I'm not sure if it speaks to my competence, but I have a planet started on a 14 deep in Torean space that's been ready to secede for about two years now. My homeworld hovers around 50%, and my taxes are at 55%. Empire-wide morale is in the low 60's.

This is a Gigantic Normal game started post-patch last night. I'm about twelve years into it and have nearly two dozen colonies.

Oh, that Torean colony used one of my billion-pop deep-space seeder colony ships (i.e., one that was intended to be a nucleus of the second wave of expansion, but didn't get built until the end of the expansion phase).

I do believe it was 'nerfed' because to many people were complaining about how difficult it was to keep people happy. I myself loved the challange. LOL

What would be nice is a slider on the setup screen with a few settings.. from 'as easy to keep happy as sheep' (current setting), to 'as popular as a door-to-door salesman'. Um.. 'as popular as an alligator in a kiddie pool'? 'as popular as a 4am car alarm concert'? Well.. the last setting shouldn't be very popular!

Anyways, that will let those who are getting whomped not have to worry about the popularity as much, while trying to learn the nuances of the game, while the rest of us masochists can enjoy dealing with being hated in general by our people.

fleabitfox

Great idea, Fleabitfox, I second it.

Truth be told, I haven't really messed with my tax/spend levels after the patch. Now I just wanna leave work and go play more!

Duodecimal,

Don't start colonies on <15 worlds. That's part of the problem here is players think they can start colonies on rocks and people should be happy about it. C'mon. read the manual. It's not a great manual, but there's even a little chart and blurb about people living on popsicles not being happy about their lot.

~SDC~

I'm not seeing the morale "problem" that some of the posters do. One of the things that I hate about games like Civ at the highest levels is the amount of nannying I have to do to my cities to keep the citisens from rioting. Me, I'm not playing these games to role play Mr. Mayor-who-feels-your-pain.

It might need some tweaking, but if there really was a major difference in the first versions of the game (started 1.01x), I don't want to go back there. What a couple of hardcore masochists want out of their game is not necessarily what the majority of players want.

Me, I want to scheme and plot against the aliens, not my own people.

"Me, I'm not playing these games to role play Mr. Mayor-who-feels-your-pain."

Well, that is why multiple settings should be allowed. 3 would be nice. Some people do enjoy managing it. For IMO, why even HAVE morale if it is absolutely no factor in running your empire? Might as well just remove it, if it doesn't actually accomplish something.

Also, how realistic is it for you to be paying 80% + taxes.. and LIKING it? Do YOU pay 80% taxes at your job? How upset would you be if the IRS (which is actually a private organization, but we won't go into that.. ) was taking 800 bucks out of your 1000 buck paycheck, and you had to live in a hovel because of it. I prefer some level of realism, at least. If you are going to get the benefit out of collecting horrendous taxes, the result SHOULD be terrible morale.

fleabitfox

Well, I don't know what the difference is, but I'm not getting away with 80% taxes with a +40% morale boost from being the populists and additional racial bonuses. At anything above 60% taxes I experience a sharp drop in revenue and "population" due to dissatisfaction.

In fact, with that boost, harmony generators, entertainment network, and a couple of morale resources, I'm still not able to go above 40% taxes and keep approval higher than ~90%. There's something different going on other than just morale with the people seeing it as a non-issue and being able to raise taxes so high.

I think they should just remove the effect population has on morale altogether. It would be a simple way to fix morale. This would allow us to have more difficult morale without having to resort to the silly transport tactic.

If you think about it, all of the problems we've had with morale stem from the population effect.

I never had problems with it until it got too easy. :notsure:

~SDC~

Morale got changed from 52 to 58%, based on what Frogboy told us.

If you run with the PQ+15 trait, you can run your entire empire at tax rate of 90% for the whole game (well, after Entertainment Centers went up on all worlds) and the worlds having a 100% morale, so long as you don't take any worlds under PQ 15 base. With or without Morale resources from what I've seen so far.

PQ is the single biggest factor in this, I think. Remember, people don't like to live on the lower PQ worlds, and they love to live on the bigger PQ worlds.

There are enough bugs and glitches that need fixing that would only make the game better (governors being my favorite: no military, inability to order any projects you need to scroll que to, only one governor functioning, ability to build 'unique' projects through governor list after their completion elsewhere ). I do not understand the rush to possibly destroy GalCiv by tweaking play balance issues without substantially testing and exploring the consequences. For every person this kind of change will please, two others will leave the community with ill will. Makes no sense to me.

Yea.. but if I am paying 80% + taxes, the planet better be SOOOO nice, that magical floating rainbow monkeys hand feed me golden raisens they pick from the joojoo bushes, whilst I am fanned by the local native girls, all of whom have measurements of 26-23-35, and really really like me.

Really tho.. if you are paying THAT high of taxes, how in the world could your morale be high?! I hope they decide to at least make a slider option for how difficult you want it to be to keep peoples morale up. Might as well please all crowds! Um.. it's all about us anyways!

fleabitfox

26??? No way, 33, 23, 35 man. THAT better be an OPTION in the game and NOT hard coded!!!!

~SDC~

I think a lot of people are using old save games with a new patch and that is producing problems. Morale is not like that when you start a brand new 1.02.49 game. It's definitely easier than 1.01, but not wizkill easier. To put some numbers on the face of it, I was testing other things earlier today and have some numbers on morale. Starting with 0% racial morale modifiers a PQ 16 homeworld (1 billion people) can be taxxed up to 34% before dropping below 100% morale, a PQ 18 homeworld can be taxxed up to 50% before falling below 100%. With a +40% morale bonus that PQ 18 world can be taxxed to 58% before falling below 100%. So it's hardly the overkill that is described by so many people. My guess is that once they start new games they'll realize the problem was save game compatibility.

I think a lot of people are using old save games with a new patch and that is producing problems. Morale is not like that when you start a brand new 1.02.49 game. It's definitely easier than 1.01, but not wizkill easier. To put some numbers on the face of it, I was testing other things earlier today and have some numbers on morale. Starting with 0% racial morale modifiers a PQ 16 homeworld (1 billion people) can be taxxed up to 34% before dropping below 100% morale, a PQ 18 homeworld can be taxxed up to 50% before falling below 100%. With a +40% morale bonus that PQ 18 world can be taxxed to 58% before falling below 100%. So it's hardly the overkill that is described by so many people. My guess is that once they start new games they'll realize the problem was save game compatibility.

bump

Vorlin, I found morale easy to maintain in the gigantic galaxy game I was playing when I patched, but I thought it was due to having PQ 20-75 planets, rather than easier morale. I haven't played a complete game with the new patch yet.

~SDC~

Once you get up and running you can keep it pretty high if you want, but it's not like the impression some people got who were using old save files with the new patch. It's just as advertised: easier. The boom phase on a gigantic galaxy lasts a long time, it's not unusual for me to see quite a few sub-70 morale planets before I switch to teching up so I can deal with that. I normally start with a tax rate around 60, then reduce it to 50, then down to around 45-40 or so and let it stabilize there.

Vorlin, I just finished my second pure 049 game. Once again, before I 'acquired' morale boosting resources, I was running 90% taxes. It was only when I branched down to taking a few base 13 and 14 worlds (to extend my range) that I had to drop my tax rate. Otherwise, those worlds would run with 0-1% morale. Not good. A few rush socials later, they were willing to deal with 80% tax rate and still give me 55% morale. And my real worlds were running 100% morale, before overcrowding.

I still think it's all about the PQ. Morale boosting resources will help out some, but PQ+15 really helps you tax the heck out of people, because their worlds are so 'nice'.

I think something interesting is happening. I finished a brand new game over the weekend. When checking the final stats, the CPU civs had an average tax rate of ~40% while mine was 70%. You think they should have been able to bump their taxes up like me since I had great morale.

todd

My End Result of a Medium, 6-race, 10+ hour, sub-normal game. Seems a bit high on my approval rating, don't you think?

Yea, and even as a Star Federation, I never lost control of the senate. :notsure:

I'd like a little more internal challenge on the medium intellegence level, if that isn't too much to ask for.

Whoops...

Here's the Screen Cap

http://www.wakarimasu.com/screen_cap.jpg

bump, since Stardock was on easter holiday.