Influence at 99999.90 outside AI's territory

Hi all, I'm new to this game. I started a tiny galaxy with the AI at the lowest setting to learn how this game works.

I don't think I understand how influence works. If you look at the screenshot, I am playing as blue. As you'll see I have 3 planets in this area, yet the area seems to belong to the yellow AI. The yellow AI's closest planet is very far away (comparitively). Why doesn't the area belong to me?

Also, worse, 2 of my mining bases are on the verge of defecting. The skull and bones icon tells me that the influence of that yellow AI is 99999.90 times as high as mine! Further, the 2 mining bases aren't even within the yellow AI's territory!

Maybe I'm making a very dumb mistake, but I do have experience with Civilization 3 and 4 and have also played Rome Total War and Medieval 2 Total War. So, I'm not new to the genre.
Could someone please explain to me what is happening?

PS
The screenshot got automatically resized to 1024x768 poor quality. The influence stats at the bottom of the screen have my faction at the very top (so about 4 times as high as the other factions).

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Let me start off in asking this: Did you just load the game and saw this?

In the onset of loading a game, lots of the influence bonuses aren't generated yet, so it's just going off of raw population or something ~shrugs~. Once it has to recalculate the influence, then things snap back to normal. If your answer to my question above was yes, then either ride it out for a few weeks, or build/destroy a star base.

If the answer is no...then we have more things to look at.

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Hi Loupdinour, thank you for replying.

No, I have been playing this in 2 sessions. The first session was turn 0 to turn 40-ish, and the second session was until here (turn 51). The red skull and bones icon just showed up the previous turn (I think), and now I stopped playing awaiting some help on what I'm doing wrong.

Is the best way to prevent the AI from taking over to decommision the mining bases and recapturing them? But, won't that lead me to the same problem as before?
Also, why are the 2 mining bases OUTSIDE yellow's sphere of influence affected, while the neighbouring mining base just INSIDE yellow's sphere of influence is unaffected?

Again, sorry if I don't understand the game mechanics... I'm new. I picked up this game because of all the rave reviews on gaming websites, so I really want to get to know this game.

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Well, barring the 'load influence bug' (which isn't a bug) I'm fairly at a loss for easy answers.

Who else is up there? I see another ZOC barrier to the right and can't see a color-change on the big map. That may be immaterial though.

The mines wanting to flip...perhaps they just updated from a time prior to this screen shot in which they were in the opponent's area.

Just for kicks, toss an influence star base up in that area. Send ~5 other constructors with it to jack it to the 100% bonus. That'll band-aid the flip issue.

Next thing to look at. The remaining Arcean planets...get a spy and just pick a planet of theirs to see the improvements that they have as well as the populations.

~10k more influence though is a insane number though. This may take a bug submission to help you out if placing a star base up there doesn't do anything...if you can tweak out the time to get one up there w/o a culture flip.

Lemme know the results of the planet snooping and what's up with that other ZOC.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Re: the planets - What is the population on the planets in Arcean territory? If the population is very low, they will not be generating much influence. At a guess, I'd say about a quarter of a billion people on each, less if you have a decent influence abilities.

Something is definitely wrong with your infuence map - there appears to be not one but two infuence borders on the far right. There seems to be a second empire using the same blue as the humans in that area, so your influence is not as strong as it appears. At the same time, the Arceans must have immense influence abilities or huge populations on their planets (or both) to generate the border they have

You're seeing the 9999.90 on your mining bases because they do not generate influence of their own at all. Since that number is the ratio of your influence to Arcean influence at that point, the absurdly large number is the result of the game attemping to divide by zero. The two nearer asteroids don't have this problem, as they are just inside the range at where the nearest human planet's influence diminishes to zero. Hence no dividing by zero, so no 10k influence ratio.

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Ok guys, thanks for the info.

I checked the population, and my 3 planets combined are 5b, while the yellow's closest planet is 11b.
My planets are 3, 5, and 5 grid squares away, while the yellow's planet is 18 grid squares away. So, I guess it means distance doesn't play as much of a role as I expected it would.

I'll decommission the mines, and will rebuild them later when my influence has improved (I presume that if I attack a mining base that counts as a declaration of war).

Thanks for the info.

BTW
You're both talking about ~10k, but it's actually ~100k

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BTW
You're both talking about ~10k, but it's actually ~100k

Even so, 10k would be an obscene number.

Don't destroy those mining bases. They'll flip back to you eventually. The distance they are from your opponent, they'll at best give 1 production point each to the end planet. Penny candy in comparison to what it'll hold for you once you get it back. Time spent on upgrading those bases will be lost and that time cannot be decreased in any way.

I only destroy mining bases when I know I won't be holding the territory any year soon. Scorched Earth policy. Since you'll be holding that area soon/again I wouldn't blow all the upgrade/build time.

I'm still wondering about that zone of control line though. Run off a list of your opponent's names and the race you are playing please.

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I've noticed that this happens with minor races quite often, them having 999999 influence on their planet. I haven't seen it with major races.

Doesn't seem to affect them at all. Just somethin weird that's happening.

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Minor races create no influence and cannot be flipped by influence. That's why they get that same influence ratio that you see on an asteroid mining base.

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Ok guys, I'm getting the hang of this game now. I've started building Influence Starbases. Needless to say, those mining bases where back in my hands in no time.

The only thing I still have problems with are the 3 sliders which determine how many percent of the population you put to military/social/research. I don't understand why this is a global setting, after which you have a cumbersome setting per planet to fine-tune things (in a very limited way). I think this is not at all transparant and seriously deminishes my feel for what is going on with the resources.

One last thing... the more I play, the more I see this game as Civilization 4 with different graphics. Maybe when I start playing at higher levels the differences will become clear.

Again, thanks for helping me along.

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The only thing I still have problems with are the 3 sliders which determine how many percent of the population you put to military/social/research. I don't understand why this is a global setting, after which you have a cumbersome setting per planet to fine-tune things (in a very limited way). I think this is not at all transparant and seriously deminishes my feel for what is going on with the resources.

It seems that you are not specializing your planets.

I'm not sure what your question is specifically. But here's a run down. (Examples of course)

You have 100 billion people

AND spending is set to 100 Percent

at 40/20/40 Social/Military/Research

then, you have 40 billion people working in your empire's assorted social programs, 20 billion in assorted Military building programs, and 40 billion people working your research labs.

IF you set spending to 50 percent, then you have 20 billion is social programs, 10 billion in military programs and 20 billion working your labs.

The method is global because your fine tuning per planet is done by what you build on those planets. For instance, you should be specializing your planets and a research-specialized-planet will satisfy your fine-tuning wishes. Further, you can emphasize production per planet, which is more helpful than one would assume. Finally, if a planet is production-specced and it has nothing to build in the social queu, then that allotted spending is spilled into the military building on a planet-by-planet basis. If nothing is being built there either, then the money is sent back into your coffers.

P.S. That pic you posted with the mining bases about to flip is totally out of whack. Those should not be flipping if they are not in any sphere-of-influence, period. In the future though, you may want to make sure that 2 races are not the same color, as this causes some difficulty managing large empires.

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