New player, confused by influence?

[MyUrp1]

Hello all, I just started playing this game, and I'm a bit confused by influence. I've sent out science ships to explore a large range of stars around my homeworld, and I set up a few outposts, and...

...now I'm sort of stuck. My influence accumulates at a pitiful 3 per month, and I've colonized all the habitable worlds in range of my homeworld, and... well, there's just not much to do while I wait for more influence to accumulate.

Am I missing something? Is there something else I should be working on while I wait to be able to set up another outpost? Or should I just crank up the speed from the default so I'm not just twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to happen?

[HappySack]

Influence is a pretty precious and valuable resource at the start of the game but as expanding slows down you start to get too much of it.

Depending on your ethics you can increase your influence gain or make expanding your territory cheaper (with authoritarian and xenophobe respectively), the domination tradition helps with the former (but is an otherwise weak tradition for non-slavers) and expansion tradition also helps with the latter.

The single best way to increase your influence generation is to expand your fleet to increase your power projection (and thus influence generation) and your ships can be completely empty for this to work (and you can retrofit them anytime if you need them to fight) but if you've met other empires then declaring a rival (preferably far away from you) is also a good way to gain more influence.

Lastly, first contacts are a good way to get chunks of it and if you play a friendly neighbourhood empire you can get even more from it.

[Kapika96]

You really need to be strategic when choosing which stars to take, go for choke points so you can block off large chunks of land (using closed borders too) that you can then take when you later have the influence. Also, snake towards any systems with habitable planets as a priority.

And yeah, speed up the game. I play on the x3 setting about 99% of the time.

[drh]

Influence is kind of hard to come by in large chunks, the main ways to get more are rivalries (and winning wars of humiliation) and power projection (mouse over your fleet cap, based on your empire size you need a certain amount of utilized fleet cap which scales against how much influence you earn). Be selective with what systems you claim, and don't sign too many treaties at the start (they all cost influence).

[Urza]

Influence is the one resource you cant just exponentially build more of.

Its set up to be a fairly linear limit on pretty much anything that requires it.

[MyUrp1]

So basically, start with the expansionist trait (somehow I did get that), build lots of ships, and accept that you're only going to be able to claim one star system every 1-2 years and plan accordingly.

Guess since I have the time I'll start building lots of ships to park over worlds I hope to claim later.

[VoiD]

Personally I don't like it, my first tradition pick is very often prosperity, as it's just better than anything else at every stage of the game, or supremacy, which makes it possible to rush down the capital of a neighboring faction GA nonscaling difficulty on first contact, expansion and discovery used to be no-brainers early on, but nowadays I don't even think they fit any builds at any stage of the game as there are better picks early on, and they are mostly useless mid-to-late game, plus they waste valuable slots since you can't just get all traditions anymore.

The only exception to those 2 starting traditions would be Synchronicity, which is kind of a must first pick for hiveminds just to get Instinctive Synchronization, then forget it exists and start filling up prosperity or supremacy as normal and fill out the rest of synchronicity later on.

As for expansion, aim at nearby systems with planets you can colonize early on and chokepoints to close your territory and keep the AI out of your future space, fill in the gaps over time.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by MyUrp1:

So basically, start with the expansionist trait (somehow I did get that), build lots of ships, and accept that you're only going to be able to claim one star system every 1-2 years and plan accordingly.

Guess since I have the time I'll start building lots of ships to park over worlds I hope to claim later.

No. You can claim several systems every year, if you do it right.

I'm guessing you're only claiming individual systems you're interested in, as opposed to claiming as you go, am I right? Claiming a system that is 2 jumps away from another system that already has an outpost has the same exact influence cost as claiming two systems that are 1 jump away (meaning you pay the same as if you'd claimed the system in the middle). You should claim as you go, not just hyper-focus on specific systems.

Furthermore, first contacts give you a ton of influence (50 or more, depending on a few factors). Assign your envoys to first contacts ASAP to get an early influence boost.

[ScreamCon]

Fanatic or normal militarist, national zeal civic, have rivalry with empire, Interstellar Dominion ascention, belligerent or supremacy diplomacy stance, Interstellar and or Galactic Campaigns technology, Expansionist Overtures Ruler agenda, Martial Alliance federation level 2, Khan's Throne relic.

All these reduce claim cost so the more bonuses above that you have, the easier claiming will be in war. If somehow you get it reduce to 0% cost claims are free. I'd say militarist is strong in boosting your fleet and making war more convenient as even neutral ending wars will be costly on territory to the defender.

At full swing this means you will be able to claim everything your ships are sitting in. Meaning the empire that didn't specialise in claim might be able to conquer 30% of an empire but only get 5% worth of claims managed. Since they for example might not be able to take the entire empire in time to game a conquer war of conquering entire empire.

[Big mean bunny]

You can get influence chunks by choosing the open arms option on the diplomacy event at the early game but you cant be a xenophobe for it to be an option. Every time your envoys complete a encounter event you get a nice chunk of influence that way.
You can also get events to buy influence from the culture enclave factions if you can discover them through exploration. You should also avoid deals with other states that aren't crucial to your survival. Every agreement chips away at your influence production so you need to secure your border claims before accepting those deals.

[C=OCl2]

Originally posted by Kapika96:

You really need to be strategic when choosing which stars to take, go for choke points so you can block off large chunks of land (using closed borders too) that you can then take when you later have the influence. Also, snake towards any systems with habitable planets as a priority.

And yeah, speed up the game. I play on the x3 setting about 99% of the time.

Using closed borders to gain choke points is great, but man doesnt it hack off other empires. Everytime i use that option i usually get some Hedgmonic Imperialist declaring war on me with a fleet size of around 1000.

[MyUrp1]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

No. You can claim several systems every year, if you do it right.

I'm guessing you're only claiming individual systems you're interested in, as opposed to claiming as you go, am I right? Claiming a system that is 2 jumps away from another system that already has an outpost has the same exact influence cost as claiming two systems that are 1 jump away (meaning you pay the same as if you'd claimed the system in the middle). You should claim as you go, not just hyper-focus on specific systems.

Yes, I've learned not to leapfrog, but it's still a cost of 75 to claim a system and 3 pts per month. That's 25 months per system. Other adjustments can boost this, but it's still going to be a slog of less than one system per year most of the time. I don't know how you're calculating several systems in only 12 months.

[Mob]

Go with xenophobe and it will be cheaper. Go with expansion tradition and it will be cheaper again.

At the start - explore to find planets -> then only take sectors that will get you to choke points and habitable planets. Leave the rest for later***mostly

You have enough time to go down the expansion tradition for influence reduction before you start taking any or many sectors if that is your preference.

[Sputnik]

A Xenophobe build might not be a good intro to new player. It encourages Ai aggression and discourages trade.

Otherwise, most builds just tolerate the low influence gain during the early game. This mechanic makes you plan very carefully just which systems you need to control. Eventually, your Influence gain improves, and can even pick up to 12-15 per month late game.

Meanwhile, when you can't build Wide build Tall.

[Orion Invictus]

Originally posted by MyUrp1:

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

No. You can claim several systems every year, if you do it right.

I'm guessing you're only claiming individual systems you're interested in, as opposed to claiming as you go, am I right? Claiming a system that is 2 jumps away from another system that already has an outpost has the same exact influence cost as claiming two systems that are 1 jump away (meaning you pay the same as if you'd claimed the system in the middle). You should claim as you go, not just hyper-focus on specific systems.

Yes, I've learned not to leapfrog, but it's still a cost of 75 to claim a system and 3 pts per month. That's 25 months per system. Other adjustments can boost this, but it's still going to be a slog of less than one system per year most of the time. I don't know how you're calculating several systems in only 12 months.

I'm taking into account the influence you get from establishing communications with new empires, which should be more than enough to rush toward choke points.

[Sputnik]

Originally posted by Orion Invictus:

Originally posted by MyUrp1:

Yes, I've learned not to leapfrog, but it's still a cost of 75 to claim a system and 3 pts per month. That's 25 months per system. Other adjustments can boost this, but it's still going to be a slog of less than one system per year most of the time. I don't know how you're calculating several systems in only 12 months.

I'm taking into account the influence you get from establishing communications with new empires, which should be more than enough to rush toward choke points.

Yeah influence farming by discovering other civilisations is great, and a good reason to get some units out exploring when you can.

And when you do, make sure you trade Communications with them if you can. This can really snowball a large chunk of mid-game influence, and uncover most of the map.