the Approval is back up in the green and safe only during elections so you don't get military penalties? I suppose that's one way to do it...

At Republic level you can easily go as low as 48% approval and not risk losing an election.

The more advanced goverments i'm not sure but by the time you get that far most people would have a morale resource so approval rating shouldn't be an issue at 41% planet morale.

People on here are making way to much a deal about approval rating it really is something that can be forgotten about imo. Winning by 1 vote is effectively the same as by 50 votes.


Lenius.

Well, the thing is that it's variable and a weighted randomization. I've had my approval at 75% once when the election came around and the votes for my party were barely over 50% of the senate. I tend not to want to let the voting get anywhere near 50% for obvious reasons.

I'd love to consistently win by 1 vote, but if there's a chance that winning by 1 vote can turn into losing by 30 votes in the next 6 or so months, then I have reason to worry.

It's a checks and balances and economic tradeoffs system. Very cool. If you need fast growth rates but low money income, keep morale high with low taxes, if you need money and dont really need growth or growth rate keep your taxes higher.

I wouldn't even use morale as a scale of morale, it's more a scale of how much flexibility there is between adding taxes and lowering them. How far you can go without counting.

Approval is not a static thing, it can go up and down. There are reasons that it should be high at some points in the game and on some planets and there are other times where it's not that necessary and the income from higher taxes is more important.

Certainly, during the initial colonization phase you want to keep your approval at 100% on all your colonies so that they grow as fast as possible and become profitable ASAP. In v1.2 I would also try to keep my homeworld approval at 100% as well so that I could pull off 500 colonists every other turn. In v1.3 I've found I only need to keep my homeworld above the 75% level because of the higher starting pop.

I usually don't build farms on my colonies until I have some global morale benefit from either tech or resource mining. During this time my colonies are sitting at 5B and they're not growing, so I up my taxes to where my global approval is in the high 70's. This insures that I don't lose any elections.

I generally put a farm down on all my colonies in advance of needing to build a lot of transports. So clearly, I need to lower my taxes to get my approval back up to first grow my colonies pop to the farm limit and then keep it high while I'm filling the transports. I lower my taxes so that most of my colonies are at 100% but not so low that they all are. The ones that lag behind obviously won't supply as many transports as the others. Anyway this goes back and forth over the course of the game as required.

As has been stated before the biggest need for population is to keep those transports filled. Nobody has mentioned a side effect of successul conquest.

I play suicidal and generally wait for wars to come to me. But when they do come, they tend to end quickly. This usually means I have spent 20-50% of my population gaining 2-6 new planets. This is a double wammy because my maintenence costs have increased by 20-50% at the same time my taxes have decreased by the same amount.

The plus side is taxes aren't worth much anyway, so 100% morale only costs 20-50BC's a turn to maintain. after 5-10 turns, I can keep the morale at 100% and increase my spending by 20-50% a turn.

FYI. It is because of this effect that I find the Galactic Privateer is the single most valuable galactic wonder in the game.

If your being invaded your doing something wrong. Probably your economy is poor because your taxes are so low. The quicker you reach and afford 100% spending and a good manufacturing base the better, it's much more important than having a slightly higher pop and a useless high approval rating. Also small military makes you a target and is an obvious flaw in your gameplay.

Did you bother reading MY post? 79% taxes aren't low, and 6k a turn isn't a poor economy. It's not a brilliant one, but it's enough.

I have a small military by choice. I'm strangling the other races for tech, and have a superior fleet. I've got the highest rating, just I don't bother with something ludicrous like a military of 500, because it's a drain on economy.

Once again: If you aren't able to sustain 100% morale empire-wide at high taxes, I'm seeing a flaw in your strategy.

Do you not understand what morale is? It's factored AFTER resources. Thus, if you're running at 41% morale with resources, your strategy is flawed.

You can keep playing with a weak economy if you like. I'll stick to high taxes and high morale, if that's fine by you.

Also: how do you plan to invade anyone with no people? you don't. The OP asked if he could stay permanently at 31% morale without penalties. The answer is: not realistically. Your "advice" is, at best, horrendously flawed if you'd rather lower morale for no good reason when it's extremely easy to keep high taxes and morale. Plus the pop growth is skewed, and growth bonuses are empire wide. No point in letting one planet drop to 41%, it drags down the average.

Considering I have 100bil pop invasion/culture farms, I rather like having the growth bonuses. Yet again: if you honestly think that high morale = weak economy, you're doing something very wrong.

I really don't see how a game can be played successfully at high difficulty levels while keeping approval at 100% all the time. Income would be too low most of the time to compete with the AI. I let my approval numbers fluctuate quite a bit depending on what I'm doing. If I need population growth, I'll drop taxes. If I need money I'll run taxes up. I jockey the tax slider a lot.

You don't *have* to keep approval in the green all the time. There are two primary disadvantages to low approval, low population growth and the possibility of losing elections which puts another political party in power. Overall approval over 50% will keep you winning elections. There's also an I-leauge random event that can cause planets with very low approval to break off. You can go a whole game without seeing that event. Some people are mistaken in thinking low approval increases the likelyhood of a planet defecting to another race, but that's not the case. Planets revolt only when under outside influence which has nothing to do with approval. Approval is mostly all about population growth versus income. Pick your poison.

Note there is marked difference in this aspect between the latest version of the game and older versions. In 1.2, there was a point fairly early where you could set taxes at 80% and forget about it. Approval is harder to come by in the latest version of the game which requires constant management. At first, I was unhappy with the change, but after getting used to, I find it actually makes the game more interesting. The game designers do know best in the end.

There is no way early[/B] on in a game Marcathonas thay you can achieve high morale and high taxes. It's simply impossible.

[B]That means you have to make a choice.

1. Your version: High morale bigger pop high approval rating.

Fact is you don't even have elections until you reach republic. Your economy is small because you have low taxes. Therefore spending is low no where near hundred percent. Means you can not build manufactoring buildings or ships at any great speed.

2. My Version. High taxes. 41% lowest morale.

All planets achieving growth, no risk of losing election till you reach republic (only gives 10% eco bonus now anyway). 100% spending achieved much more quickly. Manufacturing can be built quicker, morale and eco buildings can be built quicker to strengthen economy.


Frankly Marcathonas I don't care how you play its your game do what you like.


Lenius.

That's simply wrong. You know they have morale buildings?

You can't keep 100% full time, now. But I can still keep taxes high and morale high at the same time using those morale buildings and bonuses. Frankly, all the assumptions you've made about my gamestyle are incorrect. I ALWAYS have a powerful economy, and I've never been below the top 3. I don't need any more cash like that to start the game, and I'm making use of the pop growth bonuses.

Don't call someone's advice shoddy when you have no idea what strategy they're actually using.

Marconathas, it is not "extremely easy to keep high taxes and morale." In order to have 100% morale at 79% taxes, you'd need some combination of maxed out starbases on morale resources, morale trade goods, and VR centers. It is not fast or cheap to get any of these, and there are lots of alternative things you could be researching or building instead. I won my last suicidal game with nothing more than one morale trade good, one halfway-developed morale resource, and xeno entertainment. I had 69% taxes and about 55% morale. I think there are much more effective ways to spend your research than maximizing morale bonuses, like stock exchanges, governemnt techs, or the ships you need to take over an enemy. 100% morale at 79% taxes is a nice endgame goal for your final push for conquest of miliking metaverse scores, but the game is mostly won or lost long before that's possible.

My usual strategy is to go for 100% morale at the beginning of the game until my initial money runs out, then set taxes as high as I can to keep 40% approval. I usually don't bother with the advanced governments unless I want to run at a higher approval rating for the growth bonus.

Edit for Marconathas's last post:

You can't keep 100% full time, now. But I can still keep taxes high and morale high at the same time using those morale buildings and bonuses.

Are you playing on 1.31? Morale buildings are much weaker than they were before. I don't think they're worth building on most planets, only one that are specialized for population and economy.

I ALWAYS have a powerful economy, and I've never been below the top 3.

What difficulty are you playing on? On suicidal, your economy will be small compared to the AI early on no matter what you do. Once my economy matches that of the top AI, the game's over, I've won. All that's left is cleanup.

Reply#22

I'm sure you do always have a powefull economy. It just takes you a couple years longer than it should because of your low taxes.

Look Marcathonas it seems i'm oviously wasting my time trying to give you good advice. Frankly I have better things to do that read your replies although they are amusing, so this is my last post. Theres a lot of good advice in this thread for those that are open minded and willing to try new things. Good luck fending off the AI invasions.


Lenius.

Note there is marked difference in this aspect between the latest version of the game and older versions. In 1.2, there was a point fairly early where you could set taxes at 80% and forget about it. Approval is harder to come by in the latest version of the game which requires constant management. At first, I was unhappy with the change, but after getting used to, I find it actually makes the game more interesting. The game designers do know best in the end.

This is all very true. I even mostly agree with your last sentance as well, but you shouldn't say so publicly because it undercuts your argument the next time they make a change that you don't like (I'm mostly joking here).

You know they have morale buildings?

Actually, I have heard of them, I've just never used them. In v1.2 it was easy not to. In v1.31, I'll take a bit of a morale hit here and there just to avoid them. In v1.4, you'll be pretty much forced to use them.

There are many ways to play this game. In my current v1.31 game, I'm keeping my global approval around 85% and my taxes at 79% giving me an income of 190,000 bc per week. I'm playing a gigantic suicidal with a total of 450 planets and I have about 180 of them at this point. If I had to let my overall approval sag a bit I'd let it go down to 70% or so before I'd be willing to lower my taxes and accept a lower income.

Much of this is a style of play choice. I'm sure I could still win with a lower level of income and higher approval, but an average approval in the eighties is prefectly sufficient for building transports and growing pop on newly conquered planets. I'm also sure I could win with a lower approval level and even more income. But if I had to chose between these two choices, I'd probably chose higher approval and less income, at least when my income is 190K.