Influence victory tips (w/o war)

You need several things:

1) Massive fleet. Even if you don't want to use it, you need a fleet or the AI will attack you. Often many of them at once. Note that war is often not avoidable, but you can end them without overrunning an enemy. Fend them off for a dozen turns then sue for peace.

2) Diplomacy. The way to have civs not get pissed by your influence bases is to be allied with them, or do it commando-style. If you're allied with them, they won't complain no matter what you do. For the commando raid, build a couple dozen constructors, get them to a system near your border, build four maxed out bases touching the habitable planets and flip them in a couple turns (note this does not mean "have all the planets in the area of effect of the starbases", it means "build the base in the square next to the planets". Commando style flips the planets before the AI can get pissed about it, but it pretty much requires #3.

3) Assuming you are playing TA, be evil. The Mind Control Center was fixed to do what it was always intended to do; that is, instantly flip any planet that hits an influence ratio of 4. If you are not playing TA, DO NOT build the MCC - it actively prevents planet-flipping.

4) Get all influence mines in existance. Boost to you, denies same boost to others. Pretty straightforward, although getting a mine from someone can often be anything but straightforward if you aren't willing to destroy their base yourself.

There's a few other minor things to focus on, but those are the primary ones. Especially #3, I once flipped 40+ planets in the first turn after I built that. The following cascade of flipping took another 80+ in 10 turns and destroyed 2 or 3 civs entirely by influence.

Thanks Willy, that helps a ton.  Can't wait to try it out.  I'm glad folks 'round these parts are still willing to help new players. 

One more quick question if you'll humor me please:  When you say the planets flip, do they instantly turn into TA (or whomever) owned planets just as if you took them by force?

Thanks a bunch!

Nelson

Better.   Nobody dies, no PQ loss, and the only improvements destroyed are the ones you didn't research.

As a quick addendum to influence (and other) mines - Assign Rally points to strategic objectives (Mines and special projects owned by the other side - if he has the Restaurant of Eternity, you might as well flip that planet first - {G}) and some tactically positioned constructor fleets. I rarely pick fights with Minor Races, but when they fall it often opens up anywhere from two to five mines to be grabbed, and it's first come first served.

If nothing else, the Rally point reminds me that hey, that's right the Carinoids had that mine didn't they!

Jonnan

One other thing that's fun to do is to play with Super Diplomat and the Korath tech tree and place their Dark Influence building on influence tiles as well as any recently flipped planets.  Combined with the MCC, this influence bomb can't be stopped on a dense map.

I'm still a little foggy on how the whole planet flipping thing works.  I've done it a few times and it was totally exciting, but I'd like to understand the minimum amount of maxed out influence bases necessary to flip.  I keep reading about a magic number being 4, but I'm not sure if that means 4 times their influence or just 4 influence or what.  What you typically see is the planets IP followed by your IP in the parenthesis.  Example: 21.00IP (14.75).  So do I understand it correctly that by only having a number 4.0 in your parenthesis you start the dice roll that might land in your favor each turn?  And is there no benefit to having a greater number than the planet's own IP?  I could use some clarification.  Thanks!

Nelson

Yes, the number in parentheses is what we're talking about. That's the ratio of your influence to theirs at that spot. Technically, it's the ratio of the highest non-planet-owner's influence to that of the planet owner's, i.e if you're looking at one of your planets, that's the ratio of their influence to yours. Or if you're looking at a planet in someone else's territory, this the territory owner's influence over the planet owner's.

There is no discernable benefit to having this ratio much above 4. If there is a improved flip rate from higher influence, it's not statistically significant.