So while playing the Vodyani (go figure) I obliterated the Sophons, clearing all of their planets of the annoying little toads and yet for some reason their obnoxiously massive influence circles stayed put even though they had no planets to project it from. What gives?

I noticed that it takes system a while to change a color from its previous owner's. So, it's only logical that system's population doesn't instantly "forget" its last owners even if they have vanished (were annihilated). My guess is that's a feature.

Lexxx20 wrote:

I noticed that it takes system a while to change a color from its previous owner's. 

There's this screenshot on Steam that suggests it is a "very long while":

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=779089244

30 turns later and still there.

I have to say I do not like it very much. Reducing the influence area as I gradually take planets would give a nice visual feedback of the war's progress. Now it seems I have to wait until I exterminate the species entirely for their colour blob to disappear.

These games are about colouring the map. Don't mess with that, please!

Lexxx20 wrote:

I noticed that it takes system a while to change a color from its previous owner's. So, it's only logical that system's population doesn't instantly "forget" its last owners even if they have vanished (were annihilated). My guess is that's a feature.

If it's a feature, it's a bad one. The two worst things to happen in ES2 are the post-war influence circles that hang around for dozens of turns and the forced truces coming out of nowhere to break gameflow and your economy.

Having properly eliminated the Sophons from the game their influence finally vanished. It seems like at the moment you have to fully eliminate the faction for their influence to disappear.

And since I'm the Vodyani and I don't 'conquer' systems just de-populate them their influence wouldn't decrease and hung around like a bad fart even though there was no one left alive to spread the influence.

I'm going to peg this one down to a work in progress since you'd think genocide would pretty handily wipe out a faction's influence.

Yep, adding in to all the previous replies, it will vanish entirely if the race is snuffed out, but at the moment, wiping out the population should wipe out the influence far quicker. It's also odd that it won't disappear at all if the population is completely wiped out (Vodyani).

Like I wrote in another thread about the same topic. 

Currently to the best of my knowledge ... the only way to remove influence is by overwriting it with your own. Or having the race wiped out entirely. 

It is a bad system, and it definitely needs to be changed. It makes war so pointless since you effectively cannot take over territory properly. 

Also it forces you into getting influence tech in order to be even remotely successful at warfare, as well as spending time building said structures on newly conquered planets... which can be quite annoying. 

I had a game the other day as vodyani.. for just about the entire time I was inside lumeris influence because I could not get rid of theirs... (playing on the higher difficulties mean the AI get even more influence bonus.. so it spreads even wider!) It was just ... well both funny and not funny at the same time. 

They have one planet left, and yet their influence covers half the galaxy... yeh something aint right! 

I would like it if the influence ring was based on system influence output instead of accumulated output like in ES1. It would solve so many issues.

I'm sure it's not how they intend for the system to work at release. I agree that it's pretty bad right now. I'd be fine if the enemy's influence fades over 5-6 turns and then you start projecting your own.

Hi everybody,

What you are describing (influence circles staying for a long (30+ turns) time) is a bug on our end. Normally, it shouldn't take more than a few (think 5-10) turns to change to the new owner's colors.

However this very feature is being worked on as we'd like to tie the influence circles of captured star systems to an "ownership" mechanic.

Cheers,

actually the previous influence circle will stay until the new one is bigger (so it overlaps it)

adelahaye wrote:

Hi everybody,

What you are describing (influence circles staying for a long (30+ turns) time) is a bug on our end. Normally, it shouldn't take more than a few (think 5-10) turns to change to the new owner's colors.

However this very feature is being worked on as we'd like to tie the influence circles of captured star systems to an "ownership" mechanic.

Cheers,

Hey, so long as the numbers are being tweaked, I don't have any issues with it. Thanks for the reply!