About Culture.

I play as TEC so not sure about advent fleet make up. I rarely use culture until late game as it seems to have more of a impact on income which I usually don't have an issue with. I've pretty much beat the AI by the time I need culture.

Culture is used to convert other planets under hostile control to neutral so that you can take it over.

Culture adds unique strategies to this game. Very unique. Especially against humans.

I tend to build culture stations on the planets behind the planets on the fringes of my empire, like, the planets right behind them. This is so that if a planet is destoryed, my enemy cannot colonize it until he goes and knocks out the culture station at the next planet. It improves the situation from you losing a planet and him gaining one to you just losing one.

Also, culture gives +10% to all your allegiance, increasing credit, metal, and crystal income.

Finally, culture can take away enemy planets. In general an opponent will build a culture station to repel ur incoming culture on his planet, but if you have an opponent on the ropes and all that's left is his home world, instead of sieging, you can culture kill him. Get his allegiance down to 0, and take the planet. This isn't a bad option when it's early, you have 1 or 2 caps, and you need their abilities elsewhere.

Culture also gives you a bonus. Tec = faster antimatter regen, Advent = extra sheilds, Vasari = upped damage, it really is a nice perk that can tip the scale

So really, it's nice, though don't focus on it. Get all your planets enveloped in ur culture, but really, you shouldn't be building more than 1 for every two planets. I tend to spread them out so 1 culture station effects as many as possible.

Note that culture can be a real pain if you're assaulted by it early in the game when your empire is small and you need every bit of income that you can muster.

One addition to RagingAmish's post: building media centres at planets that have a lot of connecting phase lanes to colonizable planets is better.

-- Retro

Thanks, that was all real usefull infomation.

recently as TEC against the AI on a medium random map, I used culture stations on planet near the front. i was forced into a defensive posture by having two computers directly attaching my empire.

i held my planets and by the time i rallied my fleets and went on the offensive again i walked into 5 or 6 planets that had rebelled due to my culture influence. so the rest of the game was a cake walk. definately use culture. if for no other reason but to give the game something special.

The Advent rely upon culture, it's really important for them, namely in the ways Amish said. The TEC it doesn't matter so much for till late game, then, when combined with insurgency and the novalith, will cripple any planets health, forcing them to pull back parts of their fleet to re-colonize core worlds, allowing for you to assault them while it's away. I dunno how much it matters for the Vasari, haven't played as them, but I'm getting the vibe that it really only matters in stopping the opponent for influencing your worlds negativly.

Don't forget there is a hefty economy boost. I'm not sure how high culture can raise your planet's allegience but at least with Advent lately I've been seeing 110% on my home planet and 100% on several connecting planets. I'm guessing with advent at least it has a maximum increase of 10% though I've yet to really expiriment.

How does this affect your economy?

If you have 35% allegience on a planet, you only gain 35% of it's income. If you can raise that by 5% with culture you've just improved the value of that planet by 1/7! It's not that big of a boost on a single planet but 3-4 chained together can make or break your economy when fleet size goes up and you get taxed more heavily.

Capital ships can repel culture, so you should move your first free capital ship to the planet that's being culture bombarded to help.

True, but in the first part of the game, your capship's ability to repel culture is still relatively low level and you can't really afford to have it sitting doing nothing in a system.
Perhaps a better way of looking at it is the 10% bonus to all planetary resources that are in your culture.

Here's an Advent analysis:
Cost to get your first Temple of Communion: two civic research centres (750/60/80) + building research (600/50/100) + building cost (900/100/150) = 3000/270/410

...or a little more expensive than a capital ship. Note that this also gives you Tier 2 Civic research, so it comes with a bonus.

Now, this will boost the output rate of your Temple of Communion's planet by 10%, and then the planets closest to it by 10% after a while. In most maps there are 3-4 colonizable worlds that are phase-lane attached to your homeworld, but let's do the worst case and say the only thing nearby is an asteroid with at minimum 1 metal, 1 crystal.

So you're getting a 10% bonus on the tax rate for 300 population after full infrastructure upgrades, plus 3 metal and 2 crystal asteroids, or an overall benefit of about 1.5/0.1/0.2 per second until your culture spreads to further planets. In the worst case, it doesn't really pay to build a Temple of Communion at your home world just for the economy boost because it'll take about 2000 seconds, or 40 minutes, to earn the complete cost back. This doesn't factor in the benefits when it reaches a third planet, or the time it takes to change your planet's allegiance, but it's a pretty serious economy hit for that critical first half-hour of gameplay.

Moral of the story: do not build a Temple of Communion at your home planet. Building it the second or third node out will provide a better bonus.

-- Retro

I agree it's not a sound tactic for startup games. Taxes don't really hurt until the 4-5th stage of fleet logistics. By then you should have expanded enough for culture to start helping out quite a bit...especially on those 4 phase lane connector planets. I've noticed the fields with no planets seem to have juicy roids compared to planets...like 2x 0.96 metal roids I got in my current game! I'm not sure if culture affects those since there is no taxation. It'd sure be nice to a .096 bonus on those roids though.

95% sure that culture doesn't affect them because they aren't impacted by allegiance. The yield from a captured asteroid halfway across the map is the same as one nextdoor to your planet.

-- Retro