PvK Balance Mod Version 1.1 posted (for SE4 Gold Version 1.91 - Patch 4)

[Alneyan]

It looks like the natural decrease is actually a variation back to Indifferent level. Jubilant Empires tend to go back to Indifferent if there are no troops or an UPC on the planet, and Angry worlds can go back to Indifferent level as well. (I have never seen a rioting world going back to another level on its own though)

I ran a test with two Empires, one with 100% happiness and the other one with a mere 40% happiness. (50% Environmental Resistance and 50% happiness) Here are the results:
- Both Empires go back to indifferent level in the first few turns. (On turn 2 for 40% happiness, on turn 3 for 100% happiness) I will assume it would be the same if you raise happiness, unless you do go overboard on this characteristic to offset natural decrease.
- After many turns, both Empires remain at indifferent level, thanks to this natural decrease. If there were no natural decrease, the worlds of the 40% happiness would slowly go down in happiness. (With 1,2% more angry people every turn, your Empire would collapse easily I guess) Then troops would obviously be a priority, and lowering Happiness to 50% would be very risky to say the least.
- However, my 40% happiness didn't seem to be able to overcome the effects of losing several planets (including the homeworld) and battles, as all the worlds were on angry. On the other hand, the 100% happiness Empire eventually recovered from these effects, although the process needed about 15 turns to go back to Indifferent level. Please note that in a regular game, other attacks would have been likely, thus offseting this natural increase if no troops/UPC are present.

So, it seems like the only disavantage when lowering happiness is that you are a bit more vulnerable to happiness loss than before. But you will still have +1% happiness per turn, so it should be enough to deal with minor events such as the loss of a few ships here and there. If the situation is much worse, such as the destruction of several planets each turn, I would believe there isn't much left to do and +2% happiness will not help as losing a planet means -5% happiness. In both cases troops seem the only proper solution along with the UPC, and you would need 10 troops per planet to offset the 50% happiness disadvantage. (Or you could rely on the UPC with its +6% happiness per turn at level III)

[PvK]

Thanks Alneyan!

I'm convinced. My values were based on the assumption that lowering Happiness to 50% would be more like -5% or -10% per turn, and would keep going all the way to rioting. Your tests show that the effect is minescule in the extreme - essentially a non-factor (sigh). Therefore it's only worth perhaps 1/5 to 1/10 as much as I had it (and just plain ridiculously less than the unmodded value).

If you have time, I'd be interested to know if raising Happiness to the maximum has any worthwhile effect, or if it just delays the drop to indifferent by a couple of turns.

PvK

[primitive]

Don't forget this line from happiness.txt (Peacefull)

Any Planet Colonized := -10

This is more than enough to keep a 50% empire jubilant for a while in most games. The problem is to remember to have your troops and UPC's ready before you run out of colonizable planets

[Alneyan]

I ran a test in the early game, and here are the results:

- For 150 happiness: the homeworld remains happy for 6 turns, is Indifferent the next turn, then becomes Happy against, and so on. (I checked for 120 turns)
- For 170 happiness (150 Environmental Resistance, the Artisans Culture, and 150 happiness): the homeworld stays Happy for 100 turns, and so it seems the value needed to fully offset natural decrease. (But you will not go to Jubilant)

These results are a bit better than what I expected, and it seems that +5% happiness does slightly more than increasing the happy people by +0,1% a turn. (+2% per turn is needed to offset natural decrease) But the effect isn't impressive, as other events would likely alter happiness. Thanks for mentioning this bonus about colonizing planets Primitive, I now understand why I am always at Jubilant, even with 50% happiness. (bar such trivial events involving enemy fleets, troops and the Primitive one)

So raising happiness would give a small boost to your Empire by helping a bit to reach Jubilant status (other events or troops/UPCs are needed though), and would help to reduce the happiness loss when harmful events happen. However, once again, if these events are truly nasty, 150% happiness will not help much and you *will* be in trouble if you don't have many troops and UPCs able to keep your subjects peaceful as an armada is heading their way.

[PvK]

Yeah. There are also bonuses for building ships, and for having ships (or, say, construction bases) in orbit over a planet.

Happiness rating... another non-factor - sigh.

PvK

[Fyron]

You could always raies the max to 200, min to 0, and halve all of the costs associated with it. Make it possible to actually get a bonus or penalty.

[PvK]

That had occurred to me, but it's against the design of this particular mod, which is to "leave in all the lame unmodded crud in, but just price it fairly."

Is the minimum setting for race values zero? Of course, having to click 100 times to get a minor advantage is a penalty in itself. Love this game in general, but some aspects are ... .

PvK