Farm Bonus Tiles

You are right about the 300% food tile.  As you said, the morale penalty makes it a drawback rather than an advantage, so I never use them.

An econ bonus tile would be a really nice addition!

Sentient species taste better...

Is there any race where it would be a useful on just one planet because they have some super moral structure?

Umm Alterians or Drath (perhaps both) have a 75% morale building, super project.  Torians have 50% morale buidlings.  The Political Capital (or was it econ?) I think gives a healthy morale increase.

The political capital gives a 50% morale bonus, and is a great structure to put on a morale bonus tile.

Sentient species taste better...

unfortunately you need to get a planetary morale bonus into the hundreds range to compensate for a population above 20 billion. i really wish they'd take a look at those morale/pop curves a bit more, if for no other reason than to make it a more even curve. the "drop-off" points in population are really extreme.

To me, the fact that the boundaries have no reasonable relationship to PQ is also off-feeling. The modest morale bonus for high PQ worlds might be an adequate compromise, but IMO the math for these angry-horde dropoff points should be directly based on PQ. Every additional tile should enable that much more room for shiny, happy people.

i agree, that's an entirely reasonable stance. i think it's the boundaries themselves that i dislike. i think i dislike the way the relationship between population and morale is implemented. i would prefer to see morale penalties for high pop happen on an empire wide level as well as a planetary one, the same way there are parallel empire/planet morale bonuses. it also seems more realistic to me. i'll elaborate.

empire-wide morale bonuses are usually described in-game as some sort of commoditiy. either the "goo" you extract from mining resources or some sort of manufactured good, like VR modules. as commodities, they'd be in limited supply, and therefore as empire-wide population increases, they should have less effect (or you should need more of them to have the same effect). i dislike the approach of having a hard cap on empire-wide morale.

on the planetary level, too, it's disconcerting that plantary conditions become utterly intolerable after you exceed 20 billion. while i agree that it should become more difficult, even perhaps exponentially so, it's awkward that it's at seemingly arbitrary intervals rather than a smooth, curved of morale penalty.

/2 cents.

I would like to see PG = Max pop.  Then you would need enough farms to feed the people to realize that potential.  So a 26 PQ would need farms to reach 26 billion people, or it would cap at 6 with initial colony.  A 3 PQ planet would always cap at 3, etc. 

I havne't done this yet, but I suppose you can build a farm on a 300% tile and as long as you leave your morale level somewhat static the planet should grow until it reaches a morale of 41% and then just stop growing. Now if you lower taxes to get a morale boost and then lower them you may find that the palnet's morale may be too low but as long as its above 20% (?) you won't lose any people.

I think it's a question of game balance

the main reason for the way it is, is to prevent planets with too much billion people and that are too hard to invade

also it's stated multiple times that this is NOT the amount of population but the amount of taxpayers. Think of it like your administration can't handle any more than 20 billion of taxpayers without taking strict measures that displease people by a lot ...

Not true.  When I get a planet with one (or sometimes more) of these tiles, I throw in a couple of factories and start churning out transports.  With the Recruitment Center and Fertility Clinics (or whatever they are called), you can refill the population in no time.

Just don't do the stupid mistake that I did ith the Thalan and toss their factory/lab/farm/ / / / /  building on one.

Yep. Just spent the last game doing exactly that...I'm not sure if those poor men and women lived very happy/productive lives floating in space, but they faught like wildcats when I finally opened the door.

A few years of MRE's will do that to you - {G}

Jonnan