My understanding is that tourism income is a function of galaxy population and your percentage of influence in the galaxy. Building influence starbases would, therefore, increase your slice of the influence pie. Whether it is economically worthwhile depends on how much tourism income you’re getting. For instance, building a few influence bases in empty/unclaimed territory on a large or bigger map isn’t going to get you much more of a percentage of the influence pie. But, the population of the galaxy is bigger so there is a trade off. What I’d do is check to see what your current influence percent is, your tourism income, and then estimate how much more influence ‘territory’ you could gain by building a few influence bases in open territory. I’d suspect that on any map but small or lower that the investment probably doesn’t pay off (e.g. – you’re better off building a war ship, transport, improving a resource, or any number of other demands on your production ability).

There are few problems, though. You may have to defend the influence bases, which is a distraction and decreases their value. The AI does not like it when you build influence starbases next to their territory (influence poaching), so be prepared to suffer diplomatically – and then defend your starbases.

A better bet it so take ‘capital’ planets that have a huge influence bonus. Major race capitals and all minor races have a huge influence bonus, and taking a few of these will do wonders for your percentage of galaxy influence. This can also be a domino effect where nearby planets will start defecting, particularly if you have a few influence resources, Restaurant of Eternity (wonder that increases influence by 25% I think), and a few influence techs.

You can also try to Influence Flip the AI. If you have a poor ground invasion ability or are going for a non-aggressive win you can build and then maximize influence starbases adjacent to AI planets. The AI will rightly see this as an attack, and at mid level difficulty and higher will respond aggressively. Be prepared to defend your influence starbases. In general it is cheaper to just invade since it takes so many constructors to pull this off that it generally isn’t worth it (you could just as well build warships and transports). Note that it is impossible to influence flip a minor race (to my knowledge) and difficult to flip a capital system due to its high intrinsic influence ability.

Hydro

By the way, do you mean that any AI capital has the bonus influence? Or whatever planet is currently their capital? After all, when a capital is successfully taken, they move their capital to another planet; presumably, one cannot simply invade each new capital successively, getting an influence bonus from each one?

This method covers most my income, so don't worry.

I'm new too, don't worry bout that either... you'll fit in.

if you get a chance could you tell me how to join a metaverse galactic empire?

I just checked, and here is how Tourism income works.

Total tourism: 1bc for each 100B population of the galaxy. This total is divided between the races based on influence. This means that early in the game this will be minor, but later it may be more, and much more in galaxies with abundant planets.

As for capitals, the increased influence only is present on the races first capital or any minor races' first planet. If you check, you'll see a pretty high IP for capitals wrt other planets. Therefore, when you take a minor race or major race's capital you'll your influence replacing their. For me this means that minor races are always a priority. For instance, if there are a number of minor races in an area and you take them out then you will frequently start flipping major race's planets in the area - and there's nothing they can do about it short of war with you (and you'd better defend your conquests!). Likewise, I always want to take a major race's capital ASAP to ensure they won't surrender it to another AI. If they do then MY newly conquered planets may flip to the AI.

Hydro

Reasons for taking out minor races:
1) Prevent another race from getting them. Eventually they'll all get consumed, so why not be the one to get them first?
2) They generally have above-average planets. This is more important in small galaxies or in galaxies with rare planets. Real estate matters.
3) Good influence bump
4) Will only slightly impact your relations with others (you will get tagged with 'tendencey to conquer others')
5) Generally an easy kill since you have much more in the way of resources and can overwhelm them
6) They'll generaly have a tech you can get when you conquer them. Sometimes they'll have a really good one, too.
7) Prevent them from tech trading with others
8) Prevent them from giving please-don’t-kill-me bribes to other major AI races (especially the Drengin, who have extortion as part of their super ability)
9) By mid or late game their planets are nicely built out, and a nice addition to an empire.

Reasons for NOT killing minors:
1) Cash cow - selling tech to them can be lucrative, and they generally have a lot of $$. If you are a tech whore you want as many trading partners as possible, and minors count.
2) You can also demand $$ from them when you’re powerful and you’ll get a cut.
3) tech trading - harder to to since they drive a hard bargain
4) They’ll set up trade routes with you, so you get weekly cash
5) Because you're a nice guy...

Hmmm. I've had one or two races declare war citing my 'tendency to conquer others'. Relations are generally pretty shaky, and generally have a counter alignment. If the race is friendly or better my transgressions are overlooked. Usually 'tendency to conquer others’ shows up as a "-" in the relations screen, but only with those who are neutral or dislike me to start with. Taking out minors just fuels their distrust, I guess.

Of course, it could be that the AI bands together to take down the Big Boy. This happens in lots of TB games.

Oops - typo. Mea culpa. And I did rely on the manual.

I'm not sure what you mean on dividing up the tourism, though. Do you mean:

1) Race’s Tourism $$ = 1bc per 1B pop in galaxy * (# sectors controlled by race by influence) / (total sectors with racial influence)

or

2) Race’s tourism $$ = 1bc per 1B pop in galaxy * (# sectors controlled by race by influence) / (all sectors in galaxy)

Or something else?

The difference is in 1) all tourism $$ are divided up between the races and in 2) that some tourism $$ may not be allocated if there is space with no influence.

Or I could do some investigation myself since the math is likely not difficult.

Hydro

Reply #10
4) Will only slightly impact your relations with others (you will get tagged with 'tendencey to conquer others')


This impact is not slight at all. My last game I got hit with the "secret meeting" event because of this. Every major race left in the galaxy declared war on me. The game before that the Torians declared war on me the very turn I was about to win an influence victory, because I had conquered 2 minors much earlier.

I got labeled this in my 2nd game in DA without ever having conquered a single planet. The Drengins had declared war on me and after we made peace, refused to make peace ever again because they attacked my ally the Terrans (with whom I had economic and technological treaties) the very next turn. I honored my alliance with the Terrans and declared war against the Drengins the very next turn. While we were fighting, the Terrans got super-influence and I started having to pay rent so I built influence starbases next to my planets, resources, and mines to remedy the situation. Several turns later I got hit with the secret meeting (coincidently after I declared my ethics as neutral) and everybody except the Krynn declared war and wiped my soon to be sorry A** out   

Side Note: I have been experimenting with troop transports - had a DL game where I designed a 4K transport that only cost me 24bc maintenance. It gives me 4k pop boost toward influence and tourism when fully loaded. I thought tourism was an additional 1bc per 100M received from my pop? How is it divided then?

That seems very difficult to answer since influence is a number instead of a percentage. How would you know unless you were able to calculate every empire seperately. Minor civs don't get influence for their world - as far as I can tell, however, some build influence SBs. So how does one measure such?

Generally speaking, I fail to see why you would want to get tourism from unclaimed space with an influence starbase when you could be stealing tourism from another AI by claiming their space instead. You risk pissing them off, though. But almost always there is at least one AI near you whom you don't mind pissing off a little.

I like tourism the way it is, but I would like to see some 300% influence bonus tiles. A few randomly-placed influence-bomb planets would spice up the game.

I could see planting an influence starbase on unclaimed space if there were some red extreme colonization planets in the starbase's sphere. Then besides getting the tourism, you can start flipping the planets once the AI decides to colonize them. Now that makes sense.