Morale population bonuses

Well....

You have base morality. All morality buildings have effect on base morality. Total morality is equal to approval. What you see on the tax-page, is the average approval of all planets together. In order to prevent confusion between approval and morality I will use the term approval...

Now on a planet, the "BASE APPROVAL" starts as 100%.

Population and tax have negative effect on approval. Population have direct effect on "base approval". Tax have effect on "total approval" (resulting from base approval influenced by morality building, morale resource, and so on).

So if your population grows larger the base approval will be less. The larger the population, the faster the decline in base approval. The lowest base approval is capped at 20% (equal to 25 billion people on a planet). If you increase tax, the total aprroval will decrease. Very logical.

Now for planetary improvements that can increase your approval. Virtual Reality Center (VRC) increases the base approval by 25%. So, if your base moraly is 100% and have two VCR, then, the total approval is 150%. But if your population if 30 billion, then the base approval is capped at 20% and with two VCR the total approval will be only 28%.... So a LOT of VCR is needed for HUGE populations!
There are also Trade Goods, such as Ultra Spices (increase approval by 15% on ALL planets, thus for 25B planet total approval is 23%) or Harmony Crystal (increase approval by 20%, thus for 25B planet the total approval is 24%). If you built both Trade Goods, a >25B population will have total approval of 27%. Do not underrestimate these Trade Goods!!!
For superproject "Secret Police Center", this ADD 20% approval TO base approval on the planet were it is built. Thus for 25B planet, the base morality will be 40%! If you built a VCR on a >25B planet with Secret Police Center, then the total approval will be 50%. So, you can have at least one BIG planet with this superproject built with very few VCR's!

Finally about "Morale Resource". This is a VERY valuable resource that can improve your approval on ALL planets greatly. I believe with a maximum of 44%, I think. So for a >25B population, the total approval is about 29%. If you are very lucky you can have two or three of these resources at your disposal. Then it can happen that won't need VCRs at all!!!!

There are of course other factors that can influence your approval, for example Special Events, Planet Quality...

Cheers!

Oh yes,

only the planetary quality determine how many people can live on the planet.

On a starting planet the population is capped at 5B. You have to add a farm to increase the population-cap. It can happen that the population won't grow to the population-cap, this is due to planetary quality.

Further Approval determine how fast your population may grow. At 100% approval the growth rate may double. But when approval is lower than 20%, the population may decrease. Between 20 to 40% the population is static. When approval is between 40% and 99% the population growth may vary dependent on your game version.... In version 1.31 the growth on planets with low population is VERY slow...

In an effort at precision and to foster good use of the English language, the terms "moral" and "morality" refer to the concepts of good and evil (and neutral).

The term "morale", frequently incorrectly written as "moral" in these forums refers to the level of happiness/approval.

And to confuse matters again, your your choice of moral selection can affect your morale!