Project origins
There was some discussion on the Steam forums as to how to get an update to GalCiv 2 out there.
Draginol popped in and suggested that an update incorporating the expertise of the fanbase would be the best way forward. A bugfixing update would soon be on the way.
I sent a message to the other tech tree modders, and luckily secured the assistance of Gaunathor, and later MabusAltarn, as well as some dedicated members of the community who posted some valuable feedback. They have been instrumental to the success of the community update, and I'm glad to have played a small part along the way.
Progress report
The community update has been released as part of a rollout of Stardock products on GOG.com and is also available as an opt-in beta on Steam!
Downloads and links
Issues which can't be fixed with XML manipulation.
The file archive folder, hosted by MabusAltarn.
The list of bugs which can't be fixed with XML manipulation.
The spreadsheet of data changes, hosted by MabusAltarn.
Initial discussion on Steam forums
Credits for community member and Stardock staff involvement
Gaunathor - Tech tree changes, descriptions and standardisation. AI value adjustment. Planetary improvement changes and fixes. Keeper of the change logs, spreadsheet and file archive.
MarvinKosh - Typo and description changes (English.str, Techtree.xml). Additional spreadsheet analysis.
DARCA1213 - Tech descriptions.
MabusAltarn - UI changes, tech tree changes, AI value adjustment, keeper of the file archive, spreadsheet and change logs.
Maiden666 - Suggestions for improvement (technology victory bonuses).
OShee - tech descriptions.
SiliasOfBorg - tech descriptions.
Frogboy - executable code changes.
I never play a game with all the races. It crashes so, so quickly. Depending on what I'm doing I'll put a race up against one or three opponents.
One thing that never varies is Tough difficulty and Normal tech progression. AIP8's research decisions are partially time based so I'm very careful messing around with this.
Also, we need a testing plan with clearly defined parameters how to judge an AI's research and planet progression. For example.
Arceans Research
You'd be amazed...
Aha!
Had a few more ideas.
First, it's probably a good idea to confine all our tweaking to the racial techtrees and leave TechTree.XML alone for now. That way we can share the racial techtrees containing all our tweaks making it much easier for others to test.
To make this easy I suggest we set up a shared folder on a cloud serve. I know Gaunathor uses dropbox and so do I. I can set this up. This will allow us to share the racial techtrees, updates, etc, without having to download a complete package.
Also, and I might be hitting a sore point here, are any of you using Visual Studio to edit the XML files? If not I really, really recommend you do.
Download link to image.
On the left are all the racial techtrees. On the right TechTree.XML for side by side comparison but you can drag and drop tabs where ever you like.
Visual Studio (VS) will highlight tags, ID's, strings, etc. It will show you errors in the XML and break points make for convinient bookmarks.
In the bottom you can see the search results for "XenoCommunications". VS can search through all your opened XML documents and will display the search results. You can click these and instantly jump to the search result, or hit F8 and SHIFT-F8 to scroll through your search results.
This is HUGE time saver.
A few others cool things are:
Visual Studio isn't limited to editing XML files of course. You could edit scenario's, the STR files, etc, as well.
Best of all. The Express version is FREE.
Well, going live with a 4-player match in a minute. Korath (me) and Terrans, Korx, Arceans. I'll do some Ctrl-Z switching around at the end to see the order in which things were researched. I don't usually play the Korath, so I'll be figuring them out as I go.
Good luck
I've been using Notepad++ for this since I started back in 2008. Switching to a different program in the middle of a project doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
You can check out the replay - like I said I would, towards the end I decided to switch through the other empires to see what they'd been up to.
All the races (including mine) were set to no ability points spent.
I did pretty well with my colonisation phase, but then of course, I had the map revealed.
The other races seemed to be doing okay with grabbing planets and I don't see anything obviously wrong with their research strategy. Well, the Terrans did get an early start on Planetary Invasion, but they researched Beam Weapon Theory at least.
I may pick up the game again later, but I figured some feedback on the early game would be helpful.
Hi! I'm pretty new to GalCiv2...and I can see you guys are pretty busy...putting in a Lot of your personal time on this project...and I was just wondering....
Will there be a way to download the mod without going through Steam or needing Steam to play it?
Is it meant to mod GalCiv2 UE?
Because I understand GalCiv3 will require Steam, I haven't paid much attention to it. I'm still averse to games requiring Steam...so I'm All For what you guys are doing. Nevertheless, I'm just wondering why you're putting so much time into modding GalCiv2 when GalCiv3 is in the works. I know I will be playing GalCiv2 after GalCiv3 comes out (due to the Steam requirement), but do you expect that you and others will still be playing a lot of (presumably modded) GalCiv2...after GalCiv3 is released?
Lastly...and I apologize for this being a bit off-topic...since GalCiv2 doesn't offer multi-player, allowing "humans" to play directly against each other, I thought the Metaverse...offering "indirect" competition...was a great idea. It's kinda nice to be able to see how your own playing ability stacks up against other "humans." However, I'm not able to play GalCiv2 UE on the Metaverse...have contacted Stardock for help...but I'm wondering if there is Any Way Possible that your "ultimate mod" could be used to play games on the Metaverse.
I've read enough in the forums to know that (unless there is a "silent majority" out there who feel otherwise) most agree that there's a lot that could use fixing in GalCiv2 UE (un-modded). Has anyone put out a feeler to Stardock to see if they might consider substituting your modded GalCiv2 for Metaverse play?
There's a lot of reasons why we're modding GalCiv 2. For me, it's because it's a game that I love, it has relatively low hardware requirements, and because GalCiv 3 simply isn't finished yet - there's not even official modding support yet.
Assuming all is well with the update and it passes QA, it'll be distributed through Steam (or any other channel which is still taking updates). If you can't use Steam, then you'll still be able to use the mod. Of course, if you then want to use another mod with this mod, obviously you'll want to ask the mod creator whether there's a file clash.
There's actually a problem with Metaverse login at the moment that is being looked into. But technically, you can't actually play Metaverse with mods. Quite how it decides whether your files are modded (if you were to use the mod files in the game's installation directory - backup before attempting this) I have no idea. But if it does detect that, then you'll get a cheater flag on your game when you submit your score.
Honestly, I don't miss Metaverse much. It's a bit of a score bore.
Hi (again!)
I guess it's not a score bore for me (yet) because I've never...um...scored, yet.
I'm only on my 3rd GalCiv game. I play Immence, 9 Majors, 8 Minors. The 1st was on "Normal"...could see I was gonna win...and stopped. The 2nd was on "Tough"...could see I was gonna win...and stopped. The current one I set on "Suicidal"...but (as you know from your kindly responding to my other post) I figure I'm toast, since my strategy banked on the Super Ability I unwittingly didn't have enabled when I started it.
I would L.O.V.E. to play against an AI that's challenging due to fancy AI programming...not due to the AI getting twice the resources (or whatever) that I get. ...But other than computer chess games <grin>, I haven't found a challenging strategy game (of the kind that I like to play) that doesn't "resource cheat," yet. (Can you recommend any?)
So, yeah, without multi-player ability, I'd like to see how I stack up against other human players on the Metaverse. ...Not to mention getting some of those nifty badges.
...Speaking of which...do you have any idea why I and (it appears) others get a "Very Evil" badge paired with a "Cakewalk" badge when, at least in my case, I've never played a Metaverse game? ...Seems pretty weird....
Thanks to you (and everyone) willing to put in all the time on the Community mod. ...Can't wait to give it a whirl when it's finished.
As you wish. Could you set up a shared folder in dropbox though or would you like me to do it? If so I'll need your dropbox information.
What information do you need exactly? I'm still a bit new to this part of Dropbox.
On the left are all the racial techtrees. On the right TechTree.XML for side by side comparison but you can drag and drop tabs where ever you like. Visual Studio (VS) will highlight tags, ID's, strings, etc. It will show you errors in the XML and break points make for convinient bookmarks.In the bottom you can see the search results for "XenoCommunications". VS can search through all your opened XML documents and will display the search results. You can click these and instantly jump to the search result, or hit F8 and SHIFT-F8 to scroll through your search results.This is HUGE time saver.A few others cool things are:
Visual Studio isn't limited to editing XML files of course. You could edit scenario's, the STR files, etc, as well. Best of all. The Express version is FREE.
yes, I tried editing the DLL files with it and it didn't work out for me. Since you know some stuff, take a swing at it. Maybe you'll actually fix some hard coding. But a...good luck with the project, I can't help do what was requested.
@DARCA
The DLL files are compiled. If they'd been build in .NET we'd be able to edit the MSIL but they're not.
@Gaunathor
I;ve uploaded the Thalan techtree file to the shared folder. Did you get it?
The problem persists with all computer games because sooner or later a human player will always find weaknesses in a the programing/AI behaviour and exploit that, or vice versa, set up strategies to which the AI cannot react properly. At least, in turn based strategy games were reaction time doesn't come into play.
But still, you can make the game pretty challenging by the starting settings. Try these ones:
- Disable: Surrender. Techtrade. Techbrokering.
- Large galaxy, abundant habitable, common stars/planets, extreme planets uncommon, 2-4 Minors, rare anomalies, abundant asteroids, normal techspeed, vs. 4-5 AI random AI on maso difficulty.
Do not use influence points trade.
To get AIP11 to research Xeno Ethics give it category Economics.
Yes, I did (the Arcean tech tree too).
I'm currently working on the Drath, and just had a pretty interesting test-game. They were researching the Xeno Mysticism line of techs without falling behind in the other areas of the tech tree. I'm not sure, if my changes had some success, or if it was just a coincidence (the Drath won the colony rush). I need to test further.
Edit: By the way, Basic Gravitronics is still set to Industry in your tech tree, even though the comment says otherwise.
Fixed. It's supposed to be industry.
I was working on the Drath as well. I'm not completely happy with them so hopefully you're having more luck. The Techtree is in dropbox, maybe there's something useful in it.
I'm calling it a night so g/l editing. By the way, it might be a good idea to decide who edits what race to prevent double work in the future.
I've updated the file with my changes. It's not perfect, but it should be a noticeable improvement.
Alongside the Drath, I'm considering to work on the Korath, Drengin, and Altarians. Maybe the Iconians too. The Yor can be kept as is for the moment, because they seem to do quite well, in my opinion.
Admit it Gaunathor. You built the Yor too well!?!
Fantastic. I'll have a look.
Alright. Then I'll look into the Torians, Krynn. The Thalan and Arceans are doing quite well but perhaps you'll see things I've missed.
Looks good. But why in the hell are they researching logistics now and now before without any changes?! Could it be that AIP8 likes high AIValues more when they follow up on a low AIValue tech?
I'll see if this works on the Krynn as well.
I noticed something bad and it needs fixing. When you change a race's agression, alignment, etc it update the AIPersonality to 11 and DialogueTag to Generic. You can fix this by hitting Clear but I doubt people will realize this.
We can't fix this since this is hardcoded into the .EXE file but I have a solution.
I'm going to build a small program that launches the game and then monitors any changes in RaceConfig files. When it detects a change it resets the AIPersonality and DialogueTag to the proper values.
I've done this before with GARF (Galacitic Race Fixer) and it works. The question is, will Stardock be willing to ship this fixer along with the community update.
There is no "too well" when it comes to the AI.
I just tried to confirm this on my end, by making the Korath Good and setting their Aggression to 100%. First by editing them within the game, and then by making those changes within the RaceConfig.xml and spending their customisation points within the game. In both cases, they remained on AIP 7 and DialogueTag Korath. So, how did you make those changes?
The problem occurs when there's an AIP/Dialogue mismatch. This effects the:
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