Morale Problem

I've got the same problem in a game I'm running now, if not a bit worse. I've got great trade routes, and can maintain 0% taxation with 100% spending . . . and I'm still struggling to keep morale above 50%.

I'm still not maxed out on morale boosting trade goods, but I'm wondering if they'll make that much of a difference.

Never played something prior 1.03 (well, just finished (lost) my 1st game) and I had no too big issues with morale. However I never went beyond republic because the description of democracy and federation made me fear to loose my planets too much...

The game mechanics of GalCiv dictate that morale will gravitate towards the 50% range naturally. There is absolutely nothing you can do about this. If you have more than 50% morale, population will grow until overcrowding brings down the morale. If you have less than 50% morale, population will decrease until morale is restored. Morale problems are always transitory unless you are being destabilized. The take home message is:

1): 50% morale is not low, it is perfectly normal.
2): High morale is not sustainable.
3): It is impossible to experience perennially low morale unless you are being destabilized.

I suggest you check your game again and see if there really is a morale problem.

I take it this was added in 1.03a? Because I've never seen it before.
What about raising taxes? Will that decrease morale so that it stays below 50%? Or will it just decrease taxpaying population?
From what you're saying, the low morale just results in slower population growth and lower maximum population.
And losing the elections, of course.

None of this is new to the game. It has always been this way since the begining. The past few patches have in fact made morale easier to manage compared to the release version by upping the equilibrium morale level from 50% to 54% I think (it might have been 58% for a while too).

Raising taxes results in lower morale in the short term. If your morale is less than the equilibrium value, not only will your population stop growing, it will actually decrease over time. Eventually, you'll lose so much population that your morale will rebound back to the equilibrium level. Let's review this again:

Raise Taxes
- Short Term: Lowers Morale
- Long Term: Lowers Population

Lower Taxes
- Short Term: Increase Morale
- Long Term: Increase Population

With earlier versions, the +15 PQ bonus really helped with morale as overpopulation sets in later. In 1.03A, you would need to bring your entertainment networks and stadiums earlier to sustain an above average morale.

I usually don't have any trouble keeping my morale around, and above, 50% as long as I don't over tax. Even a realativly small increase in taxes can really affect your morale, so play around with the sliders until you get a good balance between income, morale, and production.

Also, the social projects which give morale bonuses are a really good deal for the money it takes to maintain them. After they are built the population will increase, providing you with more tax payers, and paying for the maintenance. The only one I almost never build is the virtual reality one, because it has a maintenance of 5, instead of 2 like the others.

But even doing that, you just aren't going to be able to maintain a tax level of 60% for long. Unless you have several morale resources being mined. I keep mine between 33%-50%, usually closer to the 33%. You should still be able to bring in some profit as long as you don't over do the production.

When you switch governments, you may need to lower your production or taxes a bit to compensate. But the bonuses you recieve from the new gov't will more then make up for that. This is my statagy, although I'm sure others have different ways of dealing with morale. Hope it helps ya some.

Well, I have a game where I start with Earth as a class 17 planet. At 39% taxes, I get a 95% morale on Earth. The main reason this bothers me is because it slows down Earth's population growth in the early game, when I am building colonizers. At 42%, Earth is at 82%. Above 42, my 100 pop PQ 15 starts losing morale (and thus pop growth). And there are only PQ 18- stars in my little corner of the universe (granted, there are a LOT of them, but still).
If I up to 50% taxation, I get morale 60/78. AT 34%, I get 100%, but -15 bc/mo. Plus the cost of the scouts I'll be building, of course.
Is this a morale problem, or is this a "don't bother to play the game if you start with a PQ 17 planet" problem?
All I know is, I still had trouble playing (and enjoying) the game when I started with a class 20, and another class 20 right next door. But the morale problem wasn't as severe. I don't recall morale plummeting like this, both independantly and as a result of tax shifts, in the past several games I played under 1.2 and 1.1.

Yeah it can get expensive to keep your morale above 50, especially early in the game. But you start out with a 1000 bc, so you can run on a deficit for a while if you like.

What I like to do is to max out the production slider at turn one. And then set the military slider to 60, with social and research both to 20. Also I leave the tax fairly low to get the morale. I lose a lot of money for the first portion of the game, but it lets me build my colony ships, constructors, starfighters, and increase population all at once.

Sooner or later you will have to normalize the sliders so that you stop losing money, but it can help you get a good start. The only downside I've run into using this stratagy is that I sometimes fall slightly behind on technology, but you can always catch up later, or bully the AI for it with your stronger military.

After all that, I don't worry about keeping my overall morale above 50% until later in the game, when I have plenty of money coming in.

At the start I ship 50% of each planet's population with each colony ship. That gives me lots of planets building colony ships (until they reach 100-150 million, then I switch them to constructors) and keeps morale at 100% all through my empire for fast growth. I can't say this is the best way to boom, but it definitely works for me. It tends to keep you ahead on the morale issue for the whole game, each time your planets start getting near 50% a new +morale tech/building/resource kicks in.

It's worth noting that since planet size/planet population are directly tied to morale you can boost morale greatly for no maintanence cost by making soil enrichment and habitat improvement your first two builds on a planet.