Any reason to keep morale > 65% in peace times?

Actually assuming that your population is at it's desired point there is no reason to keep your approval above 21%. Below 21% you pop declines so this is to be avoided but there's no reason to keep your approval anywhere near 60% long term.

Even if your pop is still growing there is no reason to keep your approval above 41%. Your pop grows at the same rate between 41% and 75%. At 76% is where you get a 25% bonus to pop growth and in my opinion 25% pop growth bonus is not worth the income loss from having to keep your approval 35 points higher. I either hold my approval at 100% so that I get the 100% pop growth bonus or I keep it just above the 41% mark.

War, peace doesn't really matter. The only time your approval matters is when you want to declare war or only during the one week that you're having a vote. At all other times 41% (which has the same pop growth as 75%) or 21% if your pop growth is over, is where you want to be.

How many weeks until the next election is listed in your civilization manager under the government tab. You need to pay attention to this and lower your taxes to increase your approval only during the one week that an election occurs. Otherwise for all other weeks your approval should be at 21% or 41% (or possibly 100%). These are really the only three legitimate choices.

Of course, for pop growth, what's important is the approval on each of your planets and not your average approval. Since approval varies over your planets your average approval may need to be slightly higher, usually somewhere around 45-46% to make sure all your planets are above the 41% mark. When it's the one week of the election that's when average approval is important and should be around the 65% mark.

Declaring war is even easier. You just lower your taxes slider to increase your approval then attack someone. Once you've attacked them you raise the taxes slider back to where it was before pressing end turn. What could be easier?

Mumblefratz is only right if there are no enemy transports near undefended planets. I just love propaganda wars (I guess that's my German heritage...), and the AI might use your people gainst you...

Yes, you are correct that your lower approval allows effective use of the Information Warfare invasion tactic but that's no real reason to keep your approval high. If your approval is high then instead of Information Warfare your opponent may simply use Mass Drivers which gives a better advantage factor anyway.

The point of figuring out what level you should keep your approval is based on how approval affects population growth (or lack thereof), your income, your ability to declare war and the potential disasterous consequences of losing an election. I've addressed all of these concerns.

To say that you should keep your approval at 65% (or whatever) during wartime simply to avoid making one of many invasion tactics somewhat more effective is penny wise and pound foolish. The loss of income this would imply far exceeds the marginal benefit.

However, if you prefer to give up the income this strategy gains during wartime just because Information Warfare by your opponent will be more effective then by all means do so. I certainly won't.

What about scoring?

When you complete a game, one of the categories you'll see in the Social tab is average approval rating. This naturally leads to the assumption that having a high approval all game will improve one's score.
(of course, average tax rate is one of the categories in the Economy tab, so if a higher value here means a higher score, finding the best ratio between these might be a bit trickier)

More on topic, I personally try to stay at 100% or at least in the green as often as possible. Mostly because I don't like the extra clicks that changing it often would require, and because I want to be liked by my trillions of citizens. Mumble probably has a better 'by-the-numbers' economic policy though.

It doesn't affect scoring at all. Also, you don't need to improve your popularity to declare war. Your senate votes for war, so again you only need high approval during election weeks. This is another case where extremes are better. I run my popularity basically the way Mumble describes. I like to play with superbreeders...If I could get significantly more taxes out of lowering the rates, I would run always 20% or 100%, not 40-50% or 100%.

Thanks everyone!
The main point that got me puzzled is that in the regular reports, it mentions "you have X million inhabitants, which is Y more than last year..." and it seems to hint that the happier your people, the more taxpayers and the higher your reported population.
Will definitely try a 20% morale next game, just as a taste!

Ah. Subtle point but one I didn't realize. It didn't matter because I never pressed end turn without putting the tax slider back up but I guess even that wasn't necessary.

21% not 20%. You need to be precise. It makes a big difference. With 20% you lose pop. 21% you don't. Very important.

I suspect this take is pretty common among us folks who are only half-hearted about scores, especially those of us who are into the big-map games where click overhead gets pretty serious.

Constant slider-twiddling is something I'm not likely ever to adopt, no matter how much I like having won a bit of a rank in my obscure AltMeta niche. Plus I have to "role-play" my gov't tech, and no Star Democracy could survive Mumble's math.

And I guess I should mention that, for me, the way the elections work is one of the silliest parts of the game. How hard would it be to vote based on average approval over the last year instead of just this week? The curves are there in the manager window.

Thanks for that Mumblefratz, I didn't know the exact numbers. I'll have to make a note of it.

I fiddle with the sliders quite a bit, especially in the beginning of a game. Money can be saved by only putting in what is needed to finish projects and ships. Also, by not blowing past one tech into another when the next one isn't needed right away. When money is super tight, it seems to help.

About the vote when going to war, I don't recall ever losing one until my current game. I've lost several times in that one. Don't really get the point of it. I just keep trying until I win. What are the factors in that vote?

This would explain why you are only Chaotic Evil, Win.

drrider

Oh, I don't know. Looked around North America lately? Is it the 'Star' part that makes the difference?

If you don't have to squeeze out every advantage, you're not playing at a challenging enough level Slider micromanagement seems to be the flawed part of GC2 economic system, together with the coarse steps in the approval-population growth link. Quite funny that they didn't just make it smoothly gradual?

Ditto for elections... if you got the warning like for UP conferences, they would be at least easier to manage. (Going back to last autosave is not nice...)

Noctilucus: In my empire, EVERYBODY pays taxes and they pay EXACTLY what I specify. If they try to pull my leg with this thing, they are the ones that get loaded first into that nice little transport that will take them to the new colonies... So the only way to get more taxpayers is by getting more population.

i always try keeping it in green....1 entertainment or 2 on each planet is always good...if it isn't 12 or below

Doesn't approval directly effect loyalty, or at least strongly so? Having the slider down to 21% would seem to make it easier for your enemies to flip your planets.

That's a common misconception. You would think that approval has an impact on loyalty, but that's not the case. Flipping planets is strictly a matter of influence. The more you have the easier it is. It doesn't matter if the planet has 100% approval or 21% approval.

Does the approval rating do anything against those revolts with the factions breakin up your empire while playing evil? Because i've always tried to keep it around 75%,I play evil (not that evil eh?) and those revolts have no impact on my empire and nothing ever splinters. But thats just what I noticed, not sure on if it impacts or not, but thats my 2 cents.

I believe (not positive) the "revolt" random event affects planets with low approval. So, if you want to protect yourself against that one, it's a good reason to keep approval up. But, it's a random event so I don't know that changing your whole game strategy is a good idea for something that may never happen. I've played lots of games where I never saw it.

I use the same morale strategy as Mumblefratz. He plays DL, I play DA... so it works under both versions.

Before you break down the numbers, it seems like there might be a reason for high approval. However, after the initial few turns of the game where you get a basic tax base - you never really need approval for 50 out of 52 weeks. This is the so called "counter-intuitive" part of the morale/tax workings of GalCiv2.

TheDoomBringer - try playing without any morale buildings at all. I think you'll find you do better (or at least, no worse).

Good luck,
- Wyndstar

What? You have something against it being as much like a real election as possible? (In my 50+ years of observation, electorates pretty much do decide based on how things are this week.)

drrider

I don't use them for the most part except on really high class planets that can spare the tiles to them for high populations. Seems to work pretty good and it's less stuff to deal with building.

In the past I hardly bothered building morale buildings unless really necessary, but lately I'm building at least 2 on my home planet; with the increased population cap in DA their morale tends to sit some 20 - 30% below my other planets.

One more detail: you need 21% or better for each individual planet. If you have an overall approval of 21% but have planets with less than 21% approval, those planets lose population.

So for a SuperBreeder race, it is either 100% or 21%-minimum, is it?
Interesting ... I usually like to be loved by my evil minions, but hey, we all know how the love of masochistic and sadistic freaks looks like and I do not want to be gimped, like in Pulp Fiction.

Wow, I didn't know the exact points for pop loss.

This is sadly really going to help me - i say sadly because it's silly as far as the logic behind the mechanics go, but I learned it so I can't un-learn it now