Morale too easy to manage now?

from Stardock Forums
What a difference one update makes. With the population cutoff set at I believe 56-58% now instead of 50, an empire just practically runs itself. Destabilization is now much less useful (but not useless). You can basically forget about losing elections, other than the odd fluke here and there.

Personally, I'd like 3 things to happen:

1. Take the Morale/population cutoff point back to where it was.
2. Make election victory/defeat depend on what your AVERAGE support rating was over the previous 2 years, to eliminate one month Propoganda blitz/Tax rate manipulation cheese. Winning elections should be a bit more challenging.
3. Most good players know that you can deal with overpopulation by building Colony Ships/Transports and selling/trading/disbanding them. The problem is this is the only real permanent way to deal with overpopulation (Tax rate/social projects/Propoganda only go so far), and many people have a role playing issue with selling/trading/killing their own people. Perhaps when you disband a transport or colony ship, a pop-up message could come up saying that they've set course for another galaxy, in hope of starting a new life there (anything really, just so it doesn't feel like you've sentenced them to death). Perhaps for every X number of citizens eliminated in this way you increase the chances of some kind of positive random event where some of your people return to aid you from another galaxy (you get few free attack ships appear).

Just some thoughts....I really think the Morale nerf was too much. Bring the challenge back, and let people learn to deal.
999 views 31 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I do not think that it will be good gameplay, which requires for a player to build transporters all the time to manage the morale
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Is this a different name than who you submit scores as? If not, why make a suggestion when it seems you have not fully explored the changes on high difficulty levels (and if you have, then why not report it to the Metaverse). I personally have not got above tough (though I remedy this tonight), but how can something this insignificant be important at higher levels when the AI gets the same benefits?

~SDC~
TouchTasks - Access tasks with ease on Windows touchscreens.
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I've gone into the "painful" realm and I'm not happy with how simple morale has become since the 55-58% rule got introduced. But -shrug- maybe this will get ironed out in the patches. Imiss having to really think to ensure my economy stayed afloat and my people reelected my party. Now it's a total no brainer.

~SDC~
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
@ Dr.NoChance

Full support for your 3 ideas.

As an alternative to your 2. Why not make the impact on taxes immeadtly but the higher morale scales only slowly up?


It is quite cheesy to kill, sell or send half your population to new planets to make your people happy. I would like to see the morale ffect of population scaled down.

Why not have other influences temporal influences on morale: Staring a war, loosing worlds/colony ships, killing enemy flagship, starting a new trade route.
For example if you lose a mayor colony before an election it could have an immmeadiate heavy and timed impact (after 6 months for example it goes back to normal) on the morale. Combined with no immeadiate raising for lowering taxes (or taking the average of two years) it would be quite possible to loose elections again. Living on the edge of rebellion and maxing out taxes would be more of a risk right now as it stands and you don´t have to look only when will be the next election, one month before lowering taxes and afterwards going back to buiseness as usal. :)
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
As far as I was understanding the moral issue in the beginning, the problem was, that you increased your morale, the population grew and your morale decreased therefore. The only "solution" was to build transports and colony ships which is a bit strange IMHO.

Right now I think the morality is excellent as it is.

Maybe you guys are just to good? ;) Common, switch to incredible... :)
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
There is nothing quite like the feeling of selling 5,000,000,000 to some alien species. LOL
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
It does seem to balance itself rather too well right now. With the moderate population drain for invasions I just never seem to see any morale issues after the patch. Historically population growth has been a driving cause for colonisation, wars, government change etc and attempts to have population "control itself" has generally failed. I quite liked the way it was a real issue in the game as well...
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
@ Gordoleth:

I've been victorious on Painful with ease, haven't tried Crippling or above yet.

As for submissions to the metaverse, I STILL haven't figured out why I don't get the submission screen. I'm registered on the metaverse, I'm online at the time of the win, etc. etc.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
@Alf
Even though I haven't plaid on painful yet, I have to ask: couldn't it just be, that you're better now, than in the beginning? Dealing with the morale issue is an aspect of the game. You've learnt to deal with it, therefore (of course) it isn't a problem for you anymore. That's what makes you an experienced player. But it doesn't nescessarily mean that the game is to easy on itself. I'm sure at "crippling" there are other issues you have to deal with. Otherwise said: If you wouldn't be able to deal with the morale issue, you wouldn't be able to play on crippling. ;)

If the pop growth cap was set back to 50%, how would you deal with it then? You'd have the same problem as pre-patch: you build an entertainement network, or push the propaganda-slider and the next turn, pop growth and morale is back to 40% again. There's no way out, and therefore I vote for an growth cap number which is at minimum 55%. Maybe lower at higher difficulties (not sure if that's already the case).

and a side note to destabilization, Brad mentioned somewhere, that it's cumulative, so the longer you give into it the more useful it is.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Moral should pretty much manage itself. So long as your economy is good and you aren't torturing your citizens or anything, everything should be peachy if you ask me.

~SDC~
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Maybe morale should be on a difficulty slider when you start a new game. "Normal" would be the current setting (58%), then every click towards "easy" would increase morale 1-2%, and every click towards "hard" would decrease morale 1-2%. That way people who liked the original 50% version can set it that way... and have all the AI be affected, too.


~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd like to see the balance be closer to 52% rather than 50%. 50% was annoying, but the current state is too easy.
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
58% is way too high a cutoff. As Dearmad said, morale is simply no longer a gameplay issue whatsoever. Pre-patch if you're morale was in the 40's it was Not a dead-end street. Propaganda could prop it up, social projects could prop it up. If your enemies wanted to push it back below 50% again, they would have to increase their destabilization expenditures to do it. That's a drain on their economy and gives you an advantage in other areas. I can understand a cutoff slightly over 50%, say 52%, to give some leeway, but 58% is way too high. It is a work a progress though, I'm confident we'll see many further changes, most of which we all think are great. :)
Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
The main problem with moral at 50% (or even 52%) is that your pop will grow, as soon as you increase propaganda or build say a entertainment network, therefore it's possibly impossible to ever win an election, unless you shove away the unhappy people with transport ships. Or do I miss here something? If so: enlighten me please. :)

~SDC~
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
My experience(limited of course) is that elections don't get lost at 50-52% very often at all. I've 'won' elections at 47%, with so many parties to split the vote you get a lot of wins with 35-50 senate seats, enough to maintain a plurality. Anything over 50% is enough to win most of time and even a little less gives you a fighting chance.

Also, just because planets tend towards 50% or 52% percent doesn't mean that they're always there. Every morale boosting social improvement pops the number up immediately, then it slowly drifts back down as more people show up. While planets that haven't had a 'hit' in a while may be at 50%, those that have will still be in the 60%-90% range. This means you're overall morale should generally be well above 55% come election time.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
"The main problem with moral at 50% (or even 52%) is that your pop will grow, as soon as you increase propaganda or build say a entertainment network, therefore it's possibly impossible to ever win an election, unless you shove away the unhappy people with transport ships. Or do I miss here something?"

I think what you're missing is that you can win elections with morale/approval at, or even slightly below, 50. One of the most interesting ideas I've seen floated (haven't really confirmed this, though), is to pay attention to the standings of the other parties. If your biggest rival in the Senate is the War Party, spend some money before the next election on your military. That will win you their votes. If the Federalists are gaining ground on you, improve your economy... in other words, consider the Senate public feedback on what you're doing right (parties with few seats) and what you're doing wrong (parties with lots of seats), and adjust your play accordingly to stay in power. That SEEMS to be working for me, but I haven't really done an objective analyses.

- Ash

~SDC~
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Just wanted to tell - if any Stardockers read this - that I'm still playing version 1.01 and I find winning elections and upkeeping morale not difficult at all. I fear the moment when I download the newer patches and the morale issue becomes such a cakewalk that I can forget about it.

Would you mind just resetting morale parameterers to the old values and provide people who have problems with them a FAQ or something like that?
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
I think this is one of those cases where a few people complained about a problem, Stardock fixed it, and now they're discovering that there were just as many people who liked it the old way, but who didn't say anything before because they were happy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. How Catch-22ish. :notsure:

- Ash

~SDC~
Reply #21 from Stardock Forums Top
A cpuple of points;

In the current game the carnoids, i-leage, sccottilingas are all spending money to destabalize me. and the morale has suffered greatly (4 incredible, i genius, gigantic galaxy) but you can still make it work by adjusting your spending habits.

so here are a few ideas;

random dice roll to set the starting morale parameters, incrementally from the prevoius levels to the new current levels (you'd never know which level it was set, so it might affect your game playing)

to fix the election problem, randomized length of time between elections, you lost a vote of confidence and elections are being held now. You would never have the time to get the morale up. I do feel that the current elections are not really cheesey in that they seem to reflect how elections work in california, lower taxes, promise us everything, and after the election break all of the promises :)

yours in TUNA

the cat
irc.stardock.com #galciv
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
midnight loui:

that random idea (withincertain limits) would really add some FUN to the game for me! And the slightly randomw time for elections would be fun too.

I'm also hoping we can add in evetns that can tie into our own elections.

I WANT MORE INTERNAL POLITIKING (sp) GOING ON. :) :)

~SDC~
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
I didn't have that much trouble to start with. I had noticed that I didn't even need to pay attention whatsoever to morale under version 42. And I'm not a die hard player (not playing at the upper levels yet. Still working on graduating to them at this time.)
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
In my last game my Approval rating never dropped below 70%, I had my tax rate between 76-86% and I ended the game with 91% approval.

Of course I also had 3 Completely tricked out Morale Resouces by the end of the game.

The real problem is that population increases JUST TOO DAMN FAST. I realize that part of the fun of a 4X game is the expansion and growth...but my god...the game lasts 30 YEARS...thats a single generation. I don't care how much Aphrodisiac these people are snorting there is no way that 100 million colonists grow to 8 Billion in 30 years. Maybe if each month was actually a year and we were talking about 3-4 centuries.

I have no problem with spaceing billions of people, because IMO since it was impossible for those people to actually have ever been born, I'm killing those who actually don't exist anyway.

Lest this just sound like Simulationist Wankering, I'll note that all the of the game play issues above are based on this.

There would have been no need to nerf the morale threshold from 50-58 if population didn't balloon so quickly and turn an otherwise happy planet into New Jersey.

Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
Valamir,
It's been explained repeatedly, including often in the yearly status reports, that the population figures do not represent the actual number of people but the number of people reporting a meaningful taxable income.

Brad's example was that if Earth today tried to build a colony ship the only people that would economically contribute towards it's production would be in North America, Europe and bits of developed Asia. Everyone else is still alive but their local economies don't allow them to contribute measurably to an effort of that scale.

If the world was to improve the global economy(morale improvements?) to the point where the Third World was on equal footing with the First, those people would make enough money that taxing them would actually produce income and they would show up as population on the books.

At least that's the way I understand the theory. :notsure: