Hi all,
Ok I am loving GalCiv3 so far but im very confused, if im honest im not finding the game especially transparent when it comes to letting me know what the heck is going on with my planets or what the best strat is.
Im a long time gamer of GalCiv2 and im guessing loads of the theories are the same.
So some questions....all kinda related to pop/planet specialisation.
1) What is the direct effect of Population :- in GalCiv2 your population directly impacted your Money income, more people, more money. Is it the same? Does Pop effect production in other areas Research/Manafacturing?
2) In Gal2 you where best saving your big planets to become your economic powerhouses as they could support the farms/approval building to get a huge pop so you could tax them 
Same in gal3? or do we mix them? some big man/research buildings?
3) What effect does approval have? I've been unable to quantify exactly what it does? I assume it effects production but where can I see it? or can someone give me a rough outline or its effects?
4) best strat for StartPorts? get a cluster of planets ... specialise 1-2 in man and 1 in population growth? so you can churn out troops?
5) Culture flip ... I've had an issue with one of my planets flipping ... I can see the influence is 4.5x another race, I assume I can counter this with more influence buildings/startbases. but what exactly does 4.5x mean? its an arbitrary number im guessing its worse the higher it is but is there a 'flipping point'? what increases/decreases it? As far as I can tell this 'troublesome planet' shouldn't really be In danger .... its on the edge of my space, on the edge of the map and the enemy doesn't seem to have more/planets startbases in the area. I've had no issue with any other planets along that border just this one.
I tried placing a culture starbase next to it after re-taking it.. to find the enemy had demolished my influence buildings. The culture went to 3.8x after my invasion and within 3 turns it flipped again. 
I hadn't had chance to build many influence buildings yet. Now me and enemy are just playing culture pingpong, I invade, he flipps its very annoying esp as I cant' see why his influence is so high in the area.