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'm currently mid-game on my weapon cycle test. This game has been a snooze, even on Crippling. I'm evaluating this from a high-level player perspective and not looking at any specific stats.
Iconians have been pushovers. They usually go tech-bonkers by now. The Korx have actually done pretty well, but show not much interest in conquest. Torians and Arceans i'm completely eradicating. Terrans and Krynn never got off the ground. Not sure why (haven't seen that corner of the map yet). Drenguin are doing okay are researching up the missile branch but seem to have hit a snag. The Korath grabbed some decent planets to start with but they are extremely susceptible to influence flipping. I've already grabbed several of them.
Most empires feel weak in this game with no dominant players (except me of course!). I've grabbed most of the resources and built all of the GAs and trade goods myself.
Hey since this is a community patch that, If I remember correctly might end up being put out officially, can I make a non AI suggestion?When your typing text, and click the box the bar starts at the beginning instead of at the end, so you have to arrow key to the right and backspace to clear text to type in names.I don't know, just one of those little things.
I'm afraid we can't change this type of behavior in screens.
I've updated V5.7.2 WC1.0.2 with some spelling corrections.
Can you post this to the file archive please? I'd like to base any further changes off the latest deltas.
Still digging myself out up here in Canada. Haven't seen this much ice in as long as I can remember.
It is in the file archive or should be.
Name: Community Update V5.7.2 WC1.0.2
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mgph7ah7rq0rykg/Community%20Update%20V5.7.2%20WC1.0.2.zip?dl=0
Silas, just having a brief look at the WC; if you rename
"<Weapon Name="Psionic Shredder">" to "<Weapon Name="Bsionic Shredder">" in GC2Types.xml
then it won't be taken over Graviton Driver I (which is cheaper)
The other ethical weapons/defenses are in the right order.
I can see it there now. Thanks!
Done.
So, I'm at around the midpoint with my testing of the Weapon Cycle mod. I'd consider up to T3 "well tested". Observations, in no particular order:
* the AI has no trouble with the new weapon values. It is building solid early and midgame ships.
* the advantage any particular weapon type gives you in a single tier is not enough to carry a war. However, it does act as a noticable force multiplier.
* T3 isn't too long to wait to have good missiles. T1 and T2 are "good enough" to ward off non-overwhelming aggression (especially with a bit of starbase support. And you did build the Orbital Command Center, right?)
* as a player, I find the balanced unbalanced weaponry to be a hoot. Kudos to lev for the original idea, I never would have even tried to make it work without some prodding.
In unrelated notes.. the Dregin and Korath seem to be a fair bit stronger now that they colonize well. The Yor are doing better than I remember as well, but not as noticably (small test sample, I guess). I think the AIP7 civs have "arrived" and are no longer going to be the paper tigers we had become used to. In one of my test games the Korath out-colonized everyone but the Torians, picked up some nice galactic resources (including weapons, groan), made friends with the Drengin, and exploded out on the galaxy with T2 Beam fleets. It was ugly.
Now for some longer, larger games to see what the T4+ stuff looks like.
I make the same observations. The last game i played i cancelled due to "no contest" (in my favor). The next game i play will be larger and higher difficulty, but those games take a long time to get through. I can speed up testing by moving tech speed up, though.
I've also noticed a marked difference in the viability of the Korath, Drengin, and Yor. They are legit opponents now! Even the Arceans expand more than they used to. Having the major powers actually all be major powers can alter the dynamics of the game considerably, especially if you start poorly. Outstanding job guys!
Two issues/questions:
Chrome is blocking the new exe from dropbox as containing malicious software?? Has this been seen before?
Install instructions for the comm. update and exe are located where? Didn't see them on first page or in the update files that I could download.
I guess Chrome is blocking the download because it is an exe, potentially a dangerous file. Anyway you can force the download from the download page (chrome://downloads/).
Regarding mod installation, GC2 manual explains how to install/run a mod. Basically you have to place the mod directory inside your "Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition\Mods" dir; to enable the mod you have two ways:
1) In game from the options menu you can enable the checkbox to use mods and then select the mod to be used using the UI.
2) Modify "..\Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor\Prefs.ini" in this way:
EnableMods=1
ModsDir=D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition\Mods\Community Update - WC
Of course your path may be different depending on which mod you want to enable and if you have or not the steam version of the game.
In any case, before you run the mod for the first time, delete any "*.raceconfigxml" file
from "..\Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor" directory, if present.
Weapon Cycle V1.1.0 has been uploaded to the File Archive.
Changes:
* some tech tree description fixes (e.g. Arcaen Weather Control does not actually open up terraforming now)
* adjusted weapon tech costs, some of them were a little wonky at the higher levels. Thinking back, I meant to look at these in 1.0.2 but must have missed it. In general, driver tech is 15% cheaper than beams, and missiles are 10% more expensive than beams.
* adjusted defense tech costs at the high end. They were a little too cheap; defense tech costs don't inflate near as much as weapons techs do and I hadn't taken that into account originally.
The AI has no trouble at the higher end. It seems to be building reasonable capital ships, although I haven't figured out exactly how it decides how many HP modules vs weapon modules vs defense belong on a specific design.
The Drengin, Korath, and Yor continue to impress. One game in particular was quite a monumental clash of titans when the gigantic Terran and Drengin, each five times my size, faced off. I was a mouse scuttling inbetween the toes of elephants.
I'm done with Immense maps for now. My computer is old and turns start to take a while to calculate after the first few hundred. But I can definitely say that Weapons Cycle is ready for prime time. At least, I'm happy with it.
@Mabus: this is based off the latest available CU 5.7.2. I know there were a few typos, etc that you had put in but not released, hopefully that doesn't cause any issue.
Weapon Cycle V1.1.1 has been uploaded to the File Archive.
* did one final "I cannot possibly have forgotten anything, right?" pass and found a couple race-specific weapons tech typos / transcription errors.
I just finished another game on Huge, common planets, full house, on Masochistic. I got up to about T3 on weapons before i decided to quit. I was becoming the runaway leader in every stat. Overall, not a very exciting game. The other empires were researching weapons just fine, but were wasting most of their resources fighting each other while i gobbled up all of the freshly opened resources. The Torians, Korath, and Altarians were all doing pretty good jobs of launching successful invasions.
Again, the weapon cycling adds some fine texture to an otherwise bland game of rock-paper-scissors. It does not seem to imbalance the game in any way. I wouldn't even detect this design if you didn't tell me about it.
I say let's wrap this up and send it over to Stardock QC.
Consider it wrapped up. V6.0 - Weapon Cycle included.
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kmfvtu281sak7zm/Community%20Update%20V6.0.0.zip?dl=0
I've updated the change logs from 572 to 600. I skipped over the scenario changes though to much of a bother (no really).
Woot!
Heh.. no kidding. The scenario files don't exactly lend themselves to nice deltas.
Release 6 did revert these changes, and I hope no other damage was done...
I'll do a side by side comparizon between CU6 and WC102 to check.
Yeah looks like the spelling corrections I did got overwritten. I've made a minor update.
V6.0.1
Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/so9v27yrdd3vgtm/Community%20Update%20V6.0.1.zip?dl=0
I'm still inexperienced with the game, and I'm playing only with Terrans at the moment, but from what I have seen Diplomacy makes the game too easy.
Diplomacy in general makes things a little easier for Terrans, but that is ok, after all they are super diplomats; what I really think is imbalancing the game is that the AI accepts to sell their planets for just a bunch of money.
In my actual game, just 15 or 20 turns ingame, I could buy 3 planets class 28, 11, 10 from Drengin for less than 2000 bc.
Now, if you play in a very big galaxy with lots of habitable planets, maybe that is still ok, but if good planets are uncommon, I think that is very very cheap. Even building colony ships is meaningless; just waiting that the AI colonizes a planet and buying it is much more convenient.
So my question is: is there any possibility within the mod to make buying planets much more difficult, if not impossible?
What difficulty level are you on? I find that buying planets is next to impossible most of the time.
I play on crippling.
Start a new game, send your scouts out, look for planets with less than 300.000 people, buy them.
At the beginning of the game, you can easily trade techs for planets, which is crazy, imho.
No. There isn't. AI behaviour such as selling and buying planets is hardcoded.
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