Influence based control of the galaxy

I've found that I can take over an entire galaxy without ever needing to build or research anything military, Whilst I really like that you can win territory in a non violent way (giving complete domination a more insidious feel) I've noticed that I can bring entire civilizations to their knees and the governments controlling them are fine with it, in fact they're overjoyed and love it. Surely annexing planets would result in some kind of diplomatic wrath? I mean, individuals being influenced are happy about it but wouldn't governments and those loyal to the other race be furious? Your're directly taking from them what amounts to a lot of resources and prestige. Taking enough planets rightly be seen as a threat to their existence and even an act of war.

Some balancing issues I can think of is the removing all diplomatic penalty to close boarders with an early ideology bonus, this seem unreasonably effective. I don't know how the boarder penalty system works but it would make sense if it scales with the number of adjacent tiles, rather than completely negating the diplomatic penalty why not make it reduce the penalty by 80%. So if you've got a massive front of 100 tiles pressing against them they'll be a bit intimidated but still grumpy about ii when it comes to signing treaties.

In the same vein the ideology bonus that makes you immune to influence takeovers is quite overpowered, mainly because in the large maps (like immense) the AI is far far more likely become immune to influence due to the sheer volume of planets (and so free ideology points). Making the bonus increase the time it takes to be converted 5 -6 times longer would seem fairer as it no longer stonewalls a non violent strategy in large games and still gives the encroached planet time to increase its influence with emergency star stations and such.

Also, star-bases in other races territory should be a no no, or at least not too close to their captured stars. I've been building starbases in the center of 3 "neutral" planets orbiting a sun screaming propaganda at them ceaselessly in order to assimilate them, I can't think of a much more aggressive way of non violently taking over short of landing a colony ship on the planet and telling them we're now roommates.

So yeah, I really really like the idea of being a race of apparently friendly people who slowly undermine their allies with aggressive cultural messages, It's fun to watch the influence ripple around a planet imagining my diplomats sweet talking their government by playing space golf, eating those exotic worms I killed a while back and laughing at those poor Terran who got crushed by the Drengin but at the moment it's just too easy.

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Tetrasodium

Join Date 03/2006

+17

I think a lot of the trouble you are seeing is due to the drooltastic state the placeholder ai has in 0.72. With that said, I disagree about the immune to cultural influence complaint... I have a few reasons for disagreeing as well:

There are ideology perks that make the ai ignore when they have a shared border with you,which is freaking huge for influence.
There are ideology perks that make other factions take a relations hit from everyone else if they go to war with you.
there are ideology perks & many structures to give additional influence
if you screw up too badly, you can just buy the perk that makes it so nobody can declare war on you for 100 turns and spend the next 100 turns recovering.

All of that combined results in a situation where influence can be a trivialized pathway with protective walls that no other option has.

tech victories can be trivially thwarted by military and/or influence paths if they focus too laserlike on tech victory/ research output
Military victory can be thwarted by simply getting stretched too thin & collapsing under its own weight, an alliance between one or more factions, weaker ships produced by a faction with vastly higher manufacturing capabilities, simply running into a foe with better military/fortifications, and/or too many multifront wars. There is a perk that will grant someone an army of ship(s) per planet, but upkeep can be crippling

The influence path is semi-self insulating and comes with no real upkeep /focus cost, having some factions force you to venture down a different path on occasion is a good thing

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Few thoughts about your topic. What can a government do when people of their planet wish to join another race. Especially good races would have to simply respect the will of their people. As for diplomacy, you can't openly blame the other race. They are not doing "anything wrong". Also there is a difference between big race consuming the planet of a small race, where all the small race can do is silently be furious but keep good relations as angering big race wouldn't serve you any good really. If this was other way around, the big race would totally be angry, throwing tribute request or war message to your face. However, player doesn't have control of influence overtake so even if he doesn't want to take planets of other races, this happens anyway. So diplomatic reactions to this should remain low or system should be changed first.

Close borders penalty shouldn't be between good races or allies. If they are friends this should not be an issue.

This problem with starbases is annoying but few things need to be said. If there is super aggressive (yet not in war) race they don't care if you like their starbases or not. They will just build them where they want. Diplomatic penalty? Maybe but you can build it somewhere and then their influence overtakes and now you have permanent negative value to your diplomacy. However GCII already sorted this. You cant order other races what to do. United Planets can. I remember there were few topics of council meetings that addressed starbases. We just have to wait till this feature is added. Of course, you can always leave United Planets and build starbases everywhere Finally, you can always shoot all the damn starbases with your ships or buy them from other races. There are always multiple options...

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Franco fx

Join Date 04/2003

+59

Based on my play, there seems to be some misapprehension regarding influence victory. Respect for borders is not an issue. Starbases in their ZOC are not an issue. In my experience winning numerous influence victories, you don't have to flip a single planet, or build cultural starbases in their ZOC. You win by building lots of cultural (influence) improvements on your colonies and building starbases near cultural relics.

I am not saying you can win by influence if you don't get a good colony rush. If you have 15-20 colonies vs 30-40 owned by the AI, you are unlikely to win an influence victory. In my most recent Influence win, I had the most colonies (about 45) and the Yor had about the same. The Altarians were 3rd with about 30, the others had about 15-20. I had open border treaties with all the AI but I never built a single culture SB in their ZOC. I built a huge number of consulates and other influence improvements on planets and built several influence relic SB that were developed to the max. By late game my ZOC began to grow like Topsy and engulfed everyone. The Yor either had the Dauntless trait or there is some bug because their planets did not flip. Even though they controlled a large section of the galaxy and their planets would not flip, my influence still engulfed them. All the rest did flip but not before their ZOC was overtaken. In the end I controlled 100% of the galaxy (all blue) with Yor planets occupying at least 30% of the space.

Of course the game was won when I controlled 75% but I played on to see what was going on with the Yor not flipping and to kill all the pirates that spawned when the other AI flipped.

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