Capturing planets, a question of practicality.

[tbontob]

Originally posted by Slick:
The relevant properties are from happiness.txt as follows:

Our Troops on Planet := -2
Natural Decrease := -50
Natural Decrease for Other Races := 20

This governs anger/happiness. Negative values make your empire/planet happier, positive values make them angrier.

There are lots of other things that affect happiness/anger which can totally overwhelm these effects, but relative to your question with "all other things being equal":

- planets with your native population get happier over time by 50 points/turn.
- planets with alien population (any amount) get angrier by 20 points/turn.
- EACH troop regardless of size and components makes the planet it is on 2 points/turn happier.

Doing the math, 10 troops of any kind will offset the negative effects of alien population exactly to zero. Add another 25 and they will act like your native population.

I find that "one turn's worth" of small troops with only a cockpit are usually enough to offset alien population. Also, I usually build an Urban Pacification Center in every system anyway just to get all planets to jubiliant. This is normally enough to prevent anger/rioting even if there are enemy ships in the system and/or battles in the system, both of which make planets angrier.

Hope this helps.

Slick.

Thanks Slick.

It does help. But, I think there may be an error when you say,
"Natural Decrease := -50

I believe this only applies to a Neutral race which few people play.

For a peaceful or bloodthirsty race, the Natural Decrease in Happiness.txt is -20

It would appear that if our race is a peaceful race which is happy, exuberant, angry, unhappy or rioting, then our race will move in the direction of indifference and eventually eventually centre on indifference (in the absence of factors such as battles, ships in sector etc.).

This was extensively discussed in:

Happiness...driving me to despair

I am uncertain how the "happiness.txt" affects an alien planet in our empire. But my impression is that there doesn't seem to be a self-centering mechanism to "indifference" as there is with our race. So, in the absence of factors which will affect happiness (such as troops, ships in the sector), the alien planet will just continue getting angrier and angrier and move through the stages of "indifference" to "unhappy" to "angry" to "riot".

Do you guys have the same impression?

Slick, 10 troops per planet does answer my question. Also, from what you say, it would appear that the size of the troop doesn't matter. This is good to know.

And, I hadn't thought of using the planet itself to create the troops to garrison it.

[ February 09, 2003, 14:44: Message edited by: tbontob ]