Depends on how you play I guess, my campaigns tend to have large battlefleets of capital ships jumping from planet to planet, then fortifying the captured planet before moving on.

Also, another important consideration: if a system is fully inundated by your culture, nobody else can colonize it. so even if an attack fleet gets in and takes out the colony, they can't drop a forward outpost for a while, until your culture recedes, so you don't have to worry about enemy reinforcements being manufactured within your frontier.

Ok, I guess I didn't watch long enough, to see Allegiance rise...

Will more Media/Culture structures cause Allegiance to rise more? Or is it a max 10% in the system its in, regardless of how many?

:edit:

Wait a minute. Trading Ports and Refineries give a lot more than 10% to income and extraction. And I'm moving forward too fast to bother with overwhelming enemy planets near mine with culture. So, even given I missed all those points, they still don't seem useful - IF I'm moving forward fast through use of arms. Humans might sneak in and snatch planets, but if the AI does it, it's rare... I'd rather just set up defenses (and kill his ships) rather than try to prevent him from being able to make a colony. The AI rarely sneaks into the soft underbelly (although there often are exposed points as one advances - they're the places you make defenses ASAP).

1 culture structure can usually spread to all teh nieghbouring systems and beyond if there is no culture there. So 4 logisitic for a 10% bonus to all the surrounding systems > trade/refinery spam.

As for more, it just increase your culture/s for the planet so it spreads faster, not sure about farther.

I picked up the game the same time my brother and my buddy did. My wife left us alone and we lan'd for about 24 hours strait. Later I started my first real AI game on a extra large random galaxy with a mix of hard and normal AI.

Just my luck I was sandwiched in with 2 of the hard AI's from the begining. My TEC strat is to planet grab; tech up key early economy; build up fleet and planets; tech up key military with the ocasional economy tech (ignoring culture the whole time); continue focus on military/economy tech while holding ground until I have enough momentum to start expanding again.

This game I was getting hosed by a pair of allied comps that kept me constantly on the defense. It was only when I started teching up my culture that I finaly broke the deadlock and have begun to tip the scales in my favor. There are little lines that creep out along the phase jump lanes that represent your culture spreading. 1-2 broadcasters on every border planet with 1 every 2-3 planets in your core will keep the AI from being able to get a foothold in your system and make it difficult for them to manage settlements on any border with you. The boost to my economy gave me a firm lead in this area and allowed me to affor the constant assaults on my systems. Not worried about loosing planets (they cant colonize due to culture) I was able to combine my defensive fleets and instead of jumping around and defending everywhere - I could take on (and take out) one fleet at a time and only have to rebuild 1 planet instead of 3.

My computer Ally is a sneaky SOB. He sees me attack a planet and 'helps me' by sending a fleet of umpteen colinization frigates and 2 light frigates. Guess who is able to colonize first every time? Well now this alliance has helped me out so I dont want to just attack and take the planets I deserve. So I stuck about 6 broadcasters on nearby planet and 1 by 1, I out 'civilized' my ally and took control of the planet enjoying the small fortune he already spent on defense platforms.

Think of them as a small but sure way to support your economy, support your ability to expand, and defend against invasion. Not super powerful in any way by itself... but still very useful to tip the scales in your favor.

Culture is, as noted, a subtle effect but that does not mean insignificant. It means very little on small maps where the game is over quickly but if you get on very large maps it has a tremendious impact, especially the economic swing (negative to opponents, positive to you/allies).

As far as the AI, even GC2's AI was a bit weak when it came out, give them time to continue tweaking it, you'll have a hard fight on your hands soon.

Planets in friendly culture gain allegiance up to their max. Being in friendly culture increases allegiance max by 10%. Planets in enemy culture lose allegiance until they die and become uninhabited. Planets in no culture neither gain nor lose allegiance. That's basically it as far as culture is concerned. If you can push your culture over the enemy's planets, then it is only a matter of time before those colonies die. If this happens to you, you'd better start spamming more broadcast centers fast, or your colonies will die. It's basically a form of poison gas that seeps forth from your broadcast centers.

i was under the impression that a culture building can never extend its influence more than 2 grav wells distance. that is to say the culture it generates will reach the grave well it is built in, all adjacent grav wells, and all grav wells adjacent to those grav wells. this still results in the possibility of a single broadcast center covering a large number of grav wells (i've had up to a dozen covered by a single broadcast center) depending on the layout of the star system. you definitely can't just keep piling on more and more culture buildings at one location and have it reach every grav well in the system though.

Also, if you play as Advent, they have an upgrade in the harmony section that raises the max allieence by 10% after two upgrades. It's awsome

Another benefit of friendly culture that you guys forgot to mention is that it prevents enemy culture from choking the allegiance of your worlds. It sucks when your frontline worlds are producing 20% of the income that they should be because the AI built broadcast centers and you didn't.

Sort of. If you are advent and are pumping out culture with the maximum upgrades and nobody has any capital ships or culture of their own, then yes. I got every single planet off someone, bar one asteroid, last online game, without the deliverance engine. If you wait until you've researched almost all the culture upgrades and THEN start a culture fight (you'd be surprised how many people will only start up their own culture when someone else does it first), destroy all your trade/labs/factories on your terran and desert planets, and then build nothing but temples of communion, it's possible you could flip a good few planets from someone before they could even get started fighting back. But in an even match the capital ships would probably give someone enough time to at least fend you off from around the edges, if they tied up all their cap ships for culture defence.

The culture war will only flip planets to neutral and give a player a 'enemy culture is too strong to colonise here' message rather than turn the colony into one of yours.

Ah, I see what you're saying, Talt. Raising it quickly can be important.

Also another thing to note is that although culture (and Allure of the Unity) "only" raise allegiance by a fixed 10%, this 10% is actually a 40% increase for planets that was at 25% allegiance (35/25=1.4). So on a huge map, you might see more like a 20% increase in total tax and resource income, not 10%. It can be huge... on huge maps.

to those who think it can only spread to x gravwells, it works more like this:
ok, take a straw and blow through it
now take about 10 straws and blow through them all at once
the air still goes through the 10 straws, but the pressure is a lot less than blowing through one straw, the straws represent the jump lanes

culture is just the same, with similar dynamics
it can spread forever, but it gets lower "pressure" at every grav well and trade lane that it uses
this results in slower spread after each grav well, but im fairly sure that it never will actually stop, just become incredibly easy to be pushed back by the enemy (just one capships would probably be enough to push it back after 2 or 3 grav wells)

well thats my two cents anyway.... off to take the ohio graduation test at school *ew, so easy its boring*