Capturing planets, a question of practicality.

[tbontob]

Assume a standard unmodded game with all racial traits "average".

In such a scenario and no events (winning a battle, ships in sector, etc), this is what I understand will happen:

1) A planet with our race will tend to move towards "indifference"
2) A planet with an alien race will tend to move towards "angry" and will eventually "riot".
3) Troops will help to keep the planet with an alien race from becoming angry.
4) The troops can be be "bare bones" with no weapons and will be just as effective as troops armed to the teeth in keeping an alien population on a planet from becoming angry.

Question: Is there a "rule of thumb" which can be used to keep a planet with an alien race from getting angry?

For example. 1 medium troop will keep a medium planet with an alien population in a standard unmodded game with average traits from becoming angry. <=== This is just an example to give an idea of what I am asking for and may not be true at all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Anybody care to share their experiences?

EDIT: Rearranged a couple of sentances to make this posting easier to read.

[ February 09, 2003, 09:14: Message edited by: tbontob ]

[Fyron]

I think alien races just go to indifferent more quickly, not start being angry and riotous.

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I think alien races just go to indifferent more quickly, not start being angry and riotous.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You are probably right as I have had little experience in this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

So, I am not in any way suggesting that you are wrong, but in my limited experience, alien planets will eventually become angry and later, riot.

Could it be that your experience predicates that maybe happiness was boosted as a trait when the race is created or maybe there are a large number of ships in the sector which are sufficient to stop the alien race from becoming angry? Or some such thing?

I am just trying to reconcile my experience with yours. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

EDIT: Or are we in essential agreement, that in a standard unmodded game, an alien planet will tend to move to indifference faster and then eventually become angry and riot?

[ February 09, 2003, 09:37: Message edited by: tbontob ]

[Fyron]

Maybe you are just seeing conquered populations? They start off angrier, especially after a number of planets from their empire have already been taken. Also, a race you are at war with (and engaged in hot war with) that you have on your planets does get angrier. But, just an alien race that you are not fighting does not get angry from just being an alien race.

[tbontob]

Hmmmm.

Here is an example. Actually, it was my first solo game.

I had completely wiped out a race and moved on to other solar systems.

After a few turns, I suddenly noticed that an alien moon had become a member of my empire.

I suspect, they had a colony ship which colonized a moon and since the race had been wiped out, the new alien moon became a member of my empire.

I can't remember if they started happy or indifferent. But they were either angry at the very start, or eventually became angry. Some 10 turns or so later, they riotted.

At the time I had no idea what would stop them from riotting, so they just continued to riot till the game was over (the next 50 turns or so).

[ February 09, 2003, 10:06: Message edited by: tbontob ]

[Slick]

The relevant properties are from happiness.txt as follows:

Our Troops on Planet := -2
Natural Decrease := -50
Natural Decrease for Other Races := 20

This governs anger/happiness. Negative values make your empire/planet happier, positive values make them angrier.

There are lots of other things that affect happiness/anger which can totally overwhelm these effects, but relative to your question with "all other things being equal":

- planets with your native population get happier over time by 50 points/turn.
- planets with alien population (any amount) get angrier by 20 points/turn.
- EACH troop regardless of size and components makes the planet it is on 2 points/turn happier.

Doing the math, 10 troops of any kind will offset the negative effects of alien population exactly to zero. Add another 25 and they will act like your native population.

I find that "one turn's worth" of small troops with only a cockpit are usually enough to offset alien population. Also, I usually build an Urban Pacification Center in every system anyway just to get all planets to jubiliant. This is normally enough to prevent anger/rioting even if there are enemy ships in the system and/or battles in the system, both of which make planets angrier.

Hope this helps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Slick.

[Fyron]

Or just bring an extra transport or 5 behind the main fleet loaded with police troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Slick:
The relevant properties are from happiness.txt as follows:

Our Troops on Planet := -2
Natural Decrease := -50
Natural Decrease for Other Races := 20

This governs anger/happiness. Negative values make your empire/planet happier, positive values make them angrier.

There are lots of other things that affect happiness/anger which can totally overwhelm these effects, but relative to your question with "all other things being equal":

- planets with your native population get happier over time by 50 points/turn.
- planets with alien population (any amount) get angrier by 20 points/turn.
- EACH troop regardless of size and components makes the planet it is on 2 points/turn happier.

Doing the math, 10 troops of any kind will offset the negative effects of alien population exactly to zero. Add another 25 and they will act like your native population.

I find that "one turn's worth" of small troops with only a cockpit are usually enough to offset alien population. Also, I usually build an Urban Pacification Center in every system anyway just to get all planets to jubiliant. This is normally enough to prevent anger/rioting even if there are enemy ships in the system and/or battles in the system, both of which make planets angrier.

Hope this helps. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Slick.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks Slick. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

It does help. But, I think there may be an error when you say,
"Natural Decrease := -50

I believe this only applies to a Neutral race which few people play.

For a peaceful or bloodthirsty race, the Natural Decrease in Happiness.txt is -20

It would appear that if our race is a peaceful race which is happy, exuberant, angry, unhappy or rioting, then our race will move in the direction of indifference and eventually eventually centre on indifference (in the absence of factors such as battles, ships in sector etc.).

This was extensively discussed in:

Happiness...driving me to despair (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=006526;p=3#000 042)

I am uncertain how the "happiness.txt" affects an alien planet in our empire. But my impression is that there doesn't seem to be a self-centering mechanism to "indifference" as there is with our race. So, in the absence of factors which will affect happiness (such as troops, ships in the sector), the alien planet will just continue getting angrier and angrier and move through the stages of "indifference" to "unhappy" to "angry" to "riot".

Do you guys have the same impression?

Slick, 10 troops per planet does answer my question. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Also, from what you say, it would appear that the size of the troop doesn't matter. This is good to know.

And, I hadn't thought of using the planet itself to create the troops to garrison it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ February 09, 2003, 14:44: Message edited by: tbontob ]

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
I think alien races just go to indifferent more quickly, not start being angry and riotous.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Fyron, I think I know now what your were trying to say.

An alien planet which is happy or jubilant, not only has its own natural increase in in anger of 20, it also has our races natural increase in anger of 20. Combining both, will cause the alien planet to move towards indifference much quicker as you suggest.

Once reachin indifference, our races increase in anger of 20 no longer applies. But the alien race's 20 still does, so it continues on to unhappy, angry and then rioting (in the absence of troops, ships, etc.)

It this what you were trying to say?

[tbontob]

Originally posted by couslee:
Another simple strategy you can apply to help conquered planets not start out rioting, is get the planets first. If you capture a planet that is angry or rioting, there is a reason for that. you inherit the mood of the people. for example
you enter a system, and mop up all the enemy ships, then move on to planet capture. The population has suffered a lot of anger increases because of enemy ships in sector, battles lost, ships lost, ect.. If you take the planets first, then mop up the enemy ships, you get two benefits. One, being they have not had all the battles lost anger increases, AND they get the anger decreases by your battle victories in that same sector. take the planets first, it makes a huge difference in alien happiness levels. And don't forget to leave enough troops behind to offset the "20". If you capture a planet and the first build order on emergency build is 6 troops. leave four of your invaders behind to act as police. I rarely have have to build UPCs doing this. So get the high pop ones first, then the smaller pop planets, then the Ai ships. Use intel to enemy ship supply drain and engine damage to stop them from attacking you while you grab the planets. then go mop-up the derelicts.

Try it, you will be glad you did. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Sounds like good advice. Making the planets angry means we will have to deal with the effects of an angry planet.

Much better, as you suggest, to conduct ourselves so as to avoid making the planets angry and if done right, our actions will contribute to their happiness. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[Slick]

Like I said, there are lots of other things that affect happiness. I believe that the happiness.txt applies to all empires, but is overridden by any race specific AI_XXX.txt files. I should have mentioned that. Yes, some AI's have different defaults depending on their demenor.

One other thing I do is put 5% into happiness when setting up a race. Not sure how effective it is, but I also had one of my first games go rioting all over the place and I didn't know what to do. Been adding 5% ever since and that's pretty cheap. Initially you just want to prevent planets from rioting, but if you develop a system that gets your own planets to jubiliant and keeps your planets with alien population from rioting (or also gets them to jubiliant), you will see tremendous benefits to production and construction rates. The percentages can be seen in settings.txt.

Another thing is that when you ferry population around in transports to the right-breathing planets, the population in the transport has a happiness level. I am not sure if it stays locked in from the point they are loaded into the transport or if they can change happiness when on the transport. I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this?

Slick.

[Phoenix-D]

"Like I said, there are lots of other things that affect happiness. I believe that the happiness.txt applies to all empires, but is overridden by any race specific AI_XXX.txt files. I should have mentioned that. Yes, some AI's have different defaults depending on their demenor."

Two different things. One controls the happyness of the population, the other the opinion the AI has toward other players.

Phoenix-D

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by Slick:
[QB] I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this? [QB]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This does work. If you remove the population from the planet completely, by abandoning the planet (but don't scrap the facilities), and then load them back on (you don't have to wait a turn) it resets the planets happiness. Just remember that there has to be a point where the planet is left with a population of zero.

This is usually a pain for high pop worlds though and so is easier to just drop some troops and wait. However, this is a must use tactic if you are playing with an emotionless race.

Whenever an emotionless race conquers a world it freezes the happiness at its current state permanently. I've wanted that bug fixed for a while now but it can be worked around (though it does put a crimp in the playstyle of races like the Borg).

[ February 09, 2003, 20:24: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

[Grandpa Kim]

I was checking out the facilities.txt and found something surprising. Most facilities that affect happiness do pretty much what you expect. IE UPC 1 gives 1% increase in happiness, UPC 2 gives 2%, UPC 3 gives 3%. The Medical Lab (organic) gives only 1% no matter which level you are at! Unless you are worried about plagues, don't bother with this one, use ANY of the others.

[couslee]

maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent. Things that constantly effect the mood of the planet are building facilities, winning battles, or losing them. new treaties, ect... I have read nothing that the setting have a null effect at indifferent. The race =-20 is not combined with the alien race =20 to counter each other. either one or the other applies, not both. I have not fully investigated all the settings to find out what would make it balance at ANY given level. I tend to just put troops on every planet, and my current game is artisian. my planets stay at jubilant, even if i am getting my arse handed to me by an enemy.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Grandpa Kim:
I was checking out the facilities.txt and found something surprising. Most facilities that affect happiness do pretty much what you expect. IE UPC 1 gives 1% increase in happiness, UPC 2 gives 2%, UPC 3 gives 3%. The Medical Lab (organic) gives only 1% no matter which level you are at! Unless you are worried about plagues, don't bother with this one, use ANY of the others.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes, I think that is a "gotcha" too. However if you put a Med Lab and a UPC, you get the highest bonus of each! (And the warning that you already have a system-wide facility that does the same thing, which isn't quite true based on the percentages.) Some mods increase Med Lab 2 & 3 to 2% & 2% respectively to address this.

Slick.

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by couslee:
maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I just finished making myself a sphereworld scenario (where every race starts with a fully loaded sphereworld). 'Why is this important?' you may ask.

Well, tis because I had to spend a lot of time filling those damn worlds and that means that 13 races spent a lot of time doing nothing. About 180 turns of nothing. All of the 13 races happines level stalled out at indifferent. This includes a race with neutral happiness, who should have been jubilant at being left alone but weren't.

I tried this a couple times (same scenario for different mods) and each time it was the same.

Happiness levels, whether positive or negative, will move towards indifferent if left alone.

It doesn't seem to make sense, especially after looking through happines.txt, but that's what seems to be the case.

[Slick]

Originally posted by couslee:
maybe I am wrong, but the setting for natural decrease do not stop working when you reach indifferent. Things that constantly effect the mood of the planet are building facilities, winning battles, or losing them. new treaties, ect... I have read nothing that the setting have a null effect at indifferent. The race =-20 is not combined with the alien race =20 to counter each other. either one or the other applies, not both. I have not fully investigated all the settings to find out what would make it balance at ANY given level. I tend to just put troops on every planet, and my current game is artisian. my planets stay at jubilant, even if i am getting my arse handed to me by an enemy.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I have to agree based on my experience, not on acutal testing however. I would cautiously say that I think there is the tendancy toward "Indifferent" is not quite right, and I can't find any reference to that in the txt files. Maybe it is hardcoded, however. It seems to me based on all the games I have played that all the modifiers add up on a per-planet basis and the sum is added or subtracted from the anger level to give each planet its happiness level. Since the words "anger" and "happiness" are used separately, it might be confusing, but all the numbers are for the single attribute called "anger". Happiness is just a way of displaying your relative anger state in the planet view and in happiness.txt. Then the sum over your whole empire is combined for your "mood" in the empires window.

Slick.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by QuarianRex:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Slick:
[QB] I haven't tested this, but I have heard that if you take some rioting population onto a transport for a few turns, they stop rioting. Maybe that's an urban myth. Anyone know the truth about this? [QB]<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">This does work. If you remove the population from the planet completely, by abandoning the planet (but don't scrap the facilities), and then load them back on (you don't have to wait a turn) it resets the planets happiness. Just remember that there has to be a point where the planet is left with a population of zero.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, this doesn't work. IIRC it used too but was patched

[QuarianRex]

Geo,

Try again. I just double checked on a saved game (in case I was halucinaring) and it works in 1.84. The planet went from -100% happiness modifier to +10% (emotionless race).

It works.

[geoschmo]

That's odd Q, cause when I tested it just now it didn't work. The planet was angry, I moved them to a ship, abandoned the planet, and moved them back and they were angry just like before.

Geoschmo

EDIT: Q. why did your test have an emotionless race in it? Which one were you testing?

[ February 09, 2003, 22:28: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

[QuarianRex]

I had a Borg (emotionless) game saved from a couple days back. This was a quick test and I didn't want to start a new game.

I had recently conquered an enemy planet and replaced their pop with my own (for aesthetic reasons) and then noticed that the planet wasn't constructing. The planets abilities showed -100% due to happiness. Removal of pop, abandonment, and replacement of pop resulted in a happy modifier of 10% (standard for emotionless) and restoration of construction.

I am wondering if this only applies to emotionless races. I admit that I haven't tried it out much on normal races, since I haven't really had any need.

[Fyron]

Maybe the change only affects new savegames, and not old ones that were created prior to 1.84?

[couslee]

Another simple strategy you can apply to help conquered planets not start out rioting, is get the planets first. If you capture a planet that is angry or rioting, there is a reason for that. you inherit the mood of the people. for example
you enter a system, and mop up all the enemy ships, then move on to planet capture. The population has suffered a lot of anger increases because of enemy ships in sector, battles lost, ships lost, ect.. If you take the planets first, then mop up the enemy ships, you get two benefits. One, being they have not had all the battles lost anger increases, AND they get the anger decreases by your battle victories in that same sector. take the planets first, it makes a huge difference in alien happiness levels. And don't forget to leave enough troops behind to offset the "20". If you capture a planet and the first build order on emergency build is 6 troops. leave four of your invaders behind to act as police. I rarely have have to build UPCs doing this. So get the high pop ones first, then the smaller pop planets, then the Ai ships. Use intel to enemy ship supply drain and engine damage to stop them from attacking you while you grab the planets. then go mop-up the derelicts.

Try it, you will be glad you did. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[QuarianRex]

Geo,

We are talking about the same thing. It was just that the immediate example that I had involved an emotionless race.

I just did a test game (1.84), small quadrant, three races (one normal, one mechanoid, one emotionless and mechanoid). I slapped the mechanoid trait in because I was using plague bombs to affect the planets happiness.

I had the races lay seige to each others worlds till said worlds were angry (-20%) then invaded through troop combat (removing the troops afterward), waited a turn for the plague to cure (where applicable), removed population, abandoned planet, and put the population back.

In all cases this resulted in a restoration of pop happiness to 'happy' (+10%). The happiness change was immediate and did not require a turn to take effect.

Couslee,

I don't know what you mean by 'using an end turn in the middle of it'. Could you clairify?

Geo (again),

In your test did you use a pre-1.84 save game?

[ February 10, 2003, 20:11: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]

[capnq]

Happiness is just a way of displaying your relative anger state in the planet view and in happiness.txt. Then the sum over your whole empire is combined for your "mood" in the empires window. <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, Anger/Happiness and Mood are completely different things, with no direct effect on each other. (Things that affect your Happiness, e.g battles, may affect your AI opponent's Mood as well.)

Anger/Happiness is a rating of how content each planet's population is.

Mood is an AI empire's general attitude toward another empire.

In a multiplayer game, a human player's empire's Mood stays permanently at Moderate, unless the AI takes over for a turn.

[Greybeard]

If you abandon a planet, do the facilities remain? If so, how do you reclaim the planet? Can you just transfer population? Can another race do the same?

Very curious...Greybeard

[geoschmo]

Q, I used a game speciually made to test this question. Was created in 1.84.

Are you doing simultaneous or turn based. I wonder if that's why we are seeing the opposite effects. Maybe the bug is only in turn based. If you are using simultaneous (I am) I don't know know how to explain it.

Come to think of it, I know you are doing turn based or you wouldn't be specifically mentioning removing the troops right after the invasion.

Geo

[couslee]

Couslee,

I don't know what you mean by 'using an end turn in the middle of it'. Could you clairify?
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">When you remove the population, do you have to leave the planet empty for one turn before reclaiming it.

What I was wondering was, if that is the case, then the test that failed might have been because the pop was removed and replaced in the same turn.

Also, wouldn't this tactic also require a colony ship to reclaim the abandoned planet?

[geoschmo]

Q, I think I see. You are talking about the bug with population taken over by an emotionless race still being angry. I was talking about the other part of your message. The part about removing unhappy pop resetting their happiness level. I don't think it does. Although it's possible that it does reset the happiness of the pop if you are an emotionless race as you say. I didn't test that.

Geoschmo

[couslee]

are both tests done, using an "end turn" in the middle of it? I noticed that it was not mentioned. Was just curious if the test that showed it didn't work, was run in the same manner as the test that showed it did work.

just a thought.

[QuarianRex]

Greybeard,

When you abandon a planet you are given the option of scrapping the facilities or not. If you scrap, the planet is left as if you had never colonized it in the first place. If you don't scrap the facilities the planet remains yours (and undamaged) but doesn't produce any resources and won't build anything. To restore the planet to opperational status all that must be done is to transfer pop to the planet via any pop transport or such, no colonizer required.

Geo,

Looks like you solved it. I was using turn based. I seems that happiness is not reset in simultaneous. How strange. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/confused.gif

Couslee,

Didn't have to wait a turn. The effects were immediate. See above about the colony ship.

[ February 11, 2003, 06:55: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]