What advantages are there to using culture to get planets

Presumably, that you don't have to fight the enemy in their grav well to do it.

Culture is meant to be more of empire support rather than a means to achieve victory, though, so bombardment will always be preferred.

You can do it while your fleet is busy elsewhere. It forces your enemy to build cultural buildings to stop you, or park capital ships there. Races all also have some technology to give them a bonus while inside your culture, so if you spread your culture to an enemy world and then you invade, you're at an advantage.

It's not the strongest weapon in Sins (guns are), but Cultre can cause all kinds of problems for people if you use it well.

Culture also has the useful benefit of granting your ships bonuses.

And it's very satisfying to see the entire map covered in your colour

too true...too true. 

it seems that the advent have more of an edge culture-wise..........

Damn true.

Mainly it allows for faster conquering of the planets and the ability to on Really large maps playing as Advent with the culture cannon they have to kill the economy of your enemy from afar( fewer planets= Less cash flow). also on the larger maps it allows you to concentrate your conquering forces and not need to include the very expensive and useless in actual combat siege frigates needing only a colonizer and a fleet to mop up any lingering defenses.

Oh and sorry for the double post but Culture has never been much of an issue in any games I have played with fewer than 50-60 colonizable planets other than just stopping me or a team mate from colonizing until the caps can repel the culture.

This is true.  Each race has an advantage over the other races.  For the Advent it is the culture side...for the Vasari it is the phase side.

i reallly like the ability of the advent to see inside a system that your culture dominates, very usefull.

And their super-cultural-cannon does just that, it doesnt change allegiance directly... when shot, look at the lines turn to your color at an insane speed. Good to get recon information many systems away.

Yet that information is harder to take advantage of in those kinds of games when Vasari cannons can put out production lines and TEC can destroy an entire colony off the face of a planet.

Destroying production is more effective imho. Culture simply can't be used (effectively) in the mass number of games online.

Actually that's another benefit of culture. While your caps are waiting around reducing it to the point where the world can be colonized, they're wide open for a counterattack.