[PvK]

Originally posted by Alneyan:
... According to this calculation, it means natural decrease (or increase here) is higher than increasing happiness (or raising it here), and the only side effect would be if you were experiencing battle losses and other harmful events.

I expect they add together, so you go from natural -2% per turn, to natural -3% per turn. Assuming the FAQ is correct - I noticed a couple of errors in the FAQ just while searching for this.

I ran a test just now in 1.91 and the effect isn't as strong as I expected, so you may well be right that it isn't worth as much as I thought.

What's the common wisdom on number of troops to offset a -1%/turn happiness? 10? Let's see... 5? Geez. (I remember I had good reasons for removing that factor from Proportions mod - I didn't remember them being that good.)

Let's see. The top brackets are 15% apart, while the lower ones are 25% apart. So all else being equal, assuming the FAQ is correct, a planet would drop 10% production in 5-9 turns, instead of 7-13 turns. Of course, in practice, events tend to dictate happiness level.

Overall, looking at the supposedly-correct FAQ numbers, I'm tending to think you're right. Happiness itself is a big factor, but the Happiness attribute looks extremely minescule in effect, if the FAQ is right. Maybe I need to run my test game longer, and/or do another test. (Except I have no free time to do that.)

Any other opinions or sources of info on this?

PvK