Influence borders » Forum Post by Franticfox

I am not sure if you still have a question.

The way I conceptualize the influence border is that it is a depiction of where the mathematical boundary of my net influence drops below "detectable" - where detectable is the threshold value recognized by the game for influence victory purposes. Remember that influence drops, IIRC, by the inverse square law from its point source and that the point source value is what population, capitals, modules, etc. are all affecting.

Thus, an influence base will be all you need to extend into unoccupied space (where ever such is), but you may need the capital to overpower a zone around occupied planets. So, you may want the capital where the other race planets are, which could be in the center or in some cluster near a corner. It depends.

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Yes, I understand what you are saying, the best way to use a cultural capital is to push back the influence of the others by putting it in a crowded position. My question is a little theoritical in this way but it is still that kinda: If I simply want to raise my number of votes in the Council what would be the better choise for the capital: the center or the borderline of the map (that way I'd get a half-circle) or is it the same?

As you said the center position would be better because the influence is area-based so I would have more vote at the center position but is it true?

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If there are no other influence sources, then only map edges would make the area different and - since it is an inverse square function - the circle size would not grow all that much no matter what the source. That is, an influence base in empty space would have a circle a little larger in area than a planet with 6 pop, but not all that much, especially with a few modules. I've always felt that the real difference was in the influence strengths closer to the point source.

IOW, putting the political capital in crowded space may not increase your votes all that much, but it might well decrease the votes of the other races there, making the true delta larger than might be expected.

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Quoting LTjim,

reply 3

IOW, putting the political capital in crowded space may not increase your votes all that much, but it might well decrease the votes of the other races there, making the true delta larger than might be expected.

Basically you solved my problem with this answer (Why didn't I think about that? ) but still... (and this will be nit-picking )

I didnt draw the situation clearly before. So again: You are all alone in the big universe - or the other species are far far away. You want to raise your influence in the Council. You have two planets, exact the same but one of them in an empty area somwhere in the center and the other is near to the edge of the map and that way its influence area is not circle-formed. The question is: The growth in the number of votes will be the same if I build a Political Capital? Yes will be expected, but if the influence are calculated pure based on area coverage, the answer is no. So, which one?

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From my reading of the wiki, I think the UP votes are based on a score and not an area.

The score would involve an equation with population, race bonuses, planetary improvements, Restaurant of Eternity, and researched levels of influence and government. I would guess influence star bases would be added, but i am not sure.

I could be mistaken. Hopefully, someone else will chime in.

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Yepp. Thank you for the help anyway!

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Tag for later, gotta leave work now. Will help in about 6 hours

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Does the influence border affect the influence or reverse? A practical example: I have two equal planets, one in the corner of the starmap and one in the center position. What if I build a cultural capital in one of them? Will I have the same infulence growth?

Influence affects the border. The border is calculated by summing the influence contributions of all planets and starbases (yours and others), accounting for the fall off of value over distance. The border is drawn where your influence from all sources is 1 (when bordering empty space) or when the value of your influence at that point is greater than the next highest civ (where the ratio of your influence compared to theirs crosses the 1 threshold).

Remember that influence drops, IIRC, by the inverse square law from its point source and that the point source value is what population, capitals, modules, etc. are all affecting.

Not true. Influence from starbases drops as an inverse square function. Influence from planets is closer to linear with distance (I still haven't tested this out thoroughly, but there is a marked difference between the two).

Yes, I understand what you are saying, the best way to use a cultural capital is to push back the influence of the others by putting it in a crowded position. My question is a little theoritical in this way but it is still that kinda: If I simply want to raise my number of votes in the Council what would be the better choise for the capital: the center or the borderline of the map (that way I'd get a half-circle) or is it the same?

For the purposes of flipping planets and influence victory, the crouded area is better, assuming there are enemy planets nearby. For straight UP vote production, identical planets will have identical results. Given a choice, put it on your most populated planet to get the highest number of votes, and the greatest effect on flipping and victory. Influence production scales directly with population on a per-planet basis.

IOW, putting the political capital in crowded space may not increase your votes all that much, but it might well decrease the votes of the other races there, making the true delta larger than might be expected.

It does not work this way. Votes are created based on their influence output, regardless of how much territory they own around their planets.

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Influence production scales directly with population on a per-planet basis. (...) Votes are created based on their influence output. (...) The border is calculated by summing the influence contributions of all planets and starbases.

That was an enlightening answer, thank you very much!

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Fair enough. I, too, am grateful for the corrections/clarifications.

I do have a follow-up question, though. Is the area of a base's influence - where its "border" would be drawn - the same no matter how strong the base's influence is?

That is, if one creates an influence starbase in empty space, it generates an area within a circular border. If one adds modules, does the area increase? It seems not, so I have presumed that the border is where "zero" influence is and the base is where max influence is, making the drop from max to zero always taking place over the same radius. Is that correct?

On a related point, if one player has zero racial influence bonuses etc. and creates a basic influence star base, and another player creates the same star base but has, say, 100% in total influence bonuses from racial, tech, etc. bonuses, do the two star bases have the same influence? That is, I know the planets of the two races would have different influence values (with identical populations), but I do not know if that same delta applies to influence star bases. Does it?

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

That is, if one creates an influence starbase in empty space, it generates an area within a circular border. If one adds modules, does the area increase? It seems not, so I have presumed that the border is where "zero" influence is and the base is where max influence is, making the drop from max to zero always taking place over the same radius. Is that correct?

No, the total area inside your border will increase when you add modules. At absurdly high influence levels, one base can mark more than a sector by itself. The constructor's ring of effect means nothing to influence bases.

On a related point, if one player has zero racial influence bonuses etc. and creates a basic influence star base, and another player creates the same star base but has, say, 100% in total influence bonuses from racial, tech, etc. bonuses, do the two star bases have the same influence? That is, I know the planets of the two races would have different influence values (with identical populations), but I do not know if that same delta applies to influence star bases. Does it?

The two bases will not be the same. I haven't exhaustively tested to make sure it's the same increase as planets get, but there is a noticable increase.

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Fair enough - I will keep looking for that in future games.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Holy crap, I finally started to do some in depth work on influence mechanics, and whoever designed this was nuts. Tonight's test run involved a large rare planet game on cakewalk, and influence output on planets barely increases with population at all (barely doubled going from 250M to 15B people, and much of that was due to other unidentified factors.) Of course, this was also intentionally avoiding getting any sort of influence bonuses (tech, random events, etc) but still. I *might* be able to work the decay with distance for border calculations with what I got out of it, though.

There are two other WTF factors I now need to look into. One is "influence from planet" which appeared on two of about 15 planets with no particular reasoning behind it. It was a huge factor, too - 24 and 25 IP on those planets just from this, while my test planet never exceeded 16 total. One was my homeworld, but the second didn't appear to be any different from any of the other planets.

There also seems to be a background influence generated by the rest of your empire that adds to each planet's output. No telling what it's linked to; it can't be tech or racial bonuses (never had any of either) but it could be anything from total population to number of planets. This increased slightly during the game with no obvious reason why.

The scary part is, I *know* influence output scales with population, so now I need to find out why this test gave results completely inconsistent with every game I've played before. Right now I'm thinking that influence ability bonus might increase the population modifier, rather than multiplying the influence output after the population modifier was applied.

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Are you saying that the influence chart of planet pop and distance in the wikia is hosed?

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

Post a link for it, I've never even looked at it

Chances are, it is functionally correct without being technically correct; in normal circumstances you wouldn't be able to spot the inconsistencies.

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Here:

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Influence_Equations

(I cannot seem to get the link right. The last part "underlined Equations" does not show up, but is what you need to get to the page)

It takes you to a bar chart that looks something like:

Population (billions) - 0 - 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 - 12-16-19-23-26-30- ?

Planetary Influence -- 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 -10-11-12

The info there could be wrong, of course. That is the same location from which I drew the (erroneous?) comment that influence starbases grow in strength but not in size.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

Quoting WIllythemailboy,

reply 13

...There also seems to be a background influence generated by the rest of your empire that adds to each planet's output. No telling what it's linked to; it can't be tech or racial bonuses (never had any of either) but it could be anything from total population to number of planets. This increased slightly during the game with no obvious reason why. ...

I'm lazy and tend to rely on you real numbers guys for questions like Franticfox and LTJim have asked here. But I've always had a lurking suspicion that there was more going on in influence land than the general pop drives influence output thing, especially in regard to influence bases helping increase that 'background influence' you might be near to explaining to the rest of us. I'm guessing you didn't build any inf bases for this test series, but what you've said here made me think of my old questions.

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WIllythemailboy

Join Date 03/2006

+70

I couldn't find the chart you referred to, but what you posted is close enough to my test game - meaning individual planet population is basically irrelevant in calculating influence. I opened my last suicidal game for testing (lucky thing that this patch didn't ruin saves) and population accounts for 6 IP on a 15b pop planet. The problem is, that planet was generating 153 IP, with no major bonus influence (4 stock markets, no bonus tiles). Destroying a single stock market and its 5% bonus was roughly equivalent to killing off 2b population in terms of IP production.

When you look at a planet screen, you can hover above the Influence line to see what factors are contributing. I'll hopefully be testing more over this weekend.

Planet - no clue what this is, 7 points out of 153

Population - what we're discusing, 6/153

Buildings and misc - don't know what the misc is, but it's far higher than the buildings were, 29/153

Influence ability - seems to scale linearly with your influence ability, should be pretty easy to define, 25/153 - and that's with a 369% influence ability

Empire influence - I'm hoping this scales linearly with total empire population, should be easy to test, 86/153 - with a population of just over 7 trillion

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Go to the wikia, mouse onto Main Categories, click on Category Index, then click on Influence. That should take you here:

https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Influence

From that page, toggle "Influence Equations".

That should get you to the page I mentioned.

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Hey, thank you guys that you've started a more serious digging in the influence mechanism, I'm still a newbie and I categorised to find out the exact working of influence calculating too big for me. A built-in Galcivilopedia would be a great help anyway.

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