Approval is a measure of your empire's happiness, which affects the effectiveness of your colonies and citizens. Each system has an individual rating. These are combined to form your empire-wide rating. This scale is combined with other planetary and empire factors that show how much your citizens appreciate your government.
High affects your citizen's desire to work and can give useful bonuses to production, while low lowers growth, production and research and negatively affects your empire. Maintaining high is also key to all growth, as populations increase much more slowly when disapproving of your empire.
Things that affect approval include hostile living environments on planets, which decrease , while conveniences such as Infinite Supermarkets increase .
Approval in practice[]
How the approval system works, and how to keep approval as high as possible, are questions asked quite often. Managing approval is a crucial part of playing Endless Space.
With a bad rating, your empire is likely to literally go on strike. Low approval rates will decrease production of every one of the FIDS , slowing growth. It is important to balance and account for all the factors that influence approval, and keep the rating as high as possible (while not limiting the empire in any area).
Ideally you will keep your approval in the good-ferverent area on planets that are growing or are industrial planets.
The single main conscious decision factor is expansion and colonization. Every system that is colonized will add some disapproval through population growth or system count. Especially notable are high-class planets - especially lava/barren or above, which increase disapproval significantly. Therefore the rate of expansion should keep pace with technologies that reduce maluses and increase approval.
The second is tax rate: high taxes mean low approval. This links approval to military might - the more you fight, the more dust you need for ships. Ideally you want to avoid this high dust usage altogether - if not, establishing trade with an ally can help avoid needing to do this.
Approval states[]
Empire approval[]
Note: empire approval modifiers changed drastically with the release of the Disharmony expansion. This article has been updated to reflect these changes.
The average approval in your empire, if extreme, can give a modifier to your production. Avoid being in a state of Rebellion at all costs!
Approval level | Minimum approval | modifier |
---|---|---|
Rebellion | 0% | -50% |
Content | 20% | |
Fervent | 80% | +10% |
System approval[]
The approval within a system can give a modifier to and
Approval level | Minimum approval | and modifier |
---|---|---|
Strike | 0% | -50% |
Unhappy | 20% | -20% |
Content | 40% | |
Happy | 60% | +10% |
Ecstatic | 80% | +20% |
Tax rate[]
The fastest and easiest way to change your Approval is to change your Tax Rate (below). Practically, the Tax Rate controls the balance between and the other three resources (, , and ) via Approval.
Planets[]
Planets can cause approval or disapproval.
- Planets apart from hospitable Class I (Jungle, Terran, Ocean) incur disapproval. The more inhospitable the planet type, the more disapproval ranging from -5 Approval (Arid and Tundra) to - 20 Approval (Gas Giants and Asteroids)
- Some luxury resources give an increase to Approval, some give an increase to the systems Approval, one gives empire-wide Approval.
- Some anomalies give approval or disapproval. High Gravity increases disapproval and Low Gravity increases Approval (+10)
These modifiers apply in full to the entire system as soon as a planet is colonized. The distribution of population does not matter.
Improvements[]
Some improvements increase Approval.
- Infinite Supermarkets +25
- Colonial Rights +30
- Unlimited Information Highways +30 (-50% overpopulation approval)
- Corporeal Freedom +40 (+5 for every tier 3/4/5 planet)
- Permanent Vacation +50 (-50% expansion population approval)
Empire size[]
Having more than a couple systems in an empire or having more than a few in a system gives disapproval.
Disapproval is modified by the game settings:
Difficulty | Overpopulation disapproval | Expansion disapproval |
---|---|---|
Newbie | x1.0 | x4 |
Easy | x1.1 | x4.5 |
Normal | x1.2 | x5 |
Hard | x1.3 | x5.5 |
Serious | x1.4 | x6 |
Impossible | x1.5 | x6.5 |
Endless | x1.6 | x7 |
Overpopulation disapproval[]
Systems get -1 to -1.6 for every above 3, depending on game difficulty. This can be reduced by up to 80% by improvements.
Expansion disapproval[]
Your empire gets -6 to -10.5 (ie 1.5 * difficulty modifier) for every colonized system above 2. This penalty applies only to systems within your own influence area, so outposts cause disapproval, but are not affected by it (valid for pre-Disharmony game versions).
In Disharmony: Systems inside your sphere of influence (the circles around your systems on the map) get a 50% reduction in expansion disapproval. Outposts don't have this sphere, but they can benefit from the spheres of your other systems. Making CIS-OORD satellites quite valuable at times (and the Stellar Guardians faction trait).
This can be reduced by up to 88% by technology from the Standard Exploration & Expansion (bottom) technologies tree. They each reduce expansion disapproval by 22% each. No improvements are required; the reduction is applied empire-wide on discovery.
- Applied Casimir Effect - tier 3
- Applied Atmospherics - tier 6
- Shared Fields - tier 8
- Dark Energy Effects - tier 10
Conquest disapproval[]
If player has succesfully invaded a system, two planet properties (visible when hovering mouse over owned planets) "ownership" and "control" will change to very low values (usually 2%) and will start generating large approval malus, which will appear under the Approval summary of the system. This is representative of the population's less than sunny disposition towards their new conqerors-turned-rulers. This malus CAN NOT be changed by building Approval improvements.
Both "ownership" and "control" will start rising slowly (2% and 4% per turn), as the inhabitants settle into new rule, eventually dissapearing, but its effect on your new system's productivity while they remain low are huge. "Ownership" gain can't be modified with technology or improvements, but is affected by racial traits speeding up or slowing down the process. "Control" gain can be speed-up by 3 planetary improvements near the 'trunk' of the military tech tree.