New update. THIS IS A TEST VERSION.

I went through the change log and noticed a ton of techs were cut down severely in costs. Morale, industry, terraforming. The list went on and on.

I restored a lot of techs to their old values but I'll explain each change.

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rre1q8917zy5n8q/Community%20Update.zip?dl=0

 

TechTree.

- Trade techs. Reduced trade bonus ability. They were very high. Trade is unreliable as a source of income. I want AIs and players to research their own economic tech to be more self sufficient.

- StarFed back to 5000 TP, up from 3500
The final tech should be hard to obtain and feel like an achievement. The old cost was high but now you'll think twice before diving into this tech. This may seem like a big leap for a minor 10% increase in economy but you got to have some heavy duty tech to pick up in the late game. 

- Space Mining TP change changed back.
These techs were practically given away.

- Counter Espionage back to 1200.
Pure Research to Diplomacy
Espionage bonus removed (useless money sink)

This isn't a great tech. The AI doesn't know how to use it properly and agents can be battled with agents and the AIs tend to train a ton of them.

- ExpertRefining. Restored cost to 3500, up from 1500
This is a bonus to mining. That's a potential 5% extra weapons, morale, etc, etc. This is VERY powerful.

- AdvanceHulls. Back to 800, up from 500 (Thalan value).
800 works fine. Hulls are cheap as it is.

SlaveCanyons:
-changed Cost from 2000 to 1000 to 1500. Again. a Very powerful improvement.

IndustrialReplication1:
-changed Cost from 2500 to 1500 to 2500. The Iconians can do amazing research. They have no trouble getting this and as it stands they're amongst the most powerful civs in the game.

IndustrialReplication2:
-changed Cost from 3500 to 2500 to 3500
-AI 30 to 20

IndustrialReplication3:
-changed Cost from 4500 to 3500 to 4500
-AI 30 to 10

XenoBrainWashing:
-changed Category from Culture to Pure Research to Culture

DarkInfluence:
-changed Category from Culture to Pure Research to Culture

Galactic Stock Exchanges:
-changed Cost from 3500 to 2500 to 3500

ExtremeEntertainment:
-changed Cost from 1200 to 500 to 1200

ZeroGSportsArena:
-changed Cost from 3500 to 1500 to 3500

Virtual Reality Centers:
-changed Cost from 5500 to 3000 to 5500

ArenasII:
-changed Details from "This one of a kind (per planet) attraction" to "This attraction"
-changed Group from Arenas to None
-changed Cost from 1500 to 800 to 1500

HealingPools:
-changed Cost from 300 to 60 to 300

WellnessFalls:
-changed Cost from 700 to 350 to 700

TidesOfCleansing:
-changed Cost from 3000 to 1500 to 300

TorianHotSprings:
-changed Cost from 4200 to 2100 to 4200

Morale tech is immensely powerful it should feel like a real investment. If you run into morale trouble with the old values grabbing a new tech is a very simple option.

Xeno Farm Construction II:
-changed Cost from 1000 to 600 to 1000

Advanced Charging Stalks:
-changed Cost from 2000 to 600 to 2000. I get that the Yor need their farms to make cash but they grab this so early and so easily their techs might as well be rolled into one. Now you pick up Charging Stalks and LATER you pick up the next when your research is sufficient.

Soil Enhancement
-Category from Terraforming to Biology to Terraforming

Habitat Improvement:
-changed Cost from 1500 to 600 to 1500
-Category from Terraforming to Biology to Terraforming

Terraforming:
-changed Cost from 3000 to 1200 to 3000
-Category from Terraforming to Biology to Terraforming

Again. Terraforming is extremely potent in the hands of a player, not so much for the AI. Grabbing these techs should, again, feel like an investment. Are you going to pick up a new type of factory, or, are you going to improve your planets? The sum total of the previous techs was 2100. That's less than Terraforming (the tech) used to cost on it's own. That's an incredible amount of turns.

DivergentEvolution:
-changed Cost from 500 to 300 to 500. Same as Weather Control.

Fertility Acceleration:
-changed Cost from 1500 to 800 1500. Again. A tech you pick up later not sooner unless you're willing to spend several weeks picking it up.

All "Normal" X-Col tech from 1000 to 2400
All "Advanced" X-Col tech from 2400 to 1000
This means an initial heavy investment with a shorter research span to finish it. This is a stealth buff to the Yor
and Iconians. It also solves the "useless" planet problem.

ExtremeColonization:
AIValue from 55 to -10 to 55
AIP8 fix. Now implemented in race trees. 

Planetary Invasion:
-set AIValue to 35 to 30. Hopefully the AI will leave it alone for a while longer. But it doesn't look like it.

DistributedEnergyMatrix:
-changed Cost from 5000 to 2000 to 5000. Yes this is obscenely expensive but the Yor hardly need an easier time raising their production.

WayOfTheArnor:
-set AIValue to 20 to 10 to 5. Stops the Altarians from plowing into this tree.

WayOfTheDreadLord:
-set AIValue to 20 to 10 to 5. Ditto.

That's for techtree changes. My goal was to return a measure of pace to the game and I hope this works. It might seem odd that a tech that's a minor update should cost WAY much than it's predecessor but there's a reason for it. It signals the player to do something else. If you research a tech that takes 5 week and it's follow up costs 7 you might be tempted to just pick up the next tech. If it's 15 you'll do something else. I've experienced this with the economics techs, morale techs, etc. You just don't stop and 4 techs just merge into one big research crunch until you're maxed.

I get the feeling most of these costs were slashed to "help the AI". It probably did but to me it turns research into a hurried affair and more akin to munching on popcorn than eating a pizza.

Political Parties

Mercantile:
Removed espionage bonus. Replaced with 10% Purchace Now bonus.

Invasion

InformationWarfare:
-BonusValue min 20 to 15
-BonusValue max 40 to 30

Yor Techtree
ExtendedLifetime:
-set AIValue to -10 to removed. Needed for AIP8.

SparkOfLife:
-set AIValue to -10 to removed. NEeded for AIP8.

AdvancedPopulationAcceleration:
-set AIValue to -10 to removed. NEeded for AIP8

Iconian TechTree

AquaticWorldColonization:
-set Cost to 200. removed. They're not Torians.

AdvancedAquaticWorldColonization:
-set Cost to 1200. removed. Ditto, and advanced tech is now 1000.

Torian TechTree

AdvancedAquaticWorldColonization:
-set Cost to 1200 to 600. These water dwellers should get some benefit from having fins.

Improvements:

Aphrodisiac:
-changed AbilityAmount from 50 to 25 to 50. As requested.

Capital
-morale 25 to 35. I noticed a higher population made morale a bitch. So a bit more of it can't hurt.
-economy 10 to 50 to 25. Wow?! 50%? That's an economic capital. 

RaceConfig

Thalans
Economy 0 to 25 to 0. As requested by OShea.

Arceans
Speed -10 to 0 to -10. Arceans have slow ship. Screw the AI if it can't deal with it but I will not deny a player the fun of having to find a way to work around this. They have plenty of bonuses to make up for it as well.

I did a quick test of each race to see how their research was effected. A good thing it turns out because the Yor tree still had a few hacks from when it was on AIP8. AIP7's research is a bit like AIP11 but it REALLY seems to love techs that give it starbase modules.

 

 

They'll get that from their techs as well as 10% from their political part now. We could buff the Korx trade bonus by putting it on their Trade Techs but I would make them untradable as a result. Actually, I'm not opposed to making the Korx Trade techs untradable it seems silly of them to trade away their SA advantage. 

In addition, we could put some +range on their trade tech as well like you suggested.

 

Okey... that worked really well actually. I just gave the Yor a -100 penalty to espionage. No matter what they did they couldn't spend a dime on training spies. This would work on the Korx, or any civ for that matter.

Of course it's going to look pretty strange every civ has a -25% pentalty to espionage but we could definately get away with it. The Krynn could be the exception to the rule to this and get a (very) small bonus to espionage instead and leave it as an Ability for players to toy around with.

This would mean the Krynn can still train spies faster (they can invest 35% of their income into trainign them and that's before they pick up +espionage). The Krynn get +50 morale, their citizens cannot go unhappy so they can be taxed to death.

We'd leave espionage in the game, slow it down in fact (not a bad thing imo) but at the same time we'd prevent the AI from bankrupting itself by training spies.

Any thoughts on this?

I assume this is a typo.

I like the changes to X-Col tech.  It feels more reasonable that the big technological "hump" would be getting anyone to survive at all.  Helping the AI deal with the "useless planet" syndrome is of course good too!

I think the change to Mercantile,  and in general away from Espionage% to Purchase Now%,  is genius.   We need to be careful how high this can stack,  though -- lets not cross the line where you can buy ships as cheaply as build them.

Thank you!  As you can see from my avatar I play the Arcaen frequently.  Losing the speed malus kind of felt like cheating,  as you noted they do have a lot going for them (at least in the player's hands,  the AI can sometimes struggle with them).

Can I make a request that we give these changes time to settle a bit before starting on the next round?   IMHO our overall goal here should be homing in on a set of changes that is "enough" to give everyone a more fun experience,  deal with the more obvious bugs/issues/exploits,  and be presentable to Frogboy/Stardock in a more or less complete form (along with the binary patch,  which I have high hopes will be accepted as well).

It's hard to do that if we're getting a new version every couple days.   I like GC2 but I can only play so much. 

I'm using negative values for espionage since quite some time in my personal mod. It looks ugly but is a really effective solution. Once they get some bonuses from techs or anomalies they will be able to train spies, just they take quite long. But then, there could be some bonuses be attributed to some techs for those players who'd like to play with it.

Just be cautious to not cross over -100% - then the AI will actually make money from espioange - and get a "free" spy every turn (spy holocaust)

It would require an Interest Rate of ~90% or more to do so. (calculations vary because productioncosts aren't fix as well) As of now Korx could already reach +100% (ie. no costs anymore for all buys/upgrades), but that's their Technological Victory.

Without it they should have +25% techs + 10% Political Party & +25% from going Neutral Ethics (something only the player can do). There might be more though....

I like almost all the changes so far. Especially the colonization tech changes. Not so sure about Space Mining, as it always seemed like expensive but weak tech, but maybe that's because bonuses from Asteroids are not that clearly visible.

And Silas, absolutely great job on rewriting those descriptions.

What if instead we raise Manufacturing Vortex cost to 1500-2000 (from 500 as it is now)? In non modded ToA, Manufacturing Vortex took more time to research then Anti-Matter Power Plants, now it is twice as cheap. Maybe then, raise DEM cost slightly to 3000-4000, but make Manufacturing Vortex more expensive and a bit weaker then Power Plants as it was in vanilla? For example, 25% vs 30%. It won't be such a huge leap from 500 to 5000 for the next tech that gives you only 1 GA, and overall cost for both techs will be same, be it 500+5000 or 1750+3750.

I was thinking at work about those bonuses given by Yor "government" tree, and as I remember, Gaunathor gave them and Iconians democracy, republic and federation techs to help them out with their economy - but AI don't go for those techs early anyway, so we can treat them more as something optional. That said, idea of last Yor tech to give bonus to research fits the description, but values are a bit too high. They are my favourite race, but +20 to research is too much. Like Maiden said, new governments give bonuses to economy already, so there's no need to make those techs too powerful. Unless we make the cost crazy high to balance it out.

In vanilla, Yor had a bit stronger production improvements, and with a bit lower maintenance, but they took longer to build compared to normal factories because of their cost. So basically, they didn't build up their worlds that fast, but once they did, their manufacturing was superior. So, instead of Social production from modified techs, I propose: 

Collective Evaluation: 10 Military production

In spirit of slower planet build up but stronger Military once they are operational, so no +Social.

Collective Planning: 10 Military Production, same as above.

Collective Thought: I would personally make the bonus same as in Synthetic Ingenuity and Creative Insight;

<CreativityAbility>10</CreativityAbility>
<ResearchAbility>5</ResearchAbility>

Plain +20 Reseach is an overkill, 10 Creativity is not that much, considering they already get +20 from other techs and Creativity is random compared to plain Research. It's more like a bonus on top of economy they can get from new government. Or, if you think they already have too much Creativity, make it 10 Research 5 Creativity, or just plain 10 Research. Both will work just fine.

So overall, they get 20 Military, 5 Research and 10 Creativity for a little bit more research points instead of 30 Diplomacy and 15 Influence from normal techs. Seems not that OP. 

And yes, they can still trade for normal government techs, but they can also get Aphrodisiac from trade, which is awkward but works all the same. As Mabus said, we can't cover for everything, too much would need to be cut out or made untradeable .

 

Is it possible to move Planetary Invasion to branch off from Space Weapons tech or is it too late to make such big changes? This will prevent the AI from researching it too early. If it can be done, the cost of the tech could be lowered so AI or the player can still jump quickly back to researching weapons/defenses, but only if the next techs in the Invasion branch got a bit higher costs. For example, PI from 1200 to 700, but Planetary Bombardment from 800 to 1000, Tidal Disruption from 600 to 750, Space Marines from 800 to 1000 and so on.

What if we leave just Soil Enhancement on Biology, so AI still picks it up early, but put rest on Terraforming, so it slows down after getting first one and doesn't get stuck early on rest of those expensive techs?

Still better then AI running at 20% spending

I'll start a game with Drengin and later read some of their tech tree descriptions to get their general vibe and maybe I'll come up with some descriptions that will fit them and Korath at the same time. Never played Drengin before, this will be fun If I don't write anything today, I'll do it tomorrow as well as start on Thalans.

NOTE: All of the above are just my ideas and everyone is welcome to discuss them, I write this because there's been a lot of new versions lately and I don't want to add to confusion or force anyone to playtest any changes without giving them a second thought. 

Oh hell yes. Should be 5000, not 500. I'll check if I made an error in the cost in techtree tomorrow.

I can get behind those numbers. Same TP, a bit better balanced with other techs. Unless someone raises a good argument why not to I'll put those numbers in.

 

Huh. That's weird. I'll fix it tomorrow.

Release early, release often! 

It's free production. Each mine gives you +5 to begin with. The average astriod field holds between 3 to 4 astroids. That's +15 to 20 producion which you can point at any planet you like. Then you upgrade them and it get's even better and you don't have to do anything for it. Just have a space miner or two flying around. But you're right, it's not very visible and I constantly remind myself I need to be mindful of setting them up better.

Hmmm. Possible? Sure. But tricky.. After Space Weapons the weapon tree branches off into pretty distinctive groups. I placed PI on Space Weapons before but it didn't make that much of an impact.

PI is a troubling tech. You REALLY want the AI to grab it just not to early. On the other hand you REALLY don't want the AI to wait to long since it becomes 2.8 times more expensive in the end. We'll have to think on this one. Let me know what you come up with.

Actually the AI grabs soil enhancement pretty reliably. The AIP8 races ( they hate biology ) pick it up from time to time. The thing is, if there's tons of biology tech in the techtree I'm a bit worried AIP8 races won't pick actual biology tech and instead they'll grab 2 levels of terraforming. Also, and this might just be me, but I'm not to fussed with the AI not picking up terraforming techs. They'll get extra tiles and a smidge of morale out of it. But will they use those tiles properly? That's a tough question to answer and perhaps, in the end, it's simply better if it spends its energy getting a better gun.

Agreed. And slowing down spy production wouldn't be a bad thing either. You'll value your spies a bit more and getting ADVANCED level espionage on everything will take a bloody long time so you'll have to pick carefully. Let's sleep on it and see if we can come up with an elegant solution. If not we'll slam them all with a -25% (number is debatable) espionage penalty, Krynn not included (they'll get 0 or +10 or something and a bit more from their structures.).

Have fun! I look forward to any descriptions you come up.

I'm not sure if you mentioned the Iconians but if you feel like it could you come up with something for them as well. The Iconians lacked government tech but it's mentioned here and there they have the only functional form of communism in the galaxy (I think it's in their economic tech). So, having a republic doesn't really fit. Could you have a look at them as well?

 

Anyway it's bloody late. G'night

 

BTW what's up with Military Starbases? I see the AI building them, but without modules they're worthless. And he's not going to research into them, it's labeled Research/Computing. Not saying the AI should focus on them (as he can't really stretegize with them) but at least there should be some basic modules for them.

Morning release: https://www.dropbox.com/s/rre1q8917zy5n8q/Community%20Update.zip?dl=0

 

ManufacturingVortex:
-cost 500 to 1750

DistributedEnergyMatrix:
-changed Cost from 5000 to 2000 to 5000 to 3750

Tides of Cleaning
-fixed cost set to 3000 (not 300)

Planetary Invasion
-Requirement from Space Militarization to Space Weapons

Planetary Defense:
-Requirement from Planetary Defense to StarshipDefenses
-Category Planetary Defense to Invasion to Planetary Defense

Adv. Planetary Defense:
-Category Planetary Defense to Invasion to Planetary Defense

Supreme Planetary Defense:
-Category Planetary Defense to Invasion to Planetary Defense

Category Planetary Defense means: no invasion tactics.

AdvancedStarbaseConstruction:
-changed Category from Starbase to Military to Starbase
-set to Weapon tag in all trees

StarbaseMilitarization:
-changed Category from Starbase to Military to Starbase
-set to Weapon tag in all trees

StarbaseMobilization:
-changed Category from Starbase to Military to Starbase
-set to Weapon tag in all trees

StarbaseProjection:
-changed Category from Starbase to Military to Starbase
-set to Weapon tag in all trees

StarbaseDomination:
-changed Category from Starbase to Military to Starbase
-set to Weapon tag in all trees

StarbaseConquestStrategy:
-changed Category from Starbase to Military to Starbase
-set to Weapon tag in all trees

My hope is that AIP's that build military starbases (AIP7 loves them) will be more inclided to research the Starbase category but I'm not completely sure about this.

RaceConfig

Espionage set to -25 save to exceptions.

Drath espionage 25 to 0
Krynn espionage 100 to 75

The Krynn can tax their citizens at astonishing levels, the Drath make a ton of cash with war profetering.

-Minors
Applied Maiden666's changes.

 

I haven't looked into Yor government bonuses yet.

He did? Hmm probably because sensors are capped at hmmm 16 pc or something. I'll have a look.

 

Hmmm.... you do raise an interesting point. Continuity between games. I'm not opposed to renaming "The Shrinker" back to The Hyperion Shrinker and if no one else has a problem with we'll put it in.

nvm doublepost.

I assume that the Hyperion Shrinker was originally designed with the name The Shrinker because the graphics is named like this.

Gaunathor did change some stuff according to this logic, for example the Orbital Command Center did originally use the graphics from the Temple of Espionage and there are a lot of other examples.