On the 100% morale thing. This is easily confirmable as the current cap. If you mouse over the happiness in a planet screen it will tell you what is affecting morale. In DA "native" bonuses max at 100%. This is not true in DL.

Hi!

Erm, seems that race's NATIVE ability (sum of all morale bonuses/abilities) for calculating planet approval is capped at 100%. Buildings on a planet give an additional bonus.

BR, Iztok

This 100% morale cap in DA applies to all "global" sources of morale bonus (i.e. racial, tech, wonders, trade goods and resource mining)? If so doesn't that make morale resource mining useless? Is this before or after the global morale bonus is depreciated by the population's base morale?

If the 100% cap is applied after depreciation by base morale then it may not be so bad. If the mouseover tooltip actually shows 100% then this should be the case. At a pop of 20B the base morale is 40% (0.4). This would imply a true limit of 250% bonus as it is in DL. Actually it's a bit different than this because there's a 0.75 power in the equation as well.

I'm pretty sure that my 'native' approval bonus shown in the mouseover tooltip in my current DL game isn't much more than 100% if that. This is with all wonders, trade goods, tech, racial bonuses and 6 fully mined morale resources. In my stats and graphs page from the civ manager I think I have a morale bonus of between 300% and 400%. These numbers are from memory, I'll verify them when I get home.

Hi!

Eh, too many times I forget I'm probably a minority here with my medium or large galaxy games with 9 opponents and ~10 planets per player. How the he.. can I afford buying a 10k project with my 3k economy?

I hope you have fun with your 100-planets empires. For me managing 100 planets is rather a grind. I have enough grind in real life.

BR, Iztok

Hi!

I'm pretty sure it's before. In my game I couldn't increase taxes over 71% without losing approval, even after researching VRCs (+5% to morale) and building VRMs (+12%).

BR, Iztok

I agree. I looked at comparatively equal planets between DL and DA with around the same native bonus from the bonus screen. On a planet that should have depreciated to below 100% if it was applying the bonus afterward (like DL) it still said 100%. So I think they changed it to before, but I am not conclusive on this. I have purposefully only built up one morale resource in my current game and I have yet to see a number other than 100%. Once I have a chance to let the population really grow I will know for sure. I do think that if this is the case, there is no point to building up more than one morale resource, even if you didn't take any morale bonuses on the racial abilities screen...Making it another large map nerf.

Hi!

One of how many? 25+B planets, square rooted economy, Nano ripper, ship speeds, pop growth, factory output, Stock markets, power plants, tech trading, minors....

Where's diversity of games now?

BR, Iztok

You missed the 20k treasury.

Yes it does! Which is what I originally said. It makes a lot of things useless. The formula is different, the only additional bonus you can get on top of that 100% are from morale buildings, which are based, as you said, on the base morale for the pop size.

Which all leads into the complexity of designing good cash worlds. But it does make a lot of the morale boost options in the game meaningless. I never even build VR modules or frictionless clothing, by the time I unlock them my morale was long since capped. And I don't waste precious resources building constructors to gain an "empty" penalty of additional morale. The effective cap is not 250%, it is 100%.



Iztok, I always love your analysis. But come on, just wait three turns. Or lease buy. If you know you can win in 4 years (196 turns) who cares if the lease lasts 500 turns?? Sometimes I play in galaxies with hundreds of planets. My last game I played in a tiny galaxy with 26 worlds total. I still managed to get to 100% morale quickly, mostly through lease buying wonders early. If you really focus on economy you can always stay in front of your debt and avoid the crash.

I hope I'm not sounding too harsh. I wish everyone the best.

This is not making sense. Regardless of whether the cap is applied before or after there should be no case where the 'native' approval in DA can exceed that in DL. The point is supposedly that DA morale bonus is limited in ways that DL morale bonus isn't. Clearly something else is going on as well.

Actually if the cap is applied *after* being depreciated (as I suspect it is) then the net effect is to flatten out the morale penalty of population, which could be a good thing. Also, it's not totally clear that there's no point in building up more than one morale resource.

Figuring out how this really affects things is pretty difficult. First off because the 'formula' for approval from population and morale bonuses and buildings is not well known. The only information is from the Wiki article which is quite old. Basically it's something like (I've taken liberties with the nomenclature):

Approval = BaseMorale + (BaseMorale * NativeMorale)^0.75 + (BaseMorale * BuildingMorale) - TaxMorale

If what I suspect is true then it's the (BaseMorale * NativeMorale)^0.75 term that's limited to 100% not the NativeMorale term itself. This really must be the case because otherwise this term could *never* reach 100% (except at a population of 0).

Therefore at a pop of 10B (BaseMorale = 0.77) the 'cap' on NativeMorale is actually 130% while at a pop of 20B (BaseMorale = 0.4) the cap on NativeMorale is 250%. If you take this to a pop of 25B (BaseMorale = 0.2) the cap on NativeMorale is 500%.

Of course this is a fair amount of supposition. It's not clear that the formula has stayed constant nor is it clear that the BaseMorale and TaxMorale 'penalties' have remained constant. However, I do believe that this is sufficient evidence to cast doubt on blanket statements that in DA it's a waste of time to have more than one morale resource.

What is probable is that this change has actually made it more difficult to control the approval of populations at low to medium values of population (i.e. 10B) but made virtually no difference in the difficulty of controlling medium to large values of population (i.e. 20B). The 'moral' of the story may be that if you're willing to limit your pop's to the 10B range then you're probably correct in not bothering with more than a single morale resource but that you can still achieve the 20B populations that you did in DL with similar tech/racial bonuses/resources.

Mumblefratz, your theory is interesting. And I understand you are not using DA yet. Let me describe the test I ran before I stopped ignoring morale over 100% in DA.

I built a world with a 19billion population (homeworld plus advanced farm) with no morale buildings, and no native morale bonus. I left my tax rate at 19%, which still left me with a low morale starting out. I then gradually increased my racial (native) morale bonus through research and mining resources, and watched my morale on my planet inch up. However, the increase to actual morale on my 19b people with a 19% tax stopped when I reached a morale boost of 100% (It's been a while, but I think it stopped at about 87%... I can re-run the test if you want specific numbers)... between a racial morale boost of +101% - +232% which was maxed for what existed on that galaxy, my 19billion population morale didn't move off the same 87% approval it had achieved at a +100% morale.

I ran the same test with morale buildings, to see what it would take to get to 100% approval, but one thing remained the same, after I had hit a racial morale bonus of 100%, additional increases appeared to have no effect whatsoever on the approval of my population.

Sorry I don't remember the exact numbers. Since that test (run in DA 1.5x) I have completely ignored morale bonuses after I hit a 100% bonus, and I have noticed no appreciable decline in my empires economy as a result.

Hope that helps. I always love a lively discussion.

Edit: and to be clear, I am going beyond saying it is a waste to have more than one resource. It is a waste to have ANY morale resources, or even spend the time to get half of the morale boosts available. You hit the 100% cap too quickly.

I had to think about this several times, but yes, you are right, it doesn't make sense...But it is true all the same. There is a missing piece. There is certainly a cap, but I no longer have any idea how they are calculating to get to 100%.

I do know that when I looked at multiple planets in a DL game the native bonus mouse over shows different native population bonuses depending on the specifics of the planet, the current population and the total global bonus that I possess. This number varies from planet to planet and turn to turn (makes sense). In DA, that number is always 100% post a fairly early point in the game. It's my supposition (dangerous!) that if the 100% native bonus is a calculated number, not a fixed maximum bonus, that has a max at 100% then as the population grows and the base morale drops, at some point on large population planets the number should fall below 100%, especially since I have NOT developed all the morale resources. Since I noticed this 100% number (hat tip Mag), I have only been claiming additional ones to keep them away from the AI. I still haven't seen a drop below 100%. Is the 100% number now, perhaps, just a simple total capped at 100%? I obviously need to watch this number more closely in the next game.

The real question is when running this test, at the point that increases in 'racial' morale bonus (i.e. the morale ability as shown in the civ manager stats & graphs screen) stopped improving the 'native' morale bonus (the percentage improvement from Native Ability in the colony screen approval mouseover tooltip), what was the value of the racial morale bonus in the stats & graphs screen.

Also what I'm postulating is that if you were able to run this test holding the population of the planet constant at two different values (12B and 19B for example, or whatever) I would expect that increases in what you're calling native morale will stop at different values of racial morale and that in the case of the higher pop planet the racial morale will stop affecting native pop at a higher value.

I get what you are saying mumble. And I think the answer is now 100%=100%, but I have to check since this one caught me by surprise and I wasn't watching for it when I crossed the mark.

I really became aware of it when I figured out that they had made 100% approval and 80% taxes impossible without significant morale buildings and I started looking for the reason why (the reason being morale resources were no longer providing additional boosts). My current racial bonus is ~176%, I have had some planets over 13B that were still showing 100%.

The key is for someone to watch it in their next game and see if 100% racial bonus dictates 100% native bonus, or perhaps just start a game and check it regularly to see if the mouse over always matches the racial bonus for all planets regardless of all other circumstances.

I get done with work in just over six hours [and to think I'm billing clients while chatting on a game message board... j/k ]

At that time I will rerun the test, with multiple planet population tests and post screenshots of my results. Hopefully that will help you get to the bottom of what I'm seeing.

Actually, just some number from planets you may have on hand may be enough. In reality there's no way to logically intuit how morale has really changed from DA to DL. It's pretty messed up in DL to begin with, I can easily envision it getting more messed up in DA. We've all probably spent more time on this than it's worth but it is kind of interesting.

Here's some DL v1.4 numbers. If anyone can provide similar number from DA maybe we can make some sense of it.

Morale Ability from Civ Manager Stats & Graphs = 354%
Taxes = 79%

Planet 1, 19B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 100%
Approval 72%, -56% from pop, -122% from taxes, 43% from buildings, 97% from native ability, 10% from high PQ.

Planet 2, 16B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 85%
Approval 100%, -44% from pop, -122% from taxes, 47% from buildings, 118% from native ability, 10% from high PQ.

Planet 3, 13B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 5%
Approval 84%, -33% from pop, -122% from taxes, 3% from buildings, 137% from native ability.

Planet 4, 10B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 85%
Approval 100%, -23% from pop, -122% from taxes, 65% from buildings, 153% from native ability, 10% from high PQ.

Planet 5, 6.0B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 5%
Approval 100%, -11% from pop, -122% from taxes, 4% from buildings, 172% from native ability.

Planet 6, 4.0B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 5%
Approval 100%, -6% from pop, -122% from taxes, 4% from buildings, 180% from native ability.

Planet 7, 2.0B, Planet Details Morale Bonus = 85%
Approval 100%, -2% from pop, -122% from taxes, 82% from buildings, 186% from native ability.

Do I get any credit for reading forums while writing a regular expression for log file parsing on our monitoring server? It's one of my secondary jobs when the network stuff is all working

Wyndstar, I'm hoping you have a game that doesn't have them all ticked over to a 100% that will serve as a comparative example. It's too late in my current game...

Mumble, I think we are all looking at these numbers for fun at this point!

I usually get my ass handed to me in no tech trading games!!



Yea i usually play large galaxies... i do find if i am playing at higher difficulty levels i can easily go through a whole game without building any wonders or trade goods at all - and if i was dumb enough to even bother trying then the AI would simply rush buy it one turn before i completed it... of course having no money myself, there is nothing i can do except choose not to start the project in the first place!

So it is the difficulty level which impacts on wonder construction more than anything else.

Mumble, Purge, all:

Well I stand corrected. Seems I was wrong, just my play style was such that I wasn't noticing. I re-ran the test, and took very copious notes, and built no morale buildings that might screw with my results. Here is what I saw:

Tax rate 19% always. Overall morale = what shows up in your stats and graphs tab as a racial modifier.

Overall morale - 65%
21b pop = 29% approval (-70 pop, -20 tax, +1 buildings, +18 native)
16b pop = 67% approval (-48 pop, - 20 tax, +2 buildings, +33 native)
11b pop = 100% approval (-28 pop, -20 tax, +3 buildings, +46 native)

Overall morale - 80%
21b pop = 33% approval (-70 pop, -20 tax, +1 buildings, +23 native)
16b pop = 75% approval (-48 pop, - 20 tax, +2 buildings, +41 native)
11b pop = 100% approval (-28 pop, -20 tax, +3 buildings, +57 native)

Overall morale - 85%
21b pop = 34% approval (-70 pop, -20 tax, +1 buildings, +24 native)
16b pop = 77% approval (-48 pop, - 20 tax, +2 buildings, +43 native)
11b pop = 100% approval (-28 pop, -20 tax, +3 buildings, +60 native)

Overall morale - 100%
21b pop = 39% approval (-70 pop, -20 tax, +1 buildings, +29 native)
16b pop = 85% approval (-48 pop, - 20 tax, +2 buildings, +51 native)
11b pop = 100% approval (-28 pop, -20 tax, +3 buildings, +71 native)

Overall morale - 105%
21b pop = 40% approval (-70 pop, -20 tax, +1 buildings, +30 native)
16b pop = 87% approval (-48 pop, - 20 tax, +2 buildings, +54 native)
11b pop = 100% approval (-28 pop, -20 tax, +3 buildings, +74 native)

Overall morale - 206%
21b pop = 80% approval (-70 pop, -20 tax, +1 buildings, +59 native)
16b pop = 100% approval (-48 pop, - 20 tax, +2 buildings, +100 native)
11b pop = 100% approval (-28 pop, -20 tax, +3 buildings, +100 native)


So it seems that yes, if you are going to have planets with very high populations, then very high morale bonuses DO matter. The only other difference I can think is I ran this test on cakewalk, and my previous test (and all my games) on suicidal... doesn't make sense there would be a difference though.

I obviously play with low enough populations and enough morale buildings that I just ceased to notice the slight increase vs. the steep decrease you get from increasing tax rate. Again, I apologize for leading anyone astray... It seems really your empire bonus will max depending on max pop size on one world.

Hope this information can also help anyone in deconstructing the formula overall. If you stick to populations in the 15-16b range, with two VR centers and all worlds terraformed so getting the natural +10, you can sit at 100% approval at a 79% tax rate, which is close to what I normally play with.

Of course, now I'm off to start a game with the Krynn trying to make those giant 40b pop worlds....

Bah, nevermind, I already deconstructed the DA morale formula, it is just so easy and I was expecting something complicated.

Approval = 100 -all negatives +all positives. You are just capped with a max native ablity bonus of +100. Quite silly of me really to not realize that at first.

The negative hit from tax rate is not on a linear scale, but it still figures into the formula the same way. Same with the negative hit for population size.

I started to set up a bunch of x=f(x) functions and then realized I was overworking it. This is simple, simple, simple.

Hope that helps.

Hi!

Ever heard of Ockham's razor? Well, to be honest, using it to explain internal working of an over-engineered computer game might not be really appropriate.   

BTW would you mind checking the reply #27?

BR, Iztok

It's so easy a caveman can do it.


Those 40B worlds are long gone but the 20B world is pretty much the same as it was/is in DL.


This data and the data that I extracted from DL do definitely fit a curve, although they are slightly different curves. Also, the following 'proves' that the assumption that it's a waste of time to pursue morale resources in DA is incorrect if you want to get planets in the 20B range.

Actually the Wiki Morale Article is substantially correct. Anyone that's interested and hasn't read it should check it out.

Let's start out by defining a few terms. I'm basing everything pretty much on the mouseover display of your approval from the Colony Management Screen.

Approval = BaseMorale - TaxMorale + BuildingMorale + NativeMorale + PlanetMorale

In all cases that's the 'formula'.

BaseMorale is exactly as described in the Wiki article. It's dependent only on the population of the planet. It's the primary driver of approval because besides being used directly it's also used indirectly in both BuildingMorale and in NativeMorale. This gives it a 'triple' whammy effect and is why once approval starts to decline it really takes a nosedive.

The only confusing thing about it is that in the tooltip it's displayed as a negative but whenever it's used in a formula it's used in its positive form.

From the Wiki Article plus extra data points from both my and Wyndstar's data we get the following table for BaseMorale. I believe this has remained constant throughout all the various DL revs and is still the same in DA. This data is consistent between all three sources of data (Wiki, DL, DA). There was one slight discrepancy at 16B with 0.56 in one case and 0.52 in the other, I simply split the difference in the table.

POP, BaseMorale (Tooltip Display)
1B, 0.99 (-1%)
2B, 0.98 (-2%)
4B, 0.94 (-6%)
5B, 0.91 (-9%)
6B, 0.89 (-11%)
10B, 0.77 (-23%)
11B, 0.72 (-28%)
13B, 0.67 (-33%)
15B, 0.60 (-40%)
16B, 0.54 (-46%)
19B, 0.44 (-56%)
20B, 0.40 (-60%)
21B, 0.30 (-70%)

TaxMorale is just a straightforward listing of the percentage to subtract from approval because of taxes. In the DL case I was using 79% taxes which gives a TaxMorale of 122%. In the DA case Wyndstar used 19% taxes which gives a TaxMorale of 20%. The correspondence between DL and DA wasn't exhaustively verified over the range of values but I did check that in DL v1.4 that the 19% tax rate caused a TaxMorale of 20%. In any case this term is dependent only on the tax rate and is read directly from the mouseover tooltip with no extra calculation.

BuildingMorale is simply the sum of the percentages of the morale buildings on the planet which is then multiplied by the base morale.

BuildingMorale = BaseMorale * Sum of Morale bonus of buildings on planet.

This is identical with the description in the Wiki article.

For example at 16B with 2 VRC's (40% each) and an Initial Colony (5% morale bonus) we get BuildingMorale = 0.52 * 0.85 = 0.44 which is exactly what I got on Planet 2 in Post #41 in this thread. Regrettably Wyndstar didn't list the BuildingMorale percentage in his data but I'm sure DA is consistent with this as well. This could be left as an exercise for the reader.

NativeMorale. This is the crux of the discussion about the difference between DL and DA. From the Wiki article.

NativeMorale = (BaseMorale * MoraleAbility)^0.75

Here MoraleAbility is the value listed under your Stats & Graphs tab of the Civilization manager. I was able to get a very good 'fit' for the data in both the DL and DA cases but in each case the function was slightly different. For DL v1.4 the function is:

NativeMorale = BaseMorale^0.8 * MoraleAbility^0.5

For DA it's even simpler:

NativeMorale = BaseMorale * MoraleAbility

Note this is effectively the same as for Buildings. However, for DA it's NativeMorale that's 'capped' at 100% *not* MoraleAbility (i.e. the cap is applied *after* depreciation by BaseMorale which is what I suspected all along). As Wyndstar's data (and this formula) shows there is a benefit for getting values of MoraleAbility above 100% in DA and the higher the pop of the planet the greater the benefit. The net effect of this cap as well as the change in function is to make morale more difficult in the low to mid range pop range (10B) but leave it pretty much unchanged in the mid to high range (20B) (again as I predicted). I entered both Wyndstar's and my data into an excel spreadsheet with the above listed formulas and every single datapoint 'fit' within one percentage point that's attributable to rounding. I can post the spreadsheet if anyone's interested, but this post is long enough without it.

To complete the definition of all the terms in the formula listed at the top of this post, PlanetMorale includes the 10% high quality bonus for planets PQ11 and above as well as any planet colonization event morale bonus.

So at this point everyone has all the information that's necessary to calculate the approval rate of a planet from the base principles of the planets population, your tax rate, the buildings on the planet and your global Morale Ability in both DL and DA (at least until they change it again in v1.6 ).

You were correct in saying that it's the NATIVE ability that's capped at 100%. You were incorrect in saying that NATIVE ability is the sum of all morale bonuses/abilities. NATIVE ability is actually the sum of all morale bonuses/abilities depreciated by the base morale (i.e. the morale determined by the population of the planet). There is a major difference in these assertions.

Which is what I said in both reply #28 *and* reply #35.   

No problem. I thought that was a statement, not a question, my mistake. Yeah, there are three seperate variables which can add up to give you planet bonuses, two with diminishing returns as pop rises. 1) empire morale boost, 2) building morale boost on a specific planet and 3) planet quality or other base planet bonuses (from ethics choices).

Mumblefratz has layed it out pretty easily though. The only discrepency is in how you think about base morale - and that is really just how you choose to think about it. For total approval, I like to think of it as 100-pop approval (because it is shown as a negative on the mouseover)... But because we use base morale elsewhere, base morale is just 100-pop approval, so with 21b you are dealing with a base morale of 30.



Maybe, but here's the thing. Around 25-26b ish the penalty for more population seems to drop off. I'm thinking that in the spreadsheet around there BaseMorale drops to a 0 or 1, additional population after that is just gravy (not in terms of economy because of squarerooting the tax, but in terms of bragging rights or score ) What I'm thinking is that with a starting +80% morale with Krynn it will be much easier to get to the +300% empire bonus, and then I can try to use the native and planet quality to overcome the base morale hit... and here's the thing, I'm going to build NO morale buildings. Unless my calculations are off, it should work.

In fact, since breaking down the formula I have already started a game with Krynn and I'm using no morale buildings, and it is actually working pretty well. I think sacrificing a tile is not worth the bonus they provide now. At lower pop totals, you can overcome the tax rate with native/planet bonuses... and at higher pop totals the effectiveness of the buildings drops off so much they are next to worthless anyway. If I run into problems using this I'll tell you, but I think that STARTING with a +80% morale bonus will mean I never need morale buildings throughout... Heck, with just base upgrades I can get to a +190%, add to that any morale resources and anomoly bonuses... (yum!)



Oh, I did, I guess I wasn't clear about it. I built no morale buildings, so those +1 building, +2 building, etc. was the reported morale building effect from the base colony. This still fits within your model because the colony provides a 5% morale boost so:
My 21b world got a +1% building bonus (5% * .30 = 1.5%, truncated to 1%)
My 16b world got a 2% building bonus (5% * .52 = 2.6%, truncated to a 2%) and
My 11b world got a 3% building bonus (5% * .72 = 3.6%, truncated to a 3%).



Which makes figuring out what you want for your base worlds "easy as cake" (2010). Say you want only a 13b population. NM can't go over 100, so at +149% empire bonus you are capped, because 100 = 149% * .67.

sqrt of 13,000 is 114. Compare with say a 15b and you need a +166% empire bonus to max, but sqrt of 15,000 is 122. Easy to get only another +17% empire bonus to stay maxed, but to go to 15 requires two tiles for farms. Is this worth it... I still say yes, because the difference in result is negligible:

114 * 3.00 = 342, vs. 122 * 2.75 = 335

but 15b population is more versatile than a 13b population... for raising taxes, for defense, and for breeding troops.

What about 16b? Easiest point on the scale to hit, and if you do the homeworlds go to a 17b. This requires a 185% empire bonus to max native (still reachable in most situations, but you may have to adjust based on bonuses chosen and galaxy makeup), and gives you compared to the above a 126 * 2.75 = 346, the highest income of the combinations.

17b it doesn't work so well, and the efficiancy of all pops over 16b start to drop off. IF after scouting your map you calculate you can get to a +300% empire bonus, then you can plan on building 20b pop worlds, but if you can only get to say 220%, now you know you need to shoot for 18b per planet.

Wow, yeah, thanks for laying that all out Mumblefratz, this makes econ managing a cinch in DA... (until they change it, you're right about that).

The only thing is for me, morale buildings might have just gone out the window, except for very early on. Easier to just manipulate tax rate off of native +100.... We will see how it goes.

Edit - BECAUSE of the space of morale buildings. What I am saying is I think I can now make better money worlds by building more stock markets and nomorale buildings, not that morale buildings are worthless. I don't need to start getting emails from people justifying morale buildings to me.

A stupid thought: what would I do in RL if taxes would be anywhere *near* 79%? Ugh!