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.
*sigh*. Bloody dropbox.
Anyway, I got AIP7 to use AIP11's colonization function and it works perfectly. Fun fact, I recall doing that yesterday but for some odd reason it didn't work then. Must have been tired. Oh well.
With a little luck AIP10's build issue can be solved this way as well. I'll put them on AIP8 if I can manage it.
No worries, I got you covered (see above).
Compensated Minor Races:
http://www.xup.to/dl,74956263/RaceConfig.zip/
Notice that armed colony ship at the lonely Yor planet? If the specific planet does have a rallypoint already then these kinds of cargo vessels will be treated as military ships, fleeted together + never see their real destination. Does happen to constructors also. Basically degrade the capability of their fleets while costing only maint.
hey Mabus I want a copy of that file. really badly....
And great work you deserve a medal, or karma.
Thanks but I will not be releasing a copy of anything nor share any of the details on how this was done with anyone outside Stardock.
I wouldn't know anything about that.
I think the AI puts weapons on cargo hulls in response to loss of cargo hulls, but that's just speculation. They don't seem to last long, anyway.
It could also be something AIP7 does and we've simply forgotten because we haven't taken a good look at it in ages.
The download doesn't work.
Minor update (litteraly).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rre1q8917zy5n8q/Community%20Update.zip?dl=0
Minors now use one of the major's race music for a bit more variety.
The Iconians and Krynn have a slightly different color now to make them easier to distinguish.
Another minor update. Homeworld's will now have a cap of 12 billion because I gave them a 50% food bonus instead of more food. This means our current farms will still increase the BASE VALUE of 8 billion exactly the same way as for colonies.
Result. Homeworlds with a higher population WITHOUT farms pushing the population to uncontrolable level's.
Also. Starbase health is back to 50. Starbases have to be weak. Here's why. We (players) rely on them to push our research and production to incredible levels. It's why we love them. It's why we use them.
Upping the health for starbases to make sure the AI gets to keep them kills off the need to protect them. They are a vital part of our economy and they're our weak point. This is not the case for the AI who only uses them sparingly and no where near as effective.
My point is this. Try and remember when an enemy fleet sneaked by your defenses and WRECKED your economic starbases. It's moments like this than can rob you of victory. That sucked, right? It hurt too, right? And you probably vowed to NEVER let it happen again. (And it did and it SUCKED, again)
And it's supposed to! Losing your vital starbases should be something you fear and having Starbases armed to the teeth with well over a 100 hp just kills of that part of the game. Sure its fun to see AI fleet after AI fleet break it's neck trying to kill of your starbases but there's a good reason they keep trying.
You can't affort to lose them. The AI knows where to hit you where it hurts but right now it CANT'T.
So defend your starbases or research +HP to give them more health but keep in mind. One decend warfleet slipping past your defenses will ruin your day and it should.
Hmmm...
Could you be a bit more specific?
Hmmm...maybe.
I mod away most of the changes anyhow. So it doesn't matter to me.
The file I asked for...please. Save me a copy if it gets approved by SD, my galciv copy is a used physical copy and I don't have the registration key for updates, so I would have to have it given to me like these updates are. :]
it seems like the host-server is entirely down
It's good to have them back to 50 because the bonusHP from experience was far too much.
Although I have to say that my experience is a total opposite than yours, on games at obscene the AI does beat me in getting resources in most times, and getting his bases down is one of my priority before I attack him. In a lot of instances I wouldn't be able to hold them (usually my MMR is way lower than his and I have to rely on only a few ships) so I leave them unmined - which will make the AI build + send constructors to it which I will constantly shoot down thereby wasting his MP.
I've experimented a day to get the values of starbase attack+defense mods in line with fleetship-progression - result: undoable.
I went so far to implement all modules into the weapons-tree, so with each new tier of weapons new starbase mods became available. This way, it was possible to synch these two stats, to some point where a starbase will always destroy the first fleet but not the second.
However, for this test you need also ships --> research into hulls, and tiny/small are always destroyed while medium has a little disadvantage and large is even (if I fill fleets up only using the starting logistic racial)
Then I've redone the tests but this time additionally researched progressively into miniaturization. Naturally, this would give ships an edge because starbases do not profit from this stat. However, it wasn't that much of a deal, generally ships got from 10% to 30% stronger. Still the tiny/small were killed while medium was almost even while large was then superior by little.
Then repeated this but instead of miniaturization took logistics. After Enhanced Logistics was researched it became obvious that maxed fleets will blow all starbases out of the water, and it got way worse with every tech added. The problem is that total sum of attack+defense+hitpoints is influenced by logistics with every new tech by 50% (!!!!), ie. 6-->9-->14-->21-->31. Basically the strength of fleets with 6 points will be increased by more than 450% (!) by simply researching into 4 logistic techs.
And it's not possible to offset that by any starbase modules, even if they would be integrated into the logistics branch. Because there you could easily research them and put them on your bases and make them invincible towards everything in the starting tier weapon branch.
So the only true way to really balance them versus fleets is to merge & integrate logistics, miniaturization & hulls into the weaons-tree and put starbase mods there in, too.
So I think it is by design that SD made them a weak thing, it's still better for the AI to loose them and rebuild them instead that the AIs will totally wreck their MMR by sending their ships into suicide attacks versus omnipotent bases (as player usually stays out of this)
@Maiden.
Resources are a different matter, I was speaking of economic starbases which is where a player will shine in their employment. I am glad you agree with my assesment: starbases are meant to be weak.
What are your thoughts on the Thalan modules then. They're not actually stronger than the others they simply get EVERYTHING in one go.
Perhaps it would be best to remove their weapon/defense module and let them ride along with the others by using regular modules.
Another update:
The Thalans now use regular SB attack and DEF modules to balance them out. Without this change their Starbases become immortal very early in the
A new tech was introduced. Basic space construction. It gives the basic starbase mining and production modules and it's part of a civ's histroy. As such it's automatically included when you play the campaign.
The Torians no longer get Industrial Revolution and start without factories like they're supposed to.
I've also updated the change logs.
REMOVE YOUR RACECONFIGXML files before installing this update.
I have a thought about the executable changes.
Mabus, you are essentially reverse engineering. I'm pretty sure Frogboy/Stardock won't want a binary executable patch as part of any mod -- it will be broken by any future official patch, for one thing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're essentially doing two things with the binary modifications:
1) bugfix the AIP settings (when choosing an AI personality), and
2) change AIP 7's colony subroutine to that of another AIP so that it isn't so busted.
#1 should be a simple code fix, and #2 could be changed far more easily in the source if Frogboy is willing to do so. Maybe AIP7 could just be changed, for example, to colonize only within its own influence OR where no enemy influence exists; this would be keeping more with the original spirit of AIP7 without being totally broken. It should be a one-line change; somewhere in AIP7's colony subroutine is a line like this:
if ( influenceAt( planet.coords ) == myPlayerNumber) {
willColonize = true;
}
It only has to be changed to this:
if ( influenceAt( planet.coords ) == myPlayerNumber || influenceAt( planet.coords) == 0)
{ willColonize = true;
I really would like to see these two things fixed. If they can't, we can make do, as you noted in an earlier post, but I think suggesting very simple changes to the code will go over better than "here's a binary patch which can only be applied on this exact level and will get overwritten by future patches".
Awesome work either way though, Mabus.
Bug report:
In my playtest, both the Korx and Drath have declared war on me with a blank message. I had no idea they'd even declared until I saw the GNN message. This had not happened in earlier builds of the CU (and trust me, I was on the pointy end of a lot of war declarations).
I'm not sure what's up. I checked the conversations XML and each of the DECLARE_WAR topics I checked (_ON_PLAYER, _TO_DEFEND_FRIEND, _TO_STOPAGGRESSION, _PAIDOFF) all had a Generic/Generic dialog. I thought maybe there was a blank dialog specific to the Arcaen (me), but no luck.
Anyone seen anything like that before? Are there topics that get used for declarations of war other than the DECLARE_WAR_xxx topics?
Thanks. Stardock has repeatedly stated that to their regret they can no longer combile the code because their new development environment isn't compatible. My goal was to give them a work around to this perdicament. That is now over and done with.
And yes any change made on Stardock's behalf would by MUCH better and combined with the updated XML files, SRT files, etc, it would be one heck of an update.
There might be a bug in the conversations file that prevents the game from finding the proper message but last time I checked I didn't get any error messages. It might still be something else or it could simply be a bug that pop's up from time to time.
Can you confirm if it happens more often?
what! Why? Hell no, stop changing shit man.
I think that nerfing Aphrodisiac from 50% to 25% pop growth wasn't the best idea. You can only build it just when the colonization stage has ended, so bonus is not helping that much anymore. With all the bonuses to pop growth in tech tree across all races (some got small buffs, but all got 10% more from extreme colonization), this additional 25% is not doing that much.
Thalans got buffed too much. In vanilla they (along with Torians) were already most likely to become strongest Civ on most maps. Now they are just OP. 25% to economy is huge, along with a bit bigger bonuses they now get in the tech tree they are best in manufacturing, research, morale, economy, and military (ex. Remedial Engineering was 5 research, now is 10, they have bonus MP from Space Weapons, Defense Industries, and Stellar Production got even bigger buffs). I know other races have more bonuses in their tech trees as well, but playing as Thalans feels like setting difficulty down from Painful to Tough or even Challenging. Before, Thalans had to carefully balance their money vs production, now the money problems are gone and you can just sit on 2 manufacturing worlds in the early game and spam Colony Ships every 2-4 turns, and you can afford it for long. And when you colonize more worlds then 2 AIs joined together, you can roll a dice and either go for Influence or standard Conquest Victory. Game is won.
Yor got nerfed in Influence and Diplomacy area. Now, Diplomacy sounds alright as they are just a bunch of robots set on exterminating organic life in the Galaxy, but Influence is just going to hurt them much more as they are set on AIP7. There is a slight problem with those nerfs as well - all the races that suffer from low Diplomacy or Influence like Drengin, Korath or Thalan also have some really cheap or more expensive techs to even it out:
- Dark Influence (+10 Influence and Super Project) and Xeno Intimidation (+25 Diplomacy) for Korath
- Xeno Intimidation, Xeno Propaganda (+5 Influence and GA) and Xeno Brain Washing (+25 Influence) for Drengin
- Xeno Antrophology (+20 Influence) and Xeno Public Relations (+20 Influence), along with availability of all Diplomacy techs for Thalans.
Yor could use such a tech, or restore their racial bonuses to what they had before.
Another thing is with their economy, I already have been told that you don't want to lower population growth (it doesn' fit them as it is) from their techs, but there is one more thing. Previously, Economic techs for other races gave you +5 economy every second tech, now every single one gives you +5, but Yor still have their old Efficiency tech progression. Is this intentional, or someone forgot about them? Because now they are behind all other races in 10% economy, compared to previous version, and they were supposed to be those efficient ones...
Korx is underperforming as they always are, a lot has to do with them building Freighters instead of Colony Ships, maybe increase their Cut-Throat Trading purchase now reduction from 25 to 33? They can make a lot of money in a lot of different ways, but their Manufacturing is just average, so they can't turn this money into improvements or ships.
The Colonization techs are broken atm. I don't know if it's a feature or a bug, after you decreased manufacturing of Initial Colony. Now as you colonize an extreme world you are stuck with 1 point worth of Social Manufacturing (focusing doesn't help), and building on this world is practicly impossible without second colonization tech. This is a big thing for Iconians, who are stuck with planets they cannot use for a long time, as AI not always go straight for Advanced Aquatic and Toxic Colonization techs (as in, it takes some time). It is an issue for other races that get some basic colonization tech like Korath or Yor, but it hurts Iconians most. That's why they are so random, if they go for normal planets they do just slightly below average, if there is a lot of extreme planets they just hit the bottom in every rating, except population and maybe economy and it take a long time before they get those planets up and running.
One more thing, Basic space construction should be Basic Space Construction, it stands out
Like what? Preventing starbases from becoming beacons of doom?
They get +100 lotalty. They're not going to get culture flipped anytime soon. Why would they need +influence?
The Yor's tech's are intentional. They no longer get a stucture to build but rely on high population planets. Their "farms" are the only ones that also grant morale which allows them to get away with this tactic.
I had an idea for this. Super traded gives you all techs which have +trade. My plan is to remove the +trade bonus from Trade and move it to Advanced Trade. That way they start without freighters and will build colony ships instead of freighters.
Of course... this doesn't make a lot of sense lore wise.
Perhaps it's better than that the AI's focus on getting their 2nd level extreme colonization tech.
They also get a -50 population pentalty instead of -33 but I'll look into it.
Give back the modules to the Thalan as they made then unique and its there lore, and do what OShee said.
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