Happiness builds are really good!

[FiddyTrickPony]

I was surprised how good actually, but when you have 'joyful' POPs, it increases all output by 20%, reduces ethics convergence by 20% and your people are just plain happy.

I wish it didn't require a 'spiritualist' ethos -- though I like to just imagine my beings are not neccessarily religious zealots. Also not the biggest fan of the 5 year elections for the gov type with +10% happiness.

I'm still new to the game (duh) and exploring the different builds, but so far I think this is the best I've come across. Any thoughts on ways to improve the build? (Fanatic Spiritualist, Pacifist || Communal, Enduring, Natural Engineers, Sedintary || Gov't with +10 happiness, can't remember name now.)

Any thoughts on builds that might be better than this? I generally like to get my economy optimized first, then technology and finally military. The happiness build seems good because you get that extra output early on which can compound, and also no worry about ethics divergence.

[Hurodrik]

I'm playing materialist and having no problems with happines myself. There are many techs taht you can use to increase happiness, aside from that, I always ensure to only colonize planet types that match. Since my humans are xenophile I gradually uplifted and integrated other races that thrived in other biomes and can now colonize pretty much any planet without penalty to happines.

[Fugitive Unknown]

If you are going to play a happiness build, I'd recommend getting adaptable as one of your traits.

Happiness is capped at your habitability, so the +10% lets you get 90% on the 80% planets, which you need for the higher bonuses.

[Deep One]

You can also do military republic with fanatical militarist, need to have a war going then you get insane happiness. Moral democracy (+10/20% happiness government) is the easiest way tough. The military build has advantage tough since you don't piss off your people when conquering stuff from bombardments and such.

[RodHull]

I tried a similar thing, got fed up with the 5 year elections removing my best and brightest scientists (very tedious)

Dropped that and now Im good, but yes happiness is indeed a bit op, but its tough to maintain as you progress deeper into the game.

[3Ddeath]

Maybe its time I try to find where happiness meter is... this entire time I didn't care about my pops one bit, I'm a horrible leader

[RodHull]

Its the little bar under their pic

[Avalanche]

Well, you technically can get away with not having that extra habitability, since you will need to go a specific build to get the happiness build working, you can get into federations with other races and even get alien pops and then you can get a pop for each planet type, so you will have 100% or whatever regardless.

[Maverick@DANGERZONE]

i find that depending on ethos, there are several additional buildings (virtual combat arena, monument to purity) which go very well with the spiritualist ethics. spiritualistic/millitaristic/xenophobe is very efficient at keeping people happy, even without the democratic gouvernment option. also very good at controlling ethics divergence and has the added bonus of slavery and borderline fashistic narratives. our holy arms shall not waver. also teldar plant, everyone should build it.

[Mistfox]

If you use xenophile and mix in a lot of species, you can be pretty happy as well. No spirituality needed.

[Peter]

Originally posted by RodHull:

I tried a similar thing, got fed up with the 5 year elections removing my best and brightest scientists (very tedious)

Is that why I've been losing scientists randomly? I had assumed I wasn't paying full attention to the game and missed a message somewhere.

[Maverick@DANGERZONE]

Originally posted by Peter:

Is that why I've been losing scientists randomly? I had assumed I wasn't paying full attention to the game and missed a message somewhere.

yeah they can get voted to empire leader in certain gouvernments. as can admirals and generals.

[zanaikin]

The big advantage of Spiritual is that it gets to 80-90% earlier than Materialist, who requires more buildings/infrastructure to reach that. Spiritual also gets the Grand Design modifier (+5% happiness) once they meet void cloud space monsters, usually only a few years into the game. Suddenly you have...

60% base happiness
+10% capital
+5% spiritual
+5% grand design

80% happiness on your capital planet just say, 5 years into the game? 90% if you use Propaganda Edict or build a Royal Gardens (enlightened monarchy). That is one powerful start that'll give you a major advantage!

[Regularity]

It's worth spirtual builds provide happiness *penalties* for using a lot of techs, like AI (anything above outlawed hurts happiness) or leader capacity boosters (the tech that increases lifespan and level of leaders). So if you want an optimial empire, spiritual can be more harm than good, as all the penalties together outweigh the +5%/+10% happiness bonus.

[zanaikin]

Who needs robots' mining bonus when you have joyful population do it?

(more like, who needs a mining bonus? I'm usually swimming in minerals; energy become more rare once you build up fleet to cap).

Robots/droids have no advantage over happiness playstyles until late game when Synthetics come about... who have both a 20% base bonus and benefits from happiness.

[ZeratulR]

Originally posted by Loki:

I wish it didn't require a 'spiritualist' ethos -- though I like to just imagine my beings are not neccessarily religious zealots. Also not the biggest fan of the 5 year elections for the gov type with +10% happiness.

A bit of a theryocrafting here so some things needs to be rechecked.
The main problem with spiritualist is that it excludes materialist which is probably the single best ethos. The alternative is Xenophilia. Xenophile races get +5% happiness for each alien pop of a similair habitability on a planet and +10% for pops of a different (not 100% sure about numbers). So start with xenophile + fanatic materialist + adaptive + intelligent +weak + sedentary for trait points (weak is irrelevant with robots, sedentary is bad though), take despotic hegemony for government for science or whatever. Early on look for alien species who are xenophiles and not spiritualist and allow them to migrate to you (habitability close to yours but not exaclty and traits like industrious or thrifty and again adaptive are good as well). Gaia world are perfect for attracting migrants and migration edict on other planets helps (I think). After that turn on resettlement for 10 years and transfer other species to planets of your main habitability (starting with your capital). 3 pops give you the same effect as fanatic spiritualist + moral democracy! You'll be able to get your main planet types to 90% happiness immediately and other planets (to 80% happiness). Later with gene tailoring give adaptive to everyone and voila, joyful population everywhere. Of course happiness boosts from buildings and leaders help as well.