Influence and system claims before a war. What am I doing wrong?

[retrocausality]

OK, I'm only on my fifth game of Stellaris, having just bought it in the Steam sale about a week ago.

I'm occupying half the map and have more money and resources than I can use. I want to take out my nearest competitor. I'm earning 6 influence per month so to place a claim on a single system that needs 120 influence takes 20 months.

At this stage, the game has slowed down to the point that at the fastest setting, a day takes about 2 seconds of real time, so a month takes about a minute.

At this rate, it means to place a claim on a single system involves me sitting doing nothing for 20 minutes of real time.

This nearest competitor has about 20 systems, which ranged from 30 influence up to 120.

Surely there's a better way to do this than sitting doing literally nothing ingame for between 5 and 20 minutes to lay claim to a system, then again for the next one, and again for the next one...

I've been playing for about 8 hours today and have achieved absolutely nothing in that whole time other than a number of regenerating research techs, one voluntary vasselisation of a single-system race (woo, nice surprise), and a couple of pirate kills.

Is this really the best way to do this?

I can't help thinking there's more to it than I'm getting.

Thanks in advance.

[Gaan Cathal]

Don't claim everything an enemy owns in order to defeat them in a single war. Slap down a bunch of claims, have a war, take the claims. Slap down a bunch of claims the other side of your empire, have a war, take those claims. Slap a bunch of claims on the first enemy. Rinse, repeat.

Probably takes about the same amount of time, but you're not sat around waiting for resources to regen for almost all your gametime.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

If you are stronger you should be able to simply vassialize them - tends to be faster.

[retrocausality]

Originally posted by Gaan Cathal:

Don't claim everything an enemy owns in order to defeat them in a single war. Slap down a bunch of claims, have a war, take the claims. Slap down a bunch of claims the other side of your empire, have a war, take those claims. Slap a bunch of claims on the first enemy. Rinse, repeat.

Probably takes about the same amount of time, but you're not sat around waiting for resources to regen for almost all your gametime.

Thanks for the reply.

On the other side there's a smallish non-hostile sitting directly in between me, my biggest opponent and an awakened empire that I don't want to deal with just yet. It's more convenient for me if the non-hostile stays there at the moment because of the strategic position of a few of his systems, so that just leaves this one race to attack at the moment.

[retrocausality]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

If you are stronger you should be able to simply vassialize them - tends to be faster.

Ah! And then if he says no, start a war with... is it the "conquer" option or something?

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by retrocausality:

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

If you are stronger you should be able to simply vassialize them - tends to be faster.

Ah! And then if he says no, start a war with... is it the "conquer" option or something?

No, "conquer" is for claims, "vassalize" is the one that becomes available in that case.

[retrocausality]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by retrocausality:

Ah! And then if he says no, start a war with... is it the "conquer" option or something?

No, "conquer" is for claims, "vassalize" is the one that becomes available in that case.

Oh ok, cool! Thanks for that!

[VeTilta]

You want a forced vassalization my dude, you can integrate them later.

[Nightmyre]

Honestly, in your situation, the simplest solution is to just go with the Total War casus belli. For non-annihilation empires, that means taking the Colossus ascension perk. Once you get that, you can just declare war and take systems without needing to claim them.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Honestly, in your situation, the simplest solution is to just go with the Total War casus belli. For non-annihilation empires, that means taking the Colossus ascension perk. Once you get that, you can just declare war and take systems without needing to claim them.

Just needs the DLC >.>

[Nightmyre]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by Nightmyre:

Honestly, in your situation, the simplest solution is to just go with the Total War casus belli. For non-annihilation empires, that means taking the Colossus ascension perk. Once you get that, you can just declare war and take systems without needing to claim them.

Just needs the DLC >.>

Fair enough, didn't notice that part of his post.

[retrocausality]

Incidentally, is 6 influence per month normal? Is there a way of increasing it _significantly_ or is it pretty much always around the 4 to 6 range?

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by retrocausality:

Incidentally, is 6 influence per month normal?

Yes.

Originally posted by retrocausality:

Is there a way of increasing it _significantly_

No. 6 is pretty significant increase from base 3 as it is.

[Mistfox]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by retrocausality:

Incidentally, is 6 influence per month normal?

Yes.

Originally posted by retrocausality:

Is there a way of increasing it _significantly_

No. 6 is pretty significant increase from base 3 as it is.

Yup, 6 is very good. Though the 120 influence per claim is a bit steep?
https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Warfare#Claims

Declare rivalry first will save you 20%, then the others should add up, 120 isn't normal unless you skipped all the tech and are claiming something deep in his territory.

[retrocausality]

Thanks all, interesting stuff.

[Botji]

The cost to make claims is fairly heavily based on distance as well, it might be worth either taking some neutral systems to get closer to them or just claim a single system in the first war and the next war the claims should be quite a lot cheaper to do... but you would then have to wait 10 years for the cease fire which might not be ideal.

I think the only good vanilla option is to vassalize and later integrate them if you really want to conquer large areas/everything. Been a while since I did it but im fairly sure that also costs influence and time to do.

Though if you have some DLCs.. like Apocalypse it does bring some QoL features for the late game, Colossus which opens up the Total War casus belli which is kinda designed for the exterminator empires to take entire empires in a single war without any influence cost. Im also fairly certain the unity ambition edicts(late game powerful edicts) came with the same DLC, one of which gives you +5 influence per month.