It is just as broken on smaller maps.  Was going to do a post but yous is great so ill just tag along .  I have played the king of influence faction and tried my damnedest to not declare war  but it would have taken another 200 turns for influence alone. Yes i did all the inf techs and buitl all the right buildings, even spammed dozens of inf starbases ; all to no avail.  [e digicons]:'([/e] .

Obviously we do not want planets to flip in a turn or 2 or have the ZOI expand like water but what we have now is just bad. 

There's also the bigger problem, as you mentioned, that once you're powerful the rest is just boring mop up.  

In truth, is there any challenge whatsoever in an influence victory? I don't mean this in a disparaging way - but rather literally: Where is the challenge in playing for an influence victory presently?

The reason you're bored is because there isn't one. In a conquest victory you need to defeat enemy ships. In a diplomatic victory you have to convince the AI to like you. These are only 'broken' in so far as it being far too easy to achieve, something that will go away with AI improvements.

But what's the actual challenge in an influence victory, presently? You just need the AI to like you enough not to attack you (or be powerful enough to defeat their attacks without needing to counter-invade). It's largely just a waiting game by design. Since there's no actual challenge in running an empire, all you do is colonize a lot, build lots of influence stuff, and then.... no, actually, that's just it. You do stuff for the opening ~100 turns, and after that may as well just leave it on soak.

The same is largely true of research and ascension victory options. They're not challenging, because they're just waiting games; you set them up and then you sit and wait. At least with those, you have some interaction required in that you pick techs every so often and choose where to drop the SBs/kill the enemy SBs. But it's still mostly just a game of sitting down and waiting for the game to end.

This is yet another reason why we need money to actually matter, frankly; if you had to pay attention to your budget AT ALL then at least you'd have something to distract you. But you don't, and so influence games largely just become a matter of sitting hitting 'end turn' til you win.

I saw this post, but forgot to reply earlier.  I'm just about to win a game on genius level, without building a single military vessel.  Looks like tech victory is faster, just no way to win by pure influence if you have low tech IMO.  I'll send a thread about it later.  Its quite the Bazaaro Marigoldran experience

BTW, I don't think I have won a conquest game at all, because by the time you get to the last faction, you have an influence win, or will get it soon as you begin to invade its territory.

Well, that's kind of my point - you actually had to choose to do nothing to avoid winning earlier. The victory condition, in it's present form, demands passivity. There's nothing much for you to be doing internally, since culture is almost entirely passive. You could have ended it long beforehand through warfare, but because you plumped for culture you had to sit doing nothing for 100 turns extra. And once again I'll stress - I'm not saying that people who pick to play it are bad or anything. I used Influence victory as a valid condition in GC2 and I enjoyed Influence-based gameplay. But I actually had to keep tending my budget; even if the AI wasn't threatening me, simply running my empire and avoiding running it into the ground gave me something to do while I was patiently accumulating influence.

What can we actually be doing during an inf victory? Currently, there's no gameplay involved in running the empire, since you're never really under cash pressure beyond the opening 50 turns. Diplomacy locks you out for 20 turns after each trade, so you're not exactly inundated with diplomatic maneuvering to do (which was a MAJOR part of influence victories - funding proxy wars, keeping the AI busy with each other etc). You can shuffle military units about aimlessly, and build more starbases, and pick a new tech every so often... but really, that's pretty much it.  And two of those are things people want automated.

  Agreed Joe.  i tried to go mainly culture, but I had to beef up my research to get more planetary defense.  Then, when I had zero elurium, because only the warring factions had it, I was stuck in Age of War techs, so had to go full research throttle to get to Age of Ascension and Planetary Defense Dome.  

  My influence did surely piss them off, and I flipped 2 planets.  But when your research rate is SKY HIGH and you hit Age of Ascension long before anyone else, the Research victory ends up being much faster. As well, from the rates I have seen over the past 200 turns, when I did have cultural dominance, it was just too slow, and didnt steamroll planets like I thought it would (I was 4-5x influence the nearest planet, but all of their cores were strong, all have good approval to resist, etc).  In conclusion, I now find influence ONLY useful to take over planets which are extremely close to you and far from them (leave cheap planets uncolonized, the AI will get them, and you will eventually get a free planet, fully loaded). Also, it works well as a mechanic to "cause" border disputes, and get the hostilities underway.

  Once I have won the research victory, I will go back to the previous save, and turn all research into culture, and see how fast my influence spreads around the galaxy.  It was a tough game, not building any warships, but had some advantages, namely tech rush.  Starting in the middle of the galaxy like I did, will make the pure influence victory a lot easier. I wonder how many turns it will take  BUT, if I actually had enough Elurium for all planets, I would not have needed to even get to Age of Ascension, and could have won pure influence, although would have taken forever.

  On a final note, it appears culture festival is WAY OP.  None of my planets had more than 2 factories, but I have 30-40 pop on them.  When I put raw manufacturing points into culture fest, it seems to provide as much benefit as half a planet full of culture buildings.....now, what if I had a planet full of factories using culture fest?

I dunno, turn 220 in my turtle/influence/tech game, and I have flipped 10 planets in the last 20 turns, and I havent even started going into full influence mode, still spam researching war techs to finish Age of Ascension.....the AI is dropping like flies now  

How many turns per invasion, with all of the micro directing, building troops, yada ya... Being in the middle is turning out to be quite OP

Ok I went back and tried a few things with the help of the console.

Achieved planets generating 10-20 Influence per turn which is typical 5-10x typical AI.

While influence buildings help, as do culture starbases, they are not the key.  Its population, manufacturing ability and the culture project.  Going to start a new game and try this stratigy.  If i can stay out of war, it could be effective

Agreed.  Cultural buildings stink.  You can more than double your cultural output by using cultural festival and manufacturing buildings, over using cultural buildings.  I dont see how cultural buildings can be better.  They do give you culture points while you can still manufacture (very nice), but you never lose cultural points, so you can pound out buildings in a few turns with all manufacturing, then turn to cultural festival while you have nothing to build.

Its VERY effective.  Its hilarious watching me gobble up planets, and putting a defense dome and prep center down in 3 turns, making me impregnable, as I am on all planets.  I just popped ENTICING, and I went from 35 to 48 planets! hahaha!

BEFORE Enticing

AFTER Enticing

And yes, without building a single military vessel.

Huge map, 6 opponents.  I grabbed 11 colonies (very hard to do, as I had taken malus on any ship traits, and that hurt me during colony rush, as my colony ships had a speed of 2, with a range of 16 because I was bulky (+30% mass) ).

Yes, factories would have done much better.  On the same planet, I can pump out 2x more culture with culture fest and all factories, vs all the highest tech level culture buildings (I used Anterian tech tree as well), and 2 factories on culture fest.  

A bigger map just means a bigger pain.  You will have more planets, but so will they.  I set up my games where most stars have a habitable planet.  Anything else I think is silly, playing on huge insane maps, where only 25% or 50% have colonizable planets.  It just makes the game take longer...and more micro.  I like to micro, but micro on that massive scale is not appealing to me.

In all honesty, you will find a tech rush will be much faster.  If playing defense, make a B-line towards planetary defense dome.  They are so OP  The AI invaded several times, on several planets, and just...died, and I took 0 causualties.  Until then, grab as much Elurium as you can and make Elurium Defense Shields, before the 50 turn trade expires (or they DOW you).  Without Elurium or Defense Domes, its tough.  With a prep center, planetary defense shields (adjacent to colony capital), and military academy beside each other, you can get a 65% Planetary Defense, with the other tech bonuses as well.  If you are playing a militant race, you may have other military adj bonus buildings which can help.  On one planet, I had to install Hyperion buildings, just to get a few more +1s...but it was worth it as they focused on that one planet.

I had a 185% Resistance on top, so 3.0 troops against 12.0 pop with 75% resistance, I would lose maybe 1-2 pop, which hurt.  The AI continued to try, but my birth subsidies were barely keeping up with losses.  A human player would have sent more troops to secure the victory (albiet take HUGE loses himself). And make sure to get the enemy's WMD counter.  I only got 1, and it looks like the 2 remaining races have BIO warfare, which I didnt get the counter.  But, my diplo is so high, they are ignoring me, just fighting themselves, hahaha.

well, it proved to be a very fun game, so I dont look forward to changes eliminating some type of defensible game.  A human would have broken through for sure.  The AI just needs to invade in higher numbers (hmmm, where have we seen it else not do that?? ).

I'd like to keep influence/tech/defensive victories possible, but perhaps at not such a high difficulty level.  After learning from that game, I know I could have cranked it up atleast one more difficulty level (I played on genius, as all other AI).

Also, the AI did surely figure out what I was doing.  Yes, I did finally win with Influence (FAR after I wont with tech though).  I didnt flip that many more planets.  The AI must have boosted resistance, added culture buildings, or even popped the malevolent perk which prevents flipping.  at the end game, 1 hex away from the closest enemy planet, I had over 11x their influence, but had yet to start them to rebel.  However, even though I didnt flip, my influence spread throughout the galaxy, especially once I re-tooled for manufacturing and turned on the now OP projects (see other thread), namely culture fest.

It won't necessarily break culture victory, as technically the planet is just one hex. Immunity to cultural flip doesn't prevent you from owning all of the hexes around the planet, so you can still control the required percent of the galaxy without controlling all of the planets themselves.

But good point on why some planets never seem to flip. I never thought they might have that ideology trait selected. /facepalm