Mabus,  did you pick up my final changes to the Thalan gov. tech descriptions from post 763?   It went through a bunch of edits and you got one of the intermediate ones for Beta 1B.

CU V5 - Beta 1C.

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p46tgl80yypeyk1/Community%20Update%20V5%20-%20Beta%201C.zip?dl=0

This update is mostly some numerical tweaking and a bit of nerfing here and there.

TechTree.

Dark Energy
- Weapons from 30 to 10

Unimaginable Destruction
- Weapons 10 to 0

Offensive Meditation:
- Weapons 20 to 0

DefensiveMeditation:
- Defense 20 to 0

SuperiorEspionage:
- Removed 5% Research

UltimateEspionage:
- Removed 5% Research

EfficiencyStudies3
- Cost 400 to 600
- Economy from 10 to 15

EfficiencyStudies4
- Cost 600 to 1500
- Economy from 10 to 15

EfficiencyStudies4
- Cost 800 to 3000
- Economy from 15 to 20

AdvancedStarbaseConstruction
- Category from Starbase to Pure Research. Insures all AIs grab at least this tech.

Improvements:

Super Spy Training Center
- Removed espionage bonus
- 5% Research Civ wide

Temple of Espionage
- Removed espionage bonus
- 10% Research Civ wide.

Biosphere Modulator
- Removed 20% Population Increase. Just gives tiles.

Oracle of Krynn
- Morale from 50 to 25

City of Learning
- Lowered TP from 10 to 8
- Cost from 75 to 100

University
- Cost from 50 to 70

Dark Energy Lab
- Economy from 20 to 10
- Social from 20 to 10
- Weapons from 10 to 0 to 10
- Cannot be disabled by agents.

RaceConfig.

Torians
- Lowered Social from 10 to 0
- Removed research penalty

Yor
- Socian to from 15 to 20
- Military from 15 to 20
- Removed diplo penalty

Krynn
- Removed Research penalty

Yor TechTree
- Removed Tidal Disruption.

Krynn TechTree
- Xeno Research 50 to 55
- Research Centers 600 to 660
- Research Academy 1000 to 1100
- Invention Matrix 3000 to 3300
- Discovery Sphere 6000 to 6600

Iconians
- Research Center. Cost removed. Was 800, now 600
- Research Academy. Cost removed. Was 1200, now 1000

Thalan TechTree
- Updated government descriptions.

As OShea noted the Altarians are supposed to be weak with weapons but their research fully compensates them for it which is a little odd. Now, they can research their way out of their penalty but they have to hang on to the Dark Energy Lab. In addition the Biosphere Modulator gave +20% population increase which was out of line.

The Krynn pay 10% more TP for their research structures. Spy bonuses have been eliminated from their structures and give civ wide research bonus instead. Again, they can lose this if they lose the planet.

The Torian research structures have been brought in line with the others. They're supposed to suck. Now, they suck.

The Yor have been given a minor buff in social and military production. In addition their efficiency studies yields 10% more economy but the later techs are much more expensive to research.

Enjoy.

Hit CTRL-U

Hit CTRL-SHIFT-Z and click on an enemy planet. 

You've taken over the other civ and see everything they've done.

I'm working on updated spreadsheet. Other then that - Drath have access to both Drathian Temple and Minor Hatchling Mount, both have same price, same maintenance and same 15 morale bonus. Hatchling Mount further down in the tech tree is not improving on Minor Hatchling Mount or Drathian Temple, all of them having 15 morale bonus.

Fixed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wd20tnvhaszh3mv/Community%20Update%20V5%20-%20Beta%201D.zip?dl=0

CU v5 Beta 1D test game,  played around 100 turns.   Large map,  10 players,  Painful,  lots of planets.  My favorite "knife fight" scenario.

Thanks again to Mabus for clueing me in to Ctrl-Shift-Z;   I was able to take a pretty in-depth look at the AI performance:

Korx - 16 colonies, 1400bc income (healthy 23% from trade).  Spying slider maxxed of course but "only" sucking up 270 bc/week.  Had Medium hulls, Planetary Invasion, Rail Guns II, and 2 fully developed X-Col techs.  No econ techs yet,  but it isn't hurting them.   A pleasant surprise -- they've been playing a lot better lately.

Thalan - 17 colonies, 1500bc income (9% from trade).  Spy slider maxxed, 285 bc/week.  Had already run up to Virtual Republic, Hyperion Starbases, and almost all its Econ/factory techs.  Had Laser II, Planetary Invasion, and Ion drives and  Small hulls.   Had just started slugging it out with the Torians.   Their early SBs are scary and are shredding Torian fleets but they *do* take non-trivial damage.   Singularity Weapons in their current state are giving the Thalan a very nice advantage early midgame,  but not overpoweringly so.

Altarian - 14 colonies, 960bc income (13% from trade).  Spy slider maxxed, 181 bc/week.  Had grabbed Dark Energy Research and Manufacturing Centers, and run all the way up to Impulse Drive.   Had two econ techs but no research techs (aside from Xeno Research).  Had Singularity Driver II(wow!),  Planetary Invasion, Starbase Militarization,  Small hulls,  no defensive techs.

Torian - 15 colonies, 1341 income (8% from trade).  Spy slider maxxed at 257 bc/week.  Had grabbed Wellness Falls, Xeno Factories, AM Power Plants, Cities of Learning & Greater Enlightenment,  plus a couple econ techs.  Well rounded.  Had Rail Guns III,  Planetary Invasion, Starbase Militarization,  Small hulls,  no defensive techs.   Were throwing fleets and transports at Thalan airspace like they were going out of style.

Drath - 6 colonies, 500 bc income (13% from trade).  Spy slider nearly minimum at 10 bc/week (interesting!).  The Drath got screwed.   They started in an isolated system in the corner at least 1.5 parsecs to the nearest star.  Which contained the Thalans.  I think they did quite well considering.   They as yet had only Space Weapons,  but at least they'd grabbed Starbase Militarization (and were using it).  They had yet to research Saurian Cunning or even Small hulls,  but had a good mix of factory/research/econ techs.  I think they did quite well considering.   One thing they did *very* well was grab galactic resources,  including an econ and a weapons resource 6 *parsecs* from Thala!   Lazy Thalans...

BUG:  The Drath "Hatchling Mount" should be "Hatchling Mound".  Both the tech display name and description are wrong.

Iconians - 12 colonies, 901 bc income (5% from trade).  Spy slider maxxed at 162 bc/week.   Grabbed all their econ techs and started on Industrial Replication.  Had Impulse Drive,  and were working on Rad and Toxic world X-Col (had finished Aquatic).   Had Scatterguns II, Planetary Invasion, Military SB Construction, Small hulls (though they were working towards Medium),  no defenses.

Drengin - 9 colonies, 620 bc income (7% from trade).  Spy slider midway at 97 bc/week.   Fell victim to the "mid-map squash" with the Altarian, Korx, and Thalan eating up most of the nearby real estate before they could get too far off the ground.  They had not yet researched.. Universal Translator!?  Apart from that had a decent mix of low-mid level econ techs and had just done Slave Canyons.  Had Laser III, Unconventional Warfare, Planetary Invasion, Military SB Construction, and Small hulls.   Not bad but they kind of lost the colony rush.

Korath - 2 colonies.  Got screwed worse than the Drath;  HW was kitty-corner to the Drath on the extreme edge of the map,  in a big void.  What planets they might have grabbed were too close to the Thalan HW for them to have ever had a chance.  They had ok tech for their position (Planetary Invasion aside) but with 156 bc econ (0% trade) they were not going to be even a minor threat to anyone.

Krynn - fell victim to an early rush from the meatbag.  Before they fell they had grabbed a good selection of techs,  run a fair ways up their Influence tree,  grabbed all their espionage techs, Impulse Drive, and Manufacturing Centers.  Oddly enough they had no econ techs other than the Manufacturing Centers (not quite, they did get Xeno Research).   Had Rail Guns II, Small ships, Planetary Invasion, Starbase Militarization,  no defenses.

Arcaen - lousy "meatbag" AI,  grabbed Particle Beams III and Planetary Conquest before tech inflation kicked in,  crash built a couple dozen tiny 5-0-0 ships and,  in fleets of 4,  completely controlled Krynn space before they knew what hit them,  at which point it was just a matter of dropping enough soldiers on them.   25 planets,  but their tech stinks and their economy is best described as "in the toilet".  This AI is bad and should probably be disabled. 

I'm quite happy with how well the AI did:
* good colony rush,  considering initial positions

* outstanding tech development,  with only a couple "odd" choices,  nobody is missing anything critical

* good early navy development

This mod rocks.   If vanilla TA/Ultimate had played anything like this I would have died a long time ago from lack of sleep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r8xjnsv3vx93s7d/tech%20comparison%205D.ods?dl=0

Fixed some max values by adding bonuses from techs I forgot to include (biggest failure - not including Planetary Defense for any race). Updated changes from new Beta patch.

Second sheet shows stats available for each civ right from the start (I included starting GAs/SPs).

I was working on a third sheet, predicted bonuses for the mid-game. I calculated them by giving all races TP to use:

4000 Morale+Pop Growth

4000 Eco+Farms

4000 Diplo+some cheap but powerful Influence techs (like Thalans Xeno Anthropology)

8400 for Reasearch+Industry (allows to get to Manufacturing Center, Anti-Matter Power Plants + Research Academies)

3000 for Invasion + prereq techs.

And then using powerful tool (Windows Calculator), spending TP based on Slow research setting values.

I had it almost done when my laptop crashed and file got corrupted beyond repair (I tried everything). So tomorrow I'll start again.

I was thinking again about Yor government techs and I have to say Mabus, you were right, they need some kind of penalty to Influence and Diplomacy. But for a bit different reason. As it is now, Government techs are unattractive to research for the player, as they do the same thing as Efficiency Studies and cost a lot. They cost more then other government techs, and lack bonuses to Diplomacy and Influence, so every sane player will choose to trade those techs from the AI. While Yor always sucked in Diplomacy even compared to maxed out Drengi in vanilla, they don't need extra diplomacy that tech trade allows.

Solution 1: Make all government techs untradeble. Personally I don't like this one. 

Solution 2: Give them a starting penalty but bring back Diplomacy and Influence bonuses to the techs and lower the cost to normal values.

Solution 3: Lower Loyalty to compensate for increased Influence, give them starting penalty to Diplomacy and give bonuses to government techs.

Solution 4: Move their government techs to branch off their Research tech tree: 

Interstellar Collective from Collective Research, Collective Evaluation from Collective Academies, Collective Planning from Invention Cities, Collective Thought from Discovery Sphere. Give all Research techs penalty to Influence+Diplomacy (will it work though?), give government techs +Diplomacy and Influence, set high or -10 AI Value so AI picks it up soon after finishing Research tech. Makes sense as they use computing power to research new government. But problem persists in different form, player can trade Research tech from the AI avoiding the penalty... 

Solution 5: Buff Efficiency Studies further, but remove government techs altogether. 

Solution 6: Let player trade for better techs and leave it as it is.

Solution 7: Still thinking if there are any others...

Along with Yor, Iconians also got access to government techs. Should we lower their Influence/Diplomacy somewhere, or leave them as they are? In their case lowering is simpler, Xeno Persuasion can be set to 5 or 10 Influence instead of 20, Diplomacy can be lowered by taking away Advanced and Expert Diplomacy techs.

Technology Victory - Yor Miniaturization bonus - there is a cap on how much of it is working, I believe it's 125% or 115%. But other bonuses are so big (economy, manufaturing etc) this doesn't really matter anyway.

Drengin/Korath research labs - should we do the same thing with Ultimate Slaveling Lab as with City of Learning? Down to 10 from 12tp? To get their end-game research labs they need to spend much less then other races. 10050tp to get Discovery Sphere compared to 1700tp to get Ultimate Slaveling Lab (4200tp with Pain Amplifier).

Neither do I.

I like this one. Gives the techs a bit of extra purpose and the Yor start off with a few more penalties. (They're strong atm). It's also the simplest and easy for both AI and player to figure out. As it happens AIP7 loves government technology.

I prefer option 2.

I've had some very bad results messing around with techs giving penalties then other techs making up for it while I was trying to work around the Korath/Drengin colonization issues. Also, branching off techs tends to mess up the techtree display.

I still prefer option 2.

If you hadn't supplies us with those awesome descriptions I would have gone for this one and I would have suggested we do the same with the Iconians. I'll get back on this in a bit.

Still option 2 for me.

That could work. Would be easiest for sure. 

Let's take a step back and focus on what we want.

/random

"Yor sitcom: Tonight on the good, the bad and the cybernetic. Will N-13-A's recover from its coma or will they unplug him"

"Yor commercial: Recycle now! Just imagine your life as a can opener!"

"Yor commercial: Try now! Anti-rust shaving cream!"

Yor talk show:

N-232: 000101010010101010

N-543-a: 1010101011101010010 100110 1010101

N-232: 001!

N-543-a: 000!

/endrandom

Version V5 : Beta 1E. Available from the File Archive. Use the link at the top.

Changes:

Yor get a -30 diplo penalty. Diplo on their government's is restored.

Korath get a -30 diplo penalty. Diplomatic Relations gives them 10 instead of 5 diplomacy

Drengin: Same as Korath.

Adjusted Yor description to Weak Diplomacy instead of Weak Culture.

Optimized AIP8 research by slowing their progression into top tier industrial and research tech (discribed in previous post)

Changed spelling for Hatchling Mount to Hatchling Mound.

Updated the Mod description with a version number, background story and credits.

Here's my diplomacy comparison sheet (google sheet): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rffyaqGaXXEMCxCAXBAZkegPwdGf3jgOlhEx9QxhMbw/edit?usp=sharing

The Yor are the worst, the Drath are the best closely followed by the Kynn. Keep in mind the Terrans can techtrade every two weeks due to their SA.

Continuation of yesterday's game.

After a long drawn out confict with the Drengin the Terrans (who went evil) declared war on me. Luckily I had just researched Frigates but I had to push military to 100% to survive. My frigates were a match for the terran fleets and I managed to conquer a few worlds. As I did so I noticed the Terrans were sending a lot of fire power north. 

To the Snathi. Apparenty they really had their minds set on conquering them and because of that they mostly left me alone.

Yeah, that's over now. The conflict with the Terran's is raging. I lost dozens of ships to them (should have gotten some defenses). I'm on par with them on weaponry but they industry seems supperiour (I'm playing on crippling). 

It's a tense game. My fleets are decimated, some of my worlds have just one defender and building them up is slow. The Terrans managed to sneak a couple of fleets past me and destroyed 4 eco starbases and I'm hurting because of it (=as intended).

I think I can win the war but it will be a close call. To make matters worse my low MMR is making my neighbors bolder as we speak. Even the Altarians are demanding tribute now and I'm pretty sure they won't sit still for long.

On an interesting note I was gifted well over 10 ships including a few ARcean frigates during the Drengin conflict. No idea why, I didn't have good standing with them but everyone seeemed to be very generous.

I'm considering going for a peace treaty with the Terrans so I can turn my attention on the Drengin and rebuild my fleets and infrastructure. On the other hand the Terrans have frigates. Powerful beams and they seem very confident now that I'm their sole problem.

This is exactly what the game should be. We did well. Maybe too well

No I didn't. Hmm... that really does put the Drath a bit over the top. I'll have to look into that. Perhaps it's better to remove Majesty and Total Majesty from the Drath techtree. That will lower their diplo by 30 but, Saurian Cunning is a lot cheaper to research and easier to access. They won't get that much more but they'll simply get it easier.

Yeah that could work but I'll have to look into it and think something up. It's not a big issue.

In fact, who would ever go for +200 diplo?! Seriously. That's a LOT of diplo. Granted it's spread over a lot of techs as well and it will take you a fair amount of time to grab them all but when you can get that much extra diplomacy from research it kinda dwarfs any bonus you get at the beginning. Then again that might be the whole point. You get an early advantage but unless you keep up with research you'll lose it.

Glad to hear it. It might need a bit of tweaking though but early results are encouraging. The changes are in 1E so feel free you give them a spin.

What been going on, had internet trouble seeing this forum specifically. :/

I had thought it was over three times now. Lol I want to see my name in the credits soon!