Master of Orion II: Battle at Antares/Strength through Joy

No, this is not about Hitler's state-controlled leisure organization - but it's based on the same principle: happy people are more productive.

"Morale" is MOO II's shorthand for all the factors that affect how well people work.

To what empires does all this apply
Unification governments have no morale - nothing makes their populations more efficient or less efficient than they are at the start (and they are very efficient at farming and industrial production). But players who use Unification governments should still understand this page. For example if a Unification empire captures a colony from a non-Unification empire, it should scrap all morale-raising buildings, starting with the most advanced (each colony can only scrap 1 building per turn), in order to:
 * save maintenance and get some cash back (0.5 BC per PP that the building costs to make).
 * reduce the value of the colony to a non-Unification government, in case another empire captures it or the colony rebels and returns to its original empire.

Morale and the technologies that improve it are important to non-Unification empires and especially to Dictatorship or Feudal empires, because their basic morale is 20% below that of a Democratic empire. Dictatorships' or Feudalisms' homeworlds have "average" morale only because they get a free Marine Barracks at the start of the game. Newly-founded colonies of Dictatorship or Feudal empires struggle at -20% morale until they build a Marine Barracks (or an Armor Barracks, but that's higher-tech and more expensive).

Morale is both the weakness and the strength of many Creative empires, because:
 * Creative is a very expensive race design option and therefore the best government many Creative empires can have is Dictatorship, with its low basic morale.
 * Most non-Creative empires forgo most morale technologies because they usually prefer something else at that level, such as improved research buildings. But a Creative empire gets all the techs at each level and, once it has good morale technologies, rivals a Unification empire in farming and industrial productivity and rivals a Democratic empire in research productivity and cash income per citizen.

Example of 20% improvement in morale
The following example is not completely realistic, as it ignores the effects of lower-tech boosts for research, production, farming and cash. But it accurately illustrates the differences that can be made by a research tech and a morale tech that are in the same tech level).

Suppose that:
 * You have a Swamp or Terran colony with 3 scientists, 3 workers and 6 farmers.
 * Neither your government nor the colony has any bonuses or penalties that affect research, industry, farming or money.

Then your scientists produce 3 x 3 = 9 RP, your workers produce 3 x 3 = 9 PP and your farmers produce 6 x 2 = 12 food; and your 12 colonists produce 12 BC in money.

If you build a Supercomputer (150 PP; maintenance 2 BC; 10 RP plus 2 per scientist), each scientist's output increases by 2 RP, so you get 25 RP instead of 9; but your workers still produce 9 PP, your farmers still produce 12 food, and your income from the colony is still 12 BC but you now have to pay an additional 2 BC maintenance.

Suppose instead you built a Holo Simulator (120 PP; maintenance 1 BC; improves morale by 20%; in the same tech level as Supercomputer). If you don't shuffle people around you get 11 RP (rounded up from 10.8), 11 PP (rounded up from 10.8), 14 food (rounded down from 14.4) and 14 BC (rounded down from 14.4) - and a 20 percent increase in the basic tax paid by the colonists, an extra 2 BC in this case; in addition you're now producing a surplus of 2 food, worth 1 BC per turn. If you're short of cash you may prefer the Holo Simulator to the Supercomputer.

Instead of taking the extra income from the surplus food after building the Holo Simulator, you could move one of the farmers into another job, as 5 farmers will now produce the 12 food this colony needs. Suppose you move the ex-farmer into research. Now you get 4 x 3 x 1.2 = 14 RP, 11 PP, 12 food and 1 BC extra (2 BC minus the Holo Simulator's maintenance). The only thing the Holo Simulator does not do is to produce a flat-rate 10 RP even if none of your colonists are working as researchers.

Of course if your Empire is Creative you can have both the Supercomputer and the Holo Simulator. If you don't shuffle people around after building the Holo Simulator you get: 3 x ((2+3) x 1.2) = 18 RP (morale is applied after building, planetary, and racial bonuses to each worker but before flat building bonuses); 11 PP; 14 food; 14 BC - 3 BC (maintenance) + 1 BC (surplus food) = 12 BC, so the combined package costs you no money at all. And if the Creative Empire is short of cash, it should build the Holo Simulator first.

Example of 20% morale penalty
This example also ignores the effects of industrial and research buildings in order to focus on the difference made by a morale penalty.

Suppose that:
 * Your empire is Feudal or Dictatorship, so colonies with no Barracks have a 20% morale penalty;
 * One of your colonies has 3 scientists, 3 workers and 6 farmers (as above), with no buildings except a Marine Barracks.
 * Your empire has no morale-boosting "achievements" (technologies that give benefits without the need to build anything).
 * Then a saboteur from another empire destroys the Barracks.

Before the sabotage: your scientists produced 3 x 3 = 9 RP, your workers produced 3 x 3 = 9 PP and your farmers produced 6 x 2 = 12 food; and your 12 colonists produced 12 BC in money

After the sabotage all outputs are reduced to 80% of their previous levels: 7 RP (rounded down from 7.2), 7 PP (rounded down from 7.2), 10 food (rounded up from 9.6) and 10 BC (rounded up from 9.6).

Worse still, your colony is no longer feeding itself. You may well have to move 2 scientists into farming, and the other one into industry to rebuild the Marine Barracks as fast as possible. After the reshuffle you get no RP, 10 PP (4 x 3 x 80% = 9.6; rounded up), 13 food (8 x 2 x 80%= 12.8; rounded up) and therefore 11 BC income ((12 x 80%) + 0.5 BC for the 1 surplus food + 1 BC because you're not paying maintenance for the Barracks = 11.1; rounded down).

This situation lasts for the 6 turns it will take to build another Marine Barracks (60 PP), unless you pay cash to have it built faster.