Capturing planets with influence

Destabalization is often countered by propaganda, I think culture flipping might be too.

As for the whole why doesn't the new race flip one... I'd like to know that too.

How doy you check the influence of a minor? I can check for major but for minor?

All minor races have a high starting Loyalty (possibly except some of the 'associate' races, the minors designed to be capable of winning the game). Otherwise new minors appearing in the middle of a race's territory would often culture flip three turns after they appear.

~SDC~

I'm not sure, but I don't think destabilisation helps you to culture flip enemy worlds. I think it just lowers morale, which can cause them to declare independence and join the I-League, at which point they won't ever flip - like most minors, I-League have high loyalty (the factor that prevents flipping).
The Drengin world probably had a lot of propaganda type improvements. The only way to overcome it is with more influence. A bunch of culture boosting starbases will usually do the trick - at least, they used to.

~SDC~

How about Terror Stars with culture palace. Are they still culture bombs, or has that been removed?

They are still present. Just not as powerful as in earlier versions of the game.

So, wait. It's IMPOSSIBLE to culture flip a minor? Guess I've been wasting money and time on trying to get the Scottlingas to flip. Oh well. Guess I'll build some anti-matter missiles and just take 'em over.

Actually it is possible to flip a minor, its just much harder. You know you are getting close when the Skull and Crossbones icon appears(indicates the minor's system failed first culture resist check). At some point if you keep up the cultural pressure the system fails the second check and the system flips.

Hmm...well, I may get impatient and just attack them anyway. I'm still only at 53% of a cultural victory in my current game, though I've managed to flip a few planets, which was nice. I'm not that into the combat in this game (much like I'm not usually into combat in the Civ games), largely because it seems a little too simplified. I tend to be more of a builder/researcher anyway.

The problem is, the Scottlingas have a TON of influence. They're the second or third most influential group in the game (myself and the Yor being the first two, respectively). Since there's no way to destabilize a minor, this presents me with a problem.

I have a tough time flipping minors as well. With AP you need about 5-6 fully loaded culture starbases in the same sector to pull it off. That is if you have a lot of the influence mining resources and influence trade goods and Wonders.

I thought you were limited to 3 bases per sector?

Starbases are limited to the proximity of each other. You can place as many starbases that can fit in one sector as long as they are 3 parsecs apart. However, a starbase mining a resource does not apply to this rule.

terror stars loaded up on culture can exist next to each other or stacked like ships.

I like the 3 terror stars fleet that roams by occupied sectors. FLIP FLIP FLIP how sweet it is.

Minors can be flipped but it usually is hard to do. I find that minor AIs that come into the game late are almost impossible to flip.

My strategy when a minor AI appears is to attack with 1 transport as soon as possible.

So... you want influence?

First you need to have explored alot of the map!
Then go to "Planet List" and click "Star List" cycle through to influence and see which star has the most influence and colonize it (even if its PQ 1!!!) and just build starbases with influence enhancement moduels. YOU WILL NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've changed my mind about this. I think it is possible to speed up the flipping process this way - some link between morale and loyalty - though it's not clear how strong the effect is.

It rarely happens. I had a minor start in the same sector as Sol my last game and it eventualy flipped to me near the end of the game. It was the 1st time a minor has ever culture flipped to me but I never tried it just happened.

Seems now culture flipping is for the major AI's and the human is greatly handicapped.

There are some Minors that flip really easily, the Alexians(sp?) come to mind.
There's at least one other faction as easy. Others are just about impossible.
I am sure I read a long thread about it with much more detailed info on these boards - admittedly many months ago; it may no longer be present.

cheers, -P.

~SDC~

It is poossible to flip minors. However they start out with high loyalty boni. And some have very, very high loyalty boni. So it takes a long time to flip them. Usually it's more effective, game wise, to rape them for their tech then invade rather than flip. Because the majors rarely wait, so if you wait you'll lose the planet.

It's a judgement call as to when you actually invade, of course.

I like to flip minors but it is very very hard to do.

I like their planets because the PQ is usually good and they build everything.

When the time is right I will usually hang an invasion force outside of the minors planet. I will then bribe an AI to attack them and once the minor has been beat down, invade.

Then I will transfer as many colonists as I can to that new planet. The benefit is to keep my population exploding across all my planets.

Repeat until all minors are gone.

Another nice benefit to this, my influence and culture increase nicely with captured minor planets.

My last game was very interesting. I played Tiny/RARE/Tight/MASO on AP v1.50 with all AI on.

My starting sector had earth with PQ19 and 3 other major AI and 1 minor AI. The next sector had a PQ15 planet which I grabbed.

I was really unsure what would happen with this game because I never had a start with more than 1 AI in my home sector and now I had 4 of them.

Turned out that this was the easiest game I have played ever. I started by bribing the 3 majors in my home sector to war. After a very short time I flipped all majors within 3 turns of each other and then the minor AI flipped about 5 turns later.

By the time the minor flipped every sector was blue and the other major AIs flipped to me in about 20 - 30 turns.


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