help understanding how to win with infulence strategies.

Influence victories are for those of us who are too lazy to use transports. In order to be succesful with influence, you will need to dominate militarily, so it is kindof a defacto military victory anyway.

Influence victory is a bit harder than military conquest, since you will need to have a strong military power to keep the other empires from attacking you while you flip their planets (this doesn't mean you need ships that can fight their fleets easily, just that you need a higher military rating so other empires are afraid of declaring war on you).

The effect of influence starbases decrease over distance, so the best thing to do is set them up right near enemy planets.

hmmmm, well just don't include the drengin empire in your game then.... since you will have a hard time maintaining a mathimatical military dominance against their super ability.

I have to found that the influence victory is too easy. I have turned the option off so I could follow other victory paths. As soon as you control 66% of the map, you win.

If you are serious about winning thru influence, research all Diplomacy, Trade, and Influence techs as quickly as possible. Your high Diplomacy will help keep other races from declaring war and your high Influence will flip their planets. Build lots of Cultural Exchange Centers and enough ships to hold off the inevitable attacks. You don't necessarily need to invade anyone, but Invasion techs help you resist their attempts at invading you. Build the Diplomatic Translator, Galactic Showcase and any other Specials I am forgetting to really boost your influence.

Good Luck.

Influence victories are very easy on small and tiny maps because a few planets can generate enough influence to cover a large part of the map with your sphere of influence, with 3 civ and you, when you flip one civ, or conquer them, it's practically over unless they get rescued by a mega event.

I don't like the victory that that much. On larger maps it is very time consuming. If I go for an influence victory, which I used to do a few times, I wipe out all but one or two civilizations, which I use as puppets, just to prevent a military conquest. I expand influence all over the map with starbases, colonies, tech etc, whatever improves my influence, continue untill enough of the map is covered to ensure victory. I did this with a gigantic map game once, and it took me 30 game years with the terrans, just to get enough influence.

I won an influence on a gigantic map without firing a shot. Just kept building inflence bases maxed out with all the treats, which seemed to scare everyone else away. Everytime one was completed I would simply build a newone at the edge ot the first ones sphere of influence. Long boring game. Still do the influence thing, but pick fights everynow and then just to spice it up.

That isn't really the case. I won my first game using influence in DA. In DA, you need to control at least 75% of all planets for 10 turns.

That makes it a little harder but this game is nevertheless highly military oriented.

guys i appreciate all the replys but I'm still unclear on how influence is affected by distance from the planets producing the influence

since starbases actually don't generate influence, they only increase influence from planets I would imagine distance might or might not have any affect?

i'm on my third game, and since i'm new i'm keeping the diffuculty normal or below. however, it's getting really annoying because the AI always likes me. I mean, i can't fight anybody because they're all friendly, and so i have to go for influence wins. Any reason why that happens?

Sorry, the distance does not really seem to matter. As long as your in space that you control. Just keep pushing your boundries.
When you colonize a planet in enemy held space you might want to consider speed building a influence base simply to prevent a revolution on your planet.

Yea,,, have another look at your difficulty setting, it needs to be bumped up a notch!

yeah. . . umm.. . . just not gonna talk about me and setting difficulty. . . apparently it's a hard thing to do or something. or maybe i can't tell the difference between cakewalk and normal, i dunno.

Hrmm well distance does seem to matter... I just did a test but I'm still way unclear on how influence works in terms of the numbers...

I got my espionage up so I could checkout this planet that is in my space according to the option of 'ownership' on the sector map.

It showed my ratio at around 2.0 in the planet info... I cranked out another starbase at my homeworld to about +100 influence and it had no impact whatsoever on the ratio on this planet!!! I have no idea why... If someone could explain that would be great

Then I crank out a starbase right next to this planet and put it up to about +50 influece and bamb! My ratios go up to 4.0+ on this AI planet...

What the heck I'm not understanding is how do I find out what affects these 'base' influence points and how far do they spread?

I mean lets say my home planet does 80 influence, is that 80 influence across the whole game or does it taper off and what affects the 'sphere' of influence?

I have only been around here a short time and my experience is limited, but I believe that influence starbases only effect the area within their circle.

Before construction, the circle you see when you select your constructor represents the maximum area of effect of your future starbase. After construction, until you start installing influence modules, your new starbase will be just be a pretty face. I think.

As you add modules, you'll see your influence expand.

And be sure not to let the aliens get their hands (or whatever extremity applies) on any Starbucks or American Idol broadcasts.