spheresus

Join Date 03/2006

Easier to flip then to conquer?

I'm wondering if it's easier to flip planets by using influence then conquering them. In my last game I decided to find out for my self. I researched all the influence techs and it was pretty quick. It seems that once you get past the hump the rest of the tech in that tree is only like 10 to 12 weeks away (Normal tech speed). I traded for weapons tech to catch up some against the other AI's in terms of weaponry.

I started by flipping planets that are already in my space but not owned by me. I had the 2nd strongest military out of the 2 AI's on Masochist. I flipped the 1st planet which belonged to the Torians my military was stronger then the Torians and I think that's why they didn't protest that I stole a planet of theirs. It only took 2 influence bases with a combined influence of near 500. Those bases where super easy to build since one of my industrial planets can crank out a constructer once per week. I think I could have continued with this strategy till all but the Torian HW is left with out a shot fired, but instead I wanted to take back all the planets in my space and the Iconians had 2 planets in my space, so I went after them too. The moment I built my 2nd influence base around the Iconian planet they declared war on me and my relations with them was good and I had all my trade routes to their HW. It was my death nail because they had fleets of Frigates againts my smaller fleets of heavy fighters with inferior weapons to boot.

I think the key here is that it's much safer to flip planets from a civilization who's military is weaker then yours. Then you can enlarge your Empire and build more ships and do more research till your military is stronger then your rival and begin to flip his planets.

I say it may be better to flip planets as researching the influence techs doesnt take longer then researching the ground assualt techs. Flipping has the obvious benefits by not damaging planet quality, not destroying improvements, not reducing populations from both the conquered planet and your planets from drafting soldiers and I think it's easier puping out constructers then waiting for your population to rebuild itself from troops being sent to war especially when having large population planets is difficult. The draw back is that you can't take a enemy HW but that may not be important as eseentially you took away their Empires and they pose no threat.

Has any one have sucess with flipping planets rather then invading them?

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I do that a lot. I always play as the Terrans, and I've gotten used to the boost in diplomacy, which helps. This strategy probably wouldn't work for the Yor or the Drengin.

I love it when it works. I had one game (it was a DL game a while back) where I flipped almost all the worlds the Korx had. By the time I went to war they had a bunch of resource starbases but only a few worlds. I crunched the bases in a few weeks and picked off the remaining planets.

It can be a powerful strategy but it is expensive in terms of production, research and time. I have played games that didn't give me time to build up the huge number of constructors this can take. That can be tricky.

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I think it's generally easier to conquer. Let's start with smaller planets (i.e. lower populations, maybe lower planet quality): you hardly lose any soldiers conquering it. If the planet flipped to you, it would start out with, say, 750m population, and you would lose 250m soldiers conquering it. That would set you back 1B population total, plus the cost of a transport. Compared vs. the cost of an influence starbase + all those turns you have to wait patiently for it to flip, I'd say conquering is easier.

Now, let's move up to larger planets: you would much rather flip those than conquer them, since you're getting ~10B population for free by flipping it, plus those planets tend to have lower morale and so are easier to flip. But they're also exerting much larger influence. It's harder to get 4X influence on those guys to make them even eligible for flipping. In my experience, they most definitely can be flipped, but a lot of the time the game is already practically won by that time anyway. And what's the easiest way to flip them? Take over all the low-class planets surrounding it. That's most easily done by conquering.

I find it easiest just to research my soldiering way up and conquer the big planets head-on. Then let the little planets flip over time. Once you take out all of the other guy's big planets, you have effectively chopped off his head. The little planets pose very little threat to you. So let them flip--what's the rush?

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I used to play "influence conquest" all the time when I was "role playing" a good race and didn't want to declare war on another good or neutral race. I would actually turn off influence victory and true to flip all the opposing civs without conquering their planets. Anyway, this was before the 1.6 beta made the AIs more sensitive to influence. Nonetheless, the previous posters observations rang true: it helped to have a superior military, to frighten the AIs into leaving you alone despite your "alarming influence" and building and upgrading all the influence star bases you would need got pretty expensive and boring. Not to mention waiting for all those planets to flip. There was many a time I was tempted to just load up a few transports and be done with it.
But you can flip an entire civ if you're patient enough.

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At game setup I choose 70% population growth and try to keep my morale at 100% (to double my population growth). As a result I have lots of troops for invading. I find it easier to conquer. Along the way I flip several planets as my influence grows while my population grows and my # of planets grow.

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Compared vs. the cost of an influence starbase + all those turns you have to wait patiently for it to flip, I'd say conquering is easier.

You're right. The only flaw in your logic is that you have to go to war.

With a high diplomatic ability you can flip worlds without going to war, which means you need no military. I have played games where I was the weakest military power but was able to expand through influence, to the point where my tiny military was enough to give the cou-de-grace to other races. No military means more money to spend on all kinds of things.

As I said, I play Terran. That means I have gotten used to those racial abilities. I haven't played as anyone else yet, so I haven't turned into a blood-thirsty star-killer. Yet.

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Another drawback to the flipping strategy is if you play against a race with a high Loyalty Bonus. The Yor are also immune or almost immune to flipping IIRC.

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And don't forget the popular MCC, which many people report noticing a real hinderance to their flipping ability. So you can invade faster, steal tech while doing, AND get an extra 100% to your economy. Oh, and by the way, military victories will score you 5 times more points than influence victories?? And the advantages of flipping are.... a few free extra people? "Roleplaying"? You can stay at peace (probably the best one). In short, not much.

The choice is clear.

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For me, its easier to flip. You just need one influence star base maxed out per star system, and the planets slowly become yours.

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To be fair, I prioritized some questionable techs over Concepts of Malice in my most recent game just because I wanted a few planets near my homeworld to flip to my side first before I lease-bought the MCC, since it was still early enough in the game that my population wasn't that large, thus the extra population looked more useful than a few turns of +100% economy. But yes, as a primary strategy, invasion >> flipping (and in retrospect, I probably misplayed in the example I gave; at least I should have researched Concepts of Malice and partially constructed the MCC to reduce the lease price).

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Usually what I do with MCC is just buy it outright, jack the taxes way up, and just sit out a couple turns with treasury <-500bc. The lease price is so much more expensive, I consider sitting out a couple turns cheaper. On smaller maps, though, it makes more sense not to rush-buy it--just build it straight up.

On the subject of flipping w/ MCC, I know for a fact I have flipped a few worlds even with MCC built--and they were Yor worlds, at that. Someone here mentioned it might be because people tend to jack up their taxes and lower their approval after they build MCC; that might be what's causing it. But it might be some really high undocumented loyalty bonus. I need to test that some more.

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In my previous experience I flipped a planet from the Torians really quikcly. Once my 2nd influence bas was up with a combined total of nearly 500 influence points the planet flipped the next turn. Granted it was a medium size world.

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Mumblefratz

Join Date 07/2006

+139

On the subject of flipping w/ MCC, I know for a fact I have flipped a few worlds even with MCC built--and they were Yor worlds, at that. Someone here mentioned it might be because people tend to jack up their taxes and lower their approval after they build MCC; that might be what's causing it.

That's interesting. I use the MCC religiously and have never once flipped a planet after building it, and this is with influence ratios on the order of ten or even higher, but I'm not sure if planets are supposed to flip to you faster if the ratio is higher. I also generally keep my approval levels high after building the MCC. AFAIK your approval level or for that matter the target planets approval level doesn't matter in regards to flipping a planet, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

As far as ease of flipping versus conquering I don't really know. Certainly if it requires building out a lot of influence SB's then perhaps not, but I've known folks that regularly flip bunches of planets in a game without building influence SB's. They do max out influence resource mining though.

From the point of view of efficiency flipping has always been attractive to me even though I've seldom accomplished much of it. I mean conquering planets without having to deplete your population and getting a profitable colony full of people right from the start is very effective.

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The Yor supposedly have a Loyalty bonus, but I have never had much of a problem flipping their planets. Also, I haven't had any problems the few times I have gone Evil and built the MCC.

Apart from that, I would say that whether invasion or conversion is better is a matter of what you are good at and like doing. There are a few too many variables in GCII's space combat for me to enjoy it, and then there is the whole "annihilate and replace the entire planet's population" thing when you invade. I really enjoy the concept of culturally converting planets, I like the challenge of maintaining diplomacy while you do so, and I prefer building to blowing stuff up, at least in this type of game.

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I use the MCC religiously and have never once flipped a planet after building it

Yeah, I see other vetran players say this all the time. Something is up, and I don't know what it is. I still flip after I build the MCC all the time, in fact more than I want to.

I'm really quite sure that my score goes up for every planet I take by invasion, vs. flipping (Run a simple test - disable influence victory, put everything to rare on a tiny map with one enemy. If you flip all of their worlds, you still get a military victory, so you take vicotry type out as a factor for score. Now, invade the very few worlds the enemy has (usally about 3 to 5) or flip them all, both get you a military victory. Notice a difference in your score??

). Often I'm playing for score.

Because of this, if I'm playing for score, I ALWAYS leave researching the cultural line last. I try and build the MCC to prevent flipping, make sure I never build a restaurant of eternity, and if tech trading is on, I gift every last influence tech to my opponents I can.

Still, even after I build the MCC, I STILL have to worry about constantly accidentally flipping enemy worlds. I hate it. IMO, IF the MCC actually stopped enemy worlds from flipping, it would actually be even more of an advantage.

I really wish I knew what I was doing differently vs. the people that report they can't flip after the MCC. I want to shamelessly copy their playstyle so I can raise my score per world, by not ever flipping. Maybe its a bug. I wish we could figure it out.

Edit - and to be more clear, play a non MV game, and go both ways on the EXACT same map. Just save it at the outset. Then go ahead and flip the enemy. Then reload from start, play the same way, and conquer the enemy. You have eliminated almost every other variable this way.

Honestly, I wish there was an option to turn influence flipping off.

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