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.
Ok my question is anone else who patched the screen when the menu pops up does your game also say 2.04 instead of 2.20.
When all is said and done your game version should be 2.20.
What happened it created two separate folders under stardock. The first was galactic civilizations 2 ultimate. The other is galciv2. The first had a desktop icon. The second didn't. The first was 2.04. The second was 2.20. I wasted a day figuring this out not sure who's fault this was. My new question is will your other two mods work with the new patch, or is there no point. Are they stand alone mods. Should I delete the first folder
Is "based" really necessary for this? Wouldn't just "organic" be enough? Or am I completely misunderstanding this?
No, you're completely correct. Organic is synonymous with carbon-based, making the above a tautology. With so much stuff to correct, I was actively steering clear of the game's pseudo-science, marking only the most egregious errors I saw. Stuff like that either flew by me, or I chose not to bother, lest I editorialise too far. In short, go ahead and change it.
Is it always Korx-Arcean or can it be any two races? Any pattern to these occurrences: your actions before the declaration, your relations with the declarant or their friends. Even if the race-specific declarations in Conversations are exhaustive, I imagine there could be some war trigger that is in the exe, but not the files (else, even if the race combination was absent, wouldn't the Generic dialog kick in?). There's another thing to rummage through the binaries for...
Hmmm. When I was double checking for the psyonic/pysonic corrections, I noticed any mention of psionic tech was gone from some of the campaign files. I hope that was intentional
both mods should work, just don't use CUFI.
I had gone to the Stardock site to DL the new GC2 game version two days ago when I got an email from Stardock about it. I found the button that listed 2.20 to confirm it was there. Then I deleted my current 2.04 version and downloaded. After playing for two days I saw someone had confusion about what version number should be showing. To my shock I found I was playing the 2.04 version and the 2.20 wasn't anywhere on my computer!
I went back to the Stardock site without deleting my current game version. The same DL button that gave me 2.04 lists 2.20 as it did then. It's now DL'ing 2.20 though and only 2.20 according to the name on the instlal file. I still have the DL from two days ago and it actually lists 2.04 on the install file, not 2.20. Not sure why it would give me 2.04 before but it appears to be giving only the proper 2.20 now. I wonder how many people might be playing 2.04 when they thought they had 2.20....
Okay.
I'm seeing it when playing other races too (Korx, Drath, Thalan, Iconians, Korath, Krynn), but the empty message usually comes from the Arceans.
No, however, I'm usually playing Evil when I'm seeing it. I don't remember, if it is always the case though.
You would think so. In any case, I made all race-combinations for all of the war entries, and that didn't fix it either. It got to be something else.
It is. I removed the starting/restricted techs from the Dread Lords, because they automatically start with all the techs, and the restrictions don't make sense for them. I did the same for all races that aren't in the scenario, too.
Anyway, here are the new files and the changelog. While updating the campaigns for Autumn Twilight, I noticed that I missed a few techs in the missions for DL and DA. Those should be fixed now.
Ran it through my version software. All looks good, no dirty edits.
Very nice
The idea behind this change was that if one decided to play a peaceful pacifistic game, perhaps using a good-aligned race going for influence or technological victory, then PI wouldn't be necessary. But it still might be a good idea to increase the soldiering stat to be able to more successfully thwart off invasions on own planets.
But previously, you had to invest considerable amount of research to get PI which bonuses are completely null if you plan to not build transports.
As of now, without PI the planetary defense techs will work only defensively, except for the sole exception if one researches them and buys transports from other factions. And I think it is not unlogical to assume one can strengthen its own soldiering stat without explicit knowledge on how to build a troop transport ship mosule. Planetary defense is more about building military facilities on planets to give own soldiers some sort of stronghold.
The Space Cannon seems to have been overlooked...
I have no idea how this could come together but the game tells you right below the starting screen which version you play. the filename you download also contains a version number.
Tioken it sounds like you might have the same problem I did. All the stardock says if you have the installation file on your computer not if you installed it. I used file explorer to do things, depending on the version of windows you use you may need to use user accounts, or computer instead. In your downloads, there will be more than one there is an install file for gc2 2.2. Not sure about exact wording it is an executable file. When you find it run it. Start the game, and if it doesn't say 2.2 then you might have two copies of the game. In file explorer, or whatever it is called find your c drive. Find your windows folder. Find your x86 programs folder. Find your stardock folder. If there's two copies of the game folder then you have your answer. One has an icon the other doesn't. My guess the second one doesn't. You need to ring the executable in twilight of the armor folder right click on it create icon on the desktop. This might fix your problem.
It was weird stuff. The button at Stardock originally said it was for 2.20. I then cleared all GC2 files off my computer before DL'ing it. I installed what it gave me. When I checked the version number of what was installed it was 2.04. Indeed the file I DL'ed was titled 2.04. My fault for not checking the version number sooner but what it gave me was the wrong file. I only started playing a day or two ago but DL'ed that file the moment I found out it was available so maybe they hadn't finished making the change on the web site.
I repeated this exact same process last night and the same button gave me the file titled 2.20. All good now.
That 2.20 file DID put two folders on my computer just as you mentioned happening to you. There were no GC2 folders of any kind there before the 2.20 install so they came from it. Only one of the folders is 2.20. The other is 2.04. It's no biggie so long as people use the right folder to make a proper shortcut (other than that making the DL perhaps twice as big as it needs to be).
PS I was just wondering if others that DL'ed too quickly may be inadvertantly playing 2.04 if they just assumed that was the new file. I should have known better since I have used the CU before Stardock made it official but time and a little brain fog kept me from remembering the immediate differences.
So, I got to rummage a bit through the binary and the convo file (and others, too). First, the new batch of polish (with a little leftover from the last one):
English.str: homo-sapiens to "homo sapiens", Agressors's to Aggressor'sFlavorText.xml: homo-sapiens to "homo sapiens"GC2_Conversations: aide to aid, "back bone" to backbone, "better us of them then" to "better use of them than", long-run to "long run", "Bare aggressions towards" to Threaten, bares to bears, bare to bear (not barely)GC2Types.xml: I keep coming back to that old mass drivation, now happy driving, joy system, and I'm still not feeling it. Maybe your original suggestion for mass driver, maybe mass propulsion, was better after all...TechTree.xml: "Cut Throat" to Cut-Throat
Now then, the rummaging. Firstly, I started checking for race tags in the Twilight files. I concluded that:
This is not news to anybody, I gather, but I also found a couple of possible errors:
Campaigns\DreadLords\Exploitation.GC2Map, Hearts and Minds.GC2Map, The Xenon Project.GC2Map all use "Human" instead of Terran, have Custom at 10 (usually Korath), and Dreadlords at 11 (usually Krynn).
Conversely, in GC2_Conversations.xml, line 11714 reads <Listener Name="Krynn">13</Listener> (where the Krynn index is 14 everywhere else). Also, AI_GREETING_RELATIONS_ALLY has 3 phrases for Morality="1".
Further, I tried cross-referencing the topics in the file, to the binary. Firstly, here's a bunch that I couldn't find in the exe:
B_ACCEPTAI_WANTS_PEACE_FRIENDLY_INTERVENTIONP_UNDERSTAND_INFOAI_NO_EXCHANGEP_NO_EXCHANGEAI_THREAT_RESPONSEAI_CONCERN_TOO_MUCH_DEBTAI_CONCERN_THEYRE_TOO_STRONGAI_CONCERN_TRANSPORTS_IN_AREAAI_SHIPNAMESHUMAN_WARALERT_NOWAR
Maybe they're defined somewhere else, but I couldn't find where. I only found one topic in the exe that isn't referenced in the convo file: AI_GOINGTOWAR_NOWAR. That's not exhaustive, but it's all I could find for now. Hope it helps and have a wonderful Christmas Eve, all!
I could have sworn I fixed those.
I actually like happy driving joy system.
I don't recall doing any changes to those maps, which means that they are still the original ones from DL. They work fine, so I don't see a immediate reason to fix them.
<mutters unintelligibly>
I'm pretty sure I've seen that one before. Not so sure about the rest. Maybe Stardock intended to add them, but never got around to it.
Hm, I think I'm going to do some testing the next couple of days.
In the meantime, here are the updated files and the changelog.
All the ships are white is this intentional!
hey I've just come over this (check word on the street left below corner)
however, this is from a testplay using cheats control+shift+z in order to make me into the Lentzlandians Minor race. I wanted to check what their planet description is.
Perhaps this error will never appear for the Stock Races....
Yes, this error only happens with the minors and the DL. However, I thought I fixed it for the minors by changing their DialogueTag to Generic. Maybe taking control of them via cheats caused the error to re-appear. I'll need to look into it.
Probably a variable that's used in espionage.
^ I just checked the relevant RaceConfig.xml and the Dialogue-tag is set to generic for all Minors, except DLs & Pirates
Ok, so I think it's displaying the variable because the game returns it empty. whenever a minor planet is under the zone of influence of a stockrace its name will be displayed, but without any influence you'll see the above.
Although on second thought it doesn't really matter since you wouldn't encounter this display in a normal game - or could this be encountered even without cheats?
edit:
but why, if there is no foreign culture present, is <Topic Name="WordOnStreet_HighAlienCulture"> even triggered?
logically it should then be <Topic Name="WordOnStreet_HighEmpireCulture"> which doesn't contain the empty [AlienEmpireName]...
I'm bad I was trying to optimise an old game by upping it's graphics as much as possible. I selected unload unused textures, and lo a d behold I got white ships.
Found a typo in Techtree.xml
<Culture ID="TorianHistory"> <DisplayName>A History of Perseverance</DisplayName> <Description>The pained yet hopeful road our ancestors have walked.</Description> <Details>Our civilization has been through much anquish.
should be: anguish
I ran a few tests and, so far, haven't been able to trigger this.
Thanks, but this is already fixed in the new files.
Speaking of which, here are the updated files and the new changelog.
The Counter Espionage tech can no longer be traded or stolen. I did this change, because it was otherwise too easy for the AI to get access to this tech (especially if the Krynn or a custom race with Super Spy was present). This had a serious impact on the usefulness of spies.
The Snathi had a second CustomizationPoints tag, and all minor races were missing Basic Space Construction as starting tech. This has also been fixed.
Good call.
You can thank Maiden666. He made me aware of this.
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