It does get mildly annoying on higher difficulties where AI gets extra influence income, but the bigger issue is that it adds further to the case for war being the most viable/efficient/attractive solution always (at least that's how I see it and from how you've described your reaction, how any sensible player would see it too). The AI always plays like an opportunistic dickwad - it'll attack your ships whenever it is stronger locally, sit on your outposts wherever it finds them, buyout/make outposts adjacent your capital, and declare war outright as long as it thinks it's stronger and you're near enough. There's hardly any deeper personality or any attempt to cultivate good relations (the onus is always on the player to play nice with them). Contrast with civ5 where there are inherently friendly, backstabby, expansionist, tall, conquest-driven AIs. 

So when their borders overlap a system and I get the pop-up that assimilation has begun, the natural (and moral!) response is violence. Or rather, violence begins before that even happens because war solves all problems, and gimmicks like this technology are just a continuation of war by other means. Who the heck would sit idly and let you assimilate their systems? Any rational player would see this transgression as an indirect act of war. To even think of using this mechanic, you would need a fleet of at least equivalent strength to your opponent to fight the inevitable retaliation (against players or a hopefully improved AI).

Perhaps there's room to role-play with it, but in a serious match I'd see myself focusing on military while getting just enough influence to sufficiently delay assimilation takeovers. This tech just makes border friction a bigger issue and leads to more wars. I should clarify that I'm not opposed to such a takeover mechanic in the game (ES2 is ultimately a game of dominance) - it just seems odd that a technology designed for a more pacifist approach actually functions as an invitation for aggressive play.

SirBagel wrote:

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I always thought that to use this technology you'd have to send ships to blockade a system within your influence-circle-of-doom, but you don't even need to do that, which is using dangerous ships as a display of power and dominance; the circle of doom just swallows anything and everything like a black hole with very little interaction for everyone involved, besides the obvious stopping the circle demon before it is birthed.

It wouldn't bother me if it was similar to that, because they I could just shoot the ships into pieces and churn out ships at 4 systems to smash  one or two enemy systems, only to be met with a truce of course.

I like the function. It is pretty realistic in my opinion and invites content to be created. I agree that this game is about dominance this is just another way to ultimate absorb every other empire. 

War is just another form of politics - Clausewitz.

I like the concept behind his mechanic. It gives non-military empires a tool to expand without conflict. Too bad it is highly unbalanced right now.

I agree the influence takeover is too passive and too simple. 

GalCiv2 had a similar mechanic, but it wasn't easy to intentionally flip a neighbor's planet until the late game, when it could happen more often as a passive byproduct of becoming a huge empire. 

In the mid-game, generating enough cultural influence to flip a neighbor's planet usually required building starbases with special influence-generating modules. That meant you could see when a neighbor was going for a flip, and you could do something about it. Your choices were either building influence countering starbases of your own, or just attacking the neighbor's starbases and suing for a quick peace. You could stop short of total war, or occupying the offending planet which might generate occupation/unhappiness penalties. It was a more flexible way of generating and countering influence for territorial gain.

I'm not saying that was a perfect system, but at least you had one method to counter it (your own influence bases) if you didn't want to immediately go to war over it.

"So when their borders overlap a system and I get the pop-up that assimilation has begun"

From what I've seen so far, when the border overlap, you're immediately kick out of your system. Even if you're at peace with the circle of doom, it still swallows you.

I'm not even sure what you need to do to counter it (apart from destroying the center). It seems like the only counter is to have your own circle of doom, by putting all unique influence building on your capital system.

I like the mechanic, but it feels terrible, particularly because the circle spread speed doesn't seem to scale with game speed.

This technology interrupts the flow of the game, making me drop everything to defend myself from what is essentially a timer: Kill this enemy empire completely or start losing your systems and eventually the game. There is nothing peaceful about it. I would much rather to go to war to conquer specific systems for their planets or resources. Instead I feel forced to exterminate other empires merely to protect my own planets.

Caelie wrote:

This technology interrupts the flow of the game, making me drop everything to defend myself from what is essentially a timer: Kill this enemy empire completely or start losing your systems and eventually the game. There is nothing peaceful about it. I would much rather to go to war to conquer specific systems for their planets or resources. Instead I feel forced to exterminate other empires merely to protect my own planets.

That's the main concern and negative I have with it; I'd really prefer to see a HUGE fleet which uses its influence in order to slowly take a system, so basically siege a system without firing any weapons, this would be great for pacifists to use in war and could even be a fleet action which gives a +Pacifists as it preserves all population and system improvements, wonderful!

Of course, this is only available in your influence circle of doom, it prevents much more obvious gameplay dynamics such as using a fleet of yours to protect the system and so on, while the wielder of the circle of doom gets the benefit of asteroid fields and so on.

Fortunately early-access is here to find severely imbalanced and awkward gameplay mechanics such as these scenarios we're experiencing.

Oh! Also, I've got something else I'd like to bring into this discussion;

Razing systems

So let's say you're United Empire, Cravers or even just role-playing an extremely aggressive Sophon or Lumeris faction, you take systems using influence, but then you want to raze a system as soon as possible, so you take the system with influence in order to maximise the population and system improvement reward, however you have to wait a very long time to be able to raze the system.

How could this be improved?

A technology that unlocks a system improvement, something like a culture center / propaganda center which increases the conversion rate from +16% to +32% or something, you could have multiple techs which increase in strength depending ontheir cost.

Perhaps a mechanic where you have a fleet guarding the system which increases the conversion rate? So the more command points in the fleet, or the more manpower in the fleet, maybe even a combination of both? This increases the conversion rate so you can quickly raze the system and leapfrog onto the next.

Thoughts?

I think this Technology has been removed correct me if I am wrong (as only played Vodyani since new patch so they might get it by default) but on release it is not meant to be as passive.  When you build buildings that generate influence they increases your ring of influence in the systems so you can then encroach on enemy systems so to counter this you would need to be producing equal influence.  

But lets say you get your influence on an enemy planet you will have to buy it with influence points when you meet the threshold unless you have the last religious law active (sorry I forget the name of it atm) as this instantly converts the system when you reach 100% conversion. The defending player will also have a chance to counter act this by spending influence points I believe.

If what I have said is correct I think its a great mechanic as you are influencing the population to your cause and its only a passive if you have enough religious party support and invest influence income in having the law active :)