Purpose of the mod:
This mod addresses widespread errors in the TotA TechTree.xml files. These errors pretty much broke many of the unique TechTrees, causing the AI to pursue a deeply flawed research strategy and outright preventing the research of many techs. Part of the fix included rearranging a number of the TechTrees to fix the seemingly random arrangement of some techs and reduce the number of branches for the AI to get sidetracked on. Along the way, I ended up fixing many UP issues, planetary improvements, starbase modules, and did some general improvement and balancing on individual techs.
This mod is a direct result of MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod, which provided the inspiration. A lot of my development commentary and good input from other modders working on their own fixes is in that topic. Thanks MarvinKosh, Quaternus, deweyjohn, TOV, foxthree, qrtxian and all others for input and support.
05-10-13: v3.51 release
Update to fix some errors in v3.5.
04-28-13: v3.5 release
Here it is, the more or less finished product after all this time. It's been about a year since I put this project down, so I'm a bit fuzzy on what exactly I did before coming back to finish it up. I'm pretty sure I've got the major things nailed down, though. Let's see:
TechTree Fix v3.51 with Dumb Old Minors: I did nothing to the minor races here. If you want the same dumb minors you've always known and loved, this is the mod for you.
TechTree Fix v3.51 with Smart Old Minors: Same old minors that still won't colonize, but I added code to make them play to the best of the AI's ability. I gave them respectable descriptions, modest bonuses, and changed out the silly race images to reflect their upgrade. Since they can't colonize, they'll send out a bunch of freighters and actually send constructors to grab up a lot of the resources while the majors are still colonizing. They still get slaughtered when it comes down to it, but I've had fun watching them. It's also interesting to see the majors make a ton of regular starbases since there are fewer resources to grab.
TechTree Fix v3.51 with MoOII Minors: The MoOII minors in this mod will colonize and behave pretty much like weak majors. Much larger than the other mods due to the RaceImage and RaceLogo files. If you try this mod, remember to use the "quick save fix". That is, the minors won't start behaving like majors until you save and reload. So, start your game, quicksave, reload, and enjoy.
TechTree Fix v3.51 with MoOII and Smart Old Minors: Why not? If you want a little variety, I packaged up both versions of the minors in one mod. Your minors could be one, the other, or a mix of both. Still be sure to use the quick-save fix, or your MoOII minors won't play nice. I haven't tested this arrangement, but I can't see why it won't work. (famous last words.)
03-04-12: v3.0 Release
v3.0 continues the work, this time focusing on starbase modules and planetary improvements, particularly Galactic Achievements, Super Projects, and Trade Goods. Also included is a wonderful conversation mod, kindly contributed by qrtxian. His mod fixes the errors in the GC2_Conversations.xml, so now you can enjoy all the unique dialogue as intended.
Highlights
I think that's most of it. Without further ado, here it is:
TechTree Fix v3.0 with Dumb Old Minors: I did nothing to the minor races here. If you want the same dumb minors you've always known and loved, this is the mod for you.
TechTree Fix v3.0 with Smart Old Minors: Same old minors that still won't colonize, but I added code to make them play to the best of the AI's ability. I gave them respectable descriptions, modest bonuses, and changed out the silly race images to reflect their upgrade. Since they can't colonize, they'll send out a bunch of freighters and actually send constructors to grab up a lot of the resources while the majors are still colonizing. They still get slaughtered when it comes down to it, but I've had fun watching them. It's also interesting to see the majors make a ton of regular starbases since there are fewer resources to grab.
TechTree Fix v3.0 with MoOII Minors: The MoOII minors in this mod will colonize and behave pretty much like weak majors. Much larger than the other mods due to the RaceImage and RaceLogo files. If you try this mod, remember to use the "quick save fix". That is, the minors won't start behaving like majors until you save and reload. So, start your game, quicksave, reload, and enjoy.
TechTree Fix v3.0 with MoOII and Smart Old Minors: Why not? If you want a little variety, I packaged up both versions of the minors in one mod. Your minors could be one, the other, or a mix of both. Still be sure to use the quick-save fix, or your MoOII minors won't play nice. I haven't tested this arrangement, but I can't see why it won't work. (famous last words.)
Update 01-07-12: v2 Release
After nearly a year, here it finally is. Details can be found in this post.
v1.1 Notes:
Regarding the tech trading with the AI, I've found something interesting:
https://sites.google.com/site/mabusraeen/extra/modders-resource/appendix-2-tech-trading
He's got some other interesting findings. I've tweaked my AI values in the tech tree to better match what he says there, but didn't have time for a play test.
Can't you make AI identify the problem planet and just spam happiness buildings on it? That is what I do when I have bonus food fields, I hate to waste them Then the planet makes lots of money and is great for buying transports.
Wow, it's like the long-lost twin of my own modding efforts.
Love to be able to do that. Unfortunately the AI uses up its tiles quite quickly, it does not demolish or keep tiles in reserve like we can. So without being able to add new AI code, all we're able to do is work with what we've got.
With the right programming and the ability to choose whether or not to upgrade improvements, the AI might be able to optimise a planet with a food bonus tile. Since Stardock's plans for GalCiv seem to be on ice, I wouldn't expect any code changes along those lines to happen, at least not any time soon.
Here's a question: When a new minor (e.g. Vegans) comes in, it has all the player tech. Are those techs susceptible to trade to AIs?
Depends on the techs. If the techs are set to 'can't be traded/stolen', then the minor will not be able to trade them. Just like how it is with a major.
I'm only guessing, but it may also depend on whether you have tech brokering on or off. I don't know if it will count them as techs original to the new minor, or as if they were actually gained from the major and thus non-brokerable.
Back to farms, it all comes down to the AI lacking any ability whatsoever to think long-term or assess the current situation. There are two major problems I wanted to address. One problem is the way the AI can overuse farms or misuse the bonus tiles, as has been discussed. The other problem is quite the opposite. When the AI takes its sweet time researching farming, it can end up with half or all of its planets filled up and no place to build farms.
The bottom line is that the AI simply can't use farms effectively. The only way I see to fix the problem is to remove choice and chance so the AI can't screw it up.
It seems to me that even OPP farms don't solve the problem of managing super-tiles. And too bad you can't key a farm build to planet class. I (almost) never build a farm on a planet of Q < 11. The rule would work for buggers, too, if it could be made to stick. I also key farm build and tile use to the presence of a Morale bonus tile, but that would be too much to ask, I suppose.
Is there a way to key the moral bonus assigned to an improvement to a non-morale bonus tile? E.g. make a Farm tile that increases food and morale bonus when it's set on a food bonus tile?
I think most of us modders went through this. Learning things the hard way. I figured I'd make a site for it so it's there for others to use.
Thank you for your effort!
Nice work! I made several things quite differently than you, but it is always interesting to see, how other people approach the same problem.
By the way, I had a look through the old dev journals recently (nostalgia and all that), and found out, that the way the tech trees work for the minor races is intentional. The change was made during the TotA beta, at a time, when the minors didn't had a tech tree of their own. I totally forgot about that. The minors originally used the default tech tree, which consist of all techs in the game. This means, that they had access to racial specific techs, weapons, improvements, and so on. It wasn't very well liked, and Stardock finally decided to change the minors, so they lost access to techs specific to the major races in the current game. Some time later, the minors got their own tech tree, but the change was kept in place. I have no idea, if that was intentional or not, but I would classify it as bug now, because it seriously cripples the minors, depending on what major are in the game.
I see no issue in that. The minors are intended to be treated as minors, they are good for trading and eventually conquering a good planet and that's about it. Maybe for people playing with colonizing minors this could be an issue, but for me the minors are good as they are now. I play with "smart minors" btw.
It's possible to create a tech tree for minors which doesn't contain any major race techs, but it wouldn't be much to look at. It's on my to-do list, but I have another idea that I'll try first.
Yes, it's possible, but you can't give them any new starbase modules without going over the limit. Which is why I ultimately decided against doing it. There is not much point in giving the minors their own tech tree, if they lose one of their main assets. Too bad for the Dark Yor and Snathi, though, as I gave them minor versions of the Yor and Drengin tech tree respectively.
The other problem is that when a random new minor race is rolled during the game, it doesn't use the minor race tech tree. It seems to use whatever tech tree the human player has. That's something that can't be fixed with a mod.
I'm honestly not certain what the issue is either, since the "default" minor tech tree doesn't have any unique techs to be denied. This is an issue for modding, but it's hardly crippling in normal play.
The "unique" techs depend on the major races playing in the game. If you are playing a one-on-one game between Arceans and Drengin, for example, Industrial Revolution, Traditional Research, Planetary Improvements, the Xeno Industrial Theory techs, Xeno Research and all other lab techs after, the Xeno Entertainment techs, the Xeno Business techs, Space Militarization and a couple others, are "unique" techs (only one major race has access to them) and get removed from the minor tech tree. The minors will not be able to research any tech, that comes after the ones, that got removed, because the tech-requirement will remain. In a game like this, the minors will be unable to research weapons and defenses on their own, nor can they build any kind of lab, factory or morale improvement.
I'd like to use the mod here, but am worried about the tech trading so will likely try to make my own edits if there is a problem. How many of the AIVs were changed? Is it that bad? Weren't there still problems with tech trading in the base version and high AIVs?
Anyone know how the willingness to trade works? I see nothing on the forums except 0 not willing and 100 willing.
Another question which will help me nail down what I want to do. How much of the AIV changing was because something needed to be fixed and how much was just watching the AI and playing around? If you raised everything I'd suspect its possible to back out your aiv changes without completely breaking everything.
I just played a quick immense game and stopped after I was ready to go to war. 2 years later no one had researched any weapons (except for the Bulrathi who picked up mass drivers just before the end of year 3). Everyone had advanced levels of the colonization techs, trade, diplo and the first level of econ techs.
1) I assume moving the appropriate AIs onto 8 will change this. Why not default this? Nothing really happens if no one is out extorting people and declaring wars.
2) Does the +10% PQ cause everyone to go after Extreme Colonization more? Or is this just an 11 thing? On immense maps this is always going to be a waste of turns for the AIs.
3) I don't like turns being wasted on advanced colonization. So yay for removing it - there is no way for the AI to know it should research this.
4) I really hate the tech trading thing, but really trading feels wonky in the base game anyway so I'm reconsidering the worth of worrying about it.
I usually always have tech trading off because I know how badly I could abuse it. Sell my techs for ten thousand bc, next turn buy a battleship and declare war. Yeah, that's always worth a few giggles.
Virtually all of them.
Well, as far as AIV changing, it was done based on observation of AI research patterns. So, you could say that it was all done both as a result of observing the AI and because it needed to be fixed. I'm afraid that addressing the problem will take much more than simply dialing the numbers back by a set amount. Version 4.0, perhaps.
Thanks for the feedback. Weapons development late in year 2? Sounds about right for an immense galaxy. Was the colony rush dying out, or still running strong? The AI doesn't usually start seriously gearing up for war until there aren't any planets to grab; however, because it should have a strong base to start with, its war effort may surprise you. I suggest you proceed with your game and see how it goes.
1) AIP 8 is the warmonger, but it has issues that make it less desirable to build the game around. Remember, AIP 11 is the generic personality. This is manifested in less apparent bias toward particular research strategies. So, it was much easier for me to manipulate the research behavior in predictable ways. AIP 8, on the other hand, comes with a slew of biases designed to differentiate it from the generic personality. A proclivity to focus on weapons tech and building a huge military are a couple. A near absolute aversion to Colonization Category techs is another. I actually started this project with AIP 8 as the default, but switched to 11 after utter failure to curb the 8's hyper-militarism and grapple with its other research biases.
2) Part of the AIP 11 strategy is going for the extreme planets. Why would that be a waste in an immense galaxy? Because there are still normal planets to grab when they research it? It's not a total loss, as the extreme planets have a higher average PQ, and grabbing them early can help. Besides, there's only so much that can be done to influence exactly when the AI researches a given tech. A difference in AIV of 1 - the minimum - can be the difference between obsession with researching a tech and never researching it at all. For all the vaunted ability of the AI to adapt to circumstances, it demonstrates almost zero ability to take actual game conditions into account. Given these things to work with, I aimed for a generally balanced research strategy that would result in techs being researched in a decent order relative to the other techs. There's nothing I can do to influence how the AI behaves with respect to the galaxy around it.
To answer your question fully, I'm not sure to what extent the actual bonus given by a tech influences the AI decision on researching it. I think little, if any. In any case, I did plenty of testing with the bonus added and the final AIV takes that into account.
3) Thanks. I got tired of the massive inefficiency of AIs sitting on yellow planets.
4) Yeah. Like I said, maybe v4.0.
As an update, v3.x is pretty much ready to go, with the exception of the farming issue we've been kicking around. I'm ruminating on the solution.
I suppose another solution might be to do away with farms entirely. Is it really so great to require techs and buildings to increase population? Simply have the initial colony support 14-16b pop and be done with it. Maybe have the farming techs give +%pop growth and maybe some morale to help with the higher pops.
There are still a couple Super Projects and Galactic Achievements that give +%pop (in my mod, at least). Those would need to be looked at, but that would be an easier task than anything else. Hmmm . . . I think I may have stumbled upon my solution just now.
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