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

[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

[PvK]

Ok, how does this adjustment to Happiness look to everyone?

Happiness:
==========
* Basic cost lowered from 25 to 1.
* Threshold unchanged at 20.
* Positive Threshold cost lowered from 100 to 2.
* Negative Threshold cost lowered from 10 to 1.

Thanks to Alneyan for bringing my attention to the practical irrelevance
of this attribute. His test results show that it does extremely little
to the happiness level of planets, even at extreme values, and even when
not using anything (like troops or UPC's) to boost happiness. Therefore
I reduced the basic and negative threshold value to 1, and the positive
threshold value to 2. Minimum setting of -50 gives 50 points. Maximum
setting of +50 costs 80 points.

[PvK]

Any opinions on that Last change idea?

PvK