Well it's been about a year now and I'm hankering for another Immense map GalCiv2TOTA game lol, it's nice to see how your Mod has progressed but again I'm curious about the way AI's choose weapons. I'm apprehensive about starting into a big game before trying to figure out if there will be any variation in what the AI's choose to keep things interesting. Do you have any plans to try and address this in your next mod release Tolmekian?

If not I was going to try and address it myself by just cutting out certain weapon branches from different races tech trees and forcing them to pick one specific line of weapons. Like say have the Drengin only able to have missiles, the Terrans only have access to beams and such. The reasoning behind this is when I eventually go to war with certain races (I always play an evil custom race, my avatar is there race leader haha) I know what I'll be facing so I'll have to invest in research to specific defence technologies to combat specific races. Better than just knowing they'll all pick one weapon branch (beam) I have to defend from. So for example the Drengin start a war with me whilst I'm slugging it out with the Terrans it would change the game alot. Do you think just chopping out whole weapon tech lines out of tech trees would work, or would the AI start doing weird stuff that would cripple them late into a game?

Also I just wanted to say thanks again for continuing your work on this mod.

Ok, so here I am at the very end of v3.1.  I decided to go for farming techs that unlock upgrades to the capital and colonies, but ran into a small problem.  If you make an upgrade for the Initial Colony, it works fine for regular colonies.  Problem is, that upgrade will be available to build on the Civ Capital.  Likewise for an upgraded capital - you could build one on each colony.

How to get around that problem?  I tried a PlacementLimit of zero, but that ends up being no PlacementLimit at all.  The only other solution I can think of is to have one upgrade that targets both the Initial Colony and Civ Capital.  Problem with that is that the Civ Capital looses its special bonuses and ends up becoming a Level 2,3 or 4 Colony.

Other than that, I'm pretty much done.  If we can't figure it out, then it's back to +% farms and out the door it goes.

Couldn't the "Civilization Capital" be a Mark 3 or 4 Colony (or equal to)? Certainly in the early days, a civilization's capital would be better than that of colonies, but as colonies progress it isn't that odd that they become true metropoles of their own. I personally wouldn't object to making the capital become relatively less powerful as time passes (in a way it already happens with the political, manufacturing, technological and economical capital structures in the game).

I'm no GalCiv modder so I'm not sure what you can do to the civilization capital (you have to prevent it from being downgraded to a mark 2, unless the mark 2 is just as good as the CivCap, which can be done by weakening the civ capital, or strengthening the Mark2).

I've run some test games with my weapon adjustments (beams: size-1; missiles: sizemod=1, cost +10%; guns: size +2 for Railgun I, Pulse Cannon I, etc; +1 for Railgun II-V, Pulse Cannon II-IV, etc. Cost decreased to 16 bc/damage initial, improving to ~9 bc /damage by the end of the tree).

Nothing seems to overtly unbalance the game, but I have not run in ideal conditions yet (all AIs same bonuses and tech trees). I suspect I will end up making changes to the defenses as well, namely decreasing the cost of higher level missile defense and increasing armor sizemods.

I've not been able to test very well because of the 'one weapon to rule them all' effect - often the one or two AIs who choose a non mainline weapon are not in the best position, and my subtle changes are irrelevant to their demise.

In my efforts to 'prime' AIs to use a specific weapons branch by giving them tech, I found that they only sometimes actually use it to make warships on their own. With cheats, I was able to jumpstart their ship design by taking control of them, designing a ship with the appropriate weapons, and rush building it. This prompts the AI to create designs using the tech they have, but it will not change their weapon preference. Even forcing them to research the type of weapons tech I wanted did not change their determination to go for their chosen armament. In one game, for example, the Altarians had gunboats (after I primed them - before that they were only making constructors), just finished researching Pulse Cannons (because I made them), and were at war with the Korath (not my fault ), but still insisted on starting from missile weapon theory. As soon as they had stingers, they started making missile ships instead of the clearly superior gun designs they could be making with pulse cannons. The Arceans, Yor and Drath I was also enticing to choose something other than missiles actually built ships with the tech I gave them, but likewise started from missile weapon theory as soon as they could. They seemed to have better ship building skills though, as they did not switch to missile ships until they could make superior designs.

Like AgentPiltdown, I've thought about reducing weapon choice via removing one type of weapon from the tree entirely. I'm reluctant to do so not only because of potential AI failure but because I hate removing choices from the player as well.

Things I have learned:

Super dominator gets a LOT better when there are multiple minors around for thugging and declaring war on. In my latest test the Korath had upwards of 1800 warships after going to war with the entire galaxy except the Yor, at least half of which were super dominator corvettes. Their AI made me happy by sensibly rushing ultimate logistics and crushing all opposition (battleship? good for you - eat 100 heavy fighters).

AIP 8 waits a very long time to research planetary invasion - it appears to value map control over taking planets.

AIs do not use defenses to their full potential. Increasing the value of tier 1 defenses to 2 is huge, but the AI rarely researches defense at all, and never builds 1 attack 2 defense fighters when it does so early enough to matter.

Super Diplomat Korx works pretty well in the hands of the AI. They act as sort of a warship clearing house - buying from those who have lots and selling to those who have few. I've changed my mind on altering their ability to super manipulator - I think it's fine as is.

I'm thinking about renaming the Super Hive ability to Super Engineers or Super Builders and giving it to the Arceans while shifting Super Warrior to the Korath. In my tests, I've rarely seen their first strike happen, and when I do it's mostly against starbases which don't move. It just doesn't seem to synergize well with a race which has a speed penalty. I worry that giving the Arceans instant factories will crash the hell out of their economy, though. The Thalans don't start with a spammable factory, and have to wait to research theirs... Also, two evil super dominators seems excessive, and it would differentiate the Drengin and Korath further. On the other hand, if super dominator corvettes count as being built by the civ capital, I could rename the super dominator ability to super mobilizer and give the Arceans that. If they don't, then they'll be stuck at 1 parsec per week and be useless.

Anyways, that's what I'm thinking about doing with my Arceans, take from it what you will.

Thank you very much for this, this is compatible with the MarvinKosh's mod? or should I just put this one?

Hi, I've been plating this great mod (MOO2 Smart Old Minors) for a while on GC2 Ultimate (Steam version) and found some things that look like bugs to me:

1. For some reason in ALL games ALL opponents (major and minor) ONLY research and use missile techs! They research all 3 kinds of defences though. Does not happen w/o the mod.

2. If you nave Neutrality Learning Centers AI will still auto-upgrade your planet's research facilities into Discovery Spheres, Planetary AI does not try to upgrade DS into NLC as well (thankfully, does not try to convert NLC into DS either). Looks like it just ignores them. This does not happen if you have mod disabled. I poked into the TechTree XML and PlanetaryImprovements XML and found the following:

 * The upgrade target for both NLC and DS is RecearchAcademy (as in original un-modded Twilight). Maybe, something else affects upgrade decisions? For some reason Discovery Sphere is listed as 'Medical' technology (probably does not affect anything, but strange anyway). I will try to set the Upgrade Target for NLC to DS and see what happens.

3. Looks like Spin Control Center boosts your perceved military skill for diplomacy evaluation even if you have no ships. I had 0 military ships and starbased, but once I build SCC - not a single race was willing to trade military tech to me ("my advisors tell me you are already too powerful" message). My miliraty graph was still at 0. Don't know if it's Mod-related or Twilight in general, only noticed it yesterday.

Will appreciate any feedback. Thanks for great work!

P.S. Also found some typos in the XML while trying to make Galactopedia visualize them (crashes , anyone knows how to do it?):

* Drath_TechTree: "weaopns"in Dark Energy Research

* PlanetaryImprovements "PretigeBonus" in Galaxy Resort

The only issue I had was the AI sending fleets to theirs death trying to destroy very powerful starbases. And also the minors constructing many many influence starbases, that was while playing the version with smart minors.

Anyway, Tolmekian how's the next version coming mate?

PS: I think this is the best mod yet for GalCiv2 and I'm enjoying it a lot. But I actually play it with the default AI personalities, so as to preserve the behavior of the races like the devs intended. I hope this doesn't interfere with other modifications the mod makes, does it?

Actually I noticed the minors build influence starbases in vanilla too, so it's not the mod's fault. But buying their influence points is a good idea actually.

I am currently playing a modified version of this mod, as I said, with default AI personalities, smart minors, and I also buffed the Arceans, the Drengin and the Korath, so they have a better chance of survival. The Arceans are still the underdog but at least they have better chances with an economy and an influence bonus.

They all perform fine, pretty much like with Tolmekian's mod. I didn't actually look at how they develop their planets or what they research, but they all seem to survive ok. I figured the way they survive in the long run is related to everything else.

The Torians end up very powerful most of the times, as do the Thalan. The Drengin, Korath and especially the Arceans are kind of weak. But despite what some people say, they all do colonize beyond their influence spheres. The Iconians are also quite powerfull. The Arceans are inherently weak, so the AI personality has nothing to do with their weakness, even with significant bonuses and canceling the speed penalty, they are still always the weakest civilization.

Now that you mention it, I didn't quite test AI personality 7 extensively, except for the Drengin. I will do some play tests using the CTRL+Z cheat and I'll let you guys know how it goes.

I did finish an actual game yesterday playing as Korath, and the Torians ended up as the most powerful civilization. I had to use my superior economy to spawn capital ships and quickly destroy their planets with spore ships, it was a fun game, especially since the Torians were an actual challenge.

EDIT: I did some 5-6 playthroughs and everything seems fine. The Korath use and send out their spore ships. The Yor became really powerful most of the times, they really do well for themselves. The Drengin almost always end up destroyed in a war by the most powerful civilizations. The Arceans, even with all the bonuses I have them, most of the times still end up as the one of the lesser civilizations. I nerfed the Torians', the Thalans' and the Terrans' influence a little, just to give the other races a chance. It was especially needed for the Torians, as they reproduce as rabbits and quickly became too powerful. I'm quite pleased with my results actually.

If anyone is interested, here's my RaceConfig.xml. Just replace the one from the mod with mine (after you make a backup) if you are curious to see the results. Besides all the modifications mentioned before, I also made the minors smart but they won't colonize, and I also modified some icons for them for diversity. I also use the HRG mod with Tolmekian's mod so you'll also see the modifications from that in there. For my hybrid mod I also replaced the icons and images of the two new buildings with ones from Dread Lords, unused ones I think, as the ones Tolmekian provided are quite poor.

EDIT2: It turns out my RaceConfig.xml was a bit unbalanced. I kept fine-tuning since then. If anyone is ever interested, PM me.

I honestly don't remember ever actually uploading that anywhere, though I'd have to go back and check the thread.

TOV, if I remember rightly, actually added in lines to give all races a fair share of unique dialogue (it's weighted towards a few, largely those from the original GalCiv I). I just made sure all of the original dialogue can show up.

Am I right to assume that this mod is kinda a must have in order to enjoy this game properly? Or has Stardoch fixed anything themselves for the Ultimate Edition?

While I am not 100% certain if it is caused by the mod but for some reason I am "Teamed" with the Drengings in the game I started after instelling the mod.

I myself playing Torian. If you can say for sure, it's not the mod, what other circumstances may have caused this?

Started a new game just to try and see: This time it's normal and they are neutral when I first meet them. Still very weird.