Influence - Hard Numbers?

Just a few Influence-related questions.

1. In the manual, we are told what things effect influence, but not exactly how, or in what proportion. Has anyone found actual formulas for this, and if so, what are they?

2. What is more important in influence generation, having a large population on a planet, or a small population with lots of Cultural Exchange Centers (CEC hereafter)? (Generally, I'd want a 14 pop planet deep in foreign territory, just so it has the soldiers to defend itself if invaded. However, if pop is more important than CECs, then one should go to the effort of dealing the morale problems on highly populated worlds.)

3. How often does your Influence spread? How much does a planet need to generate per turn to expand by 1 pc? { I can see it grow and shrink during play, but I'm not sure how much is needed to push the frontier 1 pc in my favor.}

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

1. I attempted this once, and gave up in frustration. There are so many interconnected factors involved it's too hard to isolate one variable to create a workable equasion. I'm sure with proper computer support and plentiful time someone could solve it, but I didn't have the resources available to devote to it.

2. In general, population trumps buildings. From what I saw in the failed attempt above, total civilization population also plays a substantial role in the influence generated by individual planets. I quit before I looked into whether this goes off absolute population or proportional population (eg. whether your empire pop being 1 trillion matters, or that you have half the total population, that sort of thing).

Getting 14 pop is generally a good endpoint. If you have a couple bonus tiles, or several morale mining bases, or significant passive bonuses from other sources (preferably all three of these) you can usually get to 20 before seeing real morale problems. This assumes a PQ 11+ planet for the high-quality planet bonus.

3. Short answer: No one can really tell you, as it will vary wildly based on the surrounding environment.

Long answer: see #1, although this part is easier to approximate than trying to solve the influence production per planet. You can treat each planet as a point source of influence based on its current influence production. The influence generated decreases with distance (roughly linearly, as far as I can tell) from the source generating it. Every planet (and starbase, see below) generates whatever influence it's going to so that turn, then the total influence on every space is totaled up. Your border is drawn at the point where your influence is greater than anyone else's on that particular space. When going into empty space, the border is drawn where the influence field drops to a certain value (presumed to be 1, never really tested).

All starbases except terror stars create their own influence, but most never grow much. Influence bases generate their own influence and the modules you stack on them boosts the BASE'S influence, not that of nearby planets. Unlike planet influence, starbase influence decreases with distance squared (again, not rigorously tested, but definitely non-linear). So when it comes to placing bases, the best place to put them is touching whatever you want influenced, whether defensively or offensively.

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Thanks for the answer: I knew it would be messy, but I didn't expect it to be this messy!

As regards Influence starbases, it appears Influence is recalculated every time a new module is added. In my current game, I'm having an influence war with the Iconians and the Korx are the victims. The I-base next to Korx at first did not have noticable effect, but once I added the +60 modules suddenly the border popped, then popped twice again when the next two modules were added that same turn. A similar effct occurred with another I-base near a Iconian frontier world.

Re: Population. Having played just prior to this game as the Iconians, I found it taxing to fill transports since their robot farms are +3 food at -3 bc/turn, thus a pop cap of 11 billion typically. I was trying to buy or steal regular Xeno Farm technologies, but it wasn't happening that game. So your above answer about what a good target struck me as right based on recent experiences, although I did not know the effect on influence.

Thanks again!

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