Was Morale nerfed recently? It seems way too easy to keep high.

Agreed, I've noticed the same thing. Loaded a "gigantic" game that I started prior to the patch and morale is sky high. I have the income set to about 90% and could probably go to 100% but that just feels silly. This is with a "democracy" government.
Something must have changed?

~SDC~

Yes, something has changed. Maybe it relates to the difficulty setting?

Dunno, maybe.
The example game I was describing though was set at Normal, so I wouldn't have expected that much change.

~SDC~

Yeah, it kinda makes the Populist party worthless, and there is no incentive to stay with Imperial government now.

I think moral needs an overhaul. It needs to be as difficult as it was before, but there should be better ways of dealing with it than loading transports and then killing them.

I would prefer something in the middle from the inane shipping population in transports to kill 'em off and this overly simplistic version after .049. When I updated to .049 my morale went from average of about 56% to a literally complete across *every* planet 100%. I have to put my tax rate above 50% before it drops to 98%. Plain nuts.

Elf

Notice that the AI races morale have gone up to 100% also?

I read a post from Brad on the matter. He implied that it was meant to get the planet population up. Perhaps it will stabilize once that happens?

DblDamage

The last game I won had EVERY planet except the most newly conquered ones at 100 Morale. My approval rating north of 80%, And my tax rate betwee 76-83%.

Most planets I'd put in the entertainment network and stadium, about half (the midling PQs) had a Multimedia Center and a couple of the others like news net that give small boosts...but I didn't build a single VR center or Harmony Generator or any of the big morale projects.

Morale and approval had essentially become a non issue.

In my last game, it was fairly easy to keep morale high (post-patch), as well as approval rating. I didn't lose any elections, despite being a Star Federation.

Of course, my worlds ranged in quality from 20-75, so that likely had a lot to do with it. Still, it seems like it has become progressively easier to maintain morale.

~SDC~

Anyone tried a new game? I heard morale is kinda funny if you load a save game, but it will be more challenging in games started from scratch.

It may be just an artifact of using an old save. I updated midway and did have a rather happy empire (along with everyone else), but in the game I started fresh last night the morale issues seem to be back to normal as far as I can tell.

I have started .049 games from scratch. Morale is still nerfed bad. Like Valamir said above, you don't have to ever worry about morale or approval, which to me takes alot out of the game. Not sure why Stardock did this, assuming it was on purpose and not a bug. A reply form them would be great.

Thanks Mr. Lucky & CodeMonkey. I had noticed the same thing in the current long-term (huge galaxy) game I am playing. From my save point, after the .049 update, my morale's skyrocketed from 52%+ (on my lowest, "frontier" worlds) to everything being 98%+ after I rebooted.I was wondering what was going on...(honestly, I thought I'd just drunk too much the last turn I'd saved and set my sliders wrong!). I'll have to try a new game!

~SDC~

Keep the updates coming guys. Can anyone confirm or deny MrChoke's experience that it's still way to easy, even on new games?

I thought I read a post from Frogboy, maybe in the '.49 is released' thread, saying that morale would be harder then the previous patch but slightly easier then originally. I don't have any play time available but I'm sincerely hoping that turns out to be accurate.

I just finished a game on Incredible AI (was started before the patch, though) and morale on every planet was through the roof. Tax rates were increased to somewhere in the 80's I believe and still 60+ support rating. The morale nerfing must affect all skill levels, and not just the lower settings.

I didn't notice too much of a difference. It was slightly easier to maintain morale, but it was reaching 50% under an Imperium in my case. This would be post-patch.

I would consider my ability to maintain morale more like increased experience and knowledge of new tricks as opposed to "nerfing".

Moral is definitly broken - with the newest patch it seems far too easy, before that it seemed to be a steady downward spiral - either stay at exactly 50% approval (and be subject to IL, uprises and losing elections), or suffer from planets growing and growing and growing until moral finally drops deep enough to be a problem. There definitly needs to be a way to limit population growth!

Another very annoying thing is conquering planets - even worse if you do it via influence and thereby get no losses. Nearly impossible to hold a high quality planet with 5bil+ people prepatch, unless you crack out transports like mad and destroy them until you are down to 500m or so.

TRANSPORTS? Er, Colony. You can pack more people on them. You just cannot invade people with them.

Im kinda disappointed. I have to lern to play from scratch, just when I was getting it down! And to make matters worse, its the AI that seems to be taking advantage of this the most and whiping the floor with me

I miss the more difficult morale issues in the game. So far it seems to easy, but maybe I've always played focusing on internal happiness more than otherplayers, I don't know. :notsure:

~SDC~

Dearmad,

I agree. Even though my current game readjusted to more reasonable morale levels the second turn after I installed .049, it is still easier to maintain >52% morale on all my planets, empire-wide, than it was pre-.049. This allows me to run 70%-80% taxes, and 80%-88% spending, on a huge map. Perhaps Brad could allow a radio button to choose between pre- and post- .049 morale calc's.

~SDC~

...And it nerfs the Populist choice.

~SDC~

I didn't play the earlier version but I'm not seeing the ease of keeping morale
that some people are. Playing a deliberate game on normal and keeping the tax
rate at 50% and building all techs as they come availabele I have high morale on my jumbo planets 25 and above but 20 to 21
hover in the 60's and high 50's and less than 20 drop to 48 at times. I even took
a few planets with influence and had some of mine go skull and crossbones.
I didn't use propaganda at all. Maybe that is too powerful. I haven't seen a downside to using propanganda.

If keeping morale up needs to be made harder please make it an option so us "mere mortals" have a chance.

Bah that was bad lousy Netscape at work doesn't wrap and I had to type that all in one line or try to format better. Didn't work and I missed all the mispelled words and bad typing..Bah

I like the current morale system, but I do think it's too easy to impose large taxation... should taxes have a greater penalty (that is my gut feeling).

I confess to not understanding the internal economy system very well, but on the surface it just seems like the higher you set taxes the more sever morale penalty you should take (like on a sliding scale, not static)

Thoughts? :notsure:

I have to agree with the majority of the posters. I'm finding morale a non-issue and playbalance seems out of whack. Playing with an 80% tax base, I have a 90% popularity rating with no morale ore resources tapped, only a 10% initial morale boost, difficulty at Painful in the year 2190. Never would have been this way prior to the last patch .