im brand spanking new to this forum and almost to the game. I dont understand something. My population size always plateaus off. But when i look at the computers population its always like 7 times as high. what is the computer doing so much better than i am. i understand taxes, planet quality, improvements all have an effect. But at the end of the day i get blown out of the water.

Whenever I notice my overall morale starting to dip I go through the planet list and set all the planets with morale below 90 or so to build another morale improvement. If there aren't any more to build I try to research one as soon as possible. I usually keep my taxes at 33% for pretty much the whole game. Also, I try to get my hands on all the trade goods that boost morale & pop. growth. I do pretty good on population. Does that help any?

~SDC~

If you have enough cash and it is only some or planets taking a moral dive:

On your planet screen, click details, on the bottom of that screen should be a slider which lets you spend money to boost morale on that planet, but its an expensive way to do it.

I only use it if that planets has fallen a bit behind on improvements and "it needs help" to catch up.

No wonder...

Every time I play I get beat to a bloody stump...but when I look at the analysis screens at the end...ALL of the aliens each had a TAX RATE of 39%.

They are trying to avoid that next big hit against morale.

So my next strategy is going to be, to set the tax rate at 39% and just leave it there.

The last game I played said that I had an average of -5bc a month. Needless to say I got pounded in that game too. LOL

what's the purpose of having a good moral ? aside of losing the elections I mean

is there a link between moral and planet production ?

anyway I'm really bad with it, my planets stay around 50/55% moral with all the moral improvements built as soon as they are available

guess I have to get a grip on it before passing to the normal difficulty level

~SDC~

Moral is extremely important. You'll find that in many of the strategy threads, conversation will gravitate towards moral's effect.

First and foremost, moral is necessary to defend against your system flipping to the I-League. This is the most obvious purpose of moral.

Secondly, and some feel just as importantly, moral is directly linked to population growth. If I remember correctly, moral of 54%-99% gives a small amount of pop growth but 100% moral will double pop growth. Why is population growth so important? Because higher population will lead to better production/research capability, more taxpayers (giving better income), and greater planetary defense.

Improving your skill at maintaining moral in your empire is very important. You say you build all moral improvements as soon as they are available, but still only have 50-55% moral. This isn't a good sign. Remember that your citizens like room. When population gets too high, they get unhappy. You'll need to move them off-planet for a short-term answer. But this isn't very efficient. Keep in mind that the higher the PQ of a planet, the more population it can support. Be careful with planets that are PQ15 or PQ16. They can't support huge populations, and will require all those moral improvements in order to maintain a high moral.

Also, remember to watch those tax rates! Try to keep your tax rate low enough to keep everyone happy, without bankrupting yourself! This is very tough to do in the early game unless you start with high PQ planets. I commonly set my tax rate to 56-58% at the beginning of the game, because Earth starts at PQ20-PQ22. I try to maintain that tax rate as long as possible, but will lower it when necessary. Toward the end of the game, many people can set their tax rates up to 100%, because they can get such high moral!

One last suggestion...build starbases on moral resources. I personally think all the resources are a key to a winning strategy, but influence and moral are the two most important! I try to grab every resource I can.

Hope this helps your understanding of moral a little better, lhetre. Good luck and happy gaming!

I just realized I spelled morale wrong in that entire post!

Too many late nights at the keyboard...I remember a Civ2 thread on Apolyton: "The worst mistakes you ever made in Civ" (or some such). There was a hilarious list from one strong player, each followed by "...I swear it wasn't the beer."

LOL

At least I was consistent! And I swear it wasn't the beer... LOL

In general that's what I do.

i have a hard time to keep morale at a high, i build all kinds of morale boosting things i can find and i have taxes at 0%, still i only have like 48 morale and decreasing... help! i might think its because of overpopulation, since i have only 3 planets, but theres nothing i can do about that...

nevermind, ive already gotten tons of help on this

A further question: What if you have a particular planet @ 100 per cent, but overall a lower approval rating? Does that planet get pop growth bonus and the others not? Or must I have 100 overall ar, and then every planet recieves the growth bonus?

If you have 100% on only one planet it will get the bonus.

What about the percentages on morale resources, abilities, improvements, etc. If you have 80% morale and build something giving you +15%, do you now have 95%, or 80 + .15(80), giving you only 92%? And if the latter is true, if that 80% is really 60% with a 33% bonus already, does the +15% give you 60% + .48(60), which is really only 89% - and if this is true, how can you find a planet's base morale to find out the actual effect of a morale improvement?

~Theoden goes shuffling for his scientific calculator~

Ummm...good questions. Somebody want to take a stab at that?

None of the above.

~SDC~

I've noticed that getting new colonies (either through cultural or military conquest) boosts the morale of the whole empire. Military conquest is of cause much easier and cheaper (well, I'm playing on normal difficulty, this is why). That changed my whole strategy (I was a very peacefull player before) - now I have to start a war against the weakest opponent (major or minor) to grab a colony or two just to increase the morale - and, of cause, to make my victory closer.
[Message Edited]

Do you meant it boosts the morale of all the colonies in your empire? I didn't think it did.
Or could it just boost the average morale, by spreading out the same population over a wider area?

~SDC~

You can always try beefing up your Econ stats in the early game. Make sure to develop trade routes to offset taxes and you should be ok. The last game I played I was at 0% tax rate for the majority, this in turn allows for excellent morale stats. Thanks for some useful info however the original post was very confusing, and did not present all the information in the correct context. Lets just say morale is important.

You can always try beefing up your Econ stats in the early game. Make sure to develop trade routes to offset taxes and you should be ok. The last game I played I was at 0% tax rate for the majority, this in turn allows for excellent morale stats. Thanks for some useful info however the original post was very confusing, and did not present all the information in the correct context. Lets just say morale is important.

Hey bstirrett... Drop by the thread and say hi eh?

I've only been playing a couple of months but here are a few thing I do:
(1) Load your colony ships with 40 mil, rarely more to start. The initial one has 100 which can cause some more morale problems on a PQ 15 or 16.
(2) After colonizing a planet build one or a couple of colony ships (this is after the initial colonization rush).
(3) Build Soil Enrichment, Habitat, Banking, Entertainment Center as your initial social projects.
(4) As the morale drop below 100 check to see if a morale building project is almost complete or send out a colony ship with 1/3 to 1/2 of the colonists. Send it to a relatively empty or higher capacity planet.
(5) Next chance you get build another colony ship for the next morale loss moment at the offending planet.

Try using transports, they can only hold 1000/5000 pop, but they are reusable, and they double as assult ships LOL . Only drawback is you cant target them to a single planet within a multiplanet system.

it is sometimes annoying all them pictures
:notsure: :notsure:

~SDC~