Happiness...driving me to dispair

[Fyron]

Climate does not affect happiness. The act of improving the climate might have an effect upon happiness, but the actual value of the climate does not.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Q:
It is not necessary that you have a new colony that is angry to test the effect. Just make any colony angry, remove all causes for the anger, don't do anything to improve the happiness and see what happens.
I modified some happiness types and gave them rather high (negative) values for the natural decrease (up to -60).
The effect was that I had most colonies in the indifferent state, but not angry or rioting as you would expect if the effect was the same all over the entire happiness scale.
What you say about the "Natural Decrease for Other Races" makes sense. Apparently the value of 20 is too small to give a clear effect, or my empire management is so good that it compensates more than enough: I have always many foreign races in my empire and they are jubiliant all the time! But as you said if we test it with higher values (and/or negative values) we should see the effect.

Keep in mind the values in the text file are in tenths of a percent. So a -60 is only -6%. That's still a biug change mind you, but it is possible you are overcoming it with other stuff.

Originally posted by tbontob:
The consensus appears to be that climate does not affect happiness.

If that is so... then why when I improve the climate of a planet, the people are much happier?

Well, the reason I am disagreeing with you is that I am not seeing what you are seeing. By "Climate" are you refering to planetary conditions? I have seen many different planetary conditions and the happiness does not appear to be affected by it at all. They always start happy and go to indiferent after a couple turns, regardless of conditions. The only affect the conditions has in my experience is that planets with poor conditions have a lower reproductive rate.

Geoschmo

[tbontob]

Yes... I use climate and planetary conditions to mean the same thing.

I guess what I have concluded from my games is that a change in climate (planetary conditions), does have an effect on the happiness of that planet.

However, this group, has had a different experience which is probably correct. If so, then it probably answers my question which started this thread...and that is that there are no factors which impact on the initial happiness of a planet.

[tbontob]

But then... here is another question

We start the game with a "happy" planet

Within a few turns, it turns "Indifferent"

The planet has not been affected by anything, except the 20 point or 2% natural increase in happiness.

So the question is "Why the drop from the state of "happy" to "indifferent"?

Is something else going on?

[gravey101]

well, it is assigned happy but not necessaily a value at the top of the happiness range. Maybe 25%, so that 3 turns of 2% increases the number to 31% and an indifferent rating.

[gravey101]

on a related note, has anyone ever figured out how much the Urban Pac III gives you per turn ??

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by gravey101:
on a related note, has anyone ever figured out how much the Urban Pac III gives you per turn ??

It's in the Facility.txt file. 1 percent for level I, 2 percent for level 2, and 3 percent for level 3.

[tbontob]

Gravey says:
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well, it is assigned happy but not necessaily a value at the top of the happiness range. Maybe 25%, so that 3 turns of 2% increases the number to 31% and an indifferent rating.
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Yes

Going to the "Happiness File"

The lower the "happiness number", the greater the happiness.

The natural decrease is -20 points

But this really translates into the statement "A natural increase of 20 points"

So all other things being equal, the state of happiness will decline with the increasing value of the "happiness number".

SE4 has a rather screwy way of doing things.

[Baron Munchausen]

No, it's not odd. 'Happiness' on a mass scale is lack of reasons for UNhappiness, that is, anger or fear. As the AI_anger file shows, what is really being measured is anger. The lower the anger, the better the 'happiness' of your population. It just sounds better to call it 'happiness' rather than 'anger' most of the time.

[ August 13, 2002, 01:27: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Q]

Did some tests about the "natural decrease" effect on happiness:
It seems indeed that a negative value drags the happiness to the indifferent state. If I plague a planet, the happiness level goes to angry but if I have a "natural decrease" of -200 it returns within one or two turns to indifferent and stays there. With a value of 0 however the happiness level remains angry.
What's odd is that I see no effect of a positive value for the "natural decrease" even at a value of 200.