Hi everybody! I uploaded a new version.

What changed?

For one, I made some changes to the starting ability bonuses you can buy. Trade Routes are much cheaper now (1 point per route instead of 3 per route), and Morale had some small adjustments. You can see the details and reasoning behind the changes here.

Fertility Acceleration now has a proper details entry. It's not great, but better than what it was before. I also reduced the Pop-growth bonus to 15%. It just felt too high at 25%.

I took back a change I made to the Welfare UP proposals. The accused race would always vote for itself, which made no sense in the context. The original way it voted made was much better in that case.

Other than that, I also made a few changes to the dialogues of the Drengin, Torians and Korath, and added new espionage entries to the Torians regarding the Drengin and Korath.

I haven't made an changes to the AI yet. That's the next part I'm working on.

I'm currently in the middle of a test game, and it is pretty wild. The Arceans and Drengin are in the top five. So too are the Paulos and Akilians of all races.

Anyhow, I hope you all like the changes and have fun playing!

Thanks! I try my best.

Off subject but I'd like to know if you and the other major mod makers are going to be heavily involved with the making of GC3. GC2 TA was horrid without your mods to fix the utterly broken AI.  It was like playing a 4x with only one side.  Stardock was going through a bad time between their incomplete work on GC2 TA and Elemental, basically making both purely to sucker folks out of cash for broken games.

They've made amends since with their work on fixing Elemental up to Legendary Heroes, the game Elemental should have been in the first place, and you guys fixed GC2 for them as best you were allowed.  They never fixed GC2 themselves though so I don't have a lot of confidence in their AI ability.  Are you, Tolmekian, and Marvin Kosh onboard with the new project?  I'd love to support it but having you guys that followed through what they didn't would go a long way in showing their intentions with GC3.

I would say (based on my latest test game) that the AI is basically sound, but TA introduced quite a few new things which threw it for a loop.  High-maintenance, low-yield buildings for one!

It's no huge surprise that mods will probably get me interested in the beta.  Tinkering with buildings and ship components is fun.

I've been testing some changes the last couple of days, and it's going pretty well.


MarvinKosh is currently working on the Life Support modules in his mod, which has reminded me of an idea I had a while ago. I didn't follow up on it at the time, because I was close to releasing v1.0 and didn't want to mess anything up. I also wasn't sure, if it would work. Now, I finally gave it a try after all. So, what exactly is this idea all about?

1. The Yor will no longer have access to Life Support modules. In exchange, the bonuses to the Range ability from the Cybernetic Support techs are greatly increased (currently 60%, 60%, 80% and 100%). The Yor will also get a replacement for the Hyperion Re-Supply Center (Spark of Life Amplifier), which provides a 50% bonus instead of 25%.

2. The Basic Life Support module gets removed completely, and the Life Support techs will no longer provide any bonuses to the Range ability. The Hyperion Re-Supply Center will also be removed (for the moment, at least). This means, that the Torians are currently the only organic race, that can get a bonus to the Range ability (unless you spend some points during race customisation).

3. The Life Support modules will become a bit weaker. Their range (currently 4, 6, 8, 10) and cost (currently 2, 3, 4, 5) gets reduced, while their base size gets increased (currently 4).

4. To prevent the Yor from getting access to the Life Support modules, the Life Support techs will become untradeable and unstealable.

This is an attempt to make the Yor a little bit more unique. So far, it's looking good. One of my main worries was, that the AI couldn't cope with this change, but that seems to have been unfounded. In fact, the AI is using the increase in free space to arm its freighters, colony ships, and constructors. While I have seen the AI do this before, it was never to this extent. Quite unexpected.

The only downside is, that the AI isn't researching the Life/Cybernetic Support techs fast enough, but I'm working on it.


Another area I made a couple changes to are the SPs and GAs.

For example, I've changed the Maintenance Grid of the Yor to a GA with a 30% bonus to the Morale ability. I did something similar during Beta 2, but wasn't quite satisfied with it back then. Now, I'm pretty sure it'll work. I'm just not certain about the value yet. I'll either keep it as it is, reduce it to 20%, or change it to 25% and add a 10% pop-growth bonus (similar to how most of the starting GAs of the other races work).

The Precursor Library of the Iconians is also a GA now. This is actually in line with what the tech says (Allows us to construct a Precursor Library.), so it's perfectly acceptable. This is also an attempt to reduce the overabundance of must-have 1pps for the Iconians. At the moment, the Library is using the same values as the Omega Research Center, but with the cost of the Tech Capital.

I've also considered turning the Merchant Trade Complex into a GA, but ultimately decided against it. A 50% bonus to your Economics ability is just too OP, and I'm not going to reduce that value. Also, if you would loose that GA, it would hurt your economy tremendously.

Lastly, the Drengin got the Artificial Slave Pods back again. Well, sort of. It's actually the Artificial Slave Center, but with a Drengin paint-job. The reason for this change is that multiple ASCs in the hand of one race is completely overpowered (which is possible to achieve, if there are several Evil races in the game).
The 50% bonus to military production of the ASC doesn't increase your Military Production ability, but directly increases the base production of all of your colonies. This means, that, if you have four factories on a world, they will now effectively produce as much as six when building ships. Your bonuses from production enhancers and your Military Production ability are then added on top of this. Should you get another ASC, then your ship production capacity will be doubled, compared to what it originally was. If you acquire even more ASCs... Well, you get the picture.
I tried turning the ASC into a TG (like it originally was in GalCiv 1) and then a GA, but neither worked. The ability of the ASC is apparently not only hardcoded, but only works as a SP. Replacing the ability with a bonus to the Military Production ability is out of the question. This is one of the few abilities that actually change how parts of the game work. I'm not going to remove it. Lowering the bonus will also not happen, because the value is fine as long as you only have one ASC. Limiting the availability of the ASC, so only one race can have it, is, therefore, the only option left.
I ultimately decided to give the ASC to the Drengin, because they only have one unique SP/GA (the Brain Washing Machine).


I made a couple more changes besides those, but I think, that's enough for now. As for when the new version comes out, I cannot say. The AI still needs some work, before I'll release it.

Learning about Gal Civ 3 (yes I'm late to the party) got me to reinstall Gal Civ 2 and give it a try.  Played it a ton back in the day.

I wanted at least some mod to overcome basic glitches.  Gaunathor appears to be very knowledgeable so gonna give this one a try!  Appears I'm getting version 1.01.

3 questions.

1) Are there any other mods you would consider "must-have" (or close) that would compliment this one (Autumn Twilight)?

2) In another thread https://forums.galciv2.com/438957/page/1/ you mentioned this mod may not be ready for prime-time, thus didn't fully recommend it over others (very humble of you).  Do you feel it's more or less "ready" now?

3) <related to (2)> Is what you're working on now for Autumn Twilight(if you are) things you feel are critical to game balance or just nice-to-haves (or somewhere in-between)?

Thank you thank you thank you for all your hard work. Much appreciated!!

Ayreon5

I've finished my first passover of the AI. It went much faster than I expected. The AI is handling my changes surprisingly well. For the most part at least. There have been two or three instances where a race didn't have any colonisable planets nearby, and, instead of trying to increase its range by building starbases, decided to turtle up. However, I consider this to be negligible, because it happened only two/three times out of over 40 test games.

The AIP 7 races are doing well too. The reduced range helps them to not fall too far behind, because it limits the expansion of the other races as well. I also saw something quite astonishing today.

I was testing the Altarians, Krynn, and Yor. The Yor were missing XTR-17 in their home-system, and they had only a few habitable worlds close by. I was ready to give up any hope for the Yor in this test, when they suddenly managed to extend their range far enough to grab an economic resource in the area between the Altarian and Krynn territory. This not only created a buffer zone, but also put several habitable worlds within Yor territory. The Yor didn't waste any time, and immediately sent colony ships to grab those worlds. They managed to get the two, that were close to the economic resource, but the Altarians beat them to the other two worlds (by only one turn). The Yor retreated their colony ships to the closest planet, and, once in orbit, immediately sent them out on a course to two extreme planets (one barren, the other toxic) behind the Altarian border and colonised them. That's highly unusual. AIP 7 normally doesn't colonise planets within enemy influence, so there must be something different with extreme worlds. It's the only explanation I have for this behaviour.

Speaking of the Yor, I decided to reduce the bonus to the Morale-ability of the Maintenance Grid to 20%. 30% felt just too powerful for a starting GA.

Based on the current progress, I might actually be able to release this version sooner than intended. Maybe early December. No promises though.

Hmm, interesting observations.  Maybe the changes to life support are responsible for this shift in AI 7's strategy?

I would hazard a guess and say that AI 7 will only send colony ships a certain distance from its influence.  Now that empires are more contiguous, that isn't as much of a problem.

Beats me then.  Unless the original assumption about AI 7 not colonising inside foreign influence is incorrect, and there is some other calculation at work.

This is a visual bug in the UI. The game shows the wrong numbers in the Summary, but the actual calculations are using the correct values.

I've noticed the same bug happening with the manufacturing and the food bonus tiles too.

I've changed the starting GAs of the Thalan to SPs in my last beta version, back in May.

In my mod, the Yor have Morale bonuses in their tech tree (+30% total). I also increased the morale bonus of the Charging Stalks (+5%->+10%, +15%->+20%, +20%->+30%). So, even without the Maintenance Grid (+20%), they will still be better off than in the vanilla game.

I understand your reasoning, but this isn't something I'm going to change, because it only affects custom races. My mod is primarily about the stock races. Those GAs signify an important achievement of the respective race. Something nobody else can do. Changing them to SPs would diminish that, in my opinion.
I only made an exception for the Thalan starting GAs because it is very likely that, if the Thalan send another team back in time, that they would have the same equipment available to them too.
Balancing factors into this as well, but not to the same extent as the uniqueness of each race.

In any case, here is how you can make those changes yourself:

1. Open up the PlanetImprovements.xml in the Data folder of my mod (any text editor will do).

2. Search for the GAs you want to change (they're all at the end of the file, so you can start from there).

3. Change the <S_Type> tag from GalacticAchievement to SuperProject.

4. Save the file, and start a new game.

No, SPs, GAs, and TGs are hardcoded to be indestructible. There is nothing we can do to change that.

That would be either money (for the defense, culture, military, and speed modules), or the necessary techs to unlock the modules. The module requirements themselves are okay. I made sure of that.

I'm currently working on the starbase defenses, because I wasn't happy about their performance (too strong early on, too weak later). I was also wondering whether or not I should change the costs of those modules. I'll make those changes now, and see if they help.

The Thalan only need the tech Hyperion Starbases to unlock most of their modules. They already go after it pretty well in my test games, but I'll keep an eye on it (along with the other races).

Thanks for the feedback! I really appreciate it.

TL;DR Added a new beam-defense tier, rebalanced engines (bigger on smaller hulls, smaller on bigger hulls), rebalanced sensors (bigger and more expensive), rebalanced the Eyes of the Universe GA, rebalanced Fortitude modules (bigger), rebalanced Large and Huge hulls.


Well, I've found a name for the my tier 3 beam-defenses: Multi-layered Shields. I'm not entirely happy with it, but it's a start.

After I was done with the weapons and defenses, I had a look at the other ship components, starting with the engines. I hadn't done much with them originally, especially the tech costs. So, it's about time I did something.

I used the same approach again as with the weapons and defenses: limiting all tiers to a maximum of three entries (i.e. getting rid of Warp Drive IV and V), using a fixed size-modifier, and starting all tiers with the same base-size. The current base-sizes are 14, 10, and 6, and the size-modifier is 10%. This means, that for smaller hulls, the first two generations of each tier are much bigger, while for bigger hulls, all engines will be smaller. I also reduced the speed of the HyperWarp Drive Mk. III and the Stellar Folder to 4 and 5 respectively. In return, I also made them much smaller and cheaper. HyperWarp is also now available to all races. So, good news for the Torians, Krynn, and Yor.


Next were the sensors. I removed the Sensors Mk. IV tech and module, and increased the cost of the Sensors Mk. II and III techs. The Galactic Guide Book is now unlocked by Sensors Mk. II, and Eyes of the Universe and the Sector Scanners starbase module are unlocked by Sensors Mk. III. Speaking of the Sector Scanners, I increased their sensor-range bonus from 2 to 4, their cost from 100bc to 200bc, and removed Perimeter Scanners. As for the sensor ship-modules, I'm using a size-modifier of 5%, while the base-sizes are 6, 4, 3, 2, and 1 (for the Sensor Array). The Survey Module is also affected by this change (i.e. it's slightly bigger). Plus, I reduced its sensor-range from 2 to 1. All around, only the Terran Sensor Array has a sensor-range of 2, making it the best sensor modules in the game (but limited to one-per-ship). To top it all off, I also increased the cost of the sensor modules, from 20 to 30. Not that it matters much, if you got the Eyes of the Universe GA (it reduces the cost of sensor-modules to zero).

Speaking of Eyes, I nerfed it (again), while also giving it a small boost. Wait, how does that work? It's simple. I replaced the bonus to the Sensor ability with a direct bonus to the sensor-range. Previously, Eyes would increase your sensor-range by 4, and that's it. Now, it provides 50% bonus which is entirely dependent on your ships sensor-range. If your ship has a sensor-range of 3, Eyes will increase it to 4. If it has a one of 6, it will be increased to 9. This makes Eyes much weaker, if your ships have a low sensor-range. Once your ships have one of 10, however, Eyes will be stronger now (but that's also it, because sensor-range is capped at 15).


The Fortitude modules (HP-booster) have a size-modifier of 3% now. The only exceptions are the Integrity Grid and Hyperion Hull Point (2% both), and the Organic Layer (renamed the Organic Hull Plating), which remains at 0%.
I also increased the HP-boost of the Hyperion Hull Point from 5 to 8, and made it slightly more expensive. This makes it better than the Integrity Grid, because it is slightly smaller. However, on bigger hulls, Organic Layer is the best Fortitude module, because its size remains constant.


Lastly, I changed the cost and size values of the Large and Huge hulls back to their original values. The bigger size values I used were making balancing too difficult. I was already considering to increase the logistics cost for those hulls, but going back to the old values seemed the better choice. It also played much more into what I had in mind with balancing.


By now, I hope you can see where I'm going with those changes. I'm trying to foster ship-specialisation. Previously, it was relatively easy to make strong generalised ships. Especially when using Huge hulls. Now, however, it's going to be more difficult. Weapons are bigger, Defenses are bigger (in general), Life Support is bigger, and so on. You have to make more trade-offs now. What is more important to you? Strong firepower? Good defenses? Big speed? It's still possible to make generalised ships, but they won't be as effective as before. At least, that's the plan. We'll see, if it works out that way, once I get to testing.