What determines planetary morale?

The more people on a planet per planet quality - morale bonsues the unhappier they are.

Mike,

Morale is a very difficult thing on GC. I even had to go to the user's guide (its in the "encyclopedia") to see if it said much about it. It does, but it says it in a rather oblique manner.

The factors that affect morale are: planet class, planet population, tax rate, completed morale improving social projects, surveyed anomalies that improve morale, government type (I think I remember this one, but I may be mistaken), mining of the yellow galactic resources (called "happy gas" in the resource definition file), and, perhaps, some other things, like an occasional UP issue or a random event. Some colonization events can also affect morale.

Correcting the morale on a planet can be done by altering any of the above factors, although some are rather difficult to accomplish and some are dependent on pure luck. Planet class can be altered (after it is colonized) by building one of the three planet class altering social projects (soil enhancement, habitat improvement, and terraforming). Populations can be moved to other planets in colony ships or transports, in addition to using them to colonize new planets or conquering the stars of opponents. Tax rate is, of course, obvious (or is it? Be very careful of your treasury. If it goes negative, it can bring morale down catastrophically, in which case, changing tax rate won't help at all). The rest are truly obvious once you know about them.

But don't expect to keep your morale at 100% on all of your planets. That is contrary to the game design (as implied in the user's guide), so don't sweat it. Just try to keep the overall morale above 60% (to keep control of the senate) and individual planets from dropping below 40% (they loose population if below 40% and, at one point on this forum, there had been discussion of carrying over from GC/OS2 the idea of planets with morale below 30% rebelling (becoming rebel planets with no ties to any race)).

Does anyone else think that its strange that players know to an exact percent what the morale of a planet is but doesn't know how that number is derived? I have a 108% morale ability from the Domestic Policy - Stats screen. Yet my new planets, with populations below 1 billion, start off with a sub-50% morale figure. I hunt down the anomalies with a passion, my tax rate is 25- 28%, have the second highest treasury in the galaxy, etc., and still the new planets are in a rebellious mood. Damned ingrats! Again, I think it would be helpful to know why planets have the morale numbers that they have, a la Civ 3.

George Bush's approval rating is about 63% right now. Does anyone know preciesely how that was derived?

If you are colonizign plantes that are less than class 15, morale would be low because those planets are awful.

I'm not sure that comparing GC's mechanics to that of the US's is going to be helpful. I'm just asking for additional clarity as to how morale works to minimize my frustation and that of other people who buy the game. :notsure:

The 108% you see in the domestic policy stats screen is the _increase_ of morale applied to a planet's base morale. A planet's base morale is determined by class and population (what I have seen looks like Stardock is using a set of lookup tables for this). Thus the formula would have to be something like (100% + empire morale increase% + social project % increases) * (planet base morale at population x) = current morale.

It sounds like you are trying to put too many people onto a planet that is not prepared to support it. 1B colonizers is too many for any planets you would have available to colonize if you are far enough into your game to have +108% morale increase and planets that could load 1B colonists into a colony ship.

That should have been " ... * (planet class base morale at ...".