New player questions

[Emala XI]

Hello, this is an excellent game and shows what can be done without a lot of cutting edge graphics. My questions are - and I am sure I will have many more as I go along, the manual being pretty good but somewhat underwritten:

1) what does the 1.31 patch do? Do I really need it?
2) Is there anyway to retard or stop population growth? I find that everytime I turn around morale is plunging because I don't have enough housing. I build more, same thing. I believe the manual said that 5000 is max pop for a territory. So when pop reaches this level and I have enough housing for 5000 then pop growth stops and I won't have this problem any more?
3)If I put pop into military units does this help a morale problem by taking unhappy civilians out of workforce? That is, does city morale count soliders or not?

Thanks

[Tggtt]

Hello Emala XI, thanks for your interest.

Answers:

1) what does the 1.31 patch do?

If you acquired Deadlock 1 from GOG, it's already the 1.31 version but with multiplayer disabled.
If you have the 1.20 (CD version) the update makes the following changes:

Technical: It updates the executable, a few libraries (for networking) and the sprite file.
To the End-user:
The changes:
* NETWORK SAVE/LOAD GAME ADDED (you can load a saved game when playing a multiplayer game)
* MULTIPLAYER SPAWNING FROM 1 CD (multiplayer clients won't act as a limited demo when joining a game)
* MAXIMUM NUMBER OF BUILDINGS INCREASED TO 1000 (FROM 750)
* AI CHAT MESSAGES LIMITED (avoids a single AI spamming you in a single turn)
* 7 PLAYER GAME, 100% DIFFICULTY FIXED (it actually gets harder when difficulty is 100%)
* ALT-DRAG UNITS (hold alt to drag a group of units together)
* ALT-DOUBLE-CLICK UNIT ORDERS (quicker to issue orders)
* RE-SYNC POP-UP BOX LIMITED (less resync messages, unless they are really causing problem)
* CTL3D32.DLL LOAD BUG FIXED (Windows 9x sometimes required the library but it's meant for NT)
* DIALOG BOX PALETTE BUG WORKAROUND (only happens with indexed color modes, hi-color and true-color won't have this problem)
* TEN and MPLAYER support (won't work anymore).

There's a PATCHME.TXT file that explains the changes in more detail, read it for instructions.

Do I really need it?

No, unless you want the added features or you want to connect to a multiplayer game hosted by that version.

Is there anyway to retard or stop population growth?

I believe that limiting housing is the best way, despite the morale issue.

So when pop reaches this level and I have enough housing for 5000 then pop growth stops and I won't have this problem any more?

Overpopulation always affects morale. If your pop reaches 5000, it won't grow even if you build more housing, but they would get angry in the same way. You can always move colonists to other territories.

3)If I put pop into military units does this help a morale problem by taking unhappy civilians out of workforce? That is, does city morale count soliders or not?

Population only counts civilians. When you build a colonizer, 100 population is taken, other units do not take any civilians, as far as I know.
Military presence affects morale negatively, unless you set them to "suppress population". Suppressing makes morale higher, but the suppressed civilians may flee from your settlement and join an enemy settlement (despite that, the colonist icons'll always look like the player's race).
Building museums is probably the best way to make the morale positive.
The Cyth are unaffected by morale effects, the proportion of angry citizens is constant.

If you click on the morale button, you can see the modifiers (positive and negative).

[edit] typo fixes.

[Ubergeneral Grunt]

If overpopulation is taking its toll on morale, there are three things that can be done to counteract it:
• Decrease the territories tax rate until the morale level is either stable or increasing. Sometimes it won't create enough of a morale boost to just modify the territory's tax rate and you will need to decrease the global tax rate in addition to the territory's tax rate. To see whether the decreased tax rate is having the desired effect, after modifying the tax rate, check to see if the "morale will become" in the morale window is either higher or the same as what the morale is currently (depending on whether the morale is relatively high as it is and you just want to stop it from dropping).
• Generate culture: all culture generated in a territory (up to 25 points) has a positive affect on morale. City centres, cultural centres and museums all generate culture. Museums generate the most amount of culture and with fast production enabled, one will generate the most amount of culture that will have an effect.
• Build art objects: art objects are created by art complexes. Art objects also have a positive affect on morale and, unlike culture, can be moved around to territories other than where they were built and where they can also have a positive morale affect.

If you have military units suppress population, it will prevent colonists from rioting (which can happen if morale dips below 10%), but will have a further impact on morale. Only happy citizens will become militia if a territory is attacked. Another thing worth pointing out is: morale subversion. If you have the Re'lu in your game and nearby (or any races if all races have all abilities), they can subvert your morale, which causes morale in an enemy territory to plummet. If your morale is dropping for no reason (i.e. the morale level should go up next turn, as stated by the "morale will become", but it goes down), have some military units patrol to catch the subverting units and keep patrolling until the morale stops dropping.

Have you read the "Colony Leader's Guidebook"? It goes into much more detail than the manual. The GOG version should include it.

[Emala XI]

Thanks for the help, all. I did not know there is a colony's leaders guidebook but will look for it now.