I was playing this afternoon at Challenging/Medium Map, and conquered a minor race. Prior to this, my influence spread to ~1/5 of the map. After conquering the race, my influence skyrocketed! Suddenly, my race color spread to the entire map, every alien planet was in rebellion, and I got the "10 turns to influence victory" note. The influence ratios on alien planets were over 1,000 in some cases.

After about 4 turns, the map returned pretty much to the previous state, although one world had converted. Has anyone else seen this sort of situation? Is it a bug?

Thanks!