Why is late game impossible to play?

This reminds me of Civilization 3's early versions with a TON of corruption that made it unworthwhile to expand.

I haven't had this problem...but I've only fully ran out the tech tree once. Usually the game is over long before this ever occurs for me.

One of the recent patches greatly reduced the impact of morale - do you have it?

I never really had bad morale problems like some have described and with the 'morale patch' things are almost overtweaked.

Too many people. Build a Combat Transport, load it up with 5 Billion people. Watch morale zoom up.

Its rather silly...the remaining 1 billion people leap and cheap that 80% of their closest friends and relatives are being shipped into space never to be seen again...but there you go.

What you do with the Combat Transport after words is up to you...invade an enemy world. Declare war on a friend just to give you someone to invade...or simply disband it (yes the planet will still rejoice at the mass space death camps of billions of their loved ones...and strangely it doesn't affect your "good" "evil" rating).

No. No.
They are going to a `better world'...

Of course all their friends are happy for them.

In other words, I find your lack of faith disturbing.

can you make 1000 combat transport and send ur people as immigrats to another planet then take over the world that way??

I'm sure you've thought of these already, but control of a couple of morale and economic resources with maxed out mining bases really helps morale and your economy. Also, build starbases in heavily populated sectors to increase military and social spending with "free" resources. Lazy as I am, I launch all my freighters from a single system and max out starbases with the trade modules (on the same starbases with the mining and production modules). I'm sure there's some point of diminishing returns with these starbases, but I build 4 or 5 of those puppies in my home system. No maintenance and increases trade.

I'm sure some people can develop a thriving economy without massive starbase expansion and resource control, but I can't. Oh, yeah - trading "safe" tech and trade items to everyone I can helps out also.

Bob Mercer

Oh, yeah: I use the "one way" transports to ensure that population levels remain "optimal". (Although I usually stash a few of them near frontiers to provide a quick invasion force should wars begin. Maybe we should think more like "popucicles", rather than going to a better place.

Bob Mercer

Your morale isn't a 'problem'. Population always increases, causing morale to drop through overpopulation, until morale drops to it's 'cutoff' point at which point population growth stops. It used to be 50% morale, now I believe it's 58%. Lowering your taxes will increase morale in the short run but the population will increase until morale drops back to the cutoff point. Dropping your taxes past a certain point is counterproductive because the extra people aren't paying enough taxes to make it worthwhile.
Why are so many people obsessed with getting morale way way above 50%. There's no benefit to super-high morale other than population growth. Once your population is a big as morale allows you don't need 'high' morale. Low is bad cause you might lose elections or have planetary defections, but there is no point to morale above 55% or so. All this talk of shipping off population on transports is mystifying to me, what's the point? You're just hurting your production and new people will show up shortly anyway.

Since you state your tax rate is at 0%, I suspect therein lies your problem. Altering your tax rate has a severe penalty to morale from my experience. I have had populations of over a trillion but I never changed my tax rate below 33%, and their morale never dropped below 60%. If morale on some planets drop into the 40% range don't panic and use the tax rate for a quick fix. It will only start a morale downward spiral and kill your civ's discretionary spending. Play with the spending rate, build the late morale devices like transporters, the morale advances like "Cure for Depression" and develop the morale resource nodes across the map, but I recommend leaving the tax rate pretty much alone. Hope this helps.

And don't colonise every crap planet you find... sticking to high quality worlds (or having a PQ bonus) is the best fix for low morale that I've come across.

lmao Valamir. well put

~SDC~

How to fix morale:

Kill everyone age 30 and older in a stadium while the crowd shouts "Renew! Renew!"

Augusten, it's been a longtime since I was supposed to compete at Carousel. I'm happily playing GalCiv in Sanctuary LOL .

Mr. Lucky: I take folks off planet after a successful invasion if there are too many people for the current planet developments to support with a morale of 50 or greater. If I've got the overall tax slider set at 82%, I don't want to reduce it for the rest of the planets and I don't want the newly conquered plane to join the I-League. So pull some of the folks back off.

In the late game, I find that most of my largest population centers are a good way from the front lines (If I'm winning that is, otherwise I don't need to do this ). It's not the most efficient method of managing my empire, but I like having a few combat transports near the front lines when my erstwhile "allies" get a bug up their rear end and declare war on a third party. I don't want to miss out on those "blue light" specials by having to build and send the combat transports from my most populous worlds to the front line. So I have my own Diego Garcia's with not just equipment, but troops stockpiled near potential trouble spots. Yeah, I pay maintenance, but I probably pick 1-2 systems more when the Torians decide they can no longer stand the sight of another Alexian or I-Leaguer.

Bob Mercer

The problem is that peopel will build every social project available instead of looking to see what should be built where.

For instance, propaganda centers and things that help keep people from defecting are very expensive to maintain.

~SDC~

"they still have about only 60% aproval!"

There's your problem. 60% approval shouldn't be viewed as "only", it should be viewed as great. Brad has said that approval ~50% is what is realistic for politicians, and therefore what you should expect to be getting. If you want it higher, expect to pay a high price for it... like the price you're currently paying.

And if you're paying that much in maintenance, you should disband some buildings. Have too many people? Raise your tax rate. The late game is by no means unplayable, you just have to experiment until you find the strategy for playing it right.

- Ash

~SDC~

MadMerse,
Those points make perfect sense of course. Wanting to have an invasion force on standby, or pulling a specific force back off a recently conquered and poorly developed planet are excellent reasons to keep stocked transports around. But they have nothing to do mainting your empires morale in general. What I dispute is the position that, in general, a fine way to improve any planets morale is to ship them off on a transport and if you don't need another transport, just vape 'em. That seems to be a common and, to me, mystifying position.

Also if you are doing well sometimes the AI will dump a lot of cash into destabilizing your government. I had my morale stuck around 45 one late game because I didn't have the capacity to produce the structures I needed to counter it.

If you have espionage going you sometimes get an indication of who is paying to destabilize you. You can counter this with various improvements, and of course "bleeding" excess population off.

I bump up propaganda, only make planet cultural buildings in my front line planets, have low tax levels, got the wonders to raise moral, or lease them if need be.

You problem is your probably building all planet upgrades on every planet..i mean do you *really* need that 5 maintenance planet shield on the 3 planets at the far end of the map?

Go around deleting things you dont need, such as propaganda buildings in rear line planets. Will make a big difference

~SDC~

I think you guys are missing the point, so let me restate this as I understand it: morale and population growth are completely linked together. Think about what that means for a minute - high morale = you need to grow more (and will do so unless you are doing counter-productive things like shipping people off planet), whereas 50% morale = your planet is reaching it's comfort level of population.

High morale just means your planet has some "growing" to do (if just from more reported taxes). That's -it- nothing more to it. High morale does not mean you are a better manager, it means you planet has some growing to do and is not cranking out the most production you can get. Improvements that boost morale are simply to get your plantets to grow and give you more production outta them.

Summary: View morale as a growth indicator and your anxieties about being a bad manager will disappear.

Gordeleth,
Bingo, bingo, bingo. That's what I was trying to say, but you've crystalized it eloquently.
The other points, sparked by Frogboy, about not building everything everyplace are well taken also. It's quite a bit different than similar games where you really can/should do that, I haven't mastered the proper balance myself yet.
Brysos
45% morale however, is an issue. I assume you're using propaganda? That usually helps me fight destablization. If it's already maxed though, you are in a spot of trouble.

The problem is if you don't build every social project, you end up having heaps of planets building nothing, which is a massive waste of your resources.

I feel better about building something marginally useful than having it all go to waste.

I've thought about the "lost production" issue, but really, it makes sense. If you don't have the people working on something, they are just kicking back with their margaritas, enjoying the view.. You shouldn't get any production out of them. If you find their laziness appalling and you have them build anyway, you will have to pay for the things they build.

"The problem is that peopel will build every social project available instead of looking to see what should be built where.

"For instance, propaganda centers and things that help keep people from defecting are very expensive to maintain."

This could be mitigated if the stats (cost, maintenance, effects) for social projects could be accessed in the governor screen. It would certainly help deciding what should go into the "standard" queue, and what needs to be in specialized queues.


~SDC~

/Quote
Summary: View morale as a growth indicator and your anxieties about being a bad manager will disappear.
Quote/

The problem is that it also influences your elections. I suspect it may influence other aspects as well, such as planet defections. This is why I think morale should be decoupled from population growth. We need "morale for elections" and "morale for population growth".

Alternatively, as I suggested in the past, we can let a player to adjust in game "zero growth morale parameter" which was 50% and know around 60%. This would also somewhat decouple moral and population growth.

MxM