Influence - I don't understand!

from Stardock Forums
Okay, one thing I am still very unclear on is influence. I know if you have the most influence in all sectors, you win. I know that certain structures influence influence :) Does population, number of ships, morale, degree of evilness come into play?

For example, I was playing on normal intelligence in a medium galaxy. I was just about to wipe out the Alterians. After I wiped them out, I 'spoke' with them and forced them to a peace treaty, taking all their money and influence points, using the known cheese bug that the race only disappears the next turn after you take their last planet. ANyway, they gave me 1400 influence points. I then looked at the mini-map, and it showed I had almost all the sectors in blue, and a statement that i was about to win the culture victory. Then, I wiped out the Alexians a few turns later (they had one planet) and my influence plummeted, only about 75% of sectors were under my influence. Then I attacked the Drengins and my influence dropped to about 50% of the sectors. So...I don't understand why that happened. Not that I care, I will wipe the galaxy clean of all alien life, to save humanity :) I am playing evil, very evil. Advice anyone?

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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Rob first of all, you might just be the evil sort of scum we're looking for in the

G.R.O.S.S. (Get Rid Of Slimy alienS) empire. You can join through the metaverse.

Did you save the game in the middle of all that? If you save and reload, Your influence drops like a rock for the next 2 or 3 turns before it goes back up to where it was again.

Second of all, the culture thing is tricky. A sector is the color of the race that has the most points. You might have just one more point in that sector. the then, if they make an improvement, you might see mass sectors revert to their color. I suspect though there's a save and reload in there. That's usually how massed sectors change color. You get em back eventually. But keep making culture improvements by building starbases in your newly taken sectors. I think there's less an influence on adjacent sectors than there used to me.


Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
Thanks Pontius, I have now joined GROSS. May the aliens quake in their...whatever.

I can't recall if I did do a save/reload. Why would that affect anything? Seems like a bug then. I was thinking it had to do with my wars against other civs. Seems to me, rationally speaking, that if you make war against another race, your cultural influence in sectors w/ their planets should drop. Ie, in WWII, the cultural influence of Japanese and Germans were low here in the U.S., whereas the influence of the U.K. was high. Also recall the prelude to the Iraqi war, how people were boycotting French and German products. If the game was actually built with this rationalization in mind, that would be really cool!

Rob
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Well I answered my own question. Actually frogboy did. It's in the Encylopedia -> How Sector Influence Works, which I read but has since been updated w/ ver 1.01 and 1.03 stuff, which I will stick here for reader convenience:

So basically my thought was right, that b/c I went to war my influence dropped dramatically. Cool!

Changes in GalCiv 1.01:

Your civilization's influence is also affected by your diplomatic relations. The idea being, if everyone hates you, that's going to put a damper on your ability to culturally influence everyone. Similarly, if they've never heard of you, that's going to have the same impact. So when you meet civilizations, your influence will take a big jump. And as your relations improve, so too does your influence. But warfare will bring a damper to it.

Also, if you are at war with a major civilization, you will not be able to win via cultural influence. You'll have to come to peace terms.

Changes in GalCiv 1.03:

Starbases were proving to bee too powerful as a way to spread your civilization. So now we take into account how far away your nearest star system is too. Before, it was "whichever is closest". Now it is "whichever is closest" averaged in with how far your nearest star is. And we made it expensive to colonize crummy star systems to where it costs large amounts of maintenance to maintain life support. $5 per turn for less than class 15 and 10 X the government level if the quality is less than 10 (so a federation colonizing a class 4 planet to extend their civilization's influence would be paying 5 + 10X4 per month = 45 per month).

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
What should be made clear in the guide is that there are two types of influence.

1): UP Votes
2): Sector Influence (F8 report)

The influence you can trade through diplomacy are of the first kind, whereas sector ownership and planet defections are determined by the later. I think Brad's article on influence focuses on sector influence too. Perhaps we should have the UP votes specifically named "UP Votes" and add a small line in the F5 UP window that influence determines how many votes you accumulate over time.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
ahhh trouble is, those crummy systems are still expensive even after you terriform em to good ones. There's a glitch there I noticed. But the change made it harder to get cultural on someone.
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
'The influence you can trade through diplomacy are of the first kind, whereas sector ownership and planet defections are determined by the later. I think Brad's article on influence focuses on sector influence too. Perhaps we should have the UP votes specifically named "UP Votes" and add a small line in the F5 UP window that influence determines how many votes you accumulate over time.'

The two are basically the same. #2 is how many of #1 you get each turn.

Sector influence is determined by the accumulation of influence, not the hoarding of it, as you say.

~SDC~