No idea, sorry.

The DL are set to civtype 5 (like the pirates), which is a special type. You could set them to 4, making them a major race. However, the game only allows 12 major races + a custom race. You'd either have to disable one of the existing ones, or make a .raceconfigxml for the DL (effectively turning them into a custom race). Making the DL a minor race (by setting their civtype to 3) is another option, but brings its own can of worms. Additionally, I'm not sure what exactly governs the hardcoded bonuses of the DL, but it's very likely  that they will lose them, if you do any of this. Some of those bonuses (like the +750% bonus to Soldiering, or starting with all techs already researched) can be replicated easily enough, but not all.

That's odd. Are you certain that you deleted all copies of the tech tree? Also, did you remove all references to it in the RaceConfig.xml? I'm wondering, if it's possible that the game generated a new tech tree with that name, just because one race was still using it. The game definitely does that in case of mods. If the game is set to use a certain mod, but the folder no longer exists, then it will generate a new one with that name.

What baffles me more is that the game allows identical internal names in the first place. Any other game would throw a fit, if you tried that. Well, rather any non-Stardock-game.

DL and DA didn't have a minor race tech tree. All races shared the same tree. Are you still running v2.04? That would explain why WarpDrive IV and V are still there (plus all the empty techs). Also, where exactly did you remove the minor race tech tree from? Only the mod, or the base-files too? If it is only the mod,  then the game will automatically use the original file.

When you play with less than 8 minors, the game will pick them randomly. I guess that will happen too, if there are more than 8 available. However, I don't think this will allow you to exceed the max limit of 8 for minors on the map.

Yes, they will only appear due to an event. However, those types of events are all hardcoded. You won't be able to change them or add new ones.

Those three are the only ones actively used in the RaceConfig.xml. There might be more in the code, but I don't know if that is the case.

Hey I've just encountered a bug and am wondering if you know anything about it.

Thing is that the Torians racial design is too weak IMO - you can actually be so much stronger with a Custom Race. I think this is in order to mitigate their strong SA but then, again, a Custom Race suffers nowhere. So I was wondering if I could do the same to them like the Thalans setup (more starting techs) esp. since the Torians have a weaker research.

So I gave them XenoEthics - so they may build HarmonyCrystals early, quite fitting. Now the problem:

If I start a game with more than 3 enemies (as Torian), AND with the first slot occupied, then the game will forget about XenoEthics and also not open up any ethical techs.

However, if the first slot is unoccupied, or, at least, only 3 enemies or less are present, then it works out as intended.

This reminds me somehow of a bug that was present in DA where you could always contact diplomatically any faction via quicksave/reloading - bare the one AI sitting on the first slot.

Suffice to say I find no solution to it 

That's certainly true, but if I would be in need of a weak race I could just use the custom race and leave the distribution points/SA out. IMO there has to be a reason why someone would pick the Torians - or any other Stockrace for that matter - they need to excel at something. Now I'm not saying they should be OP, because they certainly are already strong. Just to giv them something you just can't re-create using a Custom Race.

Well, that depends. For example, if we would be visited by some technological advanced aliens which leave some ships here I think it would greatly help us. Even if Torians aren't that much interested in research - they could teach themselves to change that, I mean they build schools.

Nevertheless, as of now, I've deleted XenoEthics and given them access to HealingPools & EnhancedAdaption. Torians seems to have some affinity to water & colonization, besides I want them to build a lot of moral improvements. Therefore I've also cut away Capitalism (bringing Market Centers) & Entertainment Networks. IDK but there's just too many different starting improvements available, some even ranging from different techtrees. Torians have the strongest moral buildings ingame, which are unique to them, so I want them to build these!

Well, we'll see how it goes^^

No, but the CU did actually change some stuff with history techs & their improvements. In vanilla most of these history techs held unique stuff like GAs etc the CU somehow now splits moral buildings into them. There was just alot of homogenization there, eg. Drengin also get Market Centers instead of Black Markets etc

So I just labelled the Entertainment Network to Capitalism, because moral is much more related to money than the Torian history. Suffice to say, I cut Capitalism away from Torians because they have absolutely no money problems at all.

I'm currently working on the Krynn. I can't get them to research their special unique improvements, like Order of Krynn for example. This building is so powerful, esp. since I find that Krynn should be an influence monster type of civ. And they do actually research cultural stuff, but more like Trade & Governments. So, apart from Consulate, their planets look like normal generic ones. Boring... and also doesn't really add to their strength.

Then, there is this problem with (AIP8 I believe) that they transfix theirselves on a weapon and every 2 tech will be a weapon researched. Even during the colony rush, even without wars, even when they already have a good weapon etc pp. And because their planets are so underdeveloped, this takes like forever with tier1 labs. And for that amount of research they could practically plow through half the rest of the techtree gathering immense bonuses!

I think what I need to do is to have more - but smaller - weapon techs in general.

You're reading my mind here. TotA did introduce alot of nice new improvements, so it'll only add to the flavour of a race if they rather use a complete set of their own, in a way like Yor or Thalan.

Not anymore, this was just a side error that appeared when I readjusted the moral stuff. As of now, Torians start out with Central Mine, Aquatic Transport, Temple of Memories, Schools, Harvester & Healing Pools. Further I've removed the generic econ-tree from them completely - using moral structures in conjunction with high taxes will also net enough money. That way they'll use entirely unique structures - at least, immediately.

The Jihad of Krynn is already labelled Pure Research, my observance from a number of testplays shows that the Krynn does ignore this also in a lot of cases - as he does ignore the other research techs, as well, like Xeno Research.

Most of his planets have still tier1 labs & facs at the end of y1 present.

He basically researches 50% weapons. It's like this:

1. He picks a miliary tech.

2. Then another, non-military tech. 

3. Bounces back to military tech.

4. Again, non-military

repeat ad nauseum

after 8 techs he's already researching tier1 weapons, which, even at fast techspeed, take 10-20 turns. So at the end of y1, he may have a tier2 weapon, but only a very miniscule amount of other techs. And that right during the colony rush.

The thing is that it's actually counterproductive to research weapons that early because usually there are no wars present here. And he's going to arm Colony-, Freighters, etc pp and these will cost them money but it will not give him any benefit. Even if the seldom incident of early war would appear, any Cargo Hull with just a single weapon will loose against a tiny fighter.

So what I'm thinking about is to split the weapons tree into more techs - with their costs also split evenly to not increase the total amount of RP necessary to get to a specific tier. The result will be that this AIP will bounce back & forth faster & therefore, get more empire-building bonuses.

The new techs wil hold some minor bonuses that are somewhat interrelated to shipcombat, like Miniaturization, Weapons, Defense, Hitpoints, Logistics, MP, Repair. But I'm not simply going to just present new stats, instead I will take these away from their respective tree. This could solve a problem in its own - I'm kinda surprised to sometimes see an AI adamantially diving for superexpensive weapons when they don't even have Basic Miniaturization & Logistics etc...

Mathematically it's better to develop your stats in a balanced fashion, because they correlate with each other. So, such a techtree setup could actually contribute to the developing strength of an AI two-fold.

Even more, because there's another AIP (I think 11) which does handle weapons-research even completely differently - it will research all tier1 branches together. And dig into defenses, too. OFC this is complete non-sense, if you, for example, already popssess Laser3 then it is best to go for ParticleBeams and not for Miniballs or Seeker...

But if the Miniballs/Seeker branches would hold some general bonuses like (+3% weapons, +5% mini) then, at least, there would be a minor compensation for their AI design failure.

Plus, trading inferior weapon techs would still become desireable.

OMG so many ideas and so much work 

Don't worry, I'm getting there. While it is true that a Stockmarket will gradually net more income than a HotSpring, the HotSpring is not far away from it. And because of the strong ties & bonuses a Breeder gets from high moral, there are other benefits. Econ is one thing, bit then, the Torians actually have the strongest economic early game wjen judging from the graphs. Besides, I've made some general tweaks that actually helps the AIs in their economic game. As of now, none of them has to reduce their slider to 20% anymore. (with the exception of some stupid AIP that constantly quickbuys into negative balances....)

Yes, I'm using the latest exe.

How much time would you give them for each turn if I would select them as opponents and click turn manually?

hey do you know what

        <Tech>Root</Tech>

was supposed to do in the orig raceconfig.xml for the minors?

and while we're at it^^

can you remember that event when you get informed that your spies did work together with a minor race - which were then able to steal all techs from another civ. And that this minor wants to sell all these techs in trade for some planets.

I got this multiple times - but whenever I contacted that Minor he had no techs for me whatsoever, and offering planets didn't change anything.

I'm wondering if perhaps that bug could be responsible for that? Or did you ever get something out of it?

guess in all those instances I must've had all these techs already^^

Hey everyone! I'm currently working on a new version.

It's still going to be a while before I'm finished, but I wanted to give you a little view of what's to come.

So, what's new?

Almost all of the techs removed by the CU are back again. I also undid some of the name and cost changes of several techs. This, combined with some changes to tech requirements and the availability of certain techs, made the tech trees look even more like the original ones. It's still not 100%, but close enough. I'm quite happy with the result.

The planetary improvements are very close to vanilla status now. With the exception of Intensive Farming, all of the removed improvements are back. The majority of the Trade Goods, Super Projects, and Galactic Achievements have their old values and tech requirements again. The regular improvements are very close to it too. Primarily their output. Their cost and maintenance is still a bit different, though I'm not too bothered by that. It's mainly for game-balance reasons.

Ship weapons and defences got a major overhaul again. I'm using Dark Avatar as a base this time, and combined it with the modifications from TotA (weapons unique to certain races, not everyone has access to every weapon/defence, etc.). The values of the components are almost completely unchanged. I only did some minor tweaks here and there. The techcosts saw the biggest change (primarily the missile and mass driver techs).

Engines and sensor also got a small overhaul. They are now a bit closer to the vanilla values (or a bit larger in case of some of the engines).

The changes to the ship components may brake existing ship designs (especially if they use Dynamic Shields II or III, or Chaff II, because those components no longer exist). I'm sorry about that.

There are a lot more changes, but this is meant to be only a short overview. If you'd like a more detailed look at the current state of the planetary improvements and ship components, you can download the spreadsheet I use for AT here.

My main goal is to go back to the original gameplay. However, the original game has some balancing-issues too, and I try to fix that, as along as doing so doesn't change the gameplay too much.

If you haven't yet, take a look at the spreadsheet I linked to in my previous post. I'm still tweaking some of the values, but it should give you a good overview over how things stand in comparison to the original game. It doesn't contain the tech trees and the ability bonuses you can get from them, but everything else is there.

Version 2.1 should be done in about a week. Two at most.

Hey everyone! Version 2.1 is out.

Well, a lot has changed since the last version, and I do mean A LOT. The changelog increased from 80 pages to 120! It's too much to give a detailed report on, so I try to keep it down to a general overview.

1. Planetary Improvements

The values of all the planetary improvements are now almost identical to the vanilla ones. There are only some minor changes remaining now. Over all, maintenance is much higher again (though not quite as high as in the original game), which makes keeping your budget balanced more of a challenge.

2. Weapons and Defences

As I mentioned last time, I made a complete overhaul of the weapons and defences, using DA as a base. Of course, some races still deviate from the standard tree. Either because they use different weapons, or because they lack access to certain defenses (for better or worse). So, don't be surprised, if you can't protect yourself properly from the enemy's mass drivers, if you are playing as the Drengin.

While working on the weapons, I also changed some of their visuals and/or sounds. TotA got a ton of new visual and sound effects for the weapons, but most of them weren't used for some reason. However, I have neither the expertise, nor the tools, to get all of the settings right. So some of the visual effects may look a bit off in the Battle Viewer (especially the mass driver ones). Still, combat looks and sounds better now, in my opinion.

3. Starbases

The defense and military-assist modules got a complete overhaul. I used the vanilla versions of the Starbase Militarization and Starbase Fortification techs as a base, and adjusted the number of modules accordingly. Excluding Battle Stations, there are now 18 standard defense modules (3 for each attack and defense type) and 15 standard military-assist modules (4 for each attack type and 1 for each defense type). The strength of each module is higher than in the vanilla game, because the total amount of modules is lower. However, the total amount of the bonuses is still the same as the original one.

4. Tech Tree

The overall layout of the tech tree looks more like the original one now (only better). I also made some tweaks to the tech requirements and the ability bonuses of some techs, and changed all the techs that got turned into modifications of other techs into real ones again. Additionally, almost all of the removed techs are back in again.

5. United Planets

I changed some of the UP proposals (as far as it was possible), in order to make them more worthwhile. The result is, that some of the proposals are now much more costly. For example, if you are playing the Korx (or any other race that highly relies on trade) then you should think twice whether to let the Trade Federation proposal pass, because it will cost you 20% of your trade income.

Well, that's it for the overview. If you prefer more details, you can either take a look at the spreadsheet (though it doesn't contain the tech trees), or the changelog itself.

In any case, have fun playing!