HUGE Morale question

from GalCiv2 Forums
Good evening everyone,

After about 3 months now: I'm considering myself an avid player of this game. I have the basics downpat, and am pretty decent overall I would say.

The ONLY thing I'm still not understanding is the morale of this game.
Recently, I made a custom version of the Yor that has rediculous stats. I simply edited the custom .xml file by changing all the property values to be positive in one way or another - all purely for fun and to see if I could figure out this morale 'issue'.

Even with a 300% bonus to morale and a 300% bonus to Economy and 500% bonus to Home planet: after two years and conquering an entire large galaxy in mere hours (I know [silly right], but remember, this was purely for fun and to see if I could overcome this weird morale hump I encounter towards the end of EVERY game I play), I found myself having to put the tax slider ALL the way down to nothing... because eventually in every game I play, the morale goes way down, and I can't tax worth a damn.

In this game ^ I'm talking about, after I had to lower my tax slider to 0, I NEVER could raise it again. My morale simply stayed LOW.

On my home planet alone, I had s***, prolly 4 or 5 Virtual Reality Centers... and at least 2-3 on every other planet. It made no difference. I bogged down to a standstill taxwise.

WHY is this, guys? Am I missing something here?
I give my planets V.R. centers at nauseum, and am not in the red in the slightest (lol, imagine a 300% bonus to Economy for crying out loud), am doing nothing but owning the rest of the galaxy military wise, Economy wise, you name it: and no matter what I do - at the end of that game, I end up not being able to tax anymore.


With normal games (untouched .xml files), usually by the time I get 50-70% of the galaxy conquered: I'll encounter the same nonsense... I have to turn my tax slider down because the morale on ALL of my planets just starts dropping like a bunch of flies.

What is going on here?

THANK you so much for any insight you can offer,


Chr*s




p.s. This is my favorite game in the last 5 years (top 5 of all time), but this 'issue' I'm having doesn't make a lick of sense in the slightest.
11,116 views 15 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
How many farms are you building? Once a planet's population gets close to 20 billion, you will see tremendous morale drops. Pop levels between 13 and 19 billion can be managed if you have a good morale bonus, a morale mining resource or two, and are willing to sacrifice a few planet tiles for VR centers, but once you top 20 billion, it is almost impossible to keep any kind of morale going on a planet.

BTW, is the morale on all of your planets falling to this level, or just your overall approval rating? Check the colony manager and look at the difference between high pop planets' morale and lower pop planets' morale. That is the most likely culprit.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Great questions:

Yes, I'm going over the 20 billion mark so I can make lots and lots of money - I thought that was the darn point of the game... in order to sustain badass navies.... ESPECIALLY if you're playing a small galaxy w/hardly any planets... I think the player 'needs' to try to have as big a pop as possible on ALL of his planets to maximize income in order to sustain more powerful and larger navies.

2nd question: yes, all of my planets are going haywire in the modified .xml game... no matter how many V.R.C. I build... when I add a new one, it'll go up maybe 5%... then the next turn it starts dropping again to around 30-40% depending on how many VRCs I have on said planet.


STILL, I gave myself a 300% bonus to Morale - how in the world does that not cover this 'issue'... I'm seriously at a loss for words.

to quote Tom Hanks in the movie BIG
"I don't get it"
 X-(  ;p 



thks for the help my man
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Imgaine having a 300% bonus to Planet Quality....  ;) 

With ALL that extra room, I'm basically dedicating about 60-70% of my planets to be 'money makers'.... nothing but VCRs, Farms, and sh**loads of Banks (I never go up to Trading Centers... don't like the extra cost).

You're right though, I was making SO much money before I hit 20 bill on my planets.

Even with the 300% bonus to Morale, how is the game making my morale so low past 20 bill on the planets.... the 300% bonus should override any penalty the game is allotting me past the 20 bill mark I would imagine.

What is the penalty - anyone know? Is it like a 200% negative hit on my morale er what?

thks guys,


Chr*s
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Even with the 300% bonus to Morale, how is the game making my morale so low past 20 bill on the planets.... the 300% bonus should override any penalty the game is allotting me past the 20 bill mark I would imagine.
End of quote


civ-wide morale bonus caps out at some (relatively low) point.

if you want to keep your planets at 100% approval with huge populations, you'll need to mod a morale structure with like a 1000% bonus to morale or so.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
You can move your mouse over the morale in the planetary view to see a breakdown in planetary morale. You'll probably find that population is killing your morale. The morale penalty grows exponentially as you get a larger population, so the practical limit for planetary population is pretty low. There's also a ceiling on how much benefit you get from racial abilities, so I don't think a race with 300% morale would have any advantages to one with a 200% morale, that's why you don't seem to be getting as far as you'd expect with your custom race.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Fact of the matter is, people have problems with being stuffed into sardine cans in order to fit more taxpayers. Overcrowding is what is killing your morale... a planet simply cannot happily sustain 20 billion people!

I mean, hell, look at Earth. We're already looking at severe overpopulation, and we're 6 billion people! Most of those 6 billion people are not consuming resources at the rate you or I do. Imagine what a space age, planet wide society would be looking at for resource consumption!
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Basically, you're going to want to keep your population at or under 13 billion civ-wide if you want to have high morale in the end-game (or hell, mid game if you're super breeders). This will be the case for DA and anything afterwards (that we're aware of at this point).

You can cheese your planets full of population in DL though, but in DA having it much higher than 13 billion gives you serious morale penalties.

Anyway, you can make boku cash just by keeping your planets happy and keeping your tax slider at 80%. With 13 bill population, you'll still make a lot of money.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top


I mean, hell, look at Earth. We're already looking at severe overpopulation, and we're 6 billion people!
End of quote


Did you know that you could fit the entire world population into Texas... and have less than the population density of New York City?

Zarth
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the player 'needs' to try to have as big a pop as possible on ALL of his planets to maximize income in order to sustain more powerful and larger navies.
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actually i disagree. in DA, there's never a reason to build more than one +7 food farm on any planet. for starters, only the square root of your population is actually taxed, so after a certain point - all morale issues asside - it's more profiable to take the +25% econ from a stock market than the smaller and smaller boosts provided by building more than one farm. going from 6B to 13B makes a lot of sense both numerically and for other strategic reasons; it's a 42% increase. but the jump from 13 to 19 is just under 25% (which means a stock market is better, especially since it'll help influence just a bit), and the jump to 20B kills your morale for only 27% or so.

the other half of it is of course morale. morale penalties grow exponentially worse at certain tax levels and population levels. to add insult to injury, IIRC the civ-wide morale bonus has a cap (not sure where, but after a certain point increses to civ-wide morale bonuses have no additional effect). you can boost individual planet morale bonuses by building morale improvements with no limit, other than the best morale improvement and total number of tiles. however, if i max out my morale bonus and keep my planets to 13B, i can tax them at 79% without a problem (still good to cut taxes during election week, though).
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There is one reason for high-pop planets:

Invasions. High pop planets shrug off attempted invasions better, and can be used to generate troops faster with less of a hit to your economy (space marines do not pay taxes). Because you generate income from the square root of your population, the hit to taxes from taking a planet from 16 to 13 billion people is a lot less than that from 6 to 3 billion.

Other than that, yeah, you start losing money with all the farms and entertainment facilities required that could be stock markets etc, so you're usually only going to want to go for high pops at planets with massive morale boost resources/squares.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Read this about 3 times:

WWW Link

Then follow the established wisdom of the various great players who have answered you:

-Don't grow a pop over 20. (Your homeworld/captured minor/captured homeworld or a planet with a Mystic Spring can probably manage 20 OK. BTW, in DA the only way to get a homeworld/ex-minor to exactly 20 is capital + 1 Food Distro Ctr.)
-Mundane colonies stick with 13+ pop.
-Build lots of Stock Markets. You'll actually make more money this way.
-Try to get by without building any morale buildings except the Counter-Espionage Center; it saves space for more Stock Markets. CEC on Mystic Spring = good thing.
-Collect morale resources and dev morale techs until you can get the civ tax rate to 79%. More than that is counter productive.
-Collect every econ resource you can.
-If you want even more money, build all your trade routes to the most distant planet you can design a freighter to reach, then start putting econ SBs with all the trade enhancers out along that trade line...and build the Galactic Privateer ASAP.
-Build about 3 additional cargo based Surveyors at the beginning of the game and keep them and your flagship grabbing anomalies forever. Remember that there are incremental morale enhancers among the anomalies, not to mentions the cash and other goodies.

drrider


Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
The ONLY thing I'm still not understanding is the morale of this game.
End of quote

You'r not the only one. I took four expert players to figure out the working of morale (check NLC's and Industrial Sectors broke my economy. The thread very soon develops into morale calculation method). Up to now I didn't collect enough patience to put that knowldge into one comprehensive article.

But in short:
There's so called base morale, that's used in most calculationso of approval on a planet. Base morale ranges from 100% to 10% and purely depends on the amount of pop on a planet: the higher the pop, the smaller the base morale, up to 24 B pop, where it stops dropping. The decrease is also non-linear: going from 6B to 9B drops it (numbers from memory) from 90% to 80%. Going from 18B to 22B pop drops it from 50% to 15%.

The main problem with base morale is it multiplies ALL things that give morale bonuses (but quality of the planet and morale bonus from colonization event). So if you have morale ability 300%, on a planet with base morale 10%, only 10% of those 300% will be used in approval calculation: approval will be increased by 30 points). The VRC that gives 40% bonus will give only 10% of that bonus (or 4 points to approval).

Now add to that the malus from taxation level, that's also non-linear, and skyrockets above 80% (more than 200% malus, number again from memory), and the morale ability cap, that after the multiplication with base morale can't exceed 100% (DA feature), you end where you are currently: deep in an as.h..e.

Since penalities from high pop are so severe, the rule of the thumb was developed: only one farm per planet. If you have morale ability 300%+, then maybe two. The SQRT (pop) in the formula for calculating money revenue from pop on a planet strongly supports that rule.

If you really want BIIIG pop on your planets, then load the DL 1.0x game. Those limitations don't exist there.

BR, Iztok

Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
WOW  :D 


THKS for all the indepth responses, guys.... I sure do appreciate it and now things are making more sense.

In regards to the "planets can only hold so many people because of space issue" - I understand that concept and it makes sense, BUT: Not only did I give my custom Yor race a 500% to Home Planet, I also gave a 300% bonus to 'Planet Quality', so my planets have LOTS and LOTS of available squares... that should cover that issue in my opinion.

Basically, what I'm getting from this is that I need to mod a morale building to have a crazy positive percentage. I'm assuming this is an easy task. I printed out all of the 'how to mod stuff' guides. I guess I need to look at the 'make a custom structure for a specific race' guide?....

Thanks an *ssload for the quality responses people: I now know and understand the limitations of having huge populations,


Chr*s



p.s. you guys ROCK!
 :CONGRAT: 
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Basically, what I'm getting from this is that I need to mod a morale building to have a crazy positive percentage. I'm assuming this is an easy task. I printed out all of the 'how to mod stuff' guides. I guess I need to look at the 'make a custom structure for a specific race' guide?....
End of quote


yea, it is really easy. if you want to keep the other AI from getting at it, here's what i suggest.

create a new tech, and make its pre-req "impossible tech" (you can copy the spore tech, for example).

mod your race to have this tech as a starting tech.

create a new planet improvement. make it's required tech the new one you made. make it give +100t food/week, and +1000% morale. you'll be able to tax your 100B people per planet at 100% and maintain 100% approval. note: your only limit to pop growth will be planet quality, but you can always move new citizens in via transport.

i figured this out playing a mod game where i wanted to be a god-like race inhabiting a binary star system at the edge of the galaxy with an even trillion inhabitants.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Basically, what I'm getting from this is that I need to mod a morale building to have a crazy positive percentage. I'm assuming this is an easy task. I printed out all of the 'how to mod stuff' guides. I guess I need to look at the 'make a custom structure for a specific race' guide?....


yea, it is really easy. if you want to keep the other AI from getting at it, here's what i suggest.

create a new tech, and make its pre-req "impossible tech" (you can copy the spore tech, for example).

mod your race to have this tech as a starting tech.

create a new planet improvement. make it's required tech the new one you made. make it give +100t food/week, and +1000% morale. you'll be able to tax your 100B people per planet at 100% and maintain 100% approval. note: your only limit to pop growth will be planet quality, but you can always move new citizens in via transport.

i figured this out playing a mod game where i wanted to be a god-like race inhabiting a binary star system at the edge of the galaxy with an even trillion inhabitants.
End of quote


SICK! I will take heed to your advice, sir.

Thks!

 
:HOT: