Hi,

I hope this post isn't taken as a troll, especially since this is my first post here, but I've been playing GalCiv since release and I just can't see any other way to descibe how morale works.

Bear with me a bit and hopefully I can back up that statement.

First, I'd call it broken from a micromanagement perspective since the only obvious solution to Morale problems is spacing half the population of your planets every few turns. Not exactly intuitive from a gameplay perspective, not FUN from a personal perspective, and it adds a lot of MM that there's really no need for. In the later game, the biggest hassle for me is the MM needed to try and keep morale up.

Second, I consider it broken from a gameplay perspective in the sense that there's a total lack of feedback when it comes to morale. There are things you do that should have a noticeable affect on Morale that just don't. The obvious examples are any of the items that globally raise morale (Galactic Resouces, unique items). Last night I had a game where I grabbed a morale resource late in the game and in one turn got a +20% global increase. The affect wasn't even noticeable. Changing government is another example. Going from Imperial to Democracy I would expect to see a drop in morale, not a marginal increase.

The same lack of feedback also causes problems with destabalization. I can only assume that the major difference between games where moral is a huge problem and games where it isn't has to do with other races destablizing you. But there's absolutely no feedback as to who and how, and no way to counter it (that I've found). It's almost MOO3-like in that regard.

Finally, I'm starting to think it's bugged from a coding perspective. I've noticed two incidents now where my homeworld had a major jump in morale (30 to 80) right after getting a global resource, but it only seemed to affect my homeworld. Unfortunately, I didn't pay close enough attention to rule out other variables at the time.

Anyways, I'd like to offer a few suggestions, possible solution.

The first thing I'd like to see is a global slider to counter the destabalizing influences of other races, along with a bit of feedback as to exactly how much your morale is being impacted in this regard.

The second is maybe to tone it down a bit, in the sense that you appear to get to a point where nothing affects the huge negatives that one gets from overpopulation. Even in the late game, the game should be noticeably reacting to what one is doing.

Finally, I'd like to see a pop cap or more elegantly, a morale cap. Let me set a morale level and if a planet drops below that, don't grow the pop (or just grow it very slowly).

I'm not sure how any of these solutions fit in from a balance/AI perspective but I really think something needs to be changed. For me it's almost gotten to be a gamebreaker. I cringe every time I build a useless transport just so I can space some colonists.

Rgds,
Frank