Race neutral happiness type

[geoschmo]

So I took over an abandoned spot in a PBW game. The empire appeared to be in decent shape, but I think I figured out why the guy quit. I am in the processes of cleaning out some pesky AI colonies in my territory, and I get the message that my colonies happiness is decreasing because of my recent battle victories. So I am pretty sure this means the guy picked the neutral happiness type at game start. Being stubborn and not wanting to quit, I thought I keep at it. Anybody have any experience with this? Will troops work to keep the planets happy as normal, or will that make the people even mroe unhappy? How about lots of ships in orbit? Is everything the opposite of normal, or only the battle thing?

Geoschmo

[Captain Kwok]

All stock happiness types respond the same to troops. Ships in orbit will not have an effect, and only none or non-intercourse treaties increase happiness.

[Alneyan]

The happiness hit for *winning* is so nice, and so nonsensical. For this matter, you will also suffer from lower happiness when colonising planets or building ships (if memory serves). And you cannot even capture enemy colonies to boost your happiness; the penalty for doing so is the same as for losing one of *your* planets.

Troops, the UPC and natural decrease still work as usual, with natural decrease being much "better" than usual (which means your planets will go back to Indifferent faster. A good thing if you have Angry planets, though it will not help your rioting planets). Otherwise, you could try playing with treaties; enacting non-interference treaties give you a boost to happiness, and you can break those without any penalty (*any* other treaty has a harsh happiness hit associated with it).

On the brighter side of things, you will suffer much less from losing planets (losing your homeworld is the same as losing any other colony, and the penalty is a mere 2%, against 5% for peaceful), so a riot run would do less damage. But your own Empire can create riots on its own just fine.

[geoschmo]

Ok, so start cranking out troops on any world that turns unhappy or angry. Is there anything that can be done for planets that do start rioting? Normally I'd park a fleet over the planet until they calmed down and then start cranking out troops. But you say that won't help for a neutral race?

[Alneyan]

Ships in sector/system do very little for neutral Empires (enemy ships slightly reduce your happiness (0.1%), and friendly ships do nothing at all). Fun eh?

If you are growing quite annoyed with the whole neutral happiness type, the best thing you can do is starting breaking some treaties (it will give you a nice happiness boost) and/or enacting some non-interference treaties. Otherwise, troops, troops and troops are all your rioting worlds need. The UPC should as well to bring these worlds away from rioting, though it will be too weak to improve your happiness beyond Indifferent.

A small edit about UPC and Neutral happiness: the UPC III can be enough to bring a world to Happy for a little while, but will not result in a stable increase in happiness, and would probably not work with a negative happiness characteristic. I believe the natural happiness reduction (going back to Indifferent) happens before UPC (and possibly other events) kick in, which allows to stay on Happy for a turn or two.

So with 100% happiness, and an UPC III, you should expect to stay on the Happy level for 75% of the time, assuming no other event. The problem is, there *will* be other events if you are actually playing, such as winning battles, enacting good treaties, building ships or colonising planets, so you should throw a party whenever one of your planets is Happy without needing troops.

[geoschmo]

I can't figure out what Malfador was thinking when they set this up this way.

Thanks for the tips. Pretty much what I was doing, but I know not to waste time parking my fleets now.

[Slynky]

I can see Malfador doing something like this but I believe the name of the selection is misleading. It could have been named better, I think, so its connotation would indicate a race that just likes to do, well, NOTHING.

[Nodachi]

Maybe it should have been called isolationist or some such. I could see where a newer player might get it confused with the emotionless trait.

[Makinus]

it´s only use is to have a challenging game against the AI...

[AMF]

Al, are you sure that non-interference treaties don't affect happiness for neutrals? I am playing a neutral in the proportions #2 game, and I would like to have such treaties with everyone, but a past experience seemed to indicate that even those treaties come with a happiness decrease...

Thanks,

Alarik