[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Q:
It is not necessary that you have a new colony that is angry to test the effect. Just make any colony angry, remove all causes for the anger, don't do anything to improve the happiness and see what happens.
I modified some happiness types and gave them rather high (negative) values for the natural decrease (up to -60).
The effect was that I had most colonies in the indifferent state, but not angry or rioting as you would expect if the effect was the same all over the entire happiness scale.
What you say about the "Natural Decrease for Other Races" makes sense. Apparently the value of 20 is too small to give a clear effect, or my empire management is so good that it compensates more than enough: I have always many foreign races in my empire and they are jubiliant all the time! But as you said if we test it with higher values (and/or negative values) we should see the effect.

Keep in mind the values in the text file are in tenths of a percent. So a -60 is only -6%. That's still a biug change mind you, but it is possible you are overcoming it with other stuff.

Originally posted by tbontob:
The consensus appears to be that climate does not affect happiness.

If that is so... then why when I improve the climate of a planet, the people are much happier?

Well, the reason I am disagreeing with you is that I am not seeing what you are seeing. By "Climate" are you refering to planetary conditions? I have seen many different planetary conditions and the happiness does not appear to be affected by it at all. They always start happy and go to indiferent after a couple turns, regardless of conditions. The only affect the conditions has in my experience is that planets with poor conditions have a lower reproductive rate.

Geoschmo