Suggestion: Write code that prevents AI from colonizing Mars

Isn't that what it should be anyway?

I think the idea of having an influence threshold the AI looks at before colonizing is good, this is really an edge case since most colonizing is done early on, but if you do not colonize mars, i can see how this would happen.

Thanks for the feedback. 

This became a huge issue in my current game with the special even that spawned random class 25 planets all over the map.  AI was colonizing everywhere and most were culture flipped by the dominate faction with in 10 turns.

This is not a bug, but it does make for some odd scenarios.

The first game i ever played, I captured a minor-faction planet very near the Altarian homeworld. As soon as the planet was mine, it insta-flipped to the Altarians. I tried recapturing it, and it insta-flipped again.

It's kinda cool that it creates an emergent system where you can't dive in and grab planets out of the opponent’s back pocket. On the other hand, the AI needs to know about this.

A a simple influence threshold is not enough because there are ways to combat the danger of culture flipping. For example there is the ideology trait that makes all planets immune to culture flip. Also it is possible to boost a planet in that regard with improvements and starbases that increase the resistance and influence. In order to be clever the AI needs to calculate if a planet in someone else influence zone can be kept from flipping with all available means, just like the human player does. What makes this really important is the fact that if done right, a planet colonized within a foreign influence zone can turn that area into your own zone of influence and eventually flip the older planets in the neighborhood.