Happiness

[Grandpa Kim]

Originally posted by couslee:
1. How many troops does it take to affect a mood change?
2. Do the same happiness rules apply to surrendered population types, if no. How many troops required to affect a change on those planets?
3. How often does the game check for happiness modifiers? (I thought it was each turn, but if only at #.0 that might explain a couple of things)

1. Several factors here. When building your empire, the default happiness (100%) will keep you at indifferent under peaceful circumstances. If you raise it to 110% (or even less than that I beilieve) you can keep your population at happy. Adding UPC 3 (or racial equivilent) will take either case to jubilant, but it will get there sooner if you start with the higher number. I have never dropped happiness below 100% but I surmise it will be harder to keep your population happy. With all that in mind, it follows that the number of troops needed to improve happiness is a variable. A good rule of thumb is 100 troops for a quick fix, 50 for steady growth.

2. Alien populations move toward angry if you don't do something about it. Merely increasing you happiness to 110% will be enough. And UPC's even better. Likely it takes more troops to get celebrating too.

3. I believe the game checks every turn. Once I start building UPC's, happiness improves at a regular pace. A few turns after it becomes operational, the happiness moves up a notch.

Kim