Earth Planet Approval Always Low

What's the population on earth?

I think 24 billion. Think I had 2 Farm II on it.

That's your problem. Try bulldozing at least one of the farms. Morale can get very difficult to manage when you get high populations (20b or higher).

Never breach 20 billion population in the most up-to-date patches of DA/TA. Raise those two farms and place something else there.

Some patch number in DA ( or was it DA itself?) stopped the populations of planets from breaching 20 billion as a viable decision.

Ok thanks. I'll try that.

I never would have guessed that that was the problem.

Along the same lines...

I have a planet with only 1 farm but it is on a +700%, so my pop is 21+ b (with approval at 40%). If I destroy that farm, would my planet fall way down in population or is there a "famine" like event which will quickly decrease the population until the food supply equals the demand?

The next week, the population will be at the new (lower) population cap.

BTW that is an excellent use of spies pre-invasion. If your going at a planet with a farm and they are exceeding the planet's normal max population via that farm, send a spy to the farm, wait until the next turn then invade with the enemy at a lower total. You can kill off billions without even one shot fired

Since when is there +700% farming?

In that situation, it is usually more productive to disable the morale buildings and invade using propaganda - more people means more troops for you when you invade. And it avoids the 1-turn delay, so with enough transports you can spy a few planets, invade, reuse spies on next few planets, invade, etc.

Note: There is a refresh issue using that technique - the lowered morale will not affect the planet until you select something else, then reselect the planet. But on the plus side, if your first invasion fails, the planet will stay at the high-population morale instead of the new, lower-population morale it should have unless you reselect the planet again.

BUT propaganda costs quite a lot; if you don't have much money and there are many planets to capture this variant is not applicable.

Try building another farm on another square then knock down the 700% one. Never use the farm bonus squares for farms.

Imagine having five civ capitals to deal with... Darned surrenders/spores.

Hmmm... oddly, I've found that my Earth morale is ridiculously low too, lower than I seem to remember civ capitals being.

I played a lot of Drath and never had a problem keeping them happy. On Earth, still in early game, with multimedia centers up, even two of them, and still only 16B on Earth, Earth's morale floats around 30%. My overall approval is almost 70%.

Seems a little weird to me.

I'd be happier if capitals only went up to 12 billion population, or came with more inherent morale boost. It bothers me that the capital requires extraordinary measures to maintain happiness.

Is it better to have 24 billion unhappy taxpayers or 20 billion happy ones? As long as your overall approval is sufficient to retain control in the Senate what is the downside to low approval on a single planet?

I tried what you suggested and sure enough - my Earth approval shot way up within 1 turn.

Thanks again for all of the replies.

My only question then is - is this a feature or a bug? It just seems quirky to me.

That is assuming there are morale buildings. Not all farmed planets get morale buildings with the AI.

It depends on how unhappy, and how many tiles you have to spend to keep them above 20% approval so the population won't decline. It also places a bit of a cap on your ability to tax your civilization because the capital will hit that population decline while your other planets are still happy.

If your population declines then, presumably, your approval will rise - my assumptions are
- the decline only affects the planet with low approval.
- you retain your existing entertainment structures and trade goods.
- your treasury maintains a positive balance and the tax rate remains constant.

In theory population should be stable once approval reaches 40% unless you raise taxes or run a deficit to drive it lower.

Also, not everyone knows about the breakpoints at 21 and 41%, and just sees the morale number turn red - which means "bad," yes?

I've really given up caring about capital worlds as far as morale goes. I'd still happily build a farm on Earth, and if the morale later sits at 42%, so be it: the population by then is probably around 20 billion or more, a veritable gold mine as far as taxes go, and the approval isn't low enough to damage the existing population; so my asset remains stable.

Later in the game, also, poor approval on my capital world is simply not enough to drop overall morale; so elections aren't a problem.

The concept that approval is valuable early game but expendable later has been quite a useful discovery for me.

J.

To keep things simple in my games i build one farm on each planet except for home worlds which dont get any but does get a moral building since it has a greater population. Eventually i have 13b on each palnet and i dont build any moral buildings. This makes moral manageable and i only lose one tile towards the farm.

My question is, if i replace one stock exchange with another basic farm (+6 billion people or +3 billion?) Will the added population make up for the lost stock exchange? SInce all planets would then have similar populartions i would skip the moral building on my home world and just fix oral with lower taxes.

Does this sound like a good idea?

Interesting question. I'd look at it this way:

A Stock Exchange gives a +25% economic bonus. Thus, theoretically, if you've got 13b people paying taxes, you get 25% more out of each individual; at the end of the day, with that stock exchange, you're getting as much money out of 13 billion people as one would out of 16.25 billion with no economic bonus. So, in replacing your stock exchange with a farm, in order to break even you have to add on population equivalent to 25% of your colony's current pop (in this example, 3.25 billion - slightly more than a basic farm). It follows that building a more advanced farm (say a +6b gain) would exceed the economic advantage of a stock exchange.

A problem, though, is that the higher population might not be sustainable due to the morale penalties of such high numbers of inhabitants; once you get to this point you might only be getting a fraction of the potential economic gain from that extra farm, since the planet simply can't grow to the new maximum pop bestowed by the new farm due to the approval penalty. The real upshot of the stock exchange, however, is that you get more money with no morale penalty.

If that makes sense.
J.

I generally try to have a population cap of 16b on PQ12 and above planets (including 9's that will be 12's with all three terraforming techs), and a cap of 10b to 12b on PQ11 and below planets.

Morale is easily controlled with a 16b cap, and with a few econ boosts on the bigger planets I can easily make plenty of money without needing to use morale buildings at all.