Morale at 100% for population growth? How!?!?!

from Stardock Forums
Hi, total n00b here.

I hear references in various people's strats about keeping morale at 100% to keep up with the AI's population growth. Now, I admit I tend to be a bit of an infrastructure-head, but I have enough problems keeping my empire in the black w/taxation, and I try to keep approval around 60% so I don't lose the senate.

Uh, approval and "morale" are one and the same, correct? And poplulation growth is the only bonus that high morale gives, right? I'm not missing out on something like the MoO2 "plus to everything" morale bonus, I hope. Also, how do you monitor individual planet morale? Aside from the angry map faces....

I recently started working the minor tech sale exploit, and that helps with cash a bit. I'm paying more attention to trade. But garrisoning my empire with Battleaxes is expensive, and even when I'm recieving a whole fistful of 25BC tributes I can't lower my tax rate enough to hit 100% mark. And I'm stuck with the lowest poplulation in the game, often not even showing up on the top 7. Sheesh. I've taken to combating this by picking Population Growth as one of my bonuses, along with PQ, but that takes up the bulk of my picks.

What am I missing?
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
100% morale doubles population growth, which is nice, but more important is the fact that population growth stops when morale is 53% and is negative when morale is less than 50%. (I could be wrong on the exact numbers.)

Morale is one of the super-important stats, like population, that's listed on the right hand side of the screen when you just click on the planet. You can also see it in the planet list, and you can even sort the planets by morale, which makes it easy to build morale-boosters on all planets with morale less than 100 (which I do when I notice overall morale dip below about 70).

I'd say what you're missing is the fact that a very high population will in the long run give you a very high income and very high production. Accept the fact that you will have low production in the early game, and keep your taxes low. And make sure you snag Aphrodisiac, it helps.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
deathy,

Another note here. Remember that the happier your population, the greater the number of them that actually file a tax return. If you can bite the bullet on income in the short term while your population grows, it will pay big dividends in tax dollars later.

Also remember that you need all of those people to grow your culture stat and to fill up those troop transports. :HOT:

If you're having cash problems, a good strategy is to immediately make a beeline to research Trade when you start a new game (Comm Theory, Diplo Translators, Diplomacy, Trade). Then, build your first three freighters ASAP, preferably all from your most populated system - usually Sol. Send them to a big planet owned by someone who's relatively close to you on the map (that you don't plan on going to war with!). That lets you get the income earlier than sending them clear across the map; and older trade routes generate more income, so getting them established early in the game is a priority. For that matter, you can send them all to the same planet if you want - a single planet can have any number of trade routes.

Later, when you can afford a few constructors, look for sectors that always seem to have a lot of your mini-freighters in them, and think about building a trade starbase or two to further boost the revenue.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
"Morale is one of the super-important stats, like population, that's listed on the right hand side of the screen when you just click on the planet"

Oh wow, I feel dumb. I'd been digging around in the "details" tab trying to find it...

I'm definately going to try the Quantity (of taxpayers) over Quality (BCs per capita) next game. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before...

Now maybe I'll stand a chance against non-idiot AI :notsure:
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Another tip is to go for the green/medical techs - a large proportion of them give either +10% morale or +10% pop growth.

Also if you have your tax rates higher than 2*PQ then people start to disappear into the "black market" so never have your tax rates very high for very long or your population will disappear.

Exar
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Uh, approval and "morale" are one and the same, correct?
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The PQ (planet quality) also works into the formula, and IMHO is one of the major reasons why you can geta low morale. With a civilization of high PQ systems you can up the tax rate and it wont affect the growth, try to put soil ehancement first on the build queue then entertainment network, manufacturing center followed by habitat improvement (you will need to research the techs though), this gives a PQ 15 planet a fairly good start. If you try to build too many things on a planet too fast that can cause problems as well as the population is always playing catchup to the spending which tends to make them unhappy. try not to colonise plannets of less than 15 PQ until you get the terraformer wonder via tech as well.

Hope that helps :)

Come join the Nefarious Empire http://www.galciv.com/metaverse/empires.asp?id=664
Remember there is only one shade of Evil, Black :HOT:
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Uh, approval and "morale" are one and the same, correct?
End of quote


Not sure on this one but I think approval relates to how the last vote in the senate went, while morale is how happy the people are. Often they can be very different, especially if the enemy is using destabilisation on you.