Help: early game starbase problem.

Are you adjusting your spending level to 100%? At the start of the game, your spending level should be 100%, even though this will cause you to run a deficit. You can, and should, have defecit spending until you reach 0 or even -500. The spending level is under the taxes bar on the economic screen. It starts at 50%. The first thing you should do when you start a new game is set the spending level to 100%. There are also 3 sliders in the lower-left corner on the same screen, for military, social, and tech. You should set the military bar to 100% and the other two to 0%. You will now be producting about 20 military on Earth, giving you a colony ship in 3 turns or a constructor in 10 turns. Another plausible starting strategy is to go 100% to tech for the first few turns. Another possibility is go 100% social for a soil enhancement.
Notice that going 50% tech and 50% military is inferior to 100% tech or 100% military at the start of a new game. If you go 50-50, it will take 6 turns to get a tech and 6 turns to get a colony ship. If you go 100% military for 3 turns, you will get a colony ship. Then, go 100% tech for 3 turns to research your first tech. You can go 100% social for a few turns if you want soil enhancement. Wait until Earth's morale drops below 100% to build the entertainment network.

Some websites will advise you to lease-buy a colony ship or constructor from Mitrosoft immediately. I find that hampers your cashflow too much. Funding at 100% is much more efficient. I save the rest of my cash to rush-buy trade goods or wonders, using the diplomacy screen to discover if the computer players have the prerequisite tech, forcing me to rush-buy. If you can get in 5-10 turns of normal production before rush-buying, you save a lot in lease costs. I find that if I don't rush-buy any colony ships or constructors at the opening of the game, I can fund at 100% until I start trading with the computer players for extra cash. I think that getting the +1 speed racial ability is superior to rush-buying a colony ship or constructor.

I agree with Mark.

Key is to adjust your spending levels and how you allocate the funds. Just setting spending to 100% and military to 60% on the first turn should give you a colony ship in say 5 turns. That translates into just 20 turns for a constructor. Another thing to ponder is look at the spending level circle in the lower left corner of the screen to see how much you are spending compared to the other civilizations.

Hate to tell you this, but I doubt the game is cheating as you define it. Another thing that could be affecting your game is AI intelligence level. At lower levels, they are penalized. Highest two they get some bonus.

Game starts with all the AI's knowing where the good planets and resources are. Back of the background story. Doesn't mean though that they know if you get to those locations first. Man is only know reaching the stars. AI's have been sending out recon drones for 100s of years if I recall it right.

My standard start is spending at 100%, military at 60%, and research and social at 20%. Crank out colony ships from each planet, each planet ships 50% of its pop with each colony ship, when planet pop reaches less than 150K then I switch that planet to constructors. At this setting I generally crank one out in about 16 turns or so. I've never had any problems getting my share of resources this way and as a rule I never buy colony ships or constructors.

Another good tip is to have your first colony ship's planet set to produce scouts (2-4, depending on the map size). They build very fast, so that by the time your constructors start showing up you'll know exactly where to send them.

The computer isn't as good as you'll be eventually, but it does play a pretty tight game, whenever you see the computer beating you to/at something try to figure out how it's doing it (or ask here), because it's probably using an approach you haven't considered yet (like deficit spending mentioned above).

It's also good to keep in mind that each computer race has a government and racial picks just like you do, so some races will start the game being better at certain things then you are (this also changes from game to game, though each AI is weighted towards favoring certain things).

Wow. Those ideas had never even occured to me. I will try them out in my next game. Thanks, guys!

-Drake

~SDC~

You can have a constructor on turn two - the magic word is "leases"

I prefer not to lease any more than I have to, normally I'll only lease 1 or 2 times a game (but keep in mind that I play in Intelligent or less). I'm not saying this is ideal, it's just that I don't like anything that drags on my economy, especially early in the game. Also keep in mind that if you lease for a constructor to build a starbase you'll not only have the lease payment but in a few turns the 5 BC starbase maintenance as well.

I'll lease diplo translators (because the AIs really go aggressive towards getting them) and gravity accellerators (because they just rock :)), anything else would usually be an emergency-type situation. I probably should lease more in the mid-game, but I figure if I get used to a style that requires less leasing I can always adapt to one that uses it more, whereas the reverse would be harder.

They weren't the Torians, were they? There was a bug at one point that gave 'em constructors at a ridiculous rate.

The AI theoretically might also be getting production bonuses from starbases, although at Normal I have not noticed the heavy use of non-resource occupied-sector starbases that I would from a human. It does appear to build tiny bases for the sole purpose of extending ship range, though.

As for leasing, I do go for quite a few of the trade goods and wonders that way -- especially if I know an AI has a head start because I just traded for the relevant tech. On normal, I haven't felt compelled to lease constructors, 'tho. If an AI grabs a resource, I might still be able to grab it if I can get a third party to attack that starbase; if not, it'll be on the target list for "opening day" in an endgame war.

I used to have the same trouble that you do Richard. I ended up hitting upon much the same sort of strategy that fsk+ suggests. If you put everything you have into military then Earth can generally build a colony ship every 2 turns. I use the first of those colonies to build a scout or three, and the rest to build constructors. They can usually turn one out in about 20 turns. So by, say, turn 40, you can easily have 4 or 5 Constructors, and you ought to be able to get at least 2 or 3 resources before the AI with those.

After all that is done, I generally switch to 25% social and 75% research. I've found it isn't that hard to catch up technologically this way, probably because the AI is doing the same sort of thing that I am.

Conquering the Galaxy, Step 3:

Okay. So I was able to figure out how to colonize agressively on my own. And with the above advice, I was able to get resources.

So after I implemented that strategy I cheerfully kicked the computer's butt on sub-normal and then on normal. Now I am playing on bright, which I count as normal (that's the level where the computer gets the same return from planets as you do, according to the manual).

So I raced out and got colonies, and raced out and got resources, and it was good. I was behind technologically but gradually catching up. Then the instant I meet the computer players, they all start making demands. I got a demand from the Gremin (if that's the name... can't remember) literally before I got the greeting screen for first meeting them (same turn). Then the Yor and Gremin are making demands every other turn or so. Naturally I refuse them all, and after about the third or fourth refusal we go to war. I have just researched the stuff to make battleaxes, and promptly build a bunch at my system. I am able to repell all the attacks.

BUT... something is still not right. Like when I was playing on sub-normal and normal, I am able to survive but not thrive. I am completely on the defensive. He's hitting me with two or three battlecruisers per turn. I am able to repell them since the battleaxe is so good for that, but I can't even BUILD battlecruisers and I'm wondering how I got so far behind. Obviously something is still wrong with my early game plan.

Any suggestions?

-Drake

~SDC~

As soon as I meet any other AI I switch my graph on the right-hand side of the screen to Military. AIs are aggressive to you based on your military strength compared to theirs. I don't like fighting early on (I'm a builder) so I try to keep my military power ranking equal to or a little higher than the closest AI (I prefer higher, gives me some buffer in case they go on a building spree). As long as you are equal to them (more or less) the AIs won't bother you as a rule.

As far as the ship tech, the AIs tend to beeline for dreadnaught tech (though this has been changed somewhat for some AIs in 1.04 I think), so unless you are doing the same they'll tend to have you outclassed when it comes to ships. The key is to either do the same, or research infrastructure stuff efficiently enough that your empire becomes such a powerhouse that you can then switch to ship tech later and blow them out of the water.

You can see what ship techs the AI has that you don't when you bring up the tech trading screen. Keep an eye on it, when you see them get battleships then dreadnaughts are coming up next (first they have to research them, then build them, which takes awhile). Be prepared for this, when the AI dreadnaughts start appearing the AI military power will grow very rapidly, so you'll want to shift your economy to military production to crank out defensive ships to match it (or offensive if you are going that route).

It can be tricky to play GalCiv as a builder-type personality, but once you get the timing down it gets easier.

Leasing KILLED me in my early games. Yeah, you start off quick...but the AI has a big economical curve over you for the next few years. That's why I could never get any trade goods...my total spending was lower to pay the leases.

I don't lease anymore at all unless it's a MILITARY EMERGENCY.

In the beginning, my BC is in the yellow each month, but only by about 50. I adjust it each turn to give me plenty of production without going into the red.

Military is at 80%, social is at 10%, and research is at 10%. That's until every planet possible is colonized and constructors are en route to the nearest resources.

Another good tactic is to get the constructors a few months into production, then lease them (if you have the loot). My focus is always on the planets before the resources...just like the AI.

Okay, I am on intelligent now and at this point I am pretty sure that the AI cheats. I also noticed that whether he attacks you or not is based upon your comparitive military ratings, so I tried to employ this strategy:

1. Get planets in each direction until I run into the computer over there, then stop.
2. Get all resources I can beat the computer to.
3. Build up military so he won't attack me.
4. Build up empire and beat the game. If you can get past 3 this should be easy, I think.

It's didn't work in the slightest. I got the planets and the resources all right, but somehow he is outproducing me by a factor of I would say between 10 and 20. The computer *has* to be cheating. I spend myself down to near zero and then level out the spending, keeping taxes at 59% (any higher and income goes down not up). I have everything shifted to military production. I think it's safe to say that I am squeezing every last drop out of my empire using the tactics that were previously recommended to me.

So if I do that, I can get about on par with the computer's military by building defenders. I am doing some catching up, since he has ships basically right away, but I am shifted so heavily to military that I can pull up to him and a little ahead. While I am doing this, he is blowing me out of the water in manufacturing, tech, and everything else. Then I shift to building constructors so I can put basic defenses on my starbases. Long before I can get to all the bases, the computers are all declaring war on me. Their military production charts are at a slope of about 70-80 degrees, and I am not exagerating for effect.

In the last game, I ended up scoring five resouces even though it was only a medium map, so that may have been part of the problem. Trying to crank out ten constructors in time just didn't do it for me. Oh, at this point I should mention another cute quirk. The computer can kill a starbase with a single corvette. Maybe I am not reading them carefully, but the combat mechanics described in the manual would not seem to allow for that.

Anyway, supposing I'm not overreaching myself and trying for five resources on a medium map, maybe I can get the starbase defenses up in time and they're pretty tough with that +5. And maybe, just maybe the defenders I have built can hold off the attack waves. But something is just.. not.. right. Any way you slice it, no matter how I min/max the sliders the computer is just blowing me away in production. What the heck is going on?

I have another problem, and I think this problem may be the cause of my bigger problem. My population growth flatlines in the early part of the game. The same thing happened when I was playing at the lower difficulty levels, but I was able to get away with it so no big deal. At the end of the game, the computers all had this irregular looking population growth chart. Up and downish, though more stable than manufacturing or tech. Mine was this gorgeous exponential curve, utterly smooth. It looks pretty, but it's flat as roadkill at the front. I suspect this may have something to do with the mad pace of my expansion. I have had colonies end up with tiny populations, one time even below 20. How can I keep this from happening? Does it matter? I don't think I have time to screw around worrying about how many colonists I am putting on the transports and what not. Should I take the Freedom to Innovate back to Earth and load more guys before I send it off? Do the tiny populations have a lower growth rate (per capita) for some reason? How come a planet with 38 people on it can produce a colony ship in only twice the time that the 700 people on Earth can do it?

Any help would be really appreciated. Every time I go up a difficulty level, I have to pull the belt tighter and eventually there's nothing left to pull. Above intelligent I can handle that, since the computer is known to have a bonus. But either there is a method a player can use to compete with the computer at intelligent, or the computer cheats.

-Drake

~SDC~

If you keep your taxes at 59%, population will stagnate pretty quickly. If you have played games such as the Civ series, you are probably aware of the population-boom strategy, where you for a few years turn up luxuries a lot and watch your population soar, which in turn gives you a higher income. Well, you can do the same in Galciv:

I assume you have 59% taxes.

1) Rush research for techs that gives you trade goods.

2) Start building one or two trade goods, and when you have built for a few turns, rush-buy. This will cause you to drop far below zero creds, but that is no problem.

3) Sell the trade goods to _all_ AI's for a hefty cash amount over, say, 20 years. This will make your income increase a lot temporarily.

4) Set spending to near zero until you have a positive treasury again. (A negative treasury lowers your morale over time.)

5) Lower taxes to 30%, and set spending to break-even given that new tax level.

6) Watch the population graph as your pop grows and grows. Read: the number of taxpayers grows

Remember to turn down spending after the AI's have payed their leases. By now you can easily have twice as much population as them with the same number of planets.

The key to this strategy is morale. Low taxes increases morale. High morale increases max population. If your population is far from max, you population will grow rapidly. Before implementing this strategy, it's a good idea to build PQ improvements (soil enh, habitat improv) and maybe a morale improvement (entertainment). Having Aphrodisiacs helps too, since that increases population growth.

Good luck!

@richard


1. Some computerplayer always build up their military might and use it to demand tribute of other AI´s especially the minor races => though they can run at 100% spending rates the whole tim / (many times you see messages that the Alexians are going broke and are not able to pay the drengin anymore, a very good strategy is to be the responsible for the econimic disaster of the minor civs => selling them trade goods or demand money yourself.....

2. Population: 100% morale doubles our growth rate / trade good improve your growth rate etc.: once you know what you are doing you can "outpop" the computer.

3.An undefended starbase can easily be destroyed by a corvette especially when the computer is harvesting military resources, runs the war party, has shipyards, trontium steel etc....

At intelligent the computer does not cheat! IF you still can´t understand how the computer achives his goals you can spend money on spying...=> seeing his stats in the game or as I have seen in other posts there is a debugfile where you can see what the computerplayers was doing during the game.

Prior to release 1.04 (which you can't currently get unless you subscribe to drengin.net) the computer only values the attack part of a ship's stats. So it's very hard to counter a dreadnaught push with defensive ships per se, you have to use offensive ships for defense (and use enough so you never get attacked, because they don't defend well). The lowly starfighter is great for this, dirt cheap and 1 BC maintanence.

59% tax rate is too high, 50% is the highest I consider workable, and IMO 40% is ideal. A planet's max population is tied to morale, population stops growing when morale drops into the low 50's percentile, so make sure to build +morale improvements at that stage so your planets can continue their growth.

Remember that +production buildings (fusion power plant, manufacturing center, and antimatter power plant) help with both military and social production. And once you get your planets going strong (around mid-game), start making 1 starbase for each sector you have a planet in, and build all the +production modules. A fully upgraded production-oriented starbase adds an incredible production bonus.

Starbase defense sucks 'out of the box'. The first shield upgrade is needed even at low levels to ensure their survivability if war breaks out.

Trading for profit can greatly increase your production capability because the profits you gain from selling your tech allow you to set your Spending slider higher without going into the red (at least for the duration of the turns of the trade agreement). This can make a huge difference, especially in the early-mid part of the game. If you sell all 5 AIs and, say, 3 minor civs a set of techs with each sale bringing in 15 per turn for 15 turns, then for 15 turns you'll have +120 BCs each turn more than you would have. That's a lot of extra production/research once you up your sliders to take that into account.

Make sure and upgrade your government. At first it looks like you are getting screwed, you chose a better form of government and your net profit is now negative! But what happens is that the newer forms of government are more efficient, so you are actually spending a lot more at the old slider positions. You are making more as well, once you adjust the sliders you'll see (if you wrote down the before-after numbers) that each new form of government is far better than the previous.

Make sure and run trade routes, and run them early. A well developed set of trade routes will end up being a healthy chunk of your total economy. And the better your economy, the better everything else is as well. Whenever you get breathing room, research one of the techs that gives you another trade route (you can have 10 total).

Don't build unnecessary structures. A lot of the buildings in GalCiv aren't worth building unless you have a specific need for them. Here is my core 'must build' list, in the order I prefer to build them:

Soil Enrichment
Habitat Improvement
Bank
Research Lab
Fusion Power
Manufacturing Center
Entertainment Network
Anti-matter Power Plant
Transporters (or Teleporters, not sure exact name)
Stock Market
Economic Exchange

I'm doing this off the top of my head at 5:43 a.m., hopefully I didn't forget any. The entertainment network is flexible, build it when you need the morale boost, I've found putting it where it is in that list works well for me most of the time. I build the fusion plant before the manufacturing center because it's half the cost to build even though it is more maintenance (but not much more, because it has a +economy bonus that helps lower the net maintenance). I'm an infrastructure nut so I can get teleporters/transporters in time, though you have to do some directed research to get to them. The boost is well worth it IMO and you get some nice bonuses from the techs along the way as well.

The economic exchange is a great building but expensive to build so I put it after the tele/stockmarket builds. Note that all three of the first builds are 0 maintenance, that gives your planet a chance to grow and start earning its keep before you start building +maintanence stuff.

Eventually I build a shipyard, advanced quality control, multimedia center, and the other relatively cheap +morale building (but not the virtual reality, that one is too expensive to maintain).

I'll sort my planet list by Production and choose the best production world to make a 'super production' planet out of, there you build your manufacturing capital, hyperion manufacturing center, omega power planet, etc., that way you end up with a planet that can build a wonder in about 2-5 turns by mid-late game. I choose my highest PQ planet to build the Economic and Tech capitals on.

As you can see by reading these posts there are so many ways to squeeze more performance out of a GalCiv session that it's no wonder at the stage of play your at that you are getting outproduced by the AIs. They know a lot of tricks, as a rule they know whatever Brad Wardell knows.

As a side note, remember that since the military power graph prior to version 1.04 is calced based on offensive power, that you aren't limited to just building ships to increase power, you can increase your military power with tech as well. For instance, 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D phasing techs alone total out to a whopping +40% offense and defensive bonus, and a correspondingly large increase in your military ratings. Toss in a military resource or two and you can jump up even higher. Never let the computer have any military resource if you have a choice in the matter, every one they get forces you to make that many more ships just to stay even, while every one you get lets you get away with making fewer ships for the same power rating.

Those spikes you saw in the AI's military power graph come a certain junctures, you'll always see one after an AI researches dreadnaught tech and starts producing them. Earlier in the game you'll usually see a corvette spike as well. Also, there are different AI's for the AI races, one AI is always easy to spot because it really emphasizes pumping out ships, you can always tell when an AI race has this one because they'll usually have 2-3 times the military power ranking of their nearest AI competitor (they better not have that much more than you or you are in trouble).

Man. I have never had so voluminous a response to game oriented questions. I thank you all, and I'll let you know how my next couple games go.

-Drake

~SDC~

Regarding your population problem:

People don't reproduce, pay taxes, research, or build things while they're in colony ships. I only load up 50-200 people per colony ship. *DON'T* use "auto-launch" for colony ships; the default tends to overload the colony ship. I try to keep enough population on Earth so that its morale is just barely at 100%. This way, I'm maximizing my taxes and production on Earth.

You get transports fairly early in the game. I use transports to move population from low-morale worlds to underpopulated high-class worlds. Transports have an upkeep of 0, so you can park your transports in space if all your planets are below 100% morale. Save them for your first invasion.
Another post in another thread said that the penalty to morale due to taxes is the tax rate squared. So, if you have lots of +morale, you can afford a higher tax rate. Otherwise, you may be better off with a lower tax rate and more taxpayers.
Regarding money problems:

After the opening phases of the game, it starts to get difficult to fund at 100%, especially if you have lots of +production or +research. Research resources really increase your research capacity. There's nothing wrong with lowering your funding below 100% after the opening phases. I try to keep money in my treasury, in case I need an emergency lease. I try to keep enough for several leases on the same turn, if necessary.

Even after I've lowered my spending below 100%, I can then use starbases to "focus" my spending on my best planets. Even if I'm funding military at 33%, if I have a 200% starbase bonus, that system is effectively funded at 100%. As long as you're below the production cap, this works, and you're only going to do this in systems with a high-class planet. My other planets will still be giving me the occasional constructor and some research.

Okay, I did what you guys said and it worked. Sort of. Your suspicion about the tax rate killing my population growth was bang on. I am keeping it closer to like 39% now and my population growth chart follows the computer's very closely. If I am agressive about keeping my approval rate way up there, I can surpass the computers, too.

So naturally, I have developed a brand NEW problem. Mid game, long after I have taken planets and bases but way before I'm really built up, my approval rate is tanking, and I haven't the slightest clue why. The last couple of games I have gotten to the point where I had an entertainment network and multimedia center on every planet, a slightly upgraded morale resource base, ZERO (yes, read "zero") tax rate, and republican form of government... and my morale rate was dropping below fifty percent. I had to focus every effort on raising it, which of course resulted in me lagging behind militarily, which resulted in sudden declaration of war by my "friends" the Torians. To give you an idea, my planets had ended up all being in step with each other producing various buildings, so there was a two turn space where almost every planet built a multimedia center. I watched my approval rating shoot straight to 99. Then I watched it decrease to 54 over the space of about seven turns.

*click*
-5%
*click*
-7%
*click*
-6%...

What in the WORLD is going on?

I still say the computer cheats, BTW. The game before last the Drengin had two, count em' two systems, and were outpacing every other empire (it goes without saying that they were surpassing me, but they were blowing away the other computers too). I had something like 11 or 12 planets, and the Drengin with their two systems were flying battlecruisers around before I had even started to build a real attack force.

Another thing, and I saw this in another thread. The numbers on the computer's ships are simply impossible. A battlecruiser (not battleship) has a base attack value of what, 5? So tell me how you get it to 23 without the aid of any starbases, because he didn't have any military ones (at least not near his TWO systems).

And a last thing.. invisible ships. What the heck? I have had it happen with transports that I built and a defender that I got from my survey ship. They do not have an icon. The hightlight circle just encircles empty space. I can move it around and use it as per normal, but it is really annoying to look at. What gives?

-Drake

~SDC~

Yeah, you get a much larger pop increase if you keep morale at 100% Quite a bit bigger than if it was just at 99%, well at least to me it seems that way.

Normally early game I run at 90/0/10 split spending, 100% spending. Tax rate kep to give 100% morale. Churn out those colony ships, put 200 mil (ish) people on each one. Or more, as with morale at 100% pop flies up faster than that, but I never let earths pop go below 1 bil... I continue with that till the treasury is just about to go past -500.

Morale is heavily linked to population and vice versa.... Anything over 50-something results in growth, and below that decline. 54 morale is ok, you're not dying..... To get it up, build stuff like stadiums and whotnot. It's also tied to planet quality, research and build anything that ups that, and don't colonise anything that starts out at less than 15PQ. I generally find at the midgame point morale hits 54 ish, a little tech push will net some good morale buildings, and will solve that problem. Also don't build everything, it'll cripple you.

As fot the battlecruiser thing. There's buildings that up the +military rating for that planet (shipyard etc) but the resources up it empire wide. Then there's the races abilty picks. These get added together, and multiply the base attack defense of the ship. You can see what a races bonuses are if you spy on them, that should let you know if you have to go scouting around for any military resource hogging starbases. This is all before experience gets worked in too, as that can have a dramatic effect on ship performance and values. With a little forsight and planning, it's possible to match the computer on those values. It's not cheating (well as far as I can see), but I hit the same point as you- losing a war against similar ships that were so much better than me. Then I cottoned on....

As for the invisible ships issue. Save your game, exit and restart and see if that works. It did for me, as it happened through one of my long games.

Starvald

~SDC~

Whoops, when I said "It's not cheating", I was refering to the AI players.

Note to self "Be clearer"

~SDC~

If you are really having trouble with morale, start building Transports or Colony ships. People within those ships are not on the planet, thus freeing up housing on the planet to keep the citizens happy. If you let the planets over-populate, your approval rating will drop.

Don't worry about the approval rating dropping to 54 - it should be enough for you in a republican government.

The AI players don't cheat at "Normal" - if you want to see how well the player performs, take a look at debug.err:
Debug Message: AI: Drengin Empire blackmailed Arcean Empire for $ 647!
Debug Message: AI: Drengin Empire blackmailed Torian Confederation for $ 505!
Debug Message: AI: Drengin Empire blackmailed Yor Collective for $ 172!
Debug Message: AI: Drengin Empire blackmailed Alexians for $ 330!

From this blackmailing, the Drengins can build up a powerful attack force from the total of $1654. It is enough to boost military output for a while.

The Battlecruiser may have been upgraded by leveling, by various technologies, by anomolies, or even by a certain random event. But in any case, you should duck and cover - an AI player with that kind of ship out is going perform a bushwacking.

The Invisible ships are a bug, as discussed in another thread. Save and reload to fix.

You know, I never build transports to bring down morale. I keep meaning to, but.... seems like an evil option to me!

~SDC~

I was just thinking of taking advantage of GalCiv being a 2d representation of a 3d world ... to those that are complaining about getting nearby resources robbed by the AI early on,

You can try blockading galactic resources from alien constructors. Early on, when the AIs constructors only have a movement speed of less then 3/turn, you only need 3 ships to effectively block them from ever reaching a resource (unless they use multiple constructors). I didn't really look into the economy of it (whether 3 cheap ships cost less then one constructor ... maybe sensor drones, but those come a bit later on the tech tree), but if you have 3 ships kicking around with nothing to do, its something to think about.

You can't keep morale up, this is probably one of the most misunderstood parts of GalCiv for newer players. You don't build +morale buildings to improve morale, you build them to increase your max population. Any morale above 54% or so will allow a planet to grow, planet population growth causes a drop in morale, eventually all your planets will stabilize at around 54% morale. This is perfectly normal and no problems will happen because of it. So don't think of +morale buildings as morale improvers, think of them as +MaxPopulation and you'll be set mentally.