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:
Sorry to bother you but I have a minor problem, once activating your mod I have the new social projetcs (as intended) and the old (vanilla) ones. It s just a minor inconvinience but I'd be glad if you could help me fix it as this Mod is a really great addition to this game I just recently discovered. (Btw: I have the Steam ultimate Edition) Thanks in advance.Edit: Problem solved
Thanks for your work Tolmekian and all the major modder crew! My friend group picked up the game early on and immediately dropped it when we all realized in our first games that there were AI's with military ships with no weapons. Entire races with fleets that were nothing more than target drones! This one flaw left no point to playing until fixed. We assumed it would be done immediately but dropped it until then. I checked a few years later and was shocked to immediately find the same flaw. This, along with Elemental pretty much killed our future purchases from Stardock. Very sad considering they have such great ideas and I love supporting indie sized companies. Their work to redeem Elemental with Elemental Enchantress is admirable. If they put the same care into GC2 we'd go from on the fence wanna be fans to fan boys.
I digress. You, MarvinKosh, Gaunathor, and the rest have taken a pretty paperweight and made it into the best space 4x ever. You should be on the Stardock payroll. Thank you.
You're welcome.
I wouldn't rule out working for Stardock, but life sucks and I'll be lucky to get through this year without going insane. Living in a country run by crazy people will do that to you.
Still loving this mod. Shouldnt discount the possibility that Marvin or Tolmekain are Stardock employees righting a wrong in cotgnito.
I've noticed there are a few building that seem overpowered. The area of agony and healing pools are so affordable, so powerful and come so early that they outstrip all other moral buildings. Might consider raising the maint costs on these or adding lesser versions early on so they arnt must haves.
Loving this mod (playing with MoO II minors), thanks Tolmekian! I especially like the expanded role of the ethics technology, and some of the new buildings. I've only played two games with it so far (neutral and good). I haven't seen "ultimate" weapons yet, but I noticed the best armor isn't unlocked unless you go good. Is it the same way with evil and weapons?
I'm giving this a go. Looks good so far (where "so far" is early game on an immense map) with the non-expanding minors. Anything that will get some of the races to expand more efficiently and be more of a challenge.
I've run into some weirdness with your mod v3 Tolmekian (using smart minors). The major AI's make some constructor ships but only use them to make influence star bases. None of the 9 major AI's in the game have set down on a special resource anywhere in the galaxy mid way through year three which was enough time for me to take all resources in the largest galaxy starting from deep in a corner so they've had lots of time. The AI's are set to "tough" level so they aren't at a disadvantage.
I don't remember having this issue with other starts using the same mod and version. The majors were always good about grabbing at least certain types of special resources when they found them. What's going on? Btw a couple minors set down on their nearby special resources. It's just the majors that don't seem to know the special resources exist. While it's the only flaw I've seen in the AI's it's fairly significant. Has anyone else run into this weirdness or did I somehow get a broken fluke?
Edit: After reading this thread it seems likely that the AI's didn't grab any special resources because they were still in colonization mode. I started deep in a corner with four other major races packed in so tight locking me in that five of us were in one sixteenth of the map. That left the other five with more open space than they could grab quickly and some long travels for all to a few areas. The result was a much longer than normal colonization phase only just ending half way through the third year. At least that's my guess.
Yes IotaZero, only the evil races get improved weapons. Only good races get improved defenses. Neutral gets neither but does get other sorts of benefits.
I just finished reading the twenty-six pages of this thread and Wow! This is a great modder community! Friendly and cooperative. I've seen mod communities that were outright hostile and jealous to the point of driving people away and destroying their games. This community is refreshing.
I'm a little at a loss for why Stardock doesn't cooperate with you guys more. I really like Stardock on some levels but this is a big oversight. The amount of effort into testing you guys have to do in order to guess at info they should be sharing with you outright is dismaying. It's doubly dismaying considering you guys are improving an outright broken product that was clearly rushed out the door to a state that not only is playable but outstanding. Some of your stuff should be used by Stardock to fix their game!
Is there no contact at Stardock that you can work through to get some of the hard coded info? They may not want to open up their source code but why would they not want to let this inner circle of modders that have shown so much dedication and willingness to work with others the chance to improve their game (that is still for sale) by allowing you guys to have the hard code info about their AI's?
You mean like how the tech chooser for the AI works?
I think that from the start we should have opened up a dialogue. Posting on the forums and enthusing about a mod which seeks to fix things isn't much of an ice breaker. I think we got a little carried away with success and forgot to really badger Stardock for any kind of helpful information.
Yes, how the tech chooser works as well as other info that could save you guys a ton of trail and error testing time and give the best possible means to really take the game to high places. I suspect that guessing how stuff would work may have become a sort of mini game in itself.
Modders working with a company can lead to official patches being easier to make happen that incorporate modder's best efforts. Consider all the fixes you guys have come up with. Not all are compatible but some could become part of the official game and get rid of some of the most glaring problems in the process.
It's not too late to start a dialogue considering there are still some active modders. I know this game is way on the back burner but a handful of you guys have a pretty good track record in these forums in terms of showing cooperation as compared to just being ranters. A company and modders working together is the best possible chance to make a game really sing. It's a win/win.
Thing is, opinion of AI playing style is quite subjective. Although I have played a lot of test games, it's difficult to say that an AI plays well, even when it is winning. We all know that in a game of GalCiv 2, there are random events which conspire to keep a dominant player in check. When an AI player is dominant you can usually count on the human player coming up with some way of defeating them such as blowing up a few stars, deploying matching defences, or just a regular old mass invasion.
I can say that there's been an improvement, but someone else might not so readily agree. Unfortunately a lot of the players who used to play GalCiv 2 have moved on and so it's difficult to get a broad range of opinions to average things out.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to do it - bring together the best bits, document each change and the reason why, then try to get it submitted for a data patch. The question remains though, would the majority of players actually enjoy this new patch or will it fall short of their expectations?
I think that the reason we haven't gone forward with such an effort is because we're waiting for some sign that the mods really do what they're meant to do, in a variety of different situations, pitted against players with very different playing styles and preferred victory types.
I wrote an insanely long reply but decided to delete it.
I've tried several mods out now and they are all more robust than the stock AI. There's no room for arguement there. Twilight unmodded shipped in a broken state and it's AI is still too weak/full of holes to compare with the mods. I'm in the process of trying to determine which mod is the most robust but that's a long process when a game is made to be long. I know you all have been handicapped by some bad hard code and lack of company feedback. I'm impressed with what you guys have done. I've seen modder communities do less even with the cooperation of the Dev's.
I haven't tried your mod yet MarvinKosh but it's next on my list.
It's nice to drop back in and see things still going on here. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to read this and give my mod a try. I'm happy to report that v3.5 is ready to go. Well, I need to package it up and upload it, but it's as done as I'm going to get it with the time I have.
If only I could get paid for the work I put into this. v3.5 completes my overhaul of the improvements, more or less standardizing the maintenance to cost to benefit structure. Should handle that problem.
You pretty much answered your own question, but I think I have a little to add. Totally ignoring resources is typical of AIP 11, while AIP 8 goes out of its way to claim them. Try setting just one race to AIP 8 and watch them gobble up resources. Of course, AIP 8 detests extreme colonization tech - any tech with Catergory Colonization, actually - so I guess the balance is that the 8's get all the resources and the 11's get all the planets. The 7's and 10's get to share all the suck between them.
I'm pretty sure they won't be coming back to GalCiv2. Brad used to come out every now and again and claim to be working on an update, but nothing ever materialized. I'm sure his heart is there, but the time and energy just isn't. I'm not surprised, given how things are. I am a bit surprised that he hasn't issued some kind of mea culpa regarding the condition of Twilight, or at least acknowledged the problem. They screwed it up pretty hard and pretty much act like everything is fine. I admit that I could easily have missed such an announcement, but to my knowledge none exists. I'd be lying if I said it didn't hurt my faith in the brand, but it's a pretty big bygone at this point. I just have trouble reconciling it with his otherwise very open and honest dialogue and the fact that he's obviously very concerned about the quality of their products. The fact that Fallen Enchantress seems to be going so well does help, so I'm willing to simply take it as it is and hope that someday GalCiv3 will make it all right.
In any case, I guess I got my money's worth out of Twilight. I've immensely enjoyed the many hours spent digging through the files and running test games.
PS - Actually, I remember now that we did have some speculation about how things stayed broken so long. I don't think Brad even realized what the problem was. There were complaints of the AI not building warships and other issues. Brad tried to tackle it by tweaking the AI, not realizing that whoever was responsible for the individual tech trees did a terrible job of it. I think it's the reason that AIP 8 is so hyper-militant. He weighted it heavily toward weapons techs and shipbuilding to compensate for the broken techtrees. By the time we started dealing with the real problem, it was too late.
Anyway, hopefully I can get v3.5 up this weekend.
I'm not wild about AI 8 either but it does put up a hell of a fight with all those ships.
I think the important thing that we found out is that the AI isn't completely broken, it's just acting on some incorrect assumptions.
Things seem to have really improved with Fallen Enchantress, there's a lot of work going into balancing and fixing and ay least with the expansion, a regular pace of updating. I just hope the testers can keep up with the changes.
I'm not discounting the possibility that GalCiv 2 will get an update at some point. Stardock is going to need to put this issue to bed one way or another prior to announcing GalCiv 3, and that's not just because everyone will remind them but because they need to develop a new game from a position of confidence. If players aren't sure that the new one will be any better than the old one, they won't buy it.
Plus nobody wants to do an EA and create the most hated sequel to a game ever made.
I was thinking more along the lines of SimCity 2013 but yeah, those too.
Actually I read that you can get VS2003 to work under Windows 7 without running in a virtual machine, it's a pain in the behind and you need a roll of duct tape and some christmas lights.
In an interview Brad said they didn't make any money from the Galactic Civ games. It didn't say exactly why but it sounded like something legal that left a bitter taste and I speculate it may have taken away their motivation to finish Twilight up. I have no idea if they make any money from it's sales now but it does seem to still be part of Stardock. Between Twilight and Elemental it seems like they had some team members that really dropped the ball for a while but they are on the comeback now with Fallen Enchantress as you've said. I can't say I like the Fallen Enchantress game engine much...way too much emphasis on 3D graphics these days for games that are meant to be board games. All that really matters are the game mechanics and the AI for long term enjoyment. They've done some good things with FE though.
If they intend to continue the Galactic Civ series some sort of patch to address the major AI flaws would probably help their GC3 potential sales. I think you guy's work could help them a lot in that regard.
Frogboy provided some information about what happened here.
Well, that does shed some light on things. It makes sense, as it always seemed to me more like things fell apart rather than they pulled some kind of jerk-move. Best wishes to them in the future, with great hopes that us space 4X lovers will have our day . . . again.
I went with an indestructible, upgradeable, 1 per-planet improvement that gives a bonus to pop growth and %food. I think there is a morale bonus, too, but I may have nixed that. All the races got the same starting tech (Basic Necessities) and the same tech group (Planetary Infrastructure) in place of farms/stalks/etc. Basic Necessities allows for the bottom-tier improvement, which has a high AI value to make sure every planet gets one. My small test group shows that every planet gets the infrastructure improvements and galactic population is up.
Should I ever get time to consider a v4 (hah!), I'll probably look back at AIValue vs trade cost. I'm wondering if I could just go through and insert a WillingnessToTrade value relative to the AIValue and bring down the asking prices that way. Wouldn't take too much work to figure out the magic numbers.
Sounds good. How is the AI handling morale? That is still the biggest problem in my mod. While the AI is much better now at researching the techs, it still has trouble building the improvements. Well, with the exception of the Drengin and Korath. AIP 7 just loves to build morale improvements.
As well as could be expected. My mod does include a lot of things that boost morale, though. Planetary Defense and a lot of the Super Projects and such. I also boosted the morale bonus of the Civ Capital and Initial Colony.
As far as getting the AI to build morale structures, I may have boosted the AI value for the morale improvements to encourage it. I also made sure that every race has a starting tech that allows the bottom tier building of every improvement chain. No more filling up planets before getting access to a certain type of improvement.
Well, except the Thalans. They still can't build factories or labs until they finally get the techs. I would probably tackle that in v4, too. They fill up their first several (or more) colonies with embassies and morale improvements before they even have a chance to build factories or labs. It's supposed to be their story, but it's pretty weak in practice. A starting tech allowing rudimentary such improvements would go a long way, I think.
v3.5 release
Now I just have to wait for the resident detectives to tell me what's wrong with it. Then I can start on v3.6
Congratulations on the release, Tolmekian!As you can probably guess, I had a small look at your files, and I'm quite impressed. You made some really great changes. I especially like how you moved the manufacturing boosters to the main factory techs, instead of requiring to research separate techs to get them. This should help the AI getting all of the manufacturing improvements, and speed up early development. However, I will reserve final judgment on those changes until after I had some time to play. Well, whenever that is. I'm currently preparing to release my new beta-version, so it may take a while. Beta 6 of my mod is released, so I have some time now.I did find some bugs, ranging from pretty minor to "should be fixed ASAP". Here they are, in no particular order:The Details-tag for Basic Necessities ends with </Category> instead of </Details>. The tech also has no Category or Description.The missing Description is also true for Enhanced Infrastructure and the two subsequent techs.Robust Hull Construction has no AIValue in the two Arcean tech trees.The Neutrality Learning Center tech still requires Research Academies in the Drengin, Korath and Torian tech tree. This means, that neither of the three races can research the tech should they go Neutral. It is probably best to just remove NLC from their tech tree, because, even if they could research it, it would do them no good. By the time they have researched the tech, their planets are most likely already full with their respective research structures, which can't be upgraded to the NLC.The Mfg. Vortex Factory and Energy Matrix Center modules can't be unlocked, because the required techs no longer exist.If I didn't miscount, there are currently 127 starbase modules in your mod. This is not only a problem because of the 100 module limit, but also because the AI has a harder time building up their starbases when it requires too many modules.The Terrans no longer have Stellar Folding in their tech tree. Is that intentional?The Power Plants and Navigation Center are still upgradeable 1pp improvements. Sure, the bug, preventing those improvements from being rebuild, is only likely to happen if tech trading and stealing is disabled, but it is possible.Well, those are the only issues I found so far.Regarding the morale problem, you could change the first morale improvement to a 1pp and set the AI value very high. While it isn't guaranteed, it will increase the likelihood of the AI having at least one morale improvement per colony. I have used this approach for some time now with relatively good success. It is probably the best compromise between the standard method and going pure 1pp. The 1pp-bug is also not going to happen, because all upgrades remain unlimited.Okay, that's it from me. I'll post again once I had some time to play.
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