heres a niffty little exploit

Two maxed out culture starbases is often enough to do it for any planet less significant than a capital. Are you sure your influence was less than 4x native influence?

although, there is still that strange one turn apparent drop in influence (noticeable with empire sphere of influence shown on minimap) when you load a saved game, it lasts only one turn though.

I've noticed that effect with influence starbases too, but I wouldn't say its an exploit because its effect lasts only briefly and you'd have to save and reload repeatedly and it would be a hassle to do that.

aye but even thought I had my star bases in there, and it was near the opponents capital they were holding it off.

the drop in influence for one turn gave me the edge, when I clicked turn I managed to flip one of the planets, it cascaded from there because the balance of power in that area had been tipped in my favour by flipping a planet.

Load game is a constant soure of cheese

tested this.....there is a dip in culture but not for your star bases....so if you have two starbases around the sun of a system...

but thats not sending them into revolt....

save.

reload.

system is now in revolt..... two turns, possiblity of one of the planets flipping....

if one flips.....you now have even more culture in that system, so the others should follow suit.

reloading is a pain so I cant be be bothered....

still it is an exploit.

Yeah I've noticed that on the first turn after a reload the influence levels are not calculated correctly and often give you an advantage over the AI. Sometimes AI planets flip that otherwise would not have if you didn't save/reload. Kinda sucks.

heres a niffty little exploit

Don't even say the word exploit or Stardock will nerf the rest of game.  

Just kidding, but they did nerf trading because cheaters kept on exploiting.

Based on what the mini-map shows, first turn influence levels are lower, not higher. Did you look at the actual influence ratios for the planets you were trying to flip (you need the first espionage level to do that). If they were higher first turn, then dropped, you would have a point. Otherwise, putting two fully loaded influence starbases around a planet will drive the ratio over 4.00 in just about any circumstance. It does sometimes take a turn for the skull and crossbones to appear, but that has no bearing on anything.

In my last game, still in V1.3, when I loaded the game after a break, I noticed a planet with the Skull-and-Crossbones, though the display showed only something like Influence 2.36 or so. I've often seen planets show the influence flag inappropriately after loading, I have even seen some flip, but that is the first time I can remember seeing a planet showing it could flip with such a low rating right after loading. I am not quite sure whether this is a new version of the old bug, or I just haven't noticed it until now.

Ahh, ok, that would be a bug then. Planets should not be in revolt when influence ratio is below 4.00. Don't think it's really exploitable. I mean, who wants to sit there reloading a game every turn to see if a planet will flip. It's a lot easier just to increse the influence on the planet normally.

Ironically, I ran into this bug shortly after posting that last reply. I had a planet event add a bunch of habitable planets in another race's territory. I promptly colonized them all. I knew I may have a problem with outside influence on those newly colonized planets. So, I checked them all and none were above 4.00. I shut down the game to go do something else for a while. When I came back and loaded the game, low and behold, I got a whole bunch of messages about planets being in revolt with the skull/crossbones next to them. None of them had ratios above 4.00. I took a turn and they all reverted to a non-revolt condition.

Yea, there's a bug and I'd say it's a pretty big one.