Colonizing Razed Planets

I never saw it as complete eradication of all beings on a planet, but rather the eradication of large chunks of the population that was supporting the holding empire. Thus would explain the lingering resentment of a planet even after an empire had been defeated.

As for the second part, logically it shouldn't happen, but it looks like you let your guard down in terms of cultural resistance/propagation. Also, it could be explained that just because a culture is dead doesn't mean that some of its ideals might not be persisting...perhaps the population of that particular planet viewed the neighboring planet with a great deal of respect, and your subsequent bombardment of said planet caused your planet to rescind membership...I'm trying to give logical explanations, not game mechanic explanations, sorry...it can make sense using the former though.

As for the third, if you want a really early push without having to deal with colony frigates, the support ship with colonization works quite well against AI players. In the late game, the Advent superweapon works quite well at disrupting strong cultural bastions, otherwise you'll have to give some time for either your culture to spread, or theirs to die out :shrug:

Well, do you really think you got them all?
You're wrong.
They are hiding in caves, building new weapons.
They are going to get you one day.
One day, one of your tripod walkers is going to happily chase a few ragged members of their failed race into a tunnel, only to stumble upon a huge cavern city... with plasma cannons.

...

Ahem.

As for the cultural loss, maybe you were playing TEC? Humans are notorious with their symphatizing for extinct species their just wiped out...

Ok, that wasn't very useful, but I couldn't help myself!

All jokes aside how can you counter enemy culture creep before you have researched the tech trees for your own propaganda spread? I tried another game where I had a crushing early military campaign against my neighbor and was then unable to colonize their empty planets after the game informed me they were defeated. Also again my outlying planets loyalty started to fall due to the influence of the now dead race.

Perhaps I'm missing something. Is it possible to invade a planet without simply bombarding it from space and taking it for your own once their cultural influence wanes enough? I know you can take over through cultural spread too but is it possible to simply send troops to the planet and make it yours by force?

No, you have to wipe them out first, otherwise your colony ships won't send their little landing craft.

As for culture thing, it may be a bug - perhaps the planets retain their culture influence even after they have been conquered?

That's pretty much what I'm seeing. A race retains it's cultural influence on specific planets for a long time after you have bombarded it clean. In addition a race that has been totally defeated still has a cultural impact on the planets around it. Perhaps it's intended but I would think that at a planetary leveling razing it to the ground would mean you can occupy it immediately. At the interplanetary level you would think killing off an entire race should immediately end their influence on nearby planets.

Well, to be totally realistic, it wouldn't. A dead race can still have cultural influence, simply through many artefacts now permeating the worlds and space they once inhabited, and the memory of your people. Your colonists would be settling amongst the shattered remains of their civilization - the reminder of what they once were would still be there. Remember that their culture has an impact on your population, not you (as in "government") - so while you happily burned their cities to the ground, your people on the other hand may have other feelings about that, to the point of rebelling against your rule.

All this is hypothetical of course, I have no idea if the devs actually thought along those lines and what you are describing is a feature - or simply a bug.

Its not a bug, it existed in beta as well.

There should be a way to overwrite cultural influence, allowing you to colonise the planet anyway. Somewhat like a "hostile invasion" involving slavery or whatever rather than a friendly colonisation .

(This could come at the downside of a larger credit income penalty for the planet)

I've found in the beta and the release that the way to overcome the lingering cultural influence is to head out to neighboring planets/asteroids -- there almost always is a media hub (or something similar) out there still generating culture.

Make sure that you destroy ALL structures, esp. the media centers. Those spread culture. Also, some planet bonuses spread culture, to my knowledge, their effect doesn't go away. You have to counter with your own media centers and wait. Researching culture upgrades helps. And, some cap ships have more influence than others in a Great White Fleet way.

pek

Removing hostile culture so you can colonize:

Keep capital ships in orbit for a while. The more you have and the higher level they are, the more hostile culture they'll push. Eventually they'll do the job. It might take a little bit depending on how much culture the enemy is stuffing from other planets

This works to remove hostile culture from planets you just bombed into oblivion so you can colonize. Obviously, having your own culture creep to help out your capitals will be a big help also

Why not? There have been plenty of times in history that a culture has taken on the traits of another it recently defeated.

Capital ships do help, and this is where the Advent superweapon really shines (one shot can deculture 3-4 planets if aimed properly). If the culture is still increasing, however, that means you left a media hub alive. Once a planet is destroyed and there's no culture flowing through it the culture recession should move fast enough for you to see. It should not hang around for more than a couple of minutes unless it's being reinforced somewhere.