Population and Morale

Oh and I forgot to mention that I decreased taxes significantly. About 30%. That didn't help very much either.

AFAIK the 'native ability' modifier shown on the tooltip is not the actual amount of your ability, but rather the amount of bonus your ability gives on that planet.

IIRC there is a massive morale hit at 22b, no matter what you do. If you want to try and get beyond that point, all you can do is keep on adding morale boosters. There is no easy way.

What's the rationale behind this population limit? Food improvements were already reduced in power and entertainment tech has been increased in cost so I'd think those would be effective deterrents already. No other planet improvements see a reduction in effectiveness that I know of? For instance, I can build unlimited factories, labs, banks, etc. with no penalties.

This is why I think the morale system in GCII is one of the most idiotic ones I've ever seen. Everything else is great, and what I don't like I can mod, but it needs to be straitforward.
If the sector says it give 60% bonus, it should give 60% to morale at ALL levels, not 34% at 12B and 14% at 20B.

Hi!

In very first versions of GC-2 it was quite easy to get really big planets to 100B pop. But that planet generated ridiculous amount of influence and money, so developers made costs to make such a planet go skyhigh by implementing rapidly decreasing morale. In early games I too used to grow pop to about 15-20B, but I soon noticed that the morale is droping much faster than the population is growing, and deliberately decided I'll not go over 15B pop (initial colony + one best farm). That was I could manage with 1-2 morale centers, and still kept taxes in range 50%-60%. At about that time developers nerfed money revenue to be a square-root of the amount of pop on a planet, so it became less and less profiteble to have high pop. But when I've read about taxes at 80% with planets at 11B without single morale building, I tried that approach, and will be using it until the game mechanics changes.

In DA I changed it only to use one morale building, since Stock Markets don't give any morale bonus anymore. I'm not sure what the actuall formula for producing money is, but the one at Wiki doesn't hold anymore. Planets in DA give less money.

BR, Iztok

see that is just absurd to me... no population no matter how "entertained" could stand for that kind of universal tax rate, what good is the best entertainment in the universe if I have no money with which to buy it?!

I think the morale and farming needs an overhaul. You should have the kind of food. I'm not talking about hotdogs vs. Steak, I'm talking about the kind of farm. If you have a basic farm vs. a Xeno farming III farm, the type III should have a larger pop boost AND a reduce in that danged morale crutch. So the quality and the method of farming is bettered. Not just the yield.

Maybe it's like the Romans and it's being given out for free. People would think, "Well, at least our taxes pay for this." If we had enough room in football stadiums, a lot of people would put up with quite higher taxes for season tickets.

I think once you get upwards of 19 billion people on a planet, about the only food most people are going to get is Soylent Green. My morale would plummet, too.

I had high hopes when I read that a new Galactic Resort super improvement was planned for DA; the fact tht it gives a smaller morale boost than a Zero-G Arena baffles me. We need something like a Galactic Superdome improvement. Free entertainment like the Romans provided, but competing against the other races. "All through the month of December, we bring you Blood Bowl VII! Terrans vs. Drengin! That's right, Bob, and it's funny how excited the Drengin fans got when they heard they would be playing the 'Skins. Go figure!"

LOL!    I would *love* to see that fight. THey need colloseums in galciv2.

The Galactic Resort should work like the Fusion Power Plant and the other booster improvements. Instead of providing a boost to morale, it should provide it's boost to the morale buildings on the planet. That would mean the Galactic Resort would have to be made a 'One per Planet' building. They'd change the name to a Solar Resort.

Hi!

It's a game. It works in that game. That's enough for me.

Speaking of absurdity: don't you think the whole computer gaming is absurd? Sitting several hours per day in a front of some flat surface watching there how some strange colors change?

BR, Iztok

High tax rates really dont mean much unless put into context. For instance, would you care if almost all money you made was sent to the government, if that government gave you everything you needed and a little more. And what money you made was for luxuries only because anything else has already been provided. You'd be pretty content, no financial worries, and the only thing you'd have to be concerned about is whether you wanted to upgrade your computer into an uber-puter or maybe buy that 100" tv of awesomeness.

Of course if all that money went to the government and you got no return, sitting in a cardboard hut, drinking flitered pee out of a mister coffee, then yes, you would be terribly pissed about it, and your morale reflect that.

Basicly its all relative.

I think the devs should be recognized for their effort to limit 100B worlds. However, there is always room for improvement. Making morale change exponetially after 22b is counterintuitive. Morale should be linked to tax rate and influence just like "real life". If you see some one more happy and prosperous than you most people want to emulate their life style. It simply makes more "game sense" to link food with population and have larger populations require more farms not morale buildings. While it did "fix" the original problem it creates a new one ... (i.e. 11b population worlds with 80% tax rates). Maybe Frogboy sould look into this further

That's definitely a male's perspective, and not universal at that for sure.



That's the standard excuse when you can't make things happen in a logical fashion, right.



Yes, because that basically removes your ability to make *choices*. So everyone, rich or poor eats the same or wears the same. Sure, you can use what's left from your salary to buy better stuff, but then your taxes were just wasted. So why would you have high salaries with high taxes, if you could have lower salaries with lower taxes? Yep, it's relative   



I think they have to be more creative with what they do. And think a little more on the consequences.

Well, that's why the words "a lot of" are included in the sentence. Even a necromancy after two months can't quite expunge them from the original text

Well In my current game I have found if I have one Intensive Farm, 2 VR and 3 or more Stock Exchanges it works pretty well but I have to keep my fleets relitivly smaller than in Gal Civ II DL.

Duh

Super Hiver ability ought to change the way that your moral/population relationship works. Different effects could be expected depending on exactly what you mean by a "hive," but societal communication ought to be much better in virtually every scenario. The Thalan, specifically, seem to be working for what they deem to be a "higher cause." This should inspire greater tolerance of the hardships caused by overpopulation in Super Hiver societies.

Super breeder also ought to change the population/morale relationship. If your culture and physiology promote having more children to such a degree that it makes a noticeable difference in your overall population growth than it seems unlikely that your citizenry will become as easily depressed by overpopulation. They are more likely to be happy that they have many children, and believe that everyone else is also having children and thus being happy. Even if living conditions are oppressive the idea that most other people are happy can often promote happiness in oneself.

On higher taxes, consider: in a futuristic society money goes a lot farther. Look at current economic theory. In the dark ages, the idea was that in order for one person to gain something someone else had to lose something. Now we have this crazy (but so far successful) idea that it is possible for EVERYONE to make a profit. No one has to lose in modern economic theory -- the only question is how much you are winning by. In GalCiv 2 we appear to be considering a futuristic society that presumably has developed better methods for using the resources available to it, and renewable energy to boot. Note that during the hints when you're loading a game the developers go out of their way to mention that the Galactic Resources (yellow cylinders, blue cubes) are special and unusual because they are NOT easily renewable.

What this boils down to is that a tax rate of 80% nowadays means poverty for the people subjected to it. An 80% tax rate in the future setting of GalCivII means that the citizens can only afford to build personal skyscrapers, not private spaceships. Aren't they so deprived?

I meant that not all *males* think that way. And what's "a lot" for you? Say 10%?!    And it was actually 1.5 months, and I wasn't aware that opinions had an expiration date    Well, for some people they do...




Don't try to make sense out of it, there is none. All this talk about 80% taxes and free entertainment, we're considering everyone is working for the state. Now consider those working for the private sector. The state is giving them free everything?! Uh huh.

They're aliens. It wouldn't surprise me in the least to have some communal, socialist-like alien race. Actually, I wouldn't expect such a race to need any entertainment at all, even at 100% tax.

It's game mechanics. Plain and simple, and it works, in that it's meant to ensure that players can't just make huge high-pop worlds and harvest money. No, it doesn't make 'sense'. But contray to your earlier statement, excusing such illogical things as game mechanics is not just valid, it's absolutly essental to gameplay.

Hi!

To push things further: if they're aliens, why the he.. are they actually using money? And from what source population in our game gets money, when not a single building in our game requires workers?

BR, Iztok

True. Kinda like when we buy something for "4 bucks", that came from 4 deer skins. Except aliens trade in humans as currency. Hurry now! Alien pizzas on sale, 4 homos apiece!

I think they just ruined the whole game. Each update fixes 1 thing and screwes up 6 other things. The only answer I get is to mod my game. Then I tell em iI play metaverse, they go oh well. Then why pay for a game I'd just make my own.

Not trying to preach communism here but I assume that the entertainment would be free and paid for by the government.