capturing a planet with influence in 1.3

It will join, if your culture exceeds that of the alien culture by a certain threshold value. I think it's 500 from the top of my head. The thing to look for is the skull and crossbones icon popping up on their system. Once it is there, they have to make a roll every turn to avoid losing the system.

news service improvement counteracts destabilisation, so does having high culture of your own, and high morale I think. I have read somewhere that increasing your spending on espionage also has a bearing.

h.t.h. -P.

~SDC~

An Embassy and a Cultural Exchange center and a few other buildings will increase the Influence of your star system in that sector (and the surroundng sectors, a little).

Also, you can build a starbase and put cultural influence modules on it. Eventually, you can build a Party Palace with some ridiculous cumulative effect. Few enemy planets can stand for long with a Party Palace in the same sector unless they counter in kind. Of course, your rival will take note.

Destabilizing will help, though it takes time unless you can pump a whole lot of money into it. If you can pay more for destablizing than his whole economy produces, he'll flop in a couple of turns.

~SDC~

6 party palaces + 1 planet of any quality in one sector and 9 enemy sectors are yours
Better to have 2-3 Influence Resources also

Treshold was like 5000 IMHO, at least if you want to capture FAST. Don't sure about 1.03, it seems more than in 1.02, in 1.02 it was 4 Party Palaces.

~SDC~

I've taken over planets from influence in the center of their empires with nothing but starbases. Of course it did take 6+ with the party palaces.

Everybody likes my parties, when they come to town, everyone joins our party!

Of course, we spend so much on parties, our military is weak, and that's usually my downfall...

I built the Party Palace Terror Star in one game. All the military upgrades too, I must have pumped fifty Constructors into that baby. Flew it into an Altarian sector with a bunch of dreadnoughts and all his planets in the surrounding sectors put up the little pirate flags. So he calls me up on the diplophone and says "I know cultural conquest when I see it" and demands that I give him the thing!

I refused, and he started building ships like mad. His Mil graph is climbing, climbing, I know he's going to attack when he gets enough antimatter missiles to suit him. My economy is only twenty times bigger than his but he's cranking and then plop! Three systems flopped and I won by Cultural conquest.

The load of putting out the propaganda and resistance stuff in that sector plus the military buildup just buried him.


~SDC~

It does *seem* to be more difficult to culturally dominate the minor races... Or is it my imagination?
I had (somehow) 400,000 influence in a sector at one point and a minor race planet didn't even have the skull and crossbones. :notsure:
Anyone noticed minor races being more resistant?

~SDC~

No, it's not your imagination. And you can't destabilize them either.

~SDC~

It is definately harder, but it is possible.

What usually happens when I'm playing is some major AI will come in and beat them up and steal their planets, and then revolt to join me. In the end, no one can withstand our culture...

Oh, I know it's possible, it just seemed to be more difficult and I was wondering if it was just my frustration or if other people had noticed it.
I know it's possible, because one of my planet's kept defecting to the I-League, then about 3 turns later I'd gain it back via cultural domination... Then about 5 turns later, it'd defect again.. And so on.

~SDC~

There are two minor races you can pick up, the Alexians (whether on purpose or not) do not have the influence resistance that the other minor civs have, so you can flip them just like anyone else. The Independent League you can pick up if you have the lead influence in a sector and they lose control of a planet with bad morale.

The chance for flipping starts at a differential of about 200 from what I've seen (I've gotten first warnings before for my planets at around this value). Obviously, the bigger the differential the better. Also, you have to keep in mind that the AI, given time, will build infrastructure to try to prevent defections. So you can have dominant influence in a sector but if it's just barely dominant and the AI builds protection you probably won't get the flip.

Culture computation was recently tweaked to take into account distance of culture starbase from your systems so as to weaken culture bombing which previously was quite easy.

What I found useful was to colonise class 13-14 systems in the enemy sectors and rush build influence improvements to project my culture. You should have decent influence at this stage else they will flip rather quickly.

I thought that planet influence depends on population of that planet. So i want to buy +Morale improvements and then move some colony ships with a good population. It may be more efficient than building +influence buildings, but i don't tried it yet.

~SDC~

To think of it, I don't know what influences the base influence of the system. Does anyone know?

It is said that purple stars also have higher influence. True?

Encyclopedia -> How sector influence works http://www.galciv.com/encyclopedia.asp

As the manual discusses, each star system you control gives a base amount of influence that is then modified by the size of your population and what planetary improvements you've built.

Encyclopedia -> GalCiv User Manual

Different star systems have different base levels of influence that are generally based on the quality and position of the star system in the galaxy. This is then enhanced by the population of the planet along with what social projects you build.

Influence works as follows:

Each star system has an inate amount of influence. A typical star system has no influence at all on its own. But those with good base planets may have an influence rating of 2 to 3 points. Once in a great while, a star system may have been home to the precursors (an ancient race that once controlled the galaxy thousands of years ago) and those star systems are much higher in prestige to control and therefore provide much more influence.

This base influence in a star system can be modified through the building of wonders and planetary improvements. They are also modified by your civilization’s influence ability which you gain through the research of certain technologies.

~SDC~

Talk about a weird chain of thoughts. I've tried the Culture Terror Stars which didn't work out very well in the game I tried them in, the game was over before they got to their target. But still, while in route, I thought of them as the McStars, including the image of giant styrofoam deathstars orbiting a planet, and trust me, you don't want to know what comes out of them when the lid pops open.

Anyway, back to the previous reasonable discourse.

Thanks for the info, Ellestar.

Neither population nor cash for rushing improvements is a concern for the late game culture bomber. I've got to amend my strat to ship over more pop then.

I suppose purple stars are home to precursors?

Popup, I call those the 'Party Palace Of Terror'. And yeah, they are slow, definitely not for a fast win.

Just realized that I dated myself with that styrofoam container comment. How long has it been since McD's stopped using those?

The Geezer Empire: O.K., so maybe we *CAN'T* remember when our empire was grand, but we know it was!

McDonald's stopped using styrofoam in the very early 90s, well in Canada anyway.

The best thing for creating culture is people. Do whatever it takes to get a toehold in an enemy empire and they fall like dominoes after that. I don't really reccomend colonizing a 13-14 actually IN their sectors, but get one in a neighboring sector and then plop down a starbase right there. You'll multiply your influence, which will be much higher because you have a base of population. The AI won't demand the starbase because they don't have a planet in that sector.

I always think of the movie 'Heavy Metal' when I think of party palaces. Those two aliens snorting foam would be regulars I think!

-Smack