Argh my empire is in ruins!!

make a colony ship or transport, load it up, and send it to oblivion. Overpopulation seems to be the only real morale killer i've been able to figure out.

~SDC~

Hmm. My first reaction to these sorts of problems is to blame someone else... Any chance someone (or more than one) could be destabilizing you?

J

yeah.Whats your population?Is it in the 5 to 6 billion range?Well happy you.Youve run into the fun morale/population killer.
What turn are you into and is there a dominant race in the galaxy? Could also be being destabilized.

It's year 2222. I have a combined population of 92 billion. 6 planetst that range from 25bn to 10bn in size. I'm by far the biggest and most powerful. Been doing well (easy level wanted to settle in nicely).

Morale is now at 20 and I'm 1000s in debt so cannot buy or build anything.

How can I tell if someone is destabilizing me and what can I do about it?

Some suggestions.Do you have an espionage points to stop some destabilization by other races?
If you want to experiment save your game and try to sell off items to get cash to get out of debt.Maybe sell a world or two.Get as much as you can.Build transports a ton as 1 transport can hold 1 billion I think.Do as many as it takes to get your population down to 4 million per planet.
What numbers are your class of planets up to?Then see if your moral goes up after a few turns.

I meant 4 billion not million.

Planets are all 18+, except one that is a 15. I might have to start from an earlier save to stop myself getting so far in the red.

I take it then higher population doesn't really make a planet that much more productive?

I have 15% espionage ability, but am not spending on other races. Would doing that help? Thanks for the advice so far, I will get my mighty empire turned around and make the others pay!

One thing you might know is that a really high moral makes your population grow faster.Keeping it at 55% keeps you in control of the senate I bielieve.Amd I dont think higher pop.makes you more productive.

Shipping lots of them off did the trick, but they planets are growing really quick and I'm going to be in the same situation.

This is pants as I don't want to spend anything on miltary, yet I have to, to keep ahead of the morale bug.

There should be a control to stop planets growing like in Civ1,2,3,Moo2 etc. It's madness having to kill your own population every few turns.

Being severely in debt, which you said you are is a major morale killer.

There are a few ways to effectively raise morale:
1) Lower taxes
2) Build social improvements that help morale
3) Only colonize good planets (i.e. 15+)
4) Research techs that boost morale.
5) Build/buy trade goods that boost morale.
6) Build/improve starbases on morale improvements.
7) Built colony ships/transports to remove population.
8) Spend money on propaganda.

Ways to lower morale:
1) Raise taxes.
2) Be destabilized by another empire.
3) Wait for population to grow. By itself this will not drop morale below ~40.
4) Have a treasury balance below 0.

All things being equal, morale will tend to head towards 40 if left alone as that is the break even point for the population growth/morale curve.

Oh, I dunno. I play EEEEVIL, and have no qualms whatsoever for killing my own population every few turns >