Oh how I love this game!

No, alignment has nothing to do with your influence AFAIK.

Have fun.

Not really, as far as i can tell. Being at war will affect your ability to get your enemies to defect to your superior empire (they won't - you must be at peace). One tactic is to seize key worlds within a target empire, sue for peace, destabilize, and watch em flip. (Seizing the producing worlds lessens their ability to produce ships, and greater lowers their influence. Once you have the most influence over that sector, the AI worlds within can defect if their morale is low enough.). Kinda like what happens on the metaverse, heh.

Clarification here. They will defect to you given enough influence. Evil does give you worse relations with everyone good and push everyone to the cool or hostile side relations. Having many cool/hostile relations will dampen your influence.
The opposite is true of being good. You will have an improved relation with everyone good and have warm or friendly relations. This increases your influence.


So yes, being evil does indirectly lower your influence. Being good does indirectly increase your influence.

Edit: Typing too quickly
[Message Edited]

OK, thanks for the input. Is there anywhere I could find a strategy guide?

PDF:
http://www.orionsector.com/pages/galciv/downloads/The_Unofficial_GalCiv_Strategy_Guide_v1_0.pdf

the Word document is somewhere around there too.
it's at orionsector: http://www.orionsector.com

I think the credits go to Gibbie and Raleigh for the compilation.
[Message Edited]

Ah, a fellow Stars! player! Welcome

Thanks for the clarification Gengsta. I have seen what you have described. Generally I think in war it's harder to get the enemy AI to convert. But it is possible. I think the part about the alignment is true too, but seemingly if you are of simliiar alignment they will flip easier (because you'll have closer relations, i guess that is what you are saying).

Thank you all for your responses...I just d/l'd the strategy guide...and yep, I played stars! to death. One feature I miss is the reusable transports and bombers, but I'll gladly pass on those in exchange for robust AI and politics!

Don't forget "Reach for the star" on the old Amiga's
My folks hid the power cord from me when i got addicted to that little gem.

My favorite games from my Amiga days were 3 Stooges and Pirates! I still fire up my old Amiga 1000 once or twice a year to play these two gems Oh yeah, Lemmings, also

I didn't start playing strategy games until the Amiga was relegated to collector's only status.

The new version of Reach for the Stars is pretty neat too...demo crashes on me upon combat, unfortunetely...

~SDC~

Stay away from that child of evil!!! (the new reach for the stars) IMO always.

~SDC~