approval rate drops and drops

What's your tax rate at? There's a big hit (becomes less noticable later in the game) from having a tax rate of 50% or more.

How far into the game is this? I find that eventually my home planet population stabilizes in the 5-6B, and morale is more stable then as well.

Well, at game start the tax rate was at 34%, I believe, and I did not touch it until I notice the dramatical drop of approval. So I lowered it first by 2-3 %, and afterwards, since this had only a short term effect, again to below 30 %. I believe it was at 28 % when I gave up the game. What I found odd too, was the extreme population growth. The game starts with your homeplanet having 5 M citizens, after only 36 turns (3 auto savings, that's why I recall this) the population size had more than doubled. Since this are week turns, such rate seems a bit extreme. But other than by tax rate, social improvements and propaganda the manual does not say anything about issues, like overpopulation, causing drops in appproval.
Is there a way to control population growth?
By the way, the custom civilization I defined had an advanced loyalty bonus.
So you see, I was at the very beginning of the game, apart from my homeplanet I had gained one more colony only.

Is there a way to control population growth?

The only real way to limit population is not feeding them

More population = less morale. Each colony produces a base of 3mt/wk which allows 3billion people to live on a colony at 100% morale.

I saw a tip posted by somebody (maybe popup) which basically went along the lines that you should never build food producing improvements until you have the technology to keep an increased population happy. If your goal is to have a high morale then this strategy certainly works.

On a technical note I would be interested to find out precisely how morale is calculated.

It's not precise as to formulas, but the game breaks the unhappiness down into components, and I've seen the tax component increase over time with the rate unchanged.

To keep the population happy (above 50%) on my home planets I've had to build 3 zero gravity stadiums and the political capitol. Morale resources help some, but they (and all the other resources and econ starbases) have been nerfed compared to earlier betas.

But it's my home planet which was affected by the dropping approval rate, and since its starting capacity was 15 mt/wk I don't see how to control population growth. After only 36 turns population had reached more than 10 B people, more than double than at the beginning. I suppose It would have continued to grow until the limit of 15 mt/wk. At this early stage of the game I simply don't have the technologies needed to keep them happy, apart from recreation centers one of which I built. Well, i'll try and build a few more of them, but considering the limited numbers of tiles to start with on your home planet I feel a bit worried about this way.

Has anybody used the extra funds area in the planet detailed screen yet to see if this helps... personally I have had my tax rate down to as low as 25% and was barely in thegreen with morale.

Doy you mean the propaganda funds? Yes, I did, I went as far as spending almost one third of my monthly revenue on this. It didn't help really. As with the other settings it raised the approval rate for the moment, but the very turn later it resumed to drop.

Two things that some people may not realize that affect this. First, a low morale does affect population. Try it, if you raise your taxes far enough, the population on your home world will actually drop I find I have less of a morale problem if I never let my tax rate go below 49% until later in the game. Set it too low, and your home world population goes up instead of down, and then you wind up with worse morale problems.

Second, the PQ of a colony also caps the population. So, we wind up with three possible limits. PQ, food, and morale.

On a PQ 4 or 5 planet, the PQ limit will be the limiting factor, if I remember correctly, so a farm is a waste. A PQ6 planet can have a population of 3.5B max, so it's only gaining 0.5B from the farm. That's a bit more tax revenue than you'll get from one improvement, so sometimes I'll use a farm there.

PQ 10 and higher have population limits high enough that morale can be a real issue. Even 9 can be bad at times. Because of this, I never put a farm on anything PQ10 or higher, and don't put one on a PQ9 planet unless i'm willing to dedicate 2 or three tiles to morale.

On the other hand, population is key to revenue. The more people, the more tax income. This game realy makes you think about balance.

Agreed, Lucky Jack, it's just that the population on a planet with a PQ higher than 9 can get out of control, which is why I use the 6-9 planets as my revenue base. In my current game, I can only spend 2/3 of what I'm making, so it can't be too bad

I can only spend 2/3 of what I'm making

How are you managing that? Every game I have played I find myself wanting to spend every BC I can lay my hands on. It isn't until much later that I start getting ahead.

If you put your mouse cursor over the approval rating it will pop up with what is causing it.

Lucky jack, I go through a phase like that in the early game, it usually ends about the time I start getting my Trade Centers. Once the expansion phase is over, that's when the money really starts coming in.

ACK! it got worse, just checked my current game, in Oct 2229, in a gigantic galaxy, with a tax rate of 49%, approval of 80%, my income is: Taxes - 13280BC, Trade - 419BC (all my trade partners just delared war), Tourism, 407BC, 14191BC toal. Expenses: 705 Military, 791 Social, 1165 Research, 394 military maintenance, 1869 colony maintenance, 846 espionage. Total expenses: 5770. Net gain per turn: 8421 BC. So I'm spending less than half of what I'm bringing in.

I think I'll adopt a minor race, get a picture sent to me once in a while. Ah, what the heck, I'll take them all

If you put your mouse cursor over the approval rating it will pop up with what is causing it.

It tells us what is causing it, but those things vary to such a degree as to make that information feel almost useless. For instance: in my last game, on my home planet, with 10.72 b, and a tax rate of 68%, I had -158 from taxes. The next turn, I had -85 from taxes. then back up. With no changes to tax rate, no changes to spending. I wasn't at war, etc. It's all very weird. I've had planets go from 60% down to 30% in one turn, and vice versa (same planet, a few turns later), with the only thing that I did was open the detail view of the planet.

From what I've seen in my past few games, it's almost like opening the planet causes it to recompute the morale. So I've gotten to the point where once it seems to stabilize, I leave that planet alone for as long as I can.

Ah, that's what was up, I was in a period of economic booming, the net gain dropped to about 2500 per turn when it ended, which is more what I'd expect.