Cultural Victory questions

from GalCiv2 Forums
OK I'm still a newbie to this game, and the genre in general really. Last 4X game I played was Civ I and I mainly picked this up because it reminded me of TradeWars 2002.

I've only played one game so far also, so please bear with me if I am missing something obvious.

I played a scenario (not campaign) game with all the defaults. Chose Terran against Drengin, Yor, Alteria?, Arcea and Toria.

The game went really well overall, I ended up completely dominating the economy early on and eventually won by diplomatic victory after wiping the next most powerful good race (Alteria), forging alliances with Arcea and Toria and then wiping out the Drengin and Yor (and they claim I don't have the warrior instinct, pshaw).

Really though, I wanted to win more peacefully. I wanted to win on influence but I guess I got impatient since I coveted some of the other race's planets and the influence strategy didn't seem to be working.

Soo.. with all that useless info out of the way, what's the best method to cultural victory? Does morale affect IP in any way? Does my approval rating affect IP? I had started building influence bases (by Yor, mistake) but they didn't have much effect that I could tell. I also built the restuarant of eternity or something like that and an embassy on a bonus tile, but again, I didn't see a big effect on influence. That world bordered the Yor btw, was that why it had little effect, because they are resistant to influence?

I think my next game I'll go for a much larger galaxy so things stretch out a bit. I got real impatient once I ran out of room to make planetary improvements.
9,012 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Morale and approval don't affect IP at all. Building influence starbases only works on worlds within their radius of effect (8 sectors). Building embassies and whatnot has a slow effect - you won't see an immediate jump in cultural influence as what it's doing is just increasing your rate of IP production a bit - it takes a while for that to make a difference when you have 100's of turns of IP built up already.

Oh, and the Yor do have a huge loyalty bonus, but that doesn't affect influence - rather it affects how likely the planet is to 'flip' to you if it's in your influence.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
The larger the map the more difficult the influence victory. Take a long time and a lot of wars in between (on challenging and above)

Influence is my favorite game. It is usually fairly easy to win on a small map if you do the planet rush and get most of the HQ worlds.

Build your economy
Grow your population
Stay strong militarily
Research the diplomatic and influence techs
Build the influence projects
Build embassies and the upgrades on all your planets
Rush for as many mining resources as possible (In addition to the mined resource they add to your map influence)

Late game you can build some influence starbases near the border planets or even right next to the AI's planet at lower difficulty. On a tiny or small map it shouldn't take more than 2 years (100 turns) max and 1 year is quite doable.
Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Another possible strategy for this type of victory would be to keep the others at war with each other. Bribe and supply to keep the wars going, like a cold war super power. Keep friendly or close relations with everyone. Maintain a decent military number to keep everyone honest.

As the AI's begin to surrender they will most likely surrender to you. Their friendly benefactor that has supported them from the beginning. Thus spreading your peaceful wisdom, culture and influence through out the galaxy.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ah ok, I didn't realize influence was something accrued over time. I should have, I could see it incrementing in the foriegn affairs screen.

So it sounds like influence victory and military might are not exclusive.

How hard is it to get a planet to "defect" to your side? Just get it inside your influence border? Can it be done without an influence starbase in close proximity?
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think you need to get it well within. With some espionage you can see your influence ratio on the planet in the middle bottom screen when you click on it - it needs to be at least 4.0 and probably more.

Note that you must not be at war with anyone to win an influence victory.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
GreenReaper, thanks for the detail.

ExaltedDruid, I like the way you think. That's exactly the kind of victory I was looking for.