Should captured planets retain all their influence?

I've yet to win a game via conquest so far - every time I go heavy military, I end up winning through influence instead, because from capturing planets with massive amounts of influence I end up going straight past the 76% victory requirement before finishing off the last couple of empires.

I know I could just turn off the influence victory, but I think that this situation is hinting at a gameplay issue: that capturing a planet immediately converts all of that planet's influence to your own. Is that really good for gameplay, or indeed does it even make sense thematically? I mean, you've just conquered a planet by force, destroyed large amounts of the population, infrastructure and maybe even scorched the terrain making it unusable. But all of the influence the planet had generated for its original owner is somehow transferred to you, 100% intact? And so, suddenly, not only does the target empire have massively less influence on the galaxy, but the conquering empire has gained what they lost, zero-sum - a double whammy for the balance of the war.

Would it not be better, in both gameplay and theme, to have a planet's influence reset, or at least heavily deteriorate, upon capture? Influence generation would still exist based on the buildings that survived, etc, but it would have to start from scratch, leaving it vulnerable to enemy influence (an approximation of some lingering rebellious population) and generally being less immediately useful for expanding your borders.

Thoughts?

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so sort of like how civ 5 makes you build courthouse (i think) on a captured city before you can effectively take advantage of the city. (a very good mechanic imo.)

yea i agree should be something to prevent them from being immediately but i think more than influence should be affected. you just dismantled the government, military and hostilely took control of everything makes perfect sense that there is alot unrest and the planet should be vulnerable for a bit. due to implementing the new government and stabilizing the planet. (things surrounding the invasion feature i feel have much less depth compared to other parts of the game, which is unfortunate.

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Yep, good idea, Cerzi. There should be some rebellion on any invaded planet (unless that planet had 0% morale and everybody's just really, really buzzed to see you), dependant on the pre-existing morale. The easiest way to show this is a hit to influence, but it's also option to have a Colony Event - "Rebels have taken over Factories on recently captured Drenga X, what do you want us to do?" kind of thing.

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Maiden666

Join Date 12/2008

+62

In GC2 being at war (with anybody) disabled the possibility of winning through influence. One had to cross past the marker (75% IRRC), make peace with everybody, and then collect 10 turns with both conditions positively fullfilled. So basically if EmpireX doesn't want EmpireY to win via this way, they still can declare war and delay this victory until the military conflict has passed, and that gave the player the option to artifically delay such a victory and/or to use this to distort an opponent's easy way to win.

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

I don't mind that conquered planets retain their influence. As far as I understand it, it's a safety measure to prevent the planets from simply flipping back to their original owner on the next turn.

What I'd really like to see, however, is that Culture Victory isn't possible when you're at war, like in the previous games. Without that CV is simply too easy, because you don't have to balance spreading your influence (which pisses the other races off) and keeping the other races happy (so they don't declare war on you).

Barring that, at least give me a notification once the 10 turn timer starts, so I can turn the CV off, if I don't want to win that way.

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