Seconded! We can assimilate all other cultures/factions without (almost) effort. It´s really too easy!

Here we are again

What am I doing wrong. I am playing as the terrans and I am not taking over anyone's planets. I am building Consulates and researching culture and diplomatic techs. 

I am not threatened by them but I am certainly not threatening them. I will admit that I am not spamming culture star bases. Is that what I need to do ?

Compared to GCII is seems to be well balanced to me.

Oh BTW, I have that benevolent trait that is supposed to flip planets and it is not working on my map. I have been playing mostly large to immense maps. Do I need to play tiny maps to see this effect?

Ahh, so this trait is giving you planets that you are going to get is 10 turns anyway. Not so powerful after all, if it is working as intended

Are you finding culture flips to be too easy? I am not. I won an influence victory on an immense map  but it took over 300 turns and did not come easy. I could have won a military victory long before that.

I don't understand how anyone can say that the AI is easy to flip. In the above game the Yor had the no flip trait and never lost a single planet to a flip. You know, you can win with influence without flipping a single planet. An influence victory is based on ZOC and you can gain control of 75% of the galaxy without flipping planets.

Is the OP referring to single player and is he saying that he can't avoid winning with influence. I would really like to know how that works. Anytime I am going for a conquest victory I have no problem avoiding planet flips until their empire is devastated and victory is certain. At that point I frankly welcome the fact that I don't have to go through the tedious process of invading 15-20 planets that are beaten anyway. I look at as a feature ano a balance bug. Planet flipping is as much a part of conquest as it is influence victory.

If the invasion process is so slow that he is being awarded an influence victory before he can take them all out maybe it is a problem but I have never had that problem

jmho

I am all for limiting culture buildings to 1 per planet. Anything more is arguably an exploit and if they code it the AI can exploit with the best of us.

LOL, I'll have to try that snuggler thing now that I know you can build more than one embassy.

Plus in Beta 5 the influence effect suddenly jumps... I was gaining slowly on my surrounding foes as usual - hex here hex there - then a bit of jump when a (Benevalent Bonus) gave me a sudden Influence jump... then a at some point later after many turns of hexes here and there pushing my borders slowly forward I suddenly jumped from just on 20% of the map under my influence to nearly 40%... taking in almost all of one other nations and large chunks of two more...

I had this in the previous game but that was a test of Beta 5 on a small map and didn't look such a big jump. Gaining 20% of a large map in one turn was huge. Of course I had to wait for the enemy planets to flip but hey... I'm not complaining about free occupation

Not Embassy, sorry, Consulate.  Embassy is +1 diplo.

The Snuggler does +2 adjacency, so ideally you could do a full circle and have all +4 structures, plus the 5% snuggler bonus.  This is actually not as great as it sounds, because the snuggler doesn't get boosts from being surrounded by the adjacency bonus granting Consulates.

If you just optimize the big single tile boosts from planet resources, you'll end up pushing vastly more influence than the AI is whether you end up creating a big producer or not, they built almost none as I rolled them over, even passing up +3 improvements to build something else with no adjacency bonuses.

This is more like what my experience has been. The only culture bases I have built are the culture rings on the archaeology bases. They have not had any effect that I noticed but the culture tech has been truncated in the betas and a lot of the modules are not available.

This is an area that we're focusing on right now actually.

It also grabs starbases, which you normally can't grab.

else, the math for influence is also questionable (not just the AI).  I don't know the current math, but it appears that Influence only grows over time and it's a contest to see who can grow it faster, with no downside to deleting influence buildings once you get 'enough'.

That in and of itself is a problem.

The game mechanic really should be similar to --

Inf range of planet (Ie, what's the maximum distance this planet can affect)

Inf strength of planet (how much Influence does it produce)

Each hex (starting from planet) gets a (planet strength / distance from planet) value out to planet range. (PS/1, PS/2, ..., PS/PR)

Where Planet range is mod'd to a 1-100% range.  (1 hex from planet = 100%, max range from planet = 1%)

Sum all Inf from all sources. 

Contest vs other influence producers.

Simple and straight forward.  Plus, if you modify the range or strength of the planet (by adding or deleting improvements/upgrading them) it modifies it on the map right away.

@Frogboy, I got a fairly good save game where it starts to get out of hand.  Conquest victories will probably never happen with the current balance.

Great idea, this sounds like the perfect solution to me. If you are playing single player, just turn it off and forgetaboutit. 

I realize that with the I victory turned off planets might still flip but as long as the outcome is a conquest V, what's the difference. In any war as the stronger faction starts closing in major segments of enemy territory come under siege and start collapsing without a shot being fired. In a way it mimics surrender.

"All we have to do is kick down the door and the whole rotten structure will come falling down"

Sounds good to me. I wondered what would happen if the last planet flipped before you could invade. 

Hell, this sounds like a feature to me. One of my biggest complaints about conquest victory was the need to kill off every single, out of the way, dinky little, class 4 planet to win. This way when you have crushed them and they are losing every battle, they will collapse and save you the trouble of the mop up. 

If the fight is still even and you have not pursued any cultural/influence advantages in the closet, their planets shouldn't be flipping any more than yours are. If I didn't want to flip any planets, I wouldn't build a single consulate, I would destroy all the snuggle bunnies in favor of a military improvement and generally disdain anything having to do with influence.

If that doesn't work and you want the immersion of crushing every planet by invasion, it shouldn't be that hard to mod any trace of culture and influence out of the game.