To those complaining about Morale
First, you have to build entertainment buildings. Yes they take up space, but think of the larger picture and let us say you have an entire planet full of factories. Would you be happy living in a hell hole, working non-stop with 0 entertainment?!?! The more workers, the more buildings you need. Imagine you are at an event and crammed in there like sardines…Having fun? Populations have needs.
Second, on larger maps pick and choose your planets more wisely!!! You do not need to colonize every single planet you find. The game is about having a strategic mindset, taking every 5-6 planet to start with is simply foolish! Where do you want to expand, go for the solid planets. Ensure you secure with some influence in case the aliens try to establish a colony. Once you have an established civilization, and then back fill planets if you really want them but do not expect to get much out of them. **Just because you can and are greedy wanting every piece of land because it is in our current human nature to devour everything, try to think on a more galactic scale for the better good of your civilization*** Devs – Any thoughts of being able setting up blockades? Being able to set up a ring of fighters to patrol planets that are not settled, that would require the other factions to have to attack to break through? Or even blocking trade routes going through your zone of influence? Would be interesting to be able to set up the ability to tax other factions for the ability to go through a blockade, as such would anger other races and have a diplomatic impact.
Other idea – say on an insane map, if I come across a planet that is a 5 and I do not want it, yet I do not want the other races to get it, maybe I can nuke it? Make it uninhabitable?
If you're on a map with 200 colonizable planets in your area, having 200 colonizable planets with 0% approval and no space spent on entertainment buildings is much better than having 80 planets with several slots spent on entertainment buildings, which are all at risk of cultural pressure when the other 120 planets get claimed by your rivals.
So there's really no choice - you take all the planets you can, and you either have Patriotic, use the Malevolent invasions bonus, or just deal with 0% approval.
It's a bad idea to bring RL logic into a game. You kinda forget about how each race society is militaristic totalitarian despotia based one some weird idea, be it religion for Altarins or global domination and enslavement for Dregin. You can move the whole planets population freely, everyone is a soldier, everyone can work in any sector, strange and seemingly dark methods are used to reproduce population, removing a farm kill billions of people and no one bats an eye, etc... And btw, why Yor needs moral anyway?
On more serious note, Approval must play a more important role - but the whole approval system must be rebalanaced. Together will a lot of other aspects like economics, tourism and research.
AI is going to take those planets if you don't and then you'll get them due to cultural flip OR AI will get your planets due to cultural flip. AI have no other tactics aside from taking every possible planet, because it's his only way to be competitive, because it cannot specialize planets. And bonuses AI get from difficulty usually go into compensating penalties from 0% Approval.
I really want a way to live with a handful of planets on a big map, because i hate rush expansion, but GC3 gives us like zero ways to do so. I tried to create galaxies with fewer habitable planets but this just confuse AI even more and make it totally useless.
Even Klingons have entertainment!!
Sigh, this should be good.
Don't build morale buildings ever. You will get more production out of adding more 0% approval population from farms than you will get from the entertainment buildings. And on larger maps, you will simply never, ever be able to counter the LEP penalty by late-game, so every morale building is a complete waste of a planet slot.
On larger maps, colonize everything. There's no reason not to, as you will get more out of owning an extra planet than you will lose from approval penalties. Your approval will be crushed by the size of each planet's pop anyway. If you have a 'strategic mindset', you should already have recognized that there's no real downsides to having more worlds. Every planet means more population, and more population means more free production. Even if you never build any buildings on the crappy planets, you are still better off having them than not.
Did you honestly think no-one had made these points yet, or that no-one had considered them? We have. It's been argued to death. Mass-colonization is overpowered, consolidation is underpowered, and morale is ineffective as a limiter, particularly since it doesn't scale with map sizes. LEP is severely rubbish, as it kicks in too early, isn't powerful enough to matter, and doesn't punish you in any particularly meaningful way.
Which is why it is broken. Nuff said?
I use morale buildings. I also tend to rush~secure Approval relics as a high priority. I use buildings on Research planets with 13+ quality. 2 farms+1 Hosp, 1 Factory, rest are all research buildings and if I have room 1 approval.
My other trick is to use Starbases to mitigate LEP.
I would really prefer a penalty that scales with number of planets and map size. This may be in the works...
I am not a programmer, but I really dont know, whats the problem to solve this. As far as I see, the morale penalty has a much greater impact on big maps, than on smaller maps and the reason is, that there is a hard cap, a number of planets when your Empire starts to count as a "Large Empire" with the "Large Empire Morale penalty". Playing patriotic is not a real solution. I played on a insane map and besides the problem, that my game is crashing when I try to save it (after 400 turns ), I was playing patriotic, but the AI wasnt and its not fun, when all your enemies are on low morale. So I will have to wait some weeks anyway, till I like to play the game again, hopefully games like this wont crash anymore.But why dont you change the hard cap (a certain number of planets that are colonized, before aproval is falling down), to a percentage of colonize planets? For example: Every empire, that owns more than 10% of all colonizeable planets, is a large empire and gets the penalty on aproval. If you are playing on a map with 600 colonize Planets, you start getting penalty with 60 planets. On a map with 60 colonized planets, it starts with 10. If your empire is still growing, the penalty will grow slowly too. So it wouldnt matter if you are playing on a small map or an insane map, when you reach a certain percentage, you have to start to build entertainment buildings. How much the penalty grows can be easily regulated, so it will be harder to have a high moral, but still isnt impossible to keep up the populations motivation.
It should be also possible to change the percentage, depending on the map size
For example: If 10 Planets cant count as a big empire, start the percentage on small maps at 20%If 60 colonized are far too much on a 600 planets map, and already an empire with 40 planets should be a big empire, than make a table like this:
10-50 colonize planets >20% = big empire51-100 colonize planets >18% = big empire
....
501-600 planets >8% = big empire - but penalty grows much slower when getting more % of colonized planets than on small maps.I am really not a programmer and maybe I just see this problem too simple. Maybe this needs alot of maths, to balance this, but hard numbers cant be the solution
sorry for bad english and so on
Yes, a scaled system would at least remove the fact that LEP outright breaks the game. It wouldn't help with the other issues (colony spam, morale building value decline, ineffectual morale penalties).
This is dumb, right now the only logical option is to completely ignore morale, get every planet you can, and crush your opponents with industry, wealth, and tech. No point even making morale buildings. I have 136 planets, and can pump out ships and troops faster than the rest of the galaxy combined.
Exactly. There ISN'T a reason to build anything besides factories and power plants and the occasional farm or colonial hospital.
Yea.. low morale should have a bigger impact. when Morale is red, the ppl should go on strike. A planet should give no more manufacturing points for shipyards, no more income from Trade, Tourism or Grocery, no more research, and for example half manufacturing for buildungs (so you can still build entertainment buildings). Already on yellow morale there should be a penalty on those things. Planets who arent giving any profit, and even cost money (maintanance) would definitely stop ppl to ignore low morale. But to make this, AI should first be able to handle its morale effectively. (AI should generally start to set up similar buildings next to each other to get higher lvl buildings)
delete me
I have to say, I'm not sure that Stardock meant to do it, but they made a game that's actually easier to play if you're a hardcore min-maxer. As documented endlessly, if you follow a few simple rules, you can make all the mechanics of the game disappear. at which point all the numbers and carefully crafted UI becomes just useless cruft.
unfortunately, playing that way not only takes all the challenge out of the game, but it also becomes painful as the game does not have sufficient tools for managing an empire larger than 10 or so planets.
Well said Sweaty.
If they AI can't manage more than 10 planets they have no hope of managing 100+. Making the mechanics disappear is akin to breaking them, which in turn means the game is broken and it is hard to argue that the AI working as intended is not broken. Not when it can't compete without cheesy handicaps. Sure it doesn't need to be deep blue and eliminating Ken Jennings but it should be somewhere between chessmaster 2000 and semi-convincing human player. I am willing to give it another 6 months but I question the decision to start working on AI in March if that is accurate and then launch in May/June with an AI that can only marginally play the game and mechanics that feed into the primary single strategy of more colonies always = best chance of winning, therefore taking the most amount the fastest is always the best strategy.
One of the reasons I point to Master of Orion as a game well balanced is if you did that, only build colony ships, you'd have the AI parking a single armed scout and making them retreat to slow you down. Now the AI doesn't do that, they just try to race you like Nascar to other planets and lose because they build stupid on their planets, and they don't specialize, they don't build efficient colony ships, they build stock.
Layer upon layer of reason why the AI needs work.
Well said. My limit is around 25-30, then its cry time. I really dont have much sympathy for people playing insane maps. I'm certain its far from the norm. i would think that to be more for multiplayer.
I'm already hitting the wall at 17 planets and I have stadiums on my worlds and there isn't one planet under class 9.I think the OP should actually read the other threads properly as I've read and posted in both!
Just get rid of the LEP altogether!
It wont happen. And having approval problems with such a small empire sounds like you are missing out on something. Unless your pop is like +25 on each planet. LEP is mainly meant to be an inefficiency malus, and that intent will forever remain in the game.
Balancing is the key, so all races, all traits, all types of play styles are on a 'fairly' even playing field. And the only perfectly valid point is that at extremely high pop levels, apparently is better to build farms and population, and take the -25% from 0% approval in the arse...from a production/economic/research point of view....which is certainly not what the devs have in mind.
Then why not make it that and just detach it entirely from happiness.
I don't completely understand why people have such morale problems. I have entertainment centers, a few key techs, some approval relics. I work my way up to 100+ planets. I take a lot of benevolent ideology choices because I am just that kind of person, and those choices have some approval bonuses. My initial colonization rush puts a severe strain on that, but it all works out.
As to whether you can go ahead and play with 0% happy people. No, I can't. Some of you are obsessed with maximizing an economy. I am obsessed with keeping my people happy. I don't think it requires all that much real estate and investment compared to some of the other challenges of the game. I do understand those who want unhappiness made more consequential.
All I can say is try being nice to your people whether it is absolutely necessary or not.
For those who want it; I've made a mini-mod that removes the LEP.
I'm pretty new, yet, but . . . can't you colonize the planet then immediately destroy it so they can't use it?
correct, if you wanted to.
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