farm construction/low morale?

Farms increase the maximum population of the planet. Higher population means lower morale.

When you destroyed the farm, your population dropped, and so the morale improved.

Use Farms in conjunction with Morale buildings. The farm increases the population, and the morale building keeps them happy. A rough rule of thumb is one farm per morale building, though obviously it depends on what level of buildings you're at, your tax rate and so on.

makes sense. Thanks.

One morale per farm at the high end. One low level morale structure will not offset the moral drop from a low level farm.

playing on the challenging difficulty i don't build farms until three things happen:
1) planet pop is maxed
2) 49% tax rate humming along
3) 95% or higher morale (usually empire-wide by this point)

I try to keep my populations building throughout the game, so I tend to build a farm (on PQ6+ worlds) as soon as the population nears the (was 5 bil, now 6 with v1.4x) limit. That way there's never a turn when my population (i.e., tax base) is not increasing on every planet. I also make morale buildings one of my first builds, though (fifth or sixth thing built), which many people seem unwilling to do.

I haven't figured out what my max pop will be with v1.4x yet because I haven't gotten the highest farm tech so far, but in v1.3 I would build two advanced farms (max pop. 19 bil) and two VR centers where I had room. I also tend to play military conquest games, where the high population gives me lots of transport fodder and builds itself back quickly.

I have worked on a farm and my morale sucked too

"I have worked on a farm and my morale sucked too"

LOL Another slam against agriculture. Curious what kinda farm was it?

Morale gets low because you gotta tax you citizens to death to pay for all the farm subsidies to hugh intergalactic agribusiness. And that agribusiness needs the money to pay all their lobbyists. And because the lobbyists give political contributions to all political parties be it Rebulican, Democrate, Federalists, Technologists, War Party no matter who gets elected your citezens get screwed into lining the all-ready deep pockets of the cosmic corn peddlers. We don't need all this conventional "food" sources. Why eat a cow when you can BBQ a Thalan?

Why eat a cow when you can BBQ a Thalan?

Mm, yeah, I'd like the 16-oz prime thorax strip, medium rare, and could we get a couple more mandible crackers for the kids please?

On a more serious note, it is not the farm itself that causes morale to decline. The farm just increases the planet's population cap. It is the increase in population that causes the morale drop.

You know, I always did think the thalans looked tasty, kinda crunchy like.

build financial upgrades to counter the morale problem. more money means less taxes required.... more population means larger tax base...

build financial upgrades to counter the morale problem.

As of v1.4, that will no longer work. You'll need at least one approval-boosting upgrade (Entertainment Network, etc.) for any planet that tops 5 billion in population. As population increases, you'll need exponentially more morale improvements, which is why a lot of folks stop at one farm per planet. I usually go to two where I can. Also, make sure to grab and mine as many morale resources as you can find, and build or trade for the morale-boosting trade goods that appear as you research up the morale tech tree.

cool, I just finished the upgrade so well see soon enough! thanx