Cultural Exchange Centers and the Social Matrix ( a brand new player's questions)

alright one more question to go with the cultural exchange one.  i was taking over the galaxy with influence had a bunch of cultural exchange centers built, Earth (i'm playing the humans obviously) had 121 ip. and i had 4-5 other planets up in the 20's (they were still newly colonized).  i was at 60 percent or so towards an influence victory.  then the small one planet Altarians built a social matrix and next turn they owned almost the whole galaxy with their influence.  What the heck is that about?  their planet with the building built only had as much influence in total as Earth yet my influence from Earth didn't have nearly that kind of power?  now half of my planets are thinking about leaving me.

 

can someone explain to me how that works?

Lots of views and no replies.  It looks like no one has a good answer for your question.  I sure don't.  Sounds buggy to me.  The Cultural Exchange Center should work right away, and the Social Matrix shouldn't do anything so extreme as you're describing.  In fact, the Social Matrix shouldn't affect influence at all.  It provides a planetary economic bonus and a civ-wide social production bonus.

Do you have very low population?

As for the other behavior...you played with vanilla races. sounds like a file has been modded, but im assuming you haven't messed with anything.

There are two Mega Events that have an effect on influence. The first massively increases the influence of one race. The other one increases the influence of all other races when one is close to a culture victory. Maybe one of those happened and the OP didn't notice it.

well, i did receive a big notice that the altarians had built something that is wowing all worlds and making everyone love their culture.  on the next turn the altarians social influence exploded across the entire galaxy absolutely taking over the galaxy with influence.  so it may have been an event and not just the building....since this is my first game, i have no idea.  

 

and my populations aren't huge on those planets but they are mid size atm.

 

an no.  i haven't changed anything.  just downloaded galciv2 ultimate edition from steam, started it up, watched the tutorials, and started my game on the easiest possible setting so i could learn what does what.

 

however, i do suspect that something is glitching in my game.  here is why....while i was playing my influence had taken over a bunch of asteroids that were being mined by another race.  they turned over to me.  all of my planets were connected (influence wise on the mini map).  after a couple more turns i had to quit, so i saved my game and turned it off.  When i started the game back up,  my influence was screwed up.  my western most planet was no longer connected (influence wise on the mini map) with the rest of my influence coverage.  even more strange was the fact that this world, that had just used it's influence to take over those asteroids now only had a tiny circle of influence around the planet....an i mean tiny.  the asteroids were now back in the influence ring of the other race and after a couple turns switched back to them.

 

this all happened after a simple load game.  no time went by.  it happens like this across the map every time i save and reload. so i'm assuming that my game is really buggy for some reason.

 

It's not your game; it's a bug that's been in GC2 forever.  Influence resets to a basic value upon a savegame load, but will go back to normal after you play out a turn.  You can also force it to update by building an influence SB, IIRC.

thanks for the replies!  Sole Soul, that makes me feel better.  it's good to know that it won't affect things much.

 

thanks Tolmekian and Neilo.  also thanks to Gaunathor for the idea of a major event.  that's probably what it was.  i'm going to play a new game and see what happens with that one.