Make Happiness give gradual benefits

[OdinTGE]

As it stands you have to build your race/ethos/government to go all in on happiness or you have to ignore it. If you're not going to reliably have +20% or +30% from your various bonuses combined then you effectively have 0%.

This means that taking the communal trait because it fits your idea for a species, but then not selecting corresponding happiness providing ethos/government types causes that trait selection to be a complete waste. It will provide perhaps some benefit on your home world where it will lift you to 75% meaning a decent governor can actually get you to 80%. On all your other worlds it will take you to 65% and even a 5 star governor will only get you to 75% which does nothing at all.

There are events that give happiness bonuses, one is even a permanent 15% boost for your entire empire. Getting this rare event should be great news, but as things stand now it's just nothing. You're either already built for happiness and so the 15% boost does nothing or you're not built for happiness and 15% doesn't get you anywhere useful.

It would be a much better system if any happiness over 70% started providing small boosts that rose as happiness rose. Going all in on a happiness set up would still be extremely effective (perhaps too effective) but at least small bonuses here and there would actually mean something.

 

[Yenzen]

I strongly agree with this, though I'd prefer a gradual bonus around 50-60 instead with +/- 3-4% pr 10%.

Right now, as you say, if you want to manage happiness in your species, you have to go *all the way*: Moral democracy, spiritualist, communal, adaptable, all stacked on top of each another. It actually works quite well, but any one of these by their lonesome, are irrelevant.

It's completely different from any other bonus such as industrious, thrifty, intelligent, agrarian or individualist, which are good by themselves. A species that only has communal as a boost will have a base of 65% happiness and that accomplishes nothing in the same way industrious would.

 

[Blorg is CK3]

I agree, and as a side effect it would make habitability more interesting. Beside of a slight penalty of growth, a planet with effective 50% habitability is as good as one with 79%.