So... Even more pressure on influence and envoys now?

[HFY]

Ok, so you have to build Potemkin fleets, but it's still incentivizing a militarist playstyle.

Yup to the first, nope to the second. Having a big fleet is not a "militarist playstyle". Using that fleet for conquest would be Militarist.

... what have you been playing that Influence is not useful to you after early expansion?

Any response to this? There seem to be a lot of Influence-sinks in the early-mid game, at least for how I play. What are you playing that you don't see those?

 

[heliostellar]

Any response to this? There seem to be a lot of Influence-sinks in the early-mid game, at least for how I play. What are you playing that you don't see those?

I think you're confusing me with Dona. I agree with you that there are plenty of uses for influence. I'm annoyed there aren't more ways to generate it...

 

[FleetMaster]

I'm influence starved in my current 3.7 game, but that's on me for going wider compared to tall.

If the system next door has 3 planets full of real estate (and, it did ) - then yeah, that's mine thanks, especially if I can grab it from Khan, and, I did.

I'm whipping most empires for tech but they have built space motorways and Tier-3 orbital rings while I still have muddy paths and just one Tier-2 ring - because my influence is going on expansion, making the large holy empire next door my Prospectorium, and my southern vassal a Bulwark to protect me from the so-polite but wanna-be Crisis machines.

Again, that's on me. I'm not sure I'd want the current influence system to change because it makes me make hard choices, and I enjoy that a lot.

 

[Thiend]

Personally I think influence was slightly too abundant when the rework hit and is far too scarce now. Either we need more ways to consistently (not RNG) get influence or some of these things shouldn't cost influence.

We can either divide by an idea of what influence is or of what influence does. If the former, if it's the diplomatic resource it can't also be in the cost for habitats because that makes no sense. There are obviously more examples but for brevity that's the only one we need. If the latter, if it's the expansion-in-general resource, things like espionage should not cost influence.

Influence being so divided in what it is for just means whatever costs influence and is less important isn't done at all.

 

[HFY]

I think you're confusing me with Dona. I agree with you that there are plenty of uses for influence. I'm annoyed there aren't more ways to generate it...

My bad!

And yeah, I'd like some risky or expensive ways to generate it -- ideally including some fast and non-sustainable ways, to make spike usage a painful choice instead of just a regret.

I'd also like a few more ways to dump Influence, perhaps some expensive Decisions or Edicts where I can dump ~500 influence mid-early if for some reason I manage to complete a bunch of First Contact envoy missions right when I run out of places to expand, before I have Orbital Rings / Ecus, and before the GC exists.

The early-mid dump would need to be just good enough that I don't feel stupid for taking it in comparison to feeling stupid for having 1000 banked and losing the excess every month.

 

[-Marauder-]

... you keep saying that. That doesn't make it right. Influence would make logical sense here. It's the resource used for anything diplomatic.

Except it's an additional sink for it, without any extra income. And a HUGE sink. For something that prior costed NONE of it whatsoever.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Yeah, you can "buy" Influence from the Artisan Troupe, but it's an RNG event. If they want to keep using this system though, they can't give us such a short leash from the beginning of the game.

For instance, if I have one ally with the standard set of treaties: Non-Aggression (-0.25) + Research (-0.25) + Commercial Pact (-0.25) + Migration Treaty (-0.25) + Defense Pact (-1.00), you are already burning through -2.00 influence just for that one empire. Although, I do realize things like the Diplomacy tree can reduce those costs.

If you only get a flat +3.0 influence, then you're not able to do much until you get much more advanced tech. So, yes, I would agree we definitely need more reliable ways to generate influence.

You're supposed to be short on influence, though. The whole point of influence is to force you to chose which of the influence-costing things you want to do, because you can't afford to do all of them. Now it's possible that influence costs may be poorly balanced, and I haven't played on 3.7 yet so I can't opine on whether or not primitive interactions are an instance of that, but the fact that you find yourself short on influence is not in and of itself proof you don't have enough influence. It's far more likely to be proof you have the right amount.

 

[XCodes]

More ways to spend influence without having more influence income is not a bad thing. If you just build everything every game then every game is the same. Selecting which ways you spend which resources is what makes subsequent playthroughs potentially different. That's why Traditions stink, because they're just generically good, generically less good, and generically bad, and you pick 4 or 5 of your 7 the exact same every game because most of the time you only really care about two of them and the rest is filler.

The problem is that spending 55 influence on an espionage mission inherently makes the mission completely useless. For one, that's not really something that Influence is supposed to be gating. Espionage missions get you stuff like information, techs, minor diplomatic effects, maybe some military advantages... 55 Influence gets you most of an Outpost. It gets you an Orbital Ring. Four of them gets you a Galactic Community motion, and three of them a Habitat. Or you can advance a pre-FTL species by a single era. Not even remotely worthwhile.

 

[Less2]

What do you mean influence is fine

*releases 20 sectors as OPM vassals and makes the holding for +0.4 influence apiece*

All mechanics working as designed and well-priced!

Envoys just shouldn't be used for a lot of these things. Raising relations with potentially dangerous empires is critical for the survival of your species. Using envoys for deciphering communnications gives you essential influence that is in high demand. Using envoys for spy networks is a funny meme that you click for the lolz when your influence is capped.

 

[Casko]

my thought on influence is, since this thread has moved onto discussing it, Is that the game would do well, if not increase the amount you gain, which at times I wish, but atleast increase the cap on it. So in case I want to, I can stack more of it in "storage" for when I really need it. Be it vassal management, mass relay construction spree, ecu buildup, or just force through some key GC votes.

 

[Masked Ermine]

I feel like influence being a diplomatic currency should mean that doing things like building out a hyperlane network border to border and that network hooking up to other empires (or their capitals) should not cost influence but pay influence....since being an integrated nation in the interstellar stage should be generating influence with other nations....and hometown influence of your diplomatic corp for getting this astounding achievement done.. Building a galactic wonder should give you influence....because it shows off your power and grace to the rest of the galaxy thus getting you cache (influence) from your peers. Being president of a federation or hegemony should pay out influence....because you are diplomatically influential.

If we take the idea of influence to mean diplomatically influential....it rather shows Stellaris's use of influence to be a bit twisted. Long standing alliances shouldn't cost influence they should be the source of influence....I am influential because I have the ear of the two largest economies in the galaxy/biggest militaries in the galaxy/etc. Which yes, maybe should be something like a influence dividend for federated (non-vassal) empires. I'm influential because I've invested in a public transit system that connects X number of national capitals together....facilitating trade, culture, etc. I'm influential because I'm building the grandest structures in the galaxy showing the strength of my engineering corps....

Yet most of the above things cost influence...they take influence away rather than paying influence dividends.

 

[-Marauder-]

That's true and I agree.

But even if we give the most generous interpretation to "after early expansion", there are a lot of uses for Influence.

I forgot to mention Ecumenopoli earlier, so let me add that now -- one of my favorite big-ticket Influence uses.

And the value versus cost of both Espionage and dealing with primitives is just extremely lopsided. You need to sink enough influence into primitives to build several Ecumenopoli or Ringworlds to get them to a point where you could make them remotely useful. For the same cost you can conquer an entire other Empire.

Whoever did the numbers messed up, and Influnce should never have been added here, no matter how "thematically" fitting some people argue it is.

 

[ashbery76]

Choices are good gameplay.Influence is way to easy to gather in large amounts imo.

 

[Nerisande]

I don't think that it is a problem since the only thing you want from primitives is access to insight technologies, which only require having primitives within your borders.

The situation with pre-FTL interactions is very similar to whole espionage mechanic itself. It require the most precious and hardly obtainable resource in the whole game, but it is too weak and unimportant and you can easily ignore it.

 

[DC E1G]

I've never been one to really agree with the people who think that there should be significantly more influence in the game, because I think it's supposed to be a limited resource. That said.. I have a hard time justifying using it for stuff involving primitives. It feels even more low yield than espionage.

 

[Koopatin]

i modded it so that espionage missions use energy instead of influence. just for a test. have to try it out now. also costs in energy might be too low or high. Do not know. All i did for now was quick and dirty replace influence with energy in the files. but since influence hit, i never had any incline to even try to use espionage.

 

[HFY]

I've never been one to really agree with the people who think that there should be significantly more influence in the game, because I think it's supposed to be a limited resource. That said.. I have a hard time justifying using it for stuff involving primitives. It feels even more low yield than espionage.

We need more tools to actively manage Influence.

That includes more places to dumb large quantities of it, and a few more ways to get some of it -- ideally one-time non-repeatable and expensive, so they're not just the new default rate.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

I think it is kind of peculiar that Stellaris uses not one but two diplomatic metrics to limit diplomatic actions: Influence and Envoys. It feels like there is a lot of conceptual overlap there. Is there anything in the game that could not be handled just as well without Influence, using Envoys or other resources instead? At this point, what value does Influence add to gameplay that could not be handled just as well, or even better and more elegantly, in a design without Influence? Now that most domestic uses of Influence have been moved to Unity, is it time for the remaining Influence mechanics to ascend to a higher level of existence, fully embracing the Envoy system?

• For instance, making a claim could instead involve an Envoy being busy for an amount of time that corresponds to the difficulty of the claim (i.e. claims would effectively cost "Envoy time" rather than "Influence", during which time the Envoy can't be used for other activities).
• Similarly, proposing resolutions in the Galactic Community could tie up an Envoy until the proposal is either passed or withdrawn, with a progress meter before the proposal is submitted (difficult proposals would take longer to draw up), rather than costing an arbitrary amount of "Influence".
• Simple tasks could require a single Envoy for a short period of time. Other tasks could require a single Envoy for a longer amount of time, or multiple Envoys for a short amount of time. Really challenging tasks could require committment of multiple Envoys for long periods of time.
• Envoys could also be given attention capacities, limiting the number of tasks they can do at the same time (for instance, capacity = 1 would allow an Envoy to manage four tasks with difficulty value -0.25). Adding experience levels and traits to Envoys could take things even further, by making Envoys different from each other (unlike Influence points, which have no individual characteristics) and adding skill requirements to various tasks that Envoys are used for.

A really radical idea could be to also replace the "explorer scientists" with Envoys.

• It always seemed peculiar that scientists are essentially split between two different jobs, researchers and explorers, with very little overlap in the usefulness of explorer traits. On the other hand, explorers and Envoys are conceptually very close. Explorers are essentially gathering intel, which is what Envoys also do in regards to foreign empires (except for the freshly added use of science vessels for spying on foreign worlds, which somehow is considered a scientist job instead).
• Envoys are completely useless at the start of the game, while explorers are essential. After that phase, explorers fade from use at the same time that the need for Envoys increases, until explorers are eventually completely useless. Finding Envoy tasks for "unemployed explorers" would be much easier than it currently is to find open research positions. It could be a seamless transition, rather than the weird place the "explorer scientists" end up post-exploration due to them only having a role in the first 10% of the timespan of the game.
• Casting Envoys as explorers could add the science vessel mechanics to diplomacy and operations tasks. If Envoys had to physically travel to wherever they are supposed to do their thing, it would not just give us a natural mechanism for picking specific targets of operations. It would also make travel time another constraint mechanism for Envoy tasks and, since time is precious, this would greatly reduce the need/benefit of artificial Influence limitations on their activities. And wormholes, gateways, jump drives and experimental subspace navigation, as well as cloaking, could have profound implications for diplomacy and intelligence activities. Physical travel distance and access would matter for diplomatic relations and operations, pre-FTL civilizations included. This would have significant implications for galactic diplomacy over the course of the game.
• Explorer trait modifiers are easily interpretable in regards to intelligence gathering.
• Salvaging debris could potentially be shifted to construction ships, giving them more uses in the midgame and forward (there is also some precedence for this in the various recovery projects, such as the abandoned Caravaneer ships).

As for megastructural and infrastructural projects, Unity and/or Research costs seem much more appropriate than Influence costs.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Is there anything in the game that could not be handled just as well without Influence, using Envoys or other resources instead?

Building outposts and ecumenopoleis are conceptually weird things for envoys to do.

 

[Nerisande]

We need more tools to actively manage Influence.

Actually there is a plenty of influence sources, but they are mostly tied either to lategame or to being warmonger. But the influence sinks are mostly tied to diplomacy and to peaceful expansion and development.
I really miss the option to gain influence without having maxed fleet from year 2200, without non-stopping agressive wars, without rivaling, humiliating, vassaling every single empire I encounter.

There is only one "space-HRE" build based on quantum catapult origin, which allows you peacefully gain huge amounts of influence before lategame. And I had a lot of fun playing this build.