I take it your have researched the entire government and business tech branches for the influence bonuses. Growing your population also grows your influence. Keeping your morale at 100%, doubles your population growth plus one of the trade goods gives you an addition bonus. The galactic wonder, Restaurant at the End of the Universe, gives you a 20% influence bonus.

I'm playing my first masochistic game, on a gigantic map, everything abundant, 9 major races (plus myself and 2 minors), and very fast research. It is 2227/04/22, I have taken out the Terrans, Korx, one of the minors, and the captured most of the Drath worlds (the remaining ones are revolting to me)! In this turn I have taken half of the Torian military and about a dozen fast troop transports (most with 3 Billion troops with 106 soldiering!) will strike next turn! I control 98 planets out of about 290 planets in the galaxy and now my influence is so high that 1 or 2 planets are revolting to me each turn!

It will take time to grow your influence through population growth; time you don't have. Research the entire planetary invasion tech branch and build the training center for the soldiering bonuses. Invade the nearby AI planets and use the mini-soldiers if your can spare the cash.

Good luck!

I have found a few revolting planets in the game & these are normally owned by the Drengin Empire

As for your 'surrounded by 4 alien planets' issue.. I would seriously consider invasion as a means to stop yours revolting as the position you are in inevitably leads to you losing your planet. There are not many ways to stop that from happening other than cranking up your colonies morale

Yet one of my favorite, heavily protected planet (lot of bonus tiles!), is surrounded by 4 alien planets

1 planet CANNOT compete with 4 planets influence wise. Planets r the most important source of influence via population in the galaxy. Everything else influence wise simply multplies yr base influence produced on yr planets.

Yr only option as Darth Griffin and Mascrinthus have said is to declare war, conquer at least 2 of those planets. The alternative is to lose that lovely world u have.

Build troop transports and send those lazy bums to war or better yet, build colony ships and fill them up then delete them for some cash. The less people on a planet, the better the moral.

With a high moral on the colony it should never revolt. You can also put in that police center wonder that will make your citizens even more loyal.

Approval doesn't account for squat with influence. I flip alien planets with 100% approval all the time.

It's not too late. If the ratio is low, it can take a long time for the planet to flip. Sometimes never.

One planet can compete against 4 others with some influence starbase help, especially if the alien populations are 5b which is probable because they don't always build farms. I've flipped groups of 3 alien planets with nothing but two maxed out influence starbases between them.

Start with an influence base in the adjacent grid sector of your planet. When I say grid sector, I mean right next to it, use Ctrl-G to see what I'm talking about. After you've built it up with the 11 influence increasing modules, build a couple more in the adjacent grid sectors of their planets. An influence starbase with all 11 influence modules is a very powerful thing, don't underestimate it.

1 planet CANNOT compete with 4 planets influence wise.

Now that's just silly. Influence bases are more powerful the closer they are to a given planet--a base adjacent to an enemy planet will be much more helpful than a base two parsecs away. And a base adjacent to a planet is very often enough to take over the planet, and two bases will pretty much always do it.

ZERO planets can compete with 4. That he has a planet of his own there is just gravy.

...If it doesn't revolt before he gets a base up. Hey, Old Sweep, can you build a Re-Education Center? That'd save that one planet long enough for you to flip its neighbors.

5 planets in one area is a wet dream. You can seriously boost your production with some econ bases in that area if you get them, though I suppose you know this...

1 planet CANNOT compete with 4 planets influence wise

Now that's just silly

I flip planets now by simply having huge populations on planets and not really using influence starbases much. High population planets r the best sources of inluence. A PQ 18 with 95B population eats PQ 4 - 7 for breakfast, yum.

ZERO planets can compete with 4.

No this is silly because u would not have any production to build constructors to build a influence base.  

One planet can compete against 4 others with some influence starbase help

The OP as already said he has 2 influence bases at 200% influence and maxed out the inluence branch completely. Yet his planet is being flipped but the Altarian 4 arn't. Sort of proves my point?

Finally I played a medium map and there was a lone system in the corner with 3 planets type 10, 11 and 12. No other planets within 1 sector any direction. They were Arcean who was considerably more powerful military then me. So I decieded to get those 3 planets by influence starbases. Built 4 per sector, all maxed out with diplo influnce and cultural conquest... 350% X 16 influence bases, I also had 2 influence resources. Never got any of those Arcean planets to flip, all had between 2.20 - 3.76 influence ratio. The 3 planets had 10b -15b population on them each.

So influence starbases only magnify yr planetary influence, planets work together with influence starbases.

I'm pretty sure influence bases do both. And i'm also pretty sure that starbases have an inherent influence ability, granted it is smaller than a planet. As for the OP, chances are the Alterians have a much larger empire on a whole, with a much greater stash of influence points. If you get some espionage on them, and check to see how many influence points each of the four planets is creating, it should give you a better idea of what you're dealing with. But I've seen computer planets in maso games making 90-100 IP per planet. If that's the case, you'll need to build the four influence bases in your sector, and try and create more influence bases in other surrounding sectors so that their area of effect is hitting at least one or two of the enemy worlds. It doesn't matter how close the starbase is to any given planet, as long as the planet it in the are of effect, you're golden....

Thanx all of you!

I built a influence starbase right next to my planet and the counterinfluence plummetted. So, that's helpful!