In Galactic Civilizations IV, Influence is a measure of your Empire’s overall cultural and logistical reach, and affects many other gameplay elements. Today I’m going to explain how to generate Culture, how that then spreads your Influence across the map, and why all this is important in your race to win the game.

First let’s take a look at the bare basics of how Influence is generated.

Each planet has a baseline statistic called Cultural Significance, representing it’s potential for the generation of Culture. You can see it just under the Planet’s Name, at the very right end of the the Planetary Inputs section, next to Food. Here at Sharma I, you can see it has 1 Cultural Significance.

When colonised as a Core World this Cultural Significance value becomes the Planetary Input value called Cultural Input.

Cultural Input is the combination of a baseline Core World’s Cultural Significance with that of any attached feeder Colonies.

As with all Planetary Inputs, Cultural Input is then further modified by any Cultural Districts and Improvements you build on the Core World, by your Governor’s Social Skills statistic, by the Social Skills of any Citizens and Entertainers located on-world, by Culture Starbases, the effects of Civilization Policies, Abilities and Traits, ongoing Events and more.

Some of these provide a multiplicative modifier, as we see with the Cultural Districts built here.

Others add Influence points directly, like the +5 Influence gained from the Ideological Trait Tolerance here, which also grants a one time bonus to all newly settled Core Worlds too.

Cultural Input is therefore added to and modified by many other things the player builds or chooses during gameplay, to create Influence Growth Per Month. Each turn, this value is added to the current Influence total value, and it is this final Influence value that determines the size of the Influence border radiating out from that Core World.

Note that Starbases and their various Modules will also generate more Culture.

Each Core World and Starbase will push its Influence into each hex on the map, and once a Civilization’s Influence reaches a hex, control of that hex will be flipped over to that player.

If two or more player’s Influence are present in a hex, then the player with the largest Influence value will gain control of that hex. The hex indicated by the white cross below is owned by the Torians because they have the larger Influence value.

Note that since the Influence Growth Per Month value for each player is dynamic and changes turn-by-turn, territory can change hands in a similarly dynamic way, particularly if players make an active effort to increase Culture production in nearby Culture producing Core Worlds and Starbases.

The actual algorithm that determines Influence growth is beyond the scope of this journal, but now we know the basics.

Let’s recap: the natural Cultural Input of a Core World and attached Colonies is modified by the effects of various Improvements, Events and various other game systems into Influence Growth Per Month. Each month this value is added to the previous total to create the Planetary Output value called Influence. This Influence then radiates outwards from those Culture producing centres to nearby hexes, and the player with the largest Influence value on that hex controls it.

So now we know how to generate Culture, and push out Influence into the galaxy, what does it all actually do?

Influence is a border that delineates your area of control over the map. Entering another Civilization’s borders of Influence will trigger a diplomatic penalty unless an Open Borders treaty exists between the two entities, and can help keep the more reasonable, law-abiding Civilizations out of your territory if you so wish, and this can be exploited to by careful construction of Culture producing assets.

Next, Influence can be used aggressively to peacefully capture enemy worlds. As your Influence envelops an enemy world, it will trigger a rebellion, which will eventually flip ownership over to the player generating the dominating Influence.

Below we can see the Yor world of Fang III in rebellion as they fall under the Influence of the nearby Krynn Syndicate.

A planet will attempt to stop this Rebellion and their Resistance score reduces the effectiveness of the conversion process due to Foreign Influence. Resistance can be raised by garrisoning Fleets there, by giving Citizens the Soldier job, with various Improvements and Civilization Policies, and so on.

A rapid Cultural development program will result in an aggressive Influence border expansion. This can be a powerful tool of conquest but it has its downsides too. I discussed this in detail in my recent developer journal on the Krynn Syndicate, who have a particularly powerful Influence border growth feature that can be rather difficult to tame. The Altarians are also a sneaky lot, while promoting peace and tolerance on the one hand, if their enormous Culture output is left unchecked, they can become a real threat to the game.

As you can see then, Influence can be used either in place of, or in addition to, military conquest to win a Conquest victory.

Influence itself is one of the game’s optional victory conditions, set in Advanced Settings. Simply control 76% of the galaxy’s hexes with your own Influence, keep that up for 10 turns and you’ll win the game!

Influence can help you win the game in another way too. Prestige is a victory condition that aggregates scores across various metrics and once you hit 100%, you win the game. Sector Ownership is one of those scores, and it is calculated by how much Influence you have in each Sector. Spreading your Influence therefore contributes to Prestige, and as part of a balanced diet can form the basis of Prestige Victory.

One other major system that intersects with Influence is Tourism, which is a type of Credit income that is determined in part by the number of hexes covered by your cultural borders. You can build Tourism Improvements to increase this, but at the root of it, you’ll want more territory within your Influence. And once again, this can add to your overall Prestige by increasing your Economic Power score too.

This should cover the basics of Culture and Influence. There’s more to be said on the topic but I’ll leave it to you minmaxers to show off all your cool tricks in the comments below.

Cheers!