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Some time ago the modding community started poking around in the TA tech trees to see why the AI was reluctant to develop certain techs. We found that some weapons techs were categorised as PD, instead of Military, meaning that unless missile weapons were deployed, those techs would never be researched by the AI. Obviously, an AI that can't fight back isn't much of a challenge.
The idea behind this mod was originally just to get the TA AI on the right track as far as weapons are concerned. However as suggestions have been put forward by the community, more improvements have been made to the tech trees. Some features have been driven by my own need to fix annoyances.
For example there is the AI's passion for spamming factories or labs onto every tile, crashing their early economy. These basic improvements would get upgraded and then cost the AI even more in terms of miantenance and production cost, forcing the AI to run inefficiently with the production slider at far less than 100%.
So my approach has been to deprive human and AI alike of early structures that can cause economic meltdown, and in their place have Super Projects which allow for some single-planet focus.
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Recent versions
v5G:
v6:
v6A:
v6B:
For obvious reasons, updates to the mod are on hiatus until the community update is completed.
For a full version history of the mod, see here.
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Figure this one out? I didn't have trouble adding two trade goods, so curious what may be the issue.
I like your ideas for the Drengin/Korath improvements. I may use something similar. In fact, it's not such a bad idea to have all the +% improvements provide some base output to help offset the typically horrible AI placement.
The presence of a +mp on it may help the AI to group it with similar improvements to specialise a planet as a ship-cranker. If not, the two tiles that are saved may get devoted to +mp improvements anyway, so while it won't necessarily make a planet good for making ships quickly, the %mp may not be wasted so often.
The problem with trade goods is that the improvements editor doesn't save the ID that you input. Easy fixed by editing the XML directly, now that I know that it's a problem.
Question:
Will the AI personalities have to be set to a certian value for the mod to work?
The latest version includes RaceConfig.xml in the mod, with AI personalities already set. You may need to reset a race to get it to pull this information from the file in the mod.
I figured that since I had to include this anyway to put in the Arcean speed boost, I might as well set the personalities while I was there.
Minor Arcean tech tree fixes
The new farm improvements seem to do the trick. The basic ones don't multiply on bonus tiles and of course, they're 1 per planet.
Need to think about unique research improvements for the Iconians. As things stand, they have no upgrade path for the Precursor Library or Archive, and they have no inclination to build Research Centres or Research Academies with those in place.
The AI still seems to think it's a great idea to use bonus tiles (like 300% bonus to research) for something else, like an economic structure. It seems to lack the ability to hold off on using a tile until a better-matching improvement comes along.
I've reduced the build cost of Invention Matrix and Discovery Sphere to be more in line with the cost of Research Academy.
I've also added the new Iconian research improvements, which will be more expensive to run and cost more to build but incredibly productive.
Good grief, no wonder the Iconians have been so economically backward, their economic techs are wrongly categorised, and the Merchant Emporium doesn't upgrade the Barter Station.
Plus I need to do some serious retooling of their tech tree.
Ouch. I vaguely recall those problems. As I've been ironing out the kinks and trying to balance everything, I just started kicking around the idea of giving everyone the normal economic techs. Not sure which way I want to go in the end, but I think it's a good thing that I've gotten to that point.
Pretty sure I wouldn't touch the Iconian ones. Granted, the Merchant Emporium is a little weedy, but the Merchant Trade Complex? That's basically an economic capital per planet, if needed!
I've spent the evening working on the new Iconian tech tree, which features Technology Strategy techs. These are basically the same deal as the Technology Progression techs, but the Super Project list is different:
Technology Strategy I - Centre for Intellect Studies, +20 to Research ability and +4tp
Technology Strategy II - Precursor Weapons Lab, +20 to Weapons ability and +4tp
Technology Strategy III - Galactic Technology Centre, +150% research on planet and +22tp
There's also four new Iconian improvements:
Precursor Repository - upgrade for Precursor Library, +15% research on planet and +20tp (respectively, 5% and 8tp better)
Precursor Matrix - upgrade for Precursor Archive, +20% economic bonus on planet +10% influence bonus and +14tp (respectively, 10% better on economic bonus and 4tp better on research)
Enhanced Invention Matrix - 50% more output than a regular invention matrix, but costs 50% more to build and maintain, too.
Enhanced Discovery Sphere - see above.
However, they lose Research Centre and Research Academy technologies, along with the improvements those grant. The Iconians didn't have Advanced Computing in the first place.
I may have to dial some of these back a little, so that the Iconians don't go into a late-game economic meltdown.
I wouldn't worry too much about that, my experience playing as the Iconians tends to be that even without trading for/capturing Banking Centers or Stock Markets their economy is healthy in the late game, thanks to Merchant Trade Complexes. The early game is another matter, as they suffer from high maintenance on their structures and they do struggle a bit - in my Iconian games I have rushed the economy techs as a matter of survival. Once a few MTCs are built they start to do better and are soon very healthy indeed. In my last game against them I also gave them back the government techs under different names, which seemed to benefit them. Indeed, they like culture techs in general and I think they therefore benefit from influence/tourism a lot, though I haven't looked into this in any great detail.
I think the AI is pretty good about building Merchant Trade Complexes on all planets, except ones that it has already filled up! I would avoid putting the MTC too deep into the tech tree as they are pretty critical to keeping the Iconians alive.
Finally, I really like the idea of the library/archive upgrades, they make a lot of sense.
I've been playing the Iconians in a Normal tech speed game, and I think I'm doing quite well. I'm not sure how well the AI would do in my place, I guess I'll have to try a game with them as Iconians and see how they do.
Well my Iconian game has been interesting to say the least.
The Enhanced Invention Matrix and the Precursor Repository are pure overkill. Granted, maybe I'm just building too many of them at the current stage of the game, but I'm struggling to keep money rolling in as things stand.
The Robotic Farm (which has the same stats as the Advanced Farm in the mod) has not really worked out as well as I'd hoped. When it goes on a bonus tile, the population cap goes up by quite a bit. I'm thinking that I will give it the same stats as the mid-level farm, and ditch Advanced Farms entirely, instead per Sole Soul's suggestion granting an upgrade to the initial colony of +2mt food. Since that isn't going to go on a bonus tile, I don't need to worry about the increase getting magnified.
The Iconians miss out on some cool stuff like Political Capital because they don't have interstellar Government techs. Going to have to look into that.
A mod update will come, but not right away.
I noticed that it's possible to hide the built-in ship designs that are left over from DL and DA, by using
<Ignore>1</Ignore>
in GC2Ships.xml so I'll be including that in my next release.
I've also come up with a recolour of the Interstellar Refinery to use for the Research Centre, currently they both look the same.
I installed Windows 7 on my desktop today so I'll be looking forward to seeing how the mod works in larger galaxies (in Windows XP, I had trouble sticking with Immense because of the memory limitations).
Noticed that the Thalans aren't building any labs in my latest game. Going to have to revisit their tech tree and make sure they do actually unlock the first level buildings.
Funny thing, the Thalans actually already have a sort of tiered tech tree, so it's proving to be fairly easy to rearrange their technologies into an AI-optimal pattern.
Okay, new version is up, see top post for download and details.
For next version, I'm planning on adding a couple of new Good-aligned ship defences (and techs to go with them). Because while there are two funky bonus shield modules, there's only one for armour or point defence which needless to say kind of sucks, especially when some of the races in the mod have their defence techs chopped into two halves. I found myself today thinking "Right, I need to stop the Drengin, but I should really research my super special awesome Arnorian Battle Armour... wait, I have to research all the way past Technology Progression III? Who's responsible for this??! Oh, right, that would be me..."
Ironically, now I need to stop the Thalans and Korx who are apparently going to become godlike a little bit at a time, but it would still help if being Good actually helped in the way it's supposed to.
I'm also considering cutting the cost of engines. My reasoning here is that they have become expensive AND bulky since DL, and the AI takes one look and says "I'm not fitting that." Even I have a hard time justifying the cost, although I'm giving it a go in my current game because an Immense galaxy really does live up to the name.
Here's what I'm planning:
Speed 1
Speed 2
Speed 3
Speed 4
Speed 5
Speed 6
Stats on the new defences:
Well I finally got far enough in my current game to compare Quantum Driver I to Quantum Driver II. On a huge hull I got a massive reduction of 1 in space used, for the same firepower and cost. Underwhelming much? Granted, it's now 6 damage instead of 4, but I spent close to two years with the research slider maxed out just to get them.
Two thoughts occur to me. First of all, it might not hurt to dial back the TP increase I gave these top tier weapons. Second of all, if I don't do that, then I may want to look at some other kind of bonus to make it worthwhile to human and AI alike. Off the top of my head, maybe a spin-off project like Quantum Rifles for a tidy soldiering bonus.
I finally finished a game! Woohoo!
Turns out, while the Thalans were a thorn in everyone's side what with starting wars, nobody could have guessed that the Altarians would almost win with a cheeky Technology Victory romp. They even had time beforehand to research Ultimate Space Weapons, get their own Quantum Drivers, and start making a serious dent in the Thalan fleet.
Unfortunately for them, I noticed them as they were researching Beyond Mortality, immediately barreled down the Tech Vistory path, and won with a fifteen week lead.
It was a very interesting game with quite a few planet quality boost events, wars started by disgruntled workers, the Peacekeepers showed up, oh and Ultradrive was invented which meant that at the end of the game my standard military ships had 19 moves. But no Dread Lords.
Noticed in the Yor tech tree that Doom Ray hasn't been re-costed. Oops.
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