80% of AI-controlled planet tiles full of embassies :(

This is killing the feel of the game for me. No wonder the AI is uncapable of upgrading its planets as it's probably constantly destroying its infrastructure to build influence buildings.

That's an AI bug, and you should submit it as such. You're not going to be able to mod your way out of the problem without damaging the game.

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That's an AI bug, and you should submit it as such. You're not going to be able to mod your way out of the problem without damaging the game.

Well in 90% of the cases I have run into they NEED those 10 tiles of embassies to stave off the 20+ influence I am putting on them. And try buying a planet deep in enemy territory and see how many Embassies/Cultural Centers YOU need to counteract the 20 influence. Especially with low population.

Population offsets Influence by providing it's own. But with low pop you NEED Embassies to counteract. And even them sometimes you need high pop AND embassies.

So I don't THINK that's a bug

But I could be wrong.

But yeah it forces the AI to either have 10 tiles of Approvals or Embassies and no room to recover. Just pure "defense" against the Influence.

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I would like to make influence basically non-existent in my games or at least nerf it to where it is barelly significanr,what would be the best approach?

And I think influence due to population is hardcoded. You could mod Embassies in PlanetImprovements.xml to provide MORE Influence bonus. Thus the AI would need to build way less to block enemy influence. But then again it could swamp you with it by building a couple of these "uber" embassies. *Shrug*

Hope that helps

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Influence makes the game fun for me as I don't like games that force me to have to battle with ships to win every game.

I have found the same but only on planets that were doing that to counter my influence of planets and stations. I have seen AI opponents counter a rebellion by buying mulitiple empassies.

If you have a bigger military and are assimilating planets then the AI has little choice on how to fight you so they build embassies as thats all they have got and it also forces you to have to rebuild the planets for your needs. If you try that without a military or a weak military you find they declare war on you.

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What else can it do with those tiles when it has enough BC flow to buy all it needs?

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Holy deja vu batman... seems we just had this discussion. Not to be harsh but at times I wish people would use the search feature on the forums

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or play on huge maps with scattered star systems. the less huddled up the planets are the less important influence is.

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bah the forum ate my 1st reply,anyways here are the magic words:

" (PlacementLimit)2(/PlacementLimit) "

(reformated tags due to forums grrrr...)

This little jewel inserted into planetimprovements.xml at the embassy and its upgrade "cultural exchange" is capping the embassies at 2 per planet. I also cut in half all influence from buildings/projects/star bases and replaced some of it with a bit of additional income to compensate for tourism income loss and make it worth building it.

Rebellions and planets switching side doesnt happen nearly as often anymore except with planets deep into another race territory ,no more crazy fast cultural border invasion either,it's still possible,just much harder.

The reason i feel i need something like this is that cultural assaults are too much of a free lunch ,it's just too easy. There should be some sort of worsening of relations with the target race as well as others of the same alignment when a planet switches sides,there should even be a small chance of starting a war (a real war with fleets and guns) when that happens imo.

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ya, I think overall the influence-idea is pretty cool, but if you play an isolationistic race (for instance like the Romulan Empire of Star Trek) you dont allow any foreign influence, nor do you spread your culture to other worlds through any means beside conquest and espionage.

so imo there should be a way to become completely immune to enemy influence (at the cost of your influence and the cash generated by it), for instance through another form of government.

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Only research influence tech up to and including the tech level of your most advanced opponent. That should keep things fairly balanced for the entire game, and free up valuable time to research weapons, etc.

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so imo there should be a way to become completely immune to enemy influence (at the cost of your influence and the cash generated by it), for instance through another form of government.

Why? That's not what this game is. This game isn't, "Make up whatever sci-fi race you want and play as them." This game is "Galactic Civilizations 2". The game is what it is, and it has the mechanics that it has.

You can choose to ignore your influence and still be successful at the game. But you can't just turn off a fundamental game mechanic just because you don't happen to like it.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to have influence defense buildings or starbases (that increases the ratio of influence that a planet needs to flip). Or perhaps the AI should be smarter about how to defend against influence (like sometimes just attacking the starbase(s), etc).

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The real problem that stems from this Cultural Overbuild, imo, is the fact that all of the spaces occupied by those culture centers are spaces that are not (or are no longer) being used for research, production, or economics.

In all of my games, I have found that sometime around the middle of the game, the AI races begin to go progressively passive, dropping farther and farther behind in research and the other categories. (Yes, this is before I start to exterm... I mean, liberate them all.)

I think these culture centers are the reason - the AI factions build so damn many of these things that they can no longer compete in the other areas. And this is in games where I do everything in my power to keep my influence low (no influence mining, no influence starbases, no embassies).

Once the Cultural Overbuild starts, it's like the AI factions have given up. Half the time, they just let their gigantic stacks of single ships sit around in one spot while I zip around and mop up their planets. They are no longer capable of researching new weapons or producing starships because all of their tiles are occupied by these stupid influence structures. It's frustrating to get that far, only to meet less and less resistance as time goes on.

I would like to see culture buildings changed so that only one can be built per planet, and have it generate influence based on the planet's Influence and Morale ratings. Embassies could add the two and multiply by their rating, culture centers could multiply all three ratings. Or something.

I know the AI feels the need to compensate for influence factors, but this slowly kills its ability to compete in all other areas. With some planets, the assault is like taking a Greek ruin - half the tiles are culture centers, the other half are empty. If the AI would just respond more forcefully to cultural threats (like I do), it wouldn't need to cripple itself to stay in the game.

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I got little bit differnt problem. Being annoyed by constant ship battles decided to go for cultural victory in my second game and pumped influence up. Something like an hour later and 15+ max out influence starbases I'd got 1 planet from Thalans. Overall rate of less than 10% defection ratio with nice evil brainwashing wonder in place. Tired, attacked and got a bunch of planets with nearly all tiles filled with morale boosters.

It kinda work now. In first Gal Civ it was ridicously easy at later stages to pump your influence in one sector to swap whole chunks of galaxy. And it went progressively. Well, Diplo victory is still possible for those too lasy to kill every single planet.

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I would like to see culture buildings changed so that only one can be built per planet, and have it generate influence based on the planet's Influence and Morale ratings. Embassies could add the two and multiply by their rating, culture centers could multiply all three ratings. Or something.

Like I said, it would be better to just have a way of defending against influence takeover without having to take up a lot of tiles.

That, combined with the AI not being nearly as afraid of influence takeover as it seems to be, would solve things. Influence buildings should be used to project influence over a long range; they should not be used to defend against influence takeover.

But this entire conversation needs to go into the Game Talk forum, not the modding forum.

Tired, attacked and got a bunch of planets with nearly all tiles filled with morale boosters.

The ultimate problem is that you choked their civilization to death. They were building all those embassies, so they could be doing research or other infrastructure.

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But this entire conversation needs to go into the Game Talk forum, not the modding forum

Why not here? You could make a mod that limits influence buildings to 1 per planet and see if that improves things...there is a tag for that in the xml file...or just remove the influence buildings totally so they can't be built at all and see what happens. I like the ability to mod the game into something better without having to wait on the developers to make up their mind what would make a game challenging. i just wish there was more access to the game, sometimes my mods feel more like workarounds. Like modding x10 hps to all ships to marginalize first strike instead of doing what I really want and making combat simultaneous.

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Why not here? You could make a mod that limits influence buildings to 1 per planet and see if that improves things

Can you really? Because I'm pretty sure that there's no other building that fits the "one-per-planet" mold you're looking for, so it's entirely possible that the developers never coded such a building type.

And why not here? Becuase that's not how the problem in question needs to be fixed. Preventing the AI from doing something stupid by making it impossible isn't a way to fix the problem; particularly when it makes impossible other things that are not stupid (building multiple embassies on a planet to turn a nearby world). The way to fix the problem is to have the AI repaired so that it is no longer doing stupid things.

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And why not here? Becuase that's not how the problem in question needs to be fixed.

The original post wasnt made to discuss anything,although everyone was and is still more than welcome to do so.

I asked for advice to change the game to fit my vision( aka to mod it and make it "better",the word better here is strictly relative and is only so in the eye of the beholder) .My version of more fun cg2 game involves butchering influence, at least the way it is currently implemented..That isn't to say that others should agree,i am sure you will find many other gamers that love the game just the way it is now.

Quote: "Preventing the AI from doing something stupid by making it impossible isn't a way to fix the problem; particularly when it makes impossible other things that are not stupid (building multiple embassies on a planet to turn a nearby world)."

well...more to the point: we cant agree on what's good and what's bad,we cant even agree on what's stupid and what's not lol. I dont see a planet full of embassies for the purpose of taking over a foreign planet as "smart" ,i see that as dull, boring and very unrealistic,this is my opinion,no offense intended.

Also,It bugs me that an influence attack doesnt appear to have any kind of risk and negative consequence to it,as if an empire wouldnt mind loosing its most strategic assets to a foreign power just because the loss did not involve guns.

The devs might think their influence model is great,or maybe they agree that it could use some improvement ,i dont know and it doesnt matter really, players can and should mod the game to fit their needs without having to wait for an official patch.

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i have play loads of huge maps and i have found about 12

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What about changing every races Loyalty to 100, like the Yor. Wouldn't that fix the influence problem?

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Can you really? Because I'm pretty sure that there's no other building that fits the "one-per-planet" mold you're looking for, so it's entirely possible that the developers never coded such a building type.

Um....Starport?
There are more, but that should be obvious.
The code specifically, had you looked is.
{PlacementLimit}1{/PlacementLimit}

Aside from that, I like the idea of the Loyalty bonus to all civs. Set high enough it would completely negate the possibility of using influence to flip a world, my only question is, would the ai recognize this and accept the change to the gameplay or would it continue (now futilely) to build influence starbases and improvements.

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