Sounds like the (well known) culture "bug" -- if you colonize a planet in enemy culture, it will instantly flip to the enemy empire. They've fixed it so you can't colonize planets that will be insta-flipped in the next patch, and I believe they're tweaking the culture values as well.

I have no clue what your talking about with friendly fleets destroying your planet... never heard of anything like it.

yeah, the planet probably was surrounded by enemy culture. You can tell culture rates by the color of the lines connecting gravity well to gravity well (i call them jump lines). If the enemy is pink and the jump lines all around the planet is pink, then it'll either jump to the enemies team (but the structures are still yours) or if they conquer it it'll be difficult to recapture the planet (it'll just flip back when you attempt to colonize).

Taking planets rich with culture is easy if you have a stable economy and some skill. You need to fully upgrade your culture technology and build broadcast stations as adjacent as possible to the planet you are going to capture. Culture can bleed through to other planets 2 or 3 jumps away but it goes faster if you have upgrades. Once at least 1 line to the planet/asteroid is fully your color (or very close) you can colonize it with no revolts.

lol don't worry barron the new beta will be fixed like Ron said. But sounds like you have a glitch on your hands.

You don't need to destroy everything (or even anything). In my early battles I hit the military structures and the planet first, then colonize and pick off the logistic structures. Enemy ships wouldn't affect it either.

If it was his homeworld before the AI took it, then that explains why it's flipping now but didn't before the AI attack (the allegiance bonuses protected it, but now he has no capital and thus is quite vulnerable).

I don't know that it'd be immune, but I do believe the allegiance counteracts culture flipping.

Instaflipping is normal behavior when a world is submerged in another faction's culture. If that was indeed the case (all the phase lanes around are in the AI's color), then it makes perfect sense.

If they were completely destroyed, there would have been no culture to cause you problems.

I tried that but, even with all his planets, structures and equipment destroyed I still had to continually bombard and rebombard his planets. Every time I destroyed them they would come back to "life" at full health. This lasted for almost half and hour then suddenly they all "magically" turned into my planets at full health without me even colonizing them! Again, VERY annoying.

Sounds more like you had some vessels set to auto colonize -- either an Akkan or two, or a colony frigate -- than anything else. What happened is you eventually had their culture degrade and your colonies didn't instant flip away from you.

I only downloaded the game about 2 weeks ago. I had prepurchased it but, since I am in Afghanistan I could not download it until I went home on leave. So, I dont think that is the issue.