Incorrect Influence When Loading a Saved Game

For what it's worth, it's been that way since the original GC2: Dread Lords. I think the rationale is that the save file would be too large, and the save time too long, if all of the influence data was stored. So it's recalculated on the next turn.

What he said.

If you really need to (trying to planet flip, avoiding Yor territory, etc), any action that changes the influence map will cause it to recalculate before the turn runs. Build or upgrade an influence base, invade a planet, colonize, possibly something as small as buying an embassy will work (never tried this, but it should).

Since there's enough information in the save to recalculate correct influence, the load algorithm should do so right away and without player prompting

This isn't correct. AFAIK influence is not specifically recalculated on End Turn.

As Willy mentions influence is recalculated by any action that changes your or an AI's influence. Specifically the colonization or invasion of a planet, the building of any starbase or even just adding a module to an existing starbase. I'm not so sure about the building of an influence type building, but perhaps that as well.

The thing is that during most of the game when you hit End Turn it's almost inevitable that at least one AI will perform one of the above actions causing the influence to be recalculated. However as you get into the later game where perhaps you've eliminated all of the AI's except for one and you've also reduced that AI's planets and may even have killed all of his ships, then you'll find that influence is not recalculated after each turn. In fact I've gone many game years where the influence hasn't been recalculated at all.

As jmgarth mentioned, this has been an issue forever. Generally the biggest problem is that you may have parked some ships along with some transports well inside your area of influence only to find that they are the cause of an AI declaring war on you due to a reload.

Also whether it's your influence that is underestimated versus that of the AI's or vice versa is not always very clear.

For example in the Metaverse League each month we play a game with randomly selected settings and victory condition. To earn the most points you need to win in the proscribed manner while all victory conditions are enabled. Additionally there are bonus point for high scores and fast games (in reported game years). Unless the selected victory condition is an Influence win, it's necessary to avoid it.

To accomplish this it's standard to build influence starbases and gift them to an opponent so as not to win prematurely with the incorrect victory type. The problem is that because of this recalculate issue your influence versus that of the AI can vary wildly and the more influence starbases in the game the wider the variation. Also once you've hit the magic 75% influence threshold the 10 week countdown starts. Even if you can cause a recalculate that causes your influence to go below the 75% level you still get credit for a turn at 75%. The next time this occurs you only need 9 turns at 75% etc. until suddenly you're forced to win by influence. This can be very annoying.

That's exactly what I've been fighting with my MVL game this month. After gifting 14 decked out Influence SBs to the AI I still have a limited number of times I can reload the game. While I only hold 66% of the galaxy during normal gameplay, upon a reload it will show 90% or above for a turn.

One thing that seems to accentuate this problem is when you use a gifted influence SB to try and overcome the natural influence that your planets have within a particular area.

If possible it's best to create the influence SB's in a sector where you have no planets. That tends to keep the difference between "normal" influence levels and "reload" levels lower. The other thing is that you'll have less difference between the two values if you've gifted fewer SB's. For example if you were to destroy one of the SB's in the game where you have 66%/90% then you might have 75%/80%.

This in itself doesn't totally fix the problem but it does reduce it so that it doesn't appear as early in the game. However no matter how you squirm it does seem that the problem is inevitable so what I do in the late game is first off to reload as little as possible. I generally don't keep my PC on all the time but with a MVL game going I will leave it powered up so that I can avoid a few reloads. Anyway once the countdown starts happening it puts an overall limit to the game. There have been a few games that I've had to end before I was really ready but usually with careful management of reloads you can get everything done that you want to before the number of influence turns above 75% counts down from 10 to 0.

One other point is that even if it counts down to 0 if you end the game via another method during that same turn then the other method seems to take precedence over the influence win. Sometimes this can result in a race between the influence win and a Tech win for example.