Morale Problems

There are several ways of keeping your people happy:

1. Build improvements (Harmony Generator, Entertainment Network, etc.)
2. Colony Ships or Combat Transports
3. Lower Taxes

The problem with building improvements is that population increases as morale raises... So the problem regenerates itself even faster.

Or am I wrong?

I have the same problem. It seems like the more people you have the lower the morale. I got a tip from a friend telling me to ship most of these people off to fight a war.
-But a new strategy i've been tryng is if you keep the morale low in the beggining and continuely keep it low so they won't populate as fast. The only downside is that less people means less taxes, but this can be solved by colonizing many planets. -Hope this helps

I've had no moral problems in gigantic crippling games. Sure, you always have a few planets with 30 - 70 moral, but more than half are always at 100. Many of my planets in my current gigantic crippling are PQ 20 - 24 with 20 - 35 billion people each and 100 morale.

The key is to build *all* of the morale and PQ increasing social improvements on all your planets, *except* (IMHO) virtual reality centre and all of the ones that primarily increase cultural resist (because these have too high a maintenance cost). Of course, this also means you have to research the tech to make them available.

Also, mine as many morale resources as you can find - one or two of those at +68% base moral really helps.

I find that, given all the tech is available, there is a natural cycle in the moral in any newly colonized planet. It starts low-ish, and goes to 100% with habitat improvement, soil enhancement, and entertainment network. It stays at 100 for a while, but dips before it's convenient to build the next set of moral enhancers (harmony generator, stadium, teleporters). Then it goes low again until you terraform the planet, after which (if you started with a base PQ 17 or better) I haven't seen them go below 100 again. I just let this cycle run it's course - I've never used transports or colony ships to take people off-planet. If you do, they stop paying taxes and building things... and then what good are they?

All of this with a tax rate ranging from 45% to 59% depending on the state of my economy.

err...morale...not moral...missed that e a few times in there

I've had no such problems. I don't have to build transports to build population pressure until rather late in the game.

How have you set your tax/spend sliders?

Are you colonizing only high-quality (ie PQ 14+) worlds?

I usually colonze about 3-8 planets and then conquer the rest from the other empires. I don't colonize any planets lower that PQ14. I usually have the taxes about 10-20% less than what I spend on government expentures.

I would guess that the problem is that your tax rate is too high. Try setting it to 40% at the beginning of the game and never touching it again. Just adjust expenditures to stay out of deficit. I would bet that this will solve your problem.

When you become more advanced you can start playing around with tax rate more, but I think it's best for beginners to just leave the tax rate alone.

I tried building EVERY social project I could get my hands on and speeding through techs. Was down to me and one comp when I got a cultural victory, but I could have easily taken them with dreadnaughts.

Won while only destroying 3 starbases and 5 fighters. Thanks for the tips.

I've had no Morale problems at all, up to and including crippling difficulty. Only colonize planets that can be PQ16 once you build soil enhancement and habitat improvement (PQ14 to start, PQ13 if you take the PQ+5% starting ability).

Keep your tax rate around 35%, keep your treasury out of the red, and put the Morale improvements in your Governor's queues. Depending on how many Morale resources I can grab (or if I choose the populists party), I put the Morale improvements every 4th to 6th item in my build queues. In other words, if I have no/little Morale resources, Morale improvements are 4th/8th/12th, etc, in my build queues, if I have lots of Morale resources, then it will be 5th/10th/15th or 6th/12th/18th. This is usually enough to get Morale pegged at 100 when a new Morale improvement is built, and to catch Morale at about 50-55 right before the next one is completed. I rarely have a planet at less than 50 Morale.

Research is key here, you need to be researching enough techs to have the Morale improvements available to you, and don't forget that some techs grant pluses to your empire-wide Morale ability, so those help also.

Finally, remember that some of the anomalies your survey ship encounters also grant pluses to your Morale ability.

Hope this helps!

But, if all we do is research morale improvements that won't leave us much research for other techs. Help! (:(

Well...research them in moderation

I never said that. By the time my top planet is building its 3rd Morale improvement, I have probably got 40-50 techs, and about 4-5 Morale improvements to choose from. I have yet to build more than 3 "pure" morale improvements on a planet. Between other improvements that add a little Morale (in addition to other abilities), anomalies, and Morale resources, I've won all my games before I need any more Morale improvements than that.

Heh, for a second there I thought I must be doing something terribly, terribly wrong. Then I realized that you probably just play the sane map sizes

Yeah, gigantic maps allows you to research really quickly, especially later on.