How exactly does influence spread?

Bump.. no one know this? It's pretty vital information :p

Bump

I think that most people really don't know, I mean we can guess and I have a few theories. But because I don't know for certain I don't want to give miss information.

I am sorry to say, but when such an important mechanic (it's a victory condition!) is so obscure, it's really poor game design.

Well I can post how I think it works if you like, I'm pretty sure I'm correct but I don't know for sure.

I'll do my best I am not a math guy so I can't give you the formulas that drive it.

You start with your home world which has an influence bonus and a growth factor. Each planet you colonize adds to your influence.

You increase your influence by researching influence techs which opens up influence improvements that can be built on you planet. The basic influence improvement is the consulate. This should be built on every planet if you are interested in spreading your culture. It will eventually upgrade to an even stronger improvement as you research the techs.

The ideology tech also give you access to powerful influence improvements. Well, at least the beneficent choices do.

You can also build culture rings on any star base that doesn't have another type ring. For instance any star base that is only relic research can also have a culture ring. You can also build culture star bases at random or near the AI if you wish. One of the ideology choices make all you star bases generate culture regardless of their purpose.

Influence effects have been nerfed to the point that they are relatively weak imo. but you can still overcome the AI with culture on the smaller maps. You could probably do the same on an insane map but it would take at least 500-600 turns maybe a lot more. I haven't heard anyone claiming an influence victory on an insane map.

To try to be more specific to your questions,

It works for your entire empires ZOI.

There is a local effect for influence generators, but the strongest effect is the overall influence generated by all your colonies and star bases. When you get a home planet bonus which increases it's already strong influence you can actually see your influence expand. Later when you border other factions, if you have been growing influence you can see on nearly every turn how you are encroaching and encompassing them. The starbases will of sourse help but they are not necessary. If you played GCII, the cultural starbases were very powerful locally. Not so much in GCIII.

Every influence building helps and I try to have at least 1 on every planet. I seldom have a planet devoted exclusively to influence but I imagine it would be powerful but overall you need your influence spread far and wide. A planet with 10 influence producers is no better that 10 planets with one.

If you also post the source or how you tested it, sure Not really interested in how you intuitively think it works.. that's not useful -- we don't necessarily think like the game designer.

Edit: Thank you for the more detailed answer.. that's also pretty much how I would expect it to work, but it's really hard to be sure.

Fairies from the kingdom of mystical nonsense spread it, kinda like herpes, yep influence is basically space herpes.

I know Franco fx just replied but i had already starting typing before he posted it hehe xD. I wont edit what i wrote i cant be bothered. but this is how i think it works.. basically the same as Franco


So each Culture generator, whether its a Starbase or planet generates influence. So if it generates 1 per turn that is divided by 6 initially and evenly distributed around all surrounding hexs. the further out it goes the more it is divided. when a hex reaches 1 influence then the next turn it pushes out your border by 1 extra hex in that direction. Now im not sure exactly how it is further divided from that point on but im guessing its still divided evenly between all surrounding hexes in your domain. My guess is that how far it spreads out from the source is calculated on a per source bases. so in order to have a planet begin to push your outer boundary out. it itself would have had to contributed at-least 1 total to all hexs in-between itself and the outer most hex. Oh and of course if your influence in a hex is greater then 1, and also larger then the influence in the same tile as an opponent that is when you take it over.

So to basically answer your main question, depending on how far away or more importantly how strong your influence generation is going on a inner planet. It can in theory help keep back all surrounding borders from being pushed back. But because of the way its divided it is less effective when it comes to giving you extra hexs, and more useful to just give your main inner planets super high influence numbers surrounding them protecting them if for whatever reason your opponent take some of your outer planets and are attempting to influence your inner planets.


now there are many factors to consider like how much a planet generates and how wide your border is from the planet. But generally how I look at it is,

-Outer planets help more to push your boundaries and if your directing extra influence towards a planet you want to flip,
-while inner planets, even know they do contribute and over the course of a game can contribute alot. they are more used to bolster your already gained influence to make it harder for people to take them. Mostly because of the way its exponentially divides the further away it is.


Edit: As for testing it, if you hover your mouse over a hex for a second or two you can see the influence numbers. you can actually per turn if you like track and see how the influence numbers spreads out.

Quoting ShoGuL, reply 7

If you also post the source or how you tested it, sure Not really interested in how you intuitively think it works.. that's not useful -- we don't necessarily think like the game designer.

Nothing that I posted is intuitive, it is based on a lot of game play with an emphasis on influence.

It is not really obscure. If you are into the numbers, they are all there in the mouse overs. I'm really surprised that one of our numbers guys hasn't jumped in and provided detailed formulas

I posted that before I saw your post, so it was not a direct reply to yours or anything. But I would beg to differ, it kind of is obscure. The best example I can give is that I had two replies on how it works, and they directly contradict one another. 

This would indicate that it's fairly pointless to build a cultural starbase in the middle or back of your empire during the mid-game, since the influence will take hundreds of turns to reach your borders, much less the enemy. That's the opposit eof what Franco fx was saying.

Well I did say I was basically making an educated guess :/ I haven't tested for certain, maybe Franco is correct.

My understanding of the influence mechanics is that each of your influence generators (colonies and Culture Starbases, for the most part, but also other starbases if you have a certain Benevolent ideology trait) generate some amount of influence per turn. This influence per turn is accumulated on the generator and produces an influence bubble of radius

R = [total accumulated influence]^(4 / 7)

based on a constant defined in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML. Your overall zone of influence appears to be the union of these bubbles, and your influence in each tile is equal to the maximum influence reaching it from any nearby influence generator rather than the sum of all the influence reaching it from nearby generators. There is an influence falloff constant defined in GalCiv3GlobalDefs of -0.6, a target bell curve divisor of 3, and a minimum influence to claim a tile of 0.03. The tile claiming constant is probably how the game determines influence radius rounding, and the target bell curve divisor makes me think that influence levels are supposed to form a sort of bell curve around each influence generator.

If your influence bubble is competing with another faction's influence bubble, then the tiles go to whoever has the greater influence in the tile.

A small sample data set, taken starting several turns into the game:

Homeworld influence, influence 1 tile away, 2 tiles away, 3 tiles away, 4 tiles away, 5 tiles away, 6 tiles away. Influence bubble radius

• 16, 12.7, 6.4, 2, 0.4, 0.0, n/a. 5
• 17.2, 13.9, 7.4, 2.6, 0.6, 0.1, n/a. 5
• 18.4, 15.1, 8.4, 3.2, 0.8, 0.1, n/a. 5
• 19.6, 16.3, 9.5, 3.8, 1.1, 0.2, n/a. 5
• 20.8, 17.5, 10.5, 4.5, 1.4, 0.3, 0.0. 6

Colony influence, influence 1 tile away, 2 tiles away, 3 tiles away, 4 tiles away. Influence bubble radius

• 10, 6.8, 2.1, 0.3, n/a. 3
• 11.4, 8.2, 3.0, 0.5, 0.0. 4

When n/a is listed, the tile at that point was not inside the influence bubble. These points have an influence bubble of radius 5 for the first 4 data points and 6 for the last; the influence bubble radii approximately match the expected radius under the assumption that the bubble radius is equal to the fourth power of the seventh root of the accumulated influence at the generator, though a bit of rounding is required and the rounding is not standard rounding or banker's rounding. It can clearly be seen that you are not losing a constant amount of influence from one radius step to the next, and the influence generated at the source is not evenly distributed out to the tiles adjacent to it, nor is this the case for each step out. Instead, it appears that the influence values in each step are following a bell curve of some description, presumably one which is defined by the target bell curve divisor of 3 and possibly by the influence falloff constant of -0.6 (though it is clearly the case that this is not a straight multiplier for determining each ring's influence level from the previous ring's influence level, that this isn't a simple exponent for the decay, and that this is not a constant falloff from the center).

More data would be required to obtain a more accurate picture of the influence mechanics.