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.
Fixed by updating FleetManagerEntryWnd.dxpack. It shows doubledigit logistics now.
Download FleetManagetEntryWnd.dxpack
Also, try my updated rallypoiny screen. I removed the useless minimap. Now you can see up to 20 rallypoints.
Download RallyPointWnd.dxpack
I would be grateful if someone could give me a short info about the community update. Seeing your last posts it seems it is still in active development, so should I wait for new update or install the latest stable version?
Mabus, I watched your LP with APT 2 mod, and I liked it a lot! I was planning on installing it when I found out about community update. Could you please be so kind to compare the two? Are they compatible, can I install APT 2 over community update?
p.s. Is there a possibility of you doing another LP with community patch and explaining the fixes and features, just like you did with APT?
Regards
Hello there. Thanks for watching my LP of APT2.0. APT2.0 and the Community update are very different beasts. APT2.0 standardized the techtree making it akin to the one used in Dark Avatar but with Twilight's unique technologies.
The Community update does no such thing. It keeps the techtrees (mostly) in the same shape and tries to use more AIs as well.
Unfortunately it isn't possible to combine total conversion mods with Galciv 2.
As to doing another LP... probably .... not... I'm not sure. I've stopped LP nearly two years ago and my old XP gaming rig is way, way outdated by now.
Feel free to download the Community Fix and give it a spin it's pretty much done anyway. Just make sure you remove any race customization files before switching mods or you will run into trouble.
Thank you for your quick reply. I haven't played GC2 in years so it will be a fresh install. Do I place community update in mods section of TOA, and activate it like any other mod?
From what I can grasp reading the posts and CU spreadsheet it seems that it ''messes'' around with lot of in game stats. Knowing it is a combined work from what seems to be the best GC2 modders, would you say that it is the ultimate GC2 experience?
I am still under impression of your mod, but CU seems larger in scope. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
I did a LP of the Community Update. Thing is, it's difficult to do a LP series when new versions are popping up quickly. I recorded a lot of footage but didn't have time to edit it. I also did a couple of streams to Twitch and uploaded one of them as an episode (it's just gameplay, no commentary).
Hi, first of all, I'm not a native English speaker, so sorry for any mistakes.
I used APT1 for a long time, but now seeing you guys doing this amazing work trying to fix and balance as many things as you can, I just wanted to thank you all for your hard work. I tried balance game on my own, but never got around to do weapons tech tree, or other important things like you did.
I tested latest version (4.0), and here's summary:
Large, Tough, all abundant, except planets (common), normal tech speed, Drengin, Torians, Altarians, Arceans, Thalans and Krynn, I played it till about 220 turn after getting a map where Drengin had a couple of planets in its influence.
Arceans after bad colony rush got slowly flipped by Krynn, later Thalans and Altarians both jumped and conquered rest of their planets. Drengin at the end of my playthrough were militaric and economic powerhouse, declared war on Thalans who were second, and I (Yor) joined in aswell, invading loads of their planets along with a homeworld. Soon after that I was first in military, tech, population and economy rating, so I left the game as I considered it already won. Krynn had massive influence but never built any influence starbases, and lacked strong military. Altarians kinda never done anything beside poking Arceans. Drengin and Thalans were strongest before Thalans got conquered. Torians had a bad spawn and never got many planets, and they were my first victim.
Now I had a lot of fun with new tech tree (at bit different than what I got used to in APT1), and those are my impressions/issues:
1. Some civs didn't build any farms on most of their worlds, only Krynn had 12-14b pop on half their planets, rest had 8b on around 80% of their planets.
2. Aquatic Colonization has 2% bonus to Courage for some reason.
3. Weather Control (Arcean) is too easy to trade from Arceans, they sold it to me for cheap techs like Trade/Soil Enhancement, and with its 10% planet quality plus their Weather Control Zenith on top, it gives the player an unfair advantage of +3-4 PQ on every world. I think is should be disabled to trade with it, maybe leave just stealing it?
4. Torians research Planetary Invasion very soon. Usually before 50-55th turn, even before getting any weapon techs. Tested it on next game that I'm playing currently, and they done same thing. In first game Altarians also done the same. It's not a big issue, but they could research something more important at this stage of the game.
5. Most civs had very high morale on most planets, 80-95% I think. I don't know if they had good tax rates and were running at 100% spending, but looks like they are better at keeping morale high anyway. Or maybe it is because they never had many farms. I don't know, someone maybe need to test it further. Only Arceans had loads of 20-40 approval planets for some reason. I don't know if they had this approval all the time, or just for a couple of turns as I checked on them only once before they surrendered.
6. All of the AIs I played with get Extreme Colonization and various colonization techs around 40-60th turn, which I think is good as there is more competition in early stage, and I have yet to get use to it Altarians swooped 2 Barren worlds from me (Yor) as I wasn't prepered for any civ to get this tech so quickly.
7. Playing as the Yor, they start with -10 pop growth, but in the tech tree they get +10, +15 and +30 pop growth. I don't know if this is best for Yor as personally I think they should be focused towards +economy or +morale, and I don't know what bonuses have other races as I haven't played them. Maybe give those techs +5, +10 and +15 pop growth, but modify efficiency techs to 10/10/10economy and 5 morale/10e 5m/10e 10m to even it out? Anyway I don't think such big bonuses suit Yor as in lore, but if it's just for balance the early stage of the game, then I'm ok with it.
8. Thalan Starbases had 150-250 attack and defense in all categories, basically making invulnerable as my fleets of medium ships had 60 attack and 15 defense. Unless it's a bug with display, as I haven't even tried to take one down. It may be a problem for other AI as they concentrate on Starbases first, which will most likely make them lose all their military.
I know it may sound like I only came to criticize, but i really appreciate what you guys doing and I just want to give you some feedback. All in all I like all the changes, balancing of weapon tech costs, changes to improvements and costs, tech trees (I really love more morale bonuses for Yor, with it I don't miss Efficiency Center that much and there's less mandatory 1pp buildings). I hope you will get permision to fix the AI in the files, so Drengin, Yor and Iconians can be set to different AIs, so I don't need to ctrl+n every time I include Drengin or Yor in my games.
Good luck people!
According to my calculations, the doubling in logistics did decrease starbase-costs by merely 10%. Does this really make a difference? We could probably increase it even more, Mabus do your changes even support 3 digits?
BTW on the FleetManager-changes - I'm not sure why the window has to be longer....? Not that I use rally points at all....
Hi gang! How's the update coming? Last time I checked there were only 22 pages to this thread.
Not every AI is as eager to put farms down. There's not much we can do here.
That was part of the vanila game as well. I may have taken it out for APT1. The CU leaves it in.
Thanks for spotting this. We'll adress it.
This the typical behaviour of the AI running them. We could try and dissuade the AIs but we'd run the risk of them skipping over the tech. When you're designing AI behaviour you always have to balance timing versus need. The AI's need Planetary Invasion more than they need to time it well.
Yup. We got all the AI's to go for it. Nice isn't it
The reason they get +pop growth is because their entire economy is based on having a large population without any economic structures. The mod to far advanced to change this at this moment.
The Thalans get all SB defense tech with a single tech, the other civs take longer. Eventually starbases will be nigh impossible to take out unless you bring a fleet with astonishingly powerful warships.
Starbase balancing is tough. I tried my best with APT2.0 but you always end up with starbases that are to weak or to strong. I'm aware of the AI's behaviour in this but this can be exploited just as easily by parking a fleet of slow but heaviliy defended ships on top of a starbase.
On the contrairy first hand experience is incredibly valuable to us. I spend tons of time modding which leaves very little time to actually playing.
As to the AI's. Well the Iconians use a proper one it's the Yor and Drengin that are giving us trouble atm. I really hope Stardock will allow an outside change to their product. We'll see.
It should. If not let me know, I'll make the display tile even larger.
(I think you meant Rally Point manager). I use a LOT of rally points and it always bothered me the window was so small. I could make it a little smaller I suppose.
Hey Yarlen. I think we're in a good place but we had to change the AI's for the Iconians, Yor and Drengin due to a bug in the EXE file.
Innitially we had the Drengin on AIP8 (same as the Terrans, Thalan, etc). A good AI and it got good results but a bug forced us to change the Drengin back to AIP7 (which doesn't colonize outside it's sphere of influence).
This bug occurs when you edit a race's personality. When there's a mismatch between the Dialogue tag and the AIPersonality tag the race's behaviour is displayed as "Generic". Change anything in the Personality tab and you overwrite the AIPersonality/Dialogue tag with AIP11 and Generic. So you lose the species unique dialogue and the "wrong" AIP will be running the show. Bad results follow.
Using the Cheat Engine I managed to find the memory addresses where the values for the AIPersonalities are stored. After changing them to mimic the CU's innitial choices I noticed the "Generic" display bug was solved. By using assembly we can make this change permanent and we can put the Drengin and Yor back on AIP8 and the CU will be much better for it.
But more importantly this will prevent players from picking broken race behaviour when they customise a race's personality. Right now there's nothing stopping them from doing just that. If they pick the Iconian or Torian behaviour they'll be in for a bad surprise .
I've PMed Frogboy and Draginol more than a week ago if we can change the defeault AIPersonality values in the EXE file but I've had no response. Is there anything you can do in this regard? Is there anything I can do to convince people this will work?
I really feel strongly about this because dispite the numerous fixed the CU implements. Dispite all the optimisations there's still 3 civs. Cool civs! That are run by a malfunctioning AI but we have the power to change this a make it work.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Regards,
A.
I see it now^^ (I was looking at the Governor screen^^). Good change. Yeah, the above map is kinda meaningless from medium-maps onward anyway....
Ok but how far do we intend to reduce starbase costs? -25% -50% etc
This is interesting. Will the defenseships always be attacked first and the starbase only afterwards if all other ships were defeated in total disregard of the decimation of firepower of common fleetbattle?
I think we can, although it would require an change of attitude, away from the spamable farms approach.
We just integrate an additional +10 or +12 (etc) food cumulative to various 1pp structures (whose techs are made untradeable, unstealable) and you will see all planets will evolve at least the possibilty to get this high capacity. The only thing that would stop this is if the specific improvement hasn't been research or enqued, but that could be taken care of.
And even if all things fail, it IS possible to introduce an upgrade to the CapCiv/Initial Colony buildings
I cannot remember how many times these forums did eat up my posts although lucky this time it was still resident in memory...: (I really should get an addon that will autosafe forum posts...)
Is it possible to create another ability, one that gives food or population percentages? Maybe then add it to the race configuration file, or farm techs?
Starbases are nigh impossible to get right when it comes to defense/attack. You either have to much of to less of either. An AI will send fleet after fleet. If it fails to destroy the SB it will level continuously to the point where it can no longer be destroyed.
Here's a thought. We kill of SB defense modules. That way the SB always takes some damage even if the fleet is destroyed.
Not that I'm aware off.
There's in general too much racial stats in game and improvements cost less and are more powerful --> the cumulative effect is that the game becomes faster (so that the AI will finish his planetary buildup in time before he loses interest there....)But I agree. It's kinda strange that with some civs it's possible to keep the taxslider at 79% throughout the whole game, even starting very early. Back in vanilla that required at least some serious technological development or Moral Resource Mines.
Kindly point out which civs you believe receive to much easy moral on their improvements and I'll look into it.
I think that defence modules just need to be balanced a bit more. Currently the progression is strong, and allows starbases to kill fleets very efficiently.
I've already removed the SB defense modules and I intent to keep it that way unless a different approach to unlocking them is applied.
Why? They're impossible to balance because SB attack/defense tech is no longer bound do actual attack/defense tech. In theory you could max out a starbase before you even get a weapon. If you go to war with a weak race you could wipe out their fleets only to be completely pummled by their starbases.
This means starbases are completely out of alignment with weapon progression. Worse, if a weak fleets keep hitting a starbase it will powerlevel to the point where they are impossible to destroy. I spend weeks tinkering with SB modules for APT2.0 and it's a deathtrap.
The only option is to return of defense SB modules back into the defense/weapon tree and tying their strength to actual weapon/defense progress. Battle Stations level 1 stays in, the rest goes.
Further weapon SB modules can be unlocked by researching weapons and defense techs that branch of weapon and defense tech.
THis solves another problem because if I had a knickle for every time the AI dove into the starbase militarisation techs before getting a weapon I could buy Altaria.
HEre's a test version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rre1q8917zy5n8q/Community%20Update.zip?dl=0
Changes.
I removed a lot of morale from the civs bonuses. It was all over the place and most species require little to no morale bonuses to keep a player running at 79%.
Added 4 attack, 4 defense SB modules and linked them to weapon and defense tech, added techs to techtree and added techs to all civs except Thalans. Techs are tradable but will be difficult to get. Reused old SB modules.
Buffer Battle stations from 1/2/1 to 2/2/2.
Removed Battle stations above level 2.
Removed Defense stations.
Recuded costs of Military SB tech.
Changed opening Military SB to to computing/research to keep the AI out.
Added Rally Point screen.
Added fix for Logistics in fleet manager.
Added changes screen to write descriptinos. More room for text.
I've also taken the time to run a few short test games. Something just got a bit to easy to manage. Morale comes to mind. Every morale building has been buffed to "help" the AI. Great. But it makes keeping up morale far to easy.
Guys it's time to think of the player, not the AI. A lot of good things were done to improve the game but making it easier to play for the AI also makes it easier for a player but a player WILL take far more advantage of the changes than the AI ever will. Basically it should be a challenge keeping morale up, making money, etc, etc when you play. The AI simply has to do the best it can at the players chosen difficulty level. If the game is to easy, up the difficulty and the AI will get bonuses to just about everything and morale, money, etc, etc, will cease to be a problem.
Good AI's are important, but they're not all that's to this game.
New testversion.
I removed the extra techs for the SB Att/Def modules and integrated with into the weapon/defense tree. Battlestations is unlocked now by Galactic Warfare because the Thalans don't have this tech and I don't want them to get it either so it's untradable/stealable now.
I toned down the Thalan attack/defense modules to similar values for generic civs. They get their modules in one go. That's their advantage they don't need to be uber on top of that.
Concerning mining modules and factory modules. These need to go back to the factory techs they came from and there need to be more modules.
It takes 3. 3! Constructors to completely build up a factory/mining operation. That's a terribly small investment for the power you get back from it.
At the meager investment of 12 constructors you get 4 fully operational eco starbases granting a 100% production/research bonus to any planet in range. I don't have a problem with the bonus, I have a problem with the ease at which it's unlocked. Two techs is all it takes and neither is very expensive.
I understand why this was done. The AIs simply don't keep build constructors for very long and the faster they can upgrade the better. But a human player will run away with this system. The previous system had much better pacing and was in sync with industrial progression.
I'm going to split up the production modules from 10/15 to 5/5/5/10 and reïntegrate them into the industrial techtree. This means it will take more time to fully upgrade your starbases. I'll make some room for the extra modules by getting rid of sensor upgrades. Seriously, who uses those?
The AI, if other modules aren't available^^. Basically a human player can easily tune him down by handing him over the sensor-techs who unlock these modules.
IMO a single but powerful sensory module should be enough.
Anyway I like your changes and agree with what you did wrote, waiting now for yet another build.
One small tip: If you ever create new techs don't use names that are already given to other stuff, including modules etc. The game gets bugggy then.
Which is a waste of money.
Agreed. That's what I did win APT2.0. I'll put it on Sensors 3.
Thank you.
I'll keep that in mind. In the current build that shouldn't be an issue.
I also did a bit of napkin math to support my idea.
Old situation. It took 4 (5?) modues + 1 = 5 to build up an eco starbase. A sector can hold 4.
What you need:
Hmm, for some reason I'm unable to edit the top post. Forum bug?
Cheers for posting a new version! I'll check it out.
Hmm, Life Support is back to normal. I guess it didn't work out as planned, then.
Thanks Mabus! I've downloaded the latest test version and will give it a spin shortly. I've actually tried to do this a couple times already but before I can get too far into a game there's a new version ready.. I can't keep up!
I do agree that morale was getting a little too easy. The SB changes sounds sensible too.
Looking forward to it!
-- Silas
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