OK.  I have just finished another play through on hard difficulty playing as UE.  Turn 202 win.

This is what is happening, and is clearly bad programming.

Turn 1-80.  Influence is like a creeping tide that must be dealt with, wether you want to or not.  I have  built up eight star systems, have the best fleet in area.  Yet still this tide threatens to take my border systems without a single shot being fired by my neighbour, the Sophons.  I do not wish to start a war with them as I would like to keep them as a buffer state.  Can't do this, must knock them out to stop influence take overs.  If I leave one system for the Sophons to live on, because I do not believe in genocide they will if unchecked start this influence tide all over again.  How can a small one system race have so much influence?  

Fast forward to turn 170-202.

I have never been challenged by AI in a skirmish over star systems.  Instead the Vodyani are just sitting back and using influence to win the game.  Boring, boring, boring.  So I send in six fleets to illuminate some of their systems.  Still their influence is taking over my forward systems, even though they are half a map away.  My empire is the largest, has the highest score and military.  The Vodyani only have occupied three or four systems yet they have such a stronghold on influence.  By turn 197 I have reduced them to one system.  Still the influence is pushing my borders back and they have taken yet another system.  

Another interesting thing then happened.  I had five fleets on their remaining system trying to take down the last ark.  Five turns later I am in a endless loop where the ark refuses to fight, opting for retreat.  This is OK if the ark actually retreats but it does not.  It just repairs itself after each engagement, not at the end of each turn.  So it will not let me destroy it.  

The option to buy out the system is not working.  Even if it were it is not the solution.  

Another critical observation is that the AI does not seem to have the capacity to attack key systems on the map.  This could be that the map is so uniformed in its distribution of assets.  No star systems seem to stand out as objective markers for tactical attacks.  The AI will always be limited because it does not know where to attack or defend on the map.  Solution would be more key systems that are identifiable by AI as key systems.  Industry rich and science rich systems need to be challenged at every opportunity.  We ought to be seeing many more skirmishes from all AI players in this area.  By turn 100-200 the AI should be pressing any advantage it can, leaving the player with the impression of being harassed and challenged.  The canvas on which this game is painted is to bland, needs contrast to make the maps interesting.  At the moment this is ok  as multi player but not as a single player game.  

What needs to happen.

Influence needs to be down scaled, or suspended during war.  

After each engagement influence should be awarded in favour to the  victorious player and adjusted on map.  We never had this issue with ES1.

Arks must either retreat or fight battles in systems.  They are anchor ships, slow moving and system specific, they have no real option but to retreat to another system or fight.  Also if they have a defending fleet then when attacked the default would be to defend with fleet first.  In other words the ark is the last thing left in the system.  This is all logical in my mind.  If unchecked this game is only playable in one way, every play through.  That is survive first 80 turns and kill all AI players, before influence takes over. 

Single player maps needed to provide for long gameplay modes.  Unfair scenario driven maps that are challenging and interesting to explore.  Fixed start positions and star systems that are quite specific containing many emergent points for conflict.  Give me the tools and I will create one for you.

I have had two games wrecked because I wished to play the long game.  That is survive against a more powerful neighbour and chip away at making it to the centre of the galaxy.  Two great powers should be able to live side by side, without influence being so dominated.  I do not wish to see Endless Space becoming Shallow Space.  Combat is the true test of 4X games, if they get this right the other systems compliment it.  

cjfoster1960 wrote:

Influence needs to be down scaled, or suspended during war.  

After each engagement influence should be awarded in favour to the  victorious player and adjusted on map.  

I agree here. You should post this in the idea section.
Send a link here for upvoting.

cjfoster1960 wrote:

Arks must either retreat or fight battles in systems.  They are anchor ships, slow moving and system specific, they have no real option but to retreat to another system or fight.  Also if they have a defending fleet then when attacked the default would be to defend with fleet first.  In other words the ark is the last thing left in the system.  This is all logical in my mind.  If unchecked this game is only playable in one way, every play through.  

This is both an improvement need and in a way a bug.

A solution I would see is to disable repairing of ships if there is an emeny fleet in orbit. 

That would make logical sense and solve the issue.

As to retreating of Arcs I wouldn't be so sure about disabling it. They are ships after all and don't have to be slow. They are just big.

But if retreating doesn't force it to travel to another system and drop all production then it is a bug that needs to be fixed.

Hey guys!

samsonazs wrote:

cjfoster1960 wrote:

*snip*

I agree here. You should post this in the idea section.
Send a link here for upvoting.

Actually, we would like Ideas to be for new features or complete reworking but not for balancing; don't worry however, we'll put a FAQ together to clarify and explain some points regarding the Idea system!

The issue with having balancing Ideas is the large amount of separate ideas we'd have to process, thus making the Ideas system less effective overall.

I have heard that maybe a "Balancing" subforum will be created in the "Game Design" forum eventually, though.

Regarding the whole areas of Influence thing, we have heard what players are saying on the different forums and we will be making a few passes of balancing on their growth.

So I wonder if playing on hard gives the AI influence bonuses which are in turn snowballing out of control - and on normal difficulty that isn't happening?  Maybe?

It also sounds like, from other threads on the topic, that influence growth is a result total accumulated influence production on a system?  Is that correct?

I am not sure if there is a difference between normal and hard or other.  All I know is that I have had problems with influence being way to strong and restrictive playing on both levels.  I am not happy with influence working the way it does.  An example of a couple of games I have played on normal difficulty resulted in what could have been enjoyable games being wrecked by influence taking control of systems, even though I had fought back from nothing to have a fighting chance at victory.  What the game seems to be doing is punishing players who have started poorly and can not push that pesky tide back.