Is there a mod or a setting that make them a little less stupid and a little more productive? I remember stories of minors taking over the galaxy but really I'm just wishing that they weren't completely worthless.
As an example, in a recent game one of the majors declared war on a minor i was trading with so I gave the minor enough ships to hold off the major for a couple turns at least. The minor in it's infinite wisdom left all the ships where they were and the major landed it's transports without firing a shot.
Okay, Tolmekian... you've got my attention.
Your tricky resaving might work and it's all good and nice to fiddle with some of the abilities you mention while tweaking CPU ratios or boosting their personalities -- but, in all fairness to the conglomerate of true Majors waiting in the hallway with Torch & Pikes & slogan panels (one of 'hem saying; We all want THAT much power too!) do you seriously believe that playing in such a new context changes anything to the fact that the winner still must defeat everyone else?
Take an Immense map and divide all usual potential (planets, resources) to a now, pretty steep curve of 9+8 almost equally strong opponents and what you will get is this;
-1- About four (per race, btw) years more of an all at war to still get rid of those enhanced Minors, and
-2- A Diplomacy + Trading gameplay chaos worth 10 years more of impossible odds, and
-3- The same old winning condition(s) to obtain EXCEPT for the fact that Influence is no longer a feasible objective. Cuz, AIs would also have to react to such weird but funny conditions.
What Minors do is obvious - they make me laugh (sometimes) as they are. If i want to play against 17 tougher or weakening (by my tactical skills, thank you) enemies, i'll petition SD coders to give me that sort of gameplay right on the usual settings screen but not before filling slots 10, 11 & 12 with you know who - the absent Majors of the default stock list - while throwin' in a single Custom race for good measures in spot thirteen. (Hint, we already can devise an opponent and tag it with some Minor values, btw)
Otherwise, i'll randomize opponents and UNTICK the Minors to zero until none show up if that's what i want some of my games to be.
Great theory, nevertheless.
Well, my short answer would be that if you don't like it, then don't do it!
Of course it doesn't change the fundamental conditions of the game - victory by defeating the other majors. What it does is do away with what one poster, whose name I don't remember, called immersion breaking comic relief minors (nasty little space squirrels, seriously?) and replace them with some more respectable - but still minor - opponents.
The longer, more thought out answer would be that you have valid points. My little quick-n-dirty guide didn't get into some of the finer points, but just gave the bare essentials to get minors to stop being idiots. A more lengthy guide would get into the pitfalls of modifying the minors. You have to take into account that the game treats minors fundamentally differently, then find a happy point where the minors can be more significant but not overpowered. Some key things:
- The intention is to make the minors more significant, but not to make them into 8 more majors. That's just a bad idea. The big problem, that you mentioned, is that they are exempt from the entire influence game. Their planets can't be flipped. Another, biger problem is that they don't count for victory conditions. So, if the super-minors wipe out the last major, then you end up winning even if there is still an epic struggle between you and the remaining minors, or even if you have only 1 planet while the 8 minors rule the galaxy.
- For the reason above, minors really shouldn't be given Super Abilities. Like Galacticdoom said, imagine a minor with Super Organizer. Now, imagine that same minor that is completely immune to influence. So the only way to take their planets is by force, getting attacked by all others of the same alignment. Yuck. Super Abilities just don't suit the minors. Not having Super Abilities is part of what seperates minors from majors.
- Minors get no customization points and almost no race bonuses. Another thing that seperates minors from majors. With the exception of the Akilians, the only bonus minors get is +100% to economics. That's a big bonus. In my mod, I take that away. No free money for them. I don't think they start with as much money as the majors, either. Coupled with the fact that minors only start with 1b population, they quickly hit economic trouble during the rush. They also only have 4 logistics points. Not so good. So, take away their +100 economics bonus and take away the Akilians military bonuses and the minors are quite weak. They'll expand, but neither as quickly nor extensively as the majors.
So, what I'm doing is giving the minors a normal personality, full CPU usage, and full economic resources (no bonus, no penalty), while leaving them without any Super Abilities or race bonuses. Seems fair. In fact, I'm playing my first suicidal game right now. Of the 3 minors I've met, 2 have 2 planets, and 1 has 1 planet. Another one has already been conquered. The rest of us have from 15 to 30 planets. Certainly not very powerful.
Now, I not sure minors are affected by the difficulty, i.e. they don't get the same bonuses as the other AIs at high levels, so they may do better on lower difficulties. They may not get the penalties at low difficulty levels, either, so they'd be more viable in that environment. Anyone playing anything less than tough probably shouldn't be fiddling around with the raceconfing anyway, though.
Yeah, normal minors are absolute moron's. I don't even bother conquering them anymore, it's not worth the diplomatic hit to do so, even for a class 15 planet. Question? when you play, do you also set all the AI personalities to Generic during game setup? I have found that by doing this, all civ's tend to expand much much better, and I am in my current Suicidal game, to see if it fixes the bug with the Torians and Iconians not building planetary improvements.
At least, this way, all civ's seem to have a chance. Of course, it seems to make Torians, Korath, and a few others still expand too much, whereas Alterians, etc don't expand very well still. But I've never seen the Alterians expand that great either way anyways...
Maybe next game, I'll set up the minors as you mentioned just to see what they do.
Tolmekian is your current game using the settings you outlined in your earlier post? I have been looking for a way to do this for a long time.
If you feel like posting the altered raceconfig file i would be honored to host it over at galciv2guide.com.
PS can the altered raceconfig be added to the my docs folder as you can the image files, if you retained the folder structure?
Thanks
Drengin
I gather you haven't examined the X-Worlds' Insectoidas & Ducks tricky values yet, right?
Cuz, i really did try to 'boost' these a little... but went off in a slightly different way - Political Parties.
Sure, i resisted myself from sticking a Logistic edge also while thinking, their HomeWorlds should also benefit from a PQ edge instead of the default 15 tiles... but went off in another slightly different way - Ability tags.
The problem isn't that we can't enhance these beyond some limits - it's that their AIs algorithms won't ever react accordingly assuming the functional routines are linked to external **modded** values.
The whole premise, i guess, is directly tied with How the Human player interacts with these in Diplomacy deals and if they can broker out the entire technology advantages to your favorite neighboring Major Enemy. Thus, why i went off in yet another slightly different way - trigger them into action or keep everything as is while knowing the risks by spreading Universal Knowledge through the Minors pipeline.
Less Minor is (somehow) a dream. Gameplay will always remain the basic concept where anything can happen including IF the Minors are, indeed - Majored which X-Worlds_05-F already "tried".
How does the diplomacy hit work? Does it only apply to minors, or do you get it for conquering the planet's of major races as well? Does the A.I. also get diplomacy hits for conquering planets?
Thanks in advance
I think it only applies if you completely destroy another civ, and not just from taking some of their planets. Since minors only have 1 planet, it would apply in that case.
I belive that if you conquer enough minors, or even a major, you will eventually get a diplo hit, and it will show on the relations screen as a negative stating 'tendency to conquer others'. It's not really a big deal, but on Suicidal difficutly, it's not worth having every major civ add this additional negative to you to simply gain a couple planets.
Some do this instead, they gift the minor a class 5 planet, then conquer and take the minors homeworld, then sue for peace and take everything the minor has... this way, since you haven't destroyed that minor completely, you get no relations hit, have gained a pretty good planet, and gave the minor a crappy planet that isn't worth much. I believe class 5 is better than giving a class 4, since class 5 can become a class 8.. whereas a class 4 can become a better class than that once you get terraforming and those related techs. Sole Soul explained it a little better, but I think that is right from him discussing it elsewhere.
Here's some useful info given about getting diplo hits for being aggressive / and how not to get them in this thread
https://forums.galciv2.com/339653
Off-topic reply follows...
Which reminds me about something "important" that only SD staff could provide some clear, direct, definitive, solid answer(s) for;
- There HAS to be a default encoded sequence for the PQ growth factor beside what is pre-defined in PD or TCS xml files once gameplay enhance levels or ability bonuses become available.
- From PQ 1 to 10, the variations seem to supplement the regular trio of YOR tiles according to some tricky proportional scaling pattern 'underneath' the usual enhancing factors.
- Anything above PQs (10+) suffer from an incode limitation to the normal trio above ONLY.
Soooooo, what is that mysterious sequence?
Insert your correct answers below, please;
PQ1=___ PQ2=___ PQ....... and, the true "maximum PQ".
As i develop the new Terraforming system in X-Worlds, it matters that if there is a way to fiddle with PD.xml values while maintaining hope for extra enhancing levels (like this... G+Y_B_O_P_R_V_M, etc) & even Extremes additional gaps (five of 'hem from 0 to 100% instead of the boring 50-50), the exact calibration of possible Tiles on any planets may eventually deploy as i truly would wish for.
See, i'd need a second Trio layer, somehow.
PS; Btw, i've already asked for this precious info in the "About the Custom Planets..." ( Refer to reply 49 in it if you're curious... https://forums.galciv2.com/170646/page/2/#replies) thread and never got *it*. Might as well push for some luck here.
Are there PQ 1's and 2's in normal games? I've never EVER seen a PQ1 or PQ2 planet.. EVER. In any of my games.
Yes, there are.
I see them fairly often-at least one or two PQ1s in as low as a medium all-abundant, and I've seen upwards of 15 of them in some games.
Oddly enough, I actually see less PQ2s than PQ1s.
Could just be lucky, though.
Ohhh, ok... PQ1's and 2's are not habitable though, I still do not recall seeing any, maybe I just haven't paid attention. The lowest habitable planet is PQ 4 (or maybe 3?).
Yes they are.
And they grow up just as well as PQ4s do, in fact in some (most?) instances better.
All PQ1 means is you can't build on it until you terraform it, since the initial colony takes up the only tile. (Well, that and population cap.)
The tricky situations that any planets below PQ10 create is that *IF* the enhancement potentials declared in the actual PD.xml (assuming the possible range includes 1 to 10) for a number of types (Desertic, Rock, Ocean, etc) are greater than 30%, your usual PQ1 and up are in fact juicy PQ18+ once terraformed entirely.
What i am more after is that the potential percentages seems to be limited to 50% or less in some cases; thus, why i claim there has to be a hidden incode function that makes indirect adjustments to any reasonably predictable figures. I extensively tested all of these planets with a special Tiles dropper raw file and i could "detect" the pattern(s) somehow -- but, i want SD coders to tell me the facts.
Take the new TA improvement which **ADDS** new tiles to planets as an example; short of making the PlanetaryQualityBonus ability tags to actually work as they should (again, presuming Carielf's modguide is the properly valid reference about such functions), i'd need an indirect similar feature for DA and the only possible way for me to determine if it is feasible is by knowing the exact built-in sequence mentionned earlier.
Braking the PQ10..15+ barrier for enhancing potential(s) is another incode subject that only THEM can alter.
Yes. I currently set all the broken AIs to generic (11) - broken AIs being 7 (Drengin, Korath, and Yor) and 10 (Torian and Iconian). AIPs 11 and 8 seem to work just fine. Terran, Drath, Krynn, and Thalan use 8, while Altarian, Korx, and Arcean use 11. All the civs seem to be doing just fine. In fact, the Drengin are on fire in my suicidal game. I've got them at war with the other 5 AIs and they're dominating.
Yes. My minors are modified exactly as I described above. Change the AIPersonality to 11 and paste in those 4 lines for each of the minors. I took the extra step of taking away all the minors racial bonuses. I'd be happy to post a guide to modifying minors on your site. I don't know how to host/transfer anything, so getting you an xml files will take some doing. I could easily copy and paste one of the minors from my xml, though.
I'm not sure about your last question. You don't need to add or delete anything in the My Documents for the minors. I just modify the main raceconfig and it's all good. If you're looking for a way to segregate the modified raceconfig, I guess it would be better to create a new Mods folder and put the modified raceconfig there. That way you could choose in-game to use mods and select the folder you want to use. Is that kinda what you were asking?
Let me know what you want me to do for your site and I'll get to work.
When you change a civ to 'Generic' do you or anyone know exactly what that civ 'loses'? For example, with Korath set to 'Generic' I never see them use Spore Ships, instead they use transports. Of course, they all still tend to go their specific moral routes (I've never seen Korath go good or neutral, or Torians go evil).
Actually, this makes me think more of WW1... It would be sort of cool to see minors ally with majors a la Serbia and Russia. 'course, it would probably nerf the game strategy, but still...
Tolmekian Hosting on the site is easy as i have a functional forum which allows most attachments
I would be honored if you would post a guide to modifying the minors on the sites modding forum .
If you have any requests or questions i can be contacted by the email link in my profile in the forum (just click on my name anywhere) or by sending a PM the same way.
You can post your modded xml file to your post using the attach option as the fourm is set up to take xml files as well.
Looking forward to seeing you over there
That would be interesting, to setup a scenario, Galactic War 1.. or something, with minors in the mix allied. Of course I guess it would be the same as an epic game.
@Tolmekian + Karma for you!
This is very good news. To me at leats this goes part way to achieving my goal of playing with 24 major races, well near to major races. Modding the minors to be more like the majors and using your save reload trick just about achieves that.
Well done!
Now all we need to is to give them civ type 4 values and mod the UI on the race selection screen and see if we can get them to show up there.........
How does an Epic game differ from a normal one?
Unless the code is extensively altered while keeping in mind the memory stack demands would raise for that much more also, i too could use a select Opponents screen such as this;
(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)
--(*)(*)(*)(*)--
---(*)(*)(*)---
-----(*)(*)-----
-------(H)-------
H being the Human Player choice you made in the previous screen... then, it looks like a Pool freaky 'Fifteen' pyramid to me. Or a bowling pins structure!
Plus an extra line of Eight balls underneath where the "real" Minors become selectable instead of randomized.
I could have sworn someone changed a DXPack sufficiently to allow you to select more opponents-I think it was for DA, but it could have been for DL. I'm unaware if there would be anything besides that necessary to get more civs to work at game start, though.
I believe that the game has been hardcoded to only allow the current amount of Majors to play at once
Epic is a normal game, I just call it that sometimes.
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