[Drake]

Well, I'll address the happiness issue first. At 50%, an idle planet will go from jubilant to happy in 5 turns. (it'd be 8 turns if it was set to 80-100, range for that might be greater, didn't test it much).

As long as you build facilities and/or ships (actually completing them), it'll help to stave off happiness loss at that planet. I found that a planet building something every turn balanced out the increased happiness loss per turn. Since it's more effective to build the most expensive facility you can get done in the least amount of time, this helped boost happiness until I got the temporal vacation service facilities built.

For an idle planet, if you pick 50% happiness, you need a +4 or better to maintain your happiness level. All +happiness facilities are +1 to +3, except for the temporal vacation service, which is +2,+4,+6 for the three levels. Since I needed to research temporal early to get to the temporal space yards, getting the TVS facilities early was no big deal, and happened well before any of my planets were finished building and sitting idle for a few turns.

About the advanced racial tech: of the three I picked, temporal was the most important, followed by organic. As it turns out, because the value improvement facilities stack, religious wasn't necessary. I went with it at first because I thought it would double the max rate I could improve planets. If I had to do it over, I'd probably go with propulsion experts and take out the AI a few turns earlier. If I hadn't taken temporal, I would've set happiness to 80% instead, but since 50% is no big deal when coupled with TVS, I took advantage of the extra 300 pts. If I was in a war and losing battles I'd have problems with happiness loss, but that obviously wasn't a concern here.

-Drake

(spelling edit)

[This message has been edited by Drake (edited 16 February 2001).]