[Cheeze]

I have to add something on this. In a PBW where the top player (who had about as many ships as we had combined, and most of them in the dreadnought/baseship range), my ally and I staged a surprise attack. We targeted his spaceports (that player and I had a partnership treaty) and as many valuable planets as possible from our borders. Anything we couldn't take, we glassed.

Basically, between cutting our treaties with this player AND the damage we caused did severely cut his income, but it was the rioting that reduced his own ability to produce anything. Even after two turns of comparatively unopposed strikes, he still had enough firepower to hit us back hard and he had more than enough planets to sustain his forces. It was the rioting which removed his ability to build ships and keep current ships fighting.

Would we have won if his population was emotionless? Probably. But the emotionless trait would have allowed him to stay strong and counter-attack, and he might have disrupted our happiness. Our attack plan relied on rioting his population first and foremost.