Hi,
I hope this post isn't taken as a troll, especially since this is my first post here, but I've been playing GalCiv since release and I just can't see any other way to descibe how morale works.
Bear with me a bit and hopefully I can back up that statement.
First, I'd call it broken from a micromanagement perspective since the only obvious solution to Morale problems is spacing half the population of your planets every few turns. Not exactly intuitive from a gameplay perspective, not FUN from a personal perspective, and it adds a lot of MM that there's really no need for. In the later game, the biggest hassle for me is the MM needed to try and keep morale up.
Second, I consider it broken from a gameplay perspective in the sense that there's a total lack of feedback when it comes to morale. There are things you do that should have a noticeable affect on Morale that just don't. The obvious examples are any of the items that globally raise morale (Galactic Resouces, unique items). Last night I had a game where I grabbed a morale resource late in the game and in one turn got a +20% global increase. The affect wasn't even noticeable. Changing government is another example. Going from Imperial to Democracy I would expect to see a drop in morale, not a marginal increase.
The same lack of feedback also causes problems with destabalization. I can only assume that the major difference between games where moral is a huge problem and games where it isn't has to do with other races destablizing you. But there's absolutely no feedback as to who and how, and no way to counter it (that I've found). It's almost MOO3-like in that regard. 
Finally, I'm starting to think it's bugged from a coding perspective. I've noticed two incidents now where my homeworld had a major jump in morale (30 to 80) right after getting a global resource, but it only seemed to affect my homeworld. Unfortunately, I didn't pay close enough attention to rule out other variables at the time.
Anyways, I'd like to offer a few suggestions, possible solution.
The first thing I'd like to see is a global slider to counter the destabalizing influences of other races, along with a bit of feedback as to exactly how much your morale is being impacted in this regard.
The second is maybe to tone it down a bit, in the sense that you appear to get to a point where nothing affects the huge negatives that one gets from overpopulation. Even in the late game, the game should be noticeably reacting to what one is doing.
Finally, I'd like to see a pop cap or more elegantly, a morale cap. Let me set a morale level and if a planet drops below that, don't grow the pop (or just grow it very slowly).
I'm not sure how any of these solutions fit in from a balance/AI perspective but I really think something needs to be changed. For me it's almost gotten to be a gamebreaker. I cringe every time I build a useless transport just so I can space some colonists.
Rgds,
Frank
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#1
by Citizen Horatio - 4/1/2003 2:47:45 PM
AFAIK population stops increasing at <= 50 morale.
i've never had problems with morale on anything but conquered planets. just max out propaganda, build a ton of morale improvements and grab those resources. i'm kinda surprised at all these "morale sucks" posts.
i agree that destabilization is a bit of a gray area. you should be able to find out if someone is destabilizing you through espionage.
cheers
h
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Thanks for the quick replies and some useful information. I do want to comment on the list that mindlar posted. Items 1 through 6 are my standard attempts to solve the problem. Admittedly, I'm still not very good at it, I'm missing a good overview of the tech tree and hampered by the fact that I can't see what a given item does on the governor screen so I know I don't build up my social que as efficiently as possible. That will change as I get more familiar with the game though. Still, given that my first 7 or 8 items in the Que are all designed to either increase the planet hab or boost moral to some degree, I would think that I shouldn't be having massive morale problems.
Item 7, remove pop, I've been avoiding mainly out of a stubborn desire to try and find another solution to the problem.
Item 8, propaganda, I haven't really played around with. How do you get any income if you set propaganda to 100? Maybe what I'm looking for is a global propaganda slider to easily let me tune my empire.
The last two items I hadn't even considered, good to know and something else to think about, play around with.
Someone mentioned espionage to find out if someone is destablizing you. I do tend to have good intel but never noticed that information. It does beg the question though, is there anything that I can do with that information. In my current game, I know it's the Yor doing it (since I'm bankrolling the other races in a fight against them) but how do I counter it?
Are my only options to go to war or bump up my attempts to destabilize him instead? Basically try to wreck his economy so he doesn't have the resources to wreck mine?
Thanks for your input,
Frank
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#5
by Citizen myomer - 4/1/2003 3:40:30 PM
How does having a negative balance on your funds make morale go up? I have this compulsion of always having my funds with positive cashflow...
 
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#6
by Citizen Alltus - 4/1/2003 3:51:31 PM
The morale 'goodies' the Survey ship picks up around the galaxy are apparently broken; they have no visible effect on the people or civ morale stats. A dev commented that if this is true it is a bug and I have no doubt will be fixed. The Morale Mining Resources are not broken however. If you use a Constructor to build a station on one it will increase the peoples morale and the civilization Morale stat. Subsequent upgrades to the station's mining ability will also effectively increase morale. Hope this helps .
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#7
by Citizen bonkku - 4/1/2003 3:56:11 PM
I agree with Frank on all points. Mindlar, your list may be more or less effective but it offers only fake solutions, trying to hide the problem instead of solving it.
In my opinion we should have a global slider for morale boosting, an exponentially decaying pop. growth and more information about how much you are being destabilized (not necessarily by whom, that's espionage).
And, as I mentioned in another post, I consider that players should be given more information about how all those things are calculated. The AI may not fake, but it has an unfair advantage: it knows the game mechanics 
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#8
by Citizen olaf73 - 4/1/2003 5:33:12 PM
This is a good post.
The key here is that, regardless of whichever means exisst to combat flagging morale, the most effective is jettisoning people into oblivion. A colony ship is worlds cheaper in the long run than most of the morale boosting social improvements. Thats...silly.
olaf
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#9
by Citizen olaf73 - 4/1/2003 5:35:39 PM
Grr no edit.
I will say though, that after a few games, morale isnt really much of a problem for me as long as I avoid colonizing sub 15 planets and have a good social production queue in place. It can be a problem for systems I have conquered or otherwise absorbed. In these situtions I use propaganda, jettison the ungrateful bastards, or best of all stick them on a combat transport and send them to the front.
olaf
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Ok, I haven't had much problem with morale, since I put a reasonable amount of my production into improving it. However, I do have a general objection with the morale/population growth system in general, in that morale perpetually spirals downward and population upward until morale hits 50% or so. This makes morale improvement techs and resources a temporary improvement at best.
A possible change to improve this might be to have 4/5ths (or some other fraction) of your morale bonus count for calculating the population break-even point, and the rest only be applied after the break-even calculation is made. It should be fairly easy to make such a change, and would provide real long-term morale improvements insteal of just a temporary boost to allow more population growth. I would suggest possibly creating more seperation of the two systems, but I realize that is probably impractical to do.
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Thing is morale seems to get lower as your planets get bigger. No matter how many morale enhancements you have or your abilities.
As people say the only way to solve the problem for a few turns is to massacre your own population. I can only assume some people that haven't had problems don't have big enough worlds or empires yet.
It needs fixing!
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100% propaganda and very low taxes and still having 20-30% morale ratings? Come on, most leaders in the real world don't give us practically 0 taxes, if they did their rating would probably shoot up too.
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I'm not looking for 80% approval. If I can maintain, in peacetime, a morale of 50-60 with a tolerable (~30%-40%) tax rate, I'd be happy. I'm just looking for morale improvements to have a bit more of a long-lasting effect. What's the point of builting a +10% morale building when your morale is going to drop back to 50 or less in a matter of a few months? Even propaganda seems to be temporary, since the morale goes up at first, but then creeps downward just like before.
Oh, and people who have their morale routinely in the 20-30 range: Are you at war with someone? Are they attacking you? I know one or both of those will drop planet morale like a rock.
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Seems to have temporarily fixed itself. After I last sent in the extermination squads morale hasn't shot down so much. I have tried to keep the tax rate at a level 31% to see what happens.
If population is such a big factor with morale then there should be a way to limit growth until your empire is ready to cope with it. Like the other guys say any morale advance or building seems to put morale up for a bit then it levels off very quickly.
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Come on people, face the challenge. I think morale works great in the game. Makes me think twice about a lot of things, it's just part of the whole decision making.
 
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It just seems a bit buggy. I have no problem trying to manage morale. I'm used to that from all the old Civilisation games and Moo 2.
In Civ you could set the Luxuries slider up a bit at the cost of income and research to resolve the problem. The main problem seems to be whatever you do has little effect apart from killing your own population. I could understand it if I had neglected my morale social buildings or whatever. When I've got nothing to build as I've kept up with my research on a piss easy skill level it shouldn't cause problems. Maybe I was being destabilised by someone and they stopped? There is no way to know or stop it happening from what I can see.
Just like to add this is a superb game and far superior to moo3, but this morale issue seems to be causing a lot of us gamers a problem or effecting enjoyment.
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#22
by Veteran Stevious - 4/1/2003 7:19:12 PM
Without getting involved in the morale debate, I love olaf's idea of putting the 'ungrateful bastards' in transports and sending them to the front! 
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#23
by Citizen StarGalax - 4/1/2003 7:26:22 PM
How do you limit population growth in real life?
To my knowledge, China has a law, of how many kids you can have. Do any other countries have such a law.
What chance do you think a law like that would have of passing in the U.S. Can you say none? People would rather be over populated and have poor conditions, rather than be told they can't have another kid.
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#24
by Citizen Horatio - 4/1/2003 7:45:35 PM
stargalax:
'How do you limit population growth in real life?'
affluence and secularism seems to be doing the trick for most 1st world nations. japan and italy are shrinking and others would be if it weren't for immigration.
apologies for the OT post.
cheers
h
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