No. The consequence is that at 31% your growth rate is appalling, and every other empire will be able to crush you because you simply can't defend your planets.

It's always best to keep approval high, I generally try and maintain 100%.

Think your advice is pretty dodgy tbh Marcathonas.

Approval rating doesn't really mean squat.

To maximise your economy increase your taxes until the lowest morale on any planet should be 41% (42 if you have too). At 40% your colonies stop growing. If your lowest morale planet hits its pop cap (farm or artificial) you can increase taxes so its morale go's as low as 31%. At 30% the colony will rebel so don't go that low!!

By following this advice all your colonys will grow in pop and your economy will go through the roof.

I have never lost an election using this strat although it is conceivable under very excceptionable circumstances.


Lenius.

Fact is your not going to be able to keep your all your planets at 100 morale for long. The only time I would keep taxes low is if I were running low on homeworld pop on a colony rush, pointless otherwise your just slowing your economy. Better to use my strat and get a pop growth abily bonus.

You only need to reach 2.6 bill on a planet to reach its max amount of pop growth each turn.

If your planets are being invaded your doing something seriously wrong already so high pop wont really matter.

I've run approval as low as 47% and never lost an election in 21 games even if you did lose an election the political bonuses arern't worth much compared to a much larger income anyway.


Lenius.

Lenius: Wrong. Approval is very, very important. If it's at 31%, you WILL NOT have the population to fight a war or get income. Because it's not growing.

Your strategy is flawed, you're losing up to 40% of tax money for no bonus by not keeping morale as high as possible.

100% morale = 100% pop growth bonus. If you're getting 31% population, you're doing something VERY wrong yourself. Invasions happen in the game, and since I play with as little military as I can be bothered with, I can say that morale that low is bad.

For the record: I, and a fair few others here I know of, are perfectly capable of maintaining 100% approval rating at 79% taxes. It's your advice which is dodgy, tbh.

I personally don't think maintaining 100% is that worthwhile. (except perhaps the first 20 turns of the game)

I tend to pick +20 to 30% pop growth, and then for the most part keep average morale over 75, with the lowest around 50%.

For me, this is a good balance. You get solid growth out of most planets, and good tax income overall.

I have never had a need to tax morale under 50%. For me 75 or higher is the way to go. No rebellions, and you win the senate every time.

Another point to mention is effiency. You shouldn't be quick buying too much stuff. Let your production and research chew up the money you're pulling in.

If you can afford 100% morale, it is probably the way to go. (you build up your population quickly.) However for me, it's just easier to build up with higher taxes.

I'm wondering if it would possible to implement both of your strategies. Start the game off by playing 100% approval until your population is very large and then going down to 41% later in the game in order to amass a large attack fleet to annihilate your neighbors?

Actually the limiting factor for me in conquering other civs is filling up transports with troops. So keeping the population growth bonus thru the whole game works well.

I work my way up to 80% taxes and then work my way up to 100% approval.
Then when a planets approval drops below 100%, I fill up a transport with troops, usually 3K troops works good for me.
Then when I have enough transports ready, I attack.
It also helps to get 2-3K population as soon as I conquer a planet so that it doesn't drain the economy for too long.

Prior to 1.3, I usually tried to start with 100% approval but with the changes that came with 1.3 I think it is best to keep the taxes high and work up to 100% approval.

Of course all this depends on ones playstyle and how everything times out for you.

So... how about if you are part of the War Party (hypothetically- I tend to prefer Technologists or Federalists) and you are in the yellow or red for Approval and an election comes along? Micromanage so that the Approval is back up in the green and safe only during elections so you don't get military penalties? I suppose that's one way to do it...

Well, the thing is that it's variable and a weighted randomization. I've had my approval at 75% once when the election came around and the votes for my party were barely over 50% of the senate. I tend not to want to let the voting get anywhere near 50% for obvious reasons.

I'd love to consistently win by 1 vote, but if there's a chance that winning by 1 vote can turn into losing by 30 votes in the next 6 or so months, then I have reason to worry.

Approval is not a static thing, it can go up and down. There are reasons that it should be high at some points in the game and on some planets and there are other times where it's not that necessary and the income from higher taxes is more important.

Certainly, during the initial colonization phase you want to keep your approval at 100% on all your colonies so that they grow as fast as possible and become profitable ASAP. In v1.2 I would also try to keep my homeworld approval at 100% as well so that I could pull off 500 colonists every other turn. In v1.3 I've found I only need to keep my homeworld above the 75% level because of the higher starting pop.

I usually don't build farms on my colonies until I have some global morale benefit from either tech or resource mining. During this time my colonies are sitting at 5B and they're not growing, so I up my taxes to where my global approval is in the high 70's. This insures that I don't lose any elections.

I generally put a farm down on all my colonies in advance of needing to build a lot of transports. So clearly, I need to lower my taxes to get my approval back up to first grow my colonies pop to the farm limit and then keep it high while I'm filling the transports. I lower my taxes so that most of my colonies are at 100% but not so low that they all are. The ones that lag behind obviously won't supply as many transports as the others. Anyway this goes back and forth over the course of the game as required.

If your being invaded your doing something wrong. Probably your economy is poor because your taxes are so low. The quicker you reach and afford 100% spending and a good manufacturing base the better, it's much more important than having a slightly higher pop and a useless high approval rating. Also small military makes you a target and is an obvious flaw in your gameplay.

Did you bother reading MY post? 79% taxes aren't low, and 6k a turn isn't a poor economy. It's not a brilliant one, but it's enough.

I have a small military by choice. I'm strangling the other races for tech, and have a superior fleet. I've got the highest rating, just I don't bother with something ludicrous like a military of 500, because it's a drain on economy.

Once again: If you aren't able to sustain 100% morale empire-wide at high taxes, I'm seeing a flaw in your strategy.

Do you not understand what morale is? It's factored AFTER resources. Thus, if you're running at 41% morale with resources, your strategy is flawed.

You can keep playing with a weak economy if you like. I'll stick to high taxes and high morale, if that's fine by you.

Also: how do you plan to invade anyone with no people? you don't. The OP asked if he could stay permanently at 31% morale without penalties. The answer is: not realistically. Your "advice" is, at best, horrendously flawed if you'd rather lower morale for no good reason when it's extremely easy to keep high taxes and morale. Plus the pop growth is skewed, and growth bonuses are empire wide. No point in letting one planet drop to 41%, it drags down the average.

Considering I have 100bil pop invasion/culture farms, I rather like having the growth bonuses. Yet again: if you honestly think that high morale = weak economy, you're doing something very wrong.

There is no way early[/B] on in a game Marcathonas thay you can achieve high morale and high taxes. It's simply impossible.

[B]That means you have to make a choice.

1. Your version: High morale bigger pop high approval rating.

Fact is you don't even have elections until you reach republic. Your economy is small because you have low taxes. Therefore spending is low no where near hundred percent. Means you can not build manufactoring buildings or ships at any great speed.

2. My Version. High taxes. 41% lowest morale.

All planets achieving growth, no risk of losing election till you reach republic (only gives 10% eco bonus now anyway). 100% spending achieved much more quickly. Manufacturing can be built quicker, morale and eco buildings can be built quicker to strengthen economy.


Frankly Marcathonas I don't care how you play its your game do what you like.


Lenius.

Marconathas, it is not "extremely easy to keep high taxes and morale." In order to have 100% morale at 79% taxes, you'd need some combination of maxed out starbases on morale resources, morale trade goods, and VR centers. It is not fast or cheap to get any of these, and there are lots of alternative things you could be researching or building instead. I won my last suicidal game with nothing more than one morale trade good, one halfway-developed morale resource, and xeno entertainment. I had 69% taxes and about 55% morale. I think there are much more effective ways to spend your research than maximizing morale bonuses, like stock exchanges, governemnt techs, or the ships you need to take over an enemy. 100% morale at 79% taxes is a nice endgame goal for your final push for conquest of miliking metaverse scores, but the game is mostly won or lost long before that's possible.

My usual strategy is to go for 100% morale at the beginning of the game until my initial money runs out, then set taxes as high as I can to keep 40% approval. I usually don't bother with the advanced governments unless I want to run at a higher approval rating for the growth bonus.

Edit for Marconathas's last post:

You can't keep 100% full time, now. But I can still keep taxes high and morale high at the same time using those morale buildings and bonuses.

Are you playing on 1.31? Morale buildings are much weaker than they were before. I don't think they're worth building on most planets, only one that are specialized for population and economy.

I ALWAYS have a powerful economy, and I've never been below the top 3.

What difficulty are you playing on? On suicidal, your economy will be small compared to the AI early on no matter what you do. Once my economy matches that of the top AI, the game's over, I've won. All that's left is cleanup.

Note there is marked difference in this aspect between the latest version of the game and older versions. In 1.2, there was a point fairly early where you could set taxes at 80% and forget about it. Approval is harder to come by in the latest version of the game which requires constant management. At first, I was unhappy with the change, but after getting used to, I find it actually makes the game more interesting. The game designers do know best in the end.

This is all very true. I even mostly agree with your last sentance as well, but you shouldn't say so publicly because it undercuts your argument the next time they make a change that you don't like (I'm mostly joking here).

You know they have morale buildings?

Actually, I have heard of them, I've just never used them. In v1.2 it was easy not to. In v1.31, I'll take a bit of a morale hit here and there just to avoid them. In v1.4, you'll be pretty much forced to use them.

There are many ways to play this game. In my current v1.31 game, I'm keeping my global approval around 85% and my taxes at 79% giving me an income of 190,000 bc per week. I'm playing a gigantic suicidal with a total of 450 planets and I have about 180 of them at this point. If I had to let my overall approval sag a bit I'd let it go down to 70% or so before I'd be willing to lower my taxes and accept a lower income.

Much of this is a style of play choice. I'm sure I could still win with a lower level of income and higher approval, but an average approval in the eighties is prefectly sufficient for building transports and growing pop on newly conquered planets. I'm also sure I could win with a lower approval level and even more income. But if I had to chose between these two choices, I'd probably chose higher approval and less income, at least when my income is 190K.