Killing them slowly

[jim]

In my uphill battle with a psychic AI left alone too long, I have been re-introduced to the effects of inciting empire-wide riots. This brings up a Q.

If one kills a colony, then it inflicts negative happiness. If one kills only SOME of the colony, does it also not inflict negative happiness? Is the TOTAL amount of negative happiness of a killed colony related to its population? From what I've seen, I'm not sure that is the case.

Thus, is it more damaging to an empire to kill it verrrrry slowly?

Taken to an extreme, one could seal off a system w/stellar manipulation, trapping the rioting colonies inside the isolated system with one's ravaging fleet. Then, with only one small ship with a couple guns on each colony, one could sloooowly kill them all off, inflicting lots of badiness for a while.

Would this work?

Of course, if it were done to me, I would quickly trade the colonies to an AI, with 2,000 organics, in exchange for 1,000 minerals.