Insane Abundant Balance Mod
A mod designed around balancing the game for large maps with many planets.
Features:
* Massive AI work, to make the AI more competitive even on normal difficulty.
* Replaces Large Empire Penalty with stacking maintenance costs.
* Reworks the balance between 'wide' and 'tall' empires to make planet-grabbing less important, smaller empires more capable of competing with large ones.
* Fixes sensor stacking and engine stacking.
* Includes dozens of bug fixes
* Trade and Tourism more valuable
* Diplomacy less exploitable
* Ship blueprints improved
Install Instructions:
Just extract the .zip file to your My documents\my games\galcvi3\mods folder, then start the game. Activate mods by going into the Options meun, selecting the Gameplay tab, and turning on the 'Enable Mods' checkbox, then restart your game. To check it's working, just start a new game. If the minor races are listed as playable factions, then the mod is working.
Current Version:
1.7.1 for GC3 1.7
Latest version download link available at:
http://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/13/?
The module you use. Assault fighters use lasers, guardians use missiles and drones use kinetics (iirc)
So my carriers use Carrier Module which says theyre assault fighters. However during combat I get Assault Fighters in guardian role and they shoot Beams. When I equip the Interceptor module instead they shoot Missiles which doesnt make sense.
From the change log, which is included in the download and is a good place to look for answers:
* Assault fighters now have beams, drones have missiles and gaurdians have kinetics. There's no difference between them in DPS terms, and all carrier modules now cost the same.
As for the role, the game determines that itself from checking the ships value and threat levels. It's extremely annoying; I spent several hours on Saturday trying to change the roles in the ship defs but they just reverted to whatever the game arbitrarily decided on launching the game.
I may swap the guardians and the interceptors.
Very good changes, keep up the good fight!
1.3.3 sneak peak (ETA tomorrow)
1.3.3
* Added Snathi Star.* Re-added the 1.2 versions of the adjacency level bonus tech texts* Tweaked Diplo modifiers to make AI less pissy.* Added planet Snathi.* Removed Shipdefs.xml, since it's unusued.* Added Snathi ship class defs.* Swapped armament of guardian and interceptor fighters.* Diplo rework: * UI now scales diplo to 100, same as the totals do. * Most treaties are now 1-way, so the AI expects to be paid if it opens it's borders for you etc. * Exploration and Open Borders treaties no longer require tech, just relations. * Went through all diplomatic modifiers and altered them to give different AI personalities varying approaches to diplomacy and balance things at the higher values
Playing with the Altarian tech tree I unlocked something called the Dark Energy Lab (+6 to manu + 6 to research). Sounded sexy, but couldn't find the building in my build list.
I'm glad you've rejigged how the AI sees military power. I hate to say it, but I think the idea of exchanging credits for ship upgrades is an idea that the AI just won't be able to handle, and it's enormous military score (by having hundreds of obsolete ships which could not even put a dent in my newer, smaller fleet) makes it think it is much more powerful than it is. I wonder if there is something that can be done?
I was running pretty solid, but just had a save game than finally went on me at around turn 500 (I think). I checked the debug.err file and I see this message repeated thousands of times (I finally had to ctrl'alt-delete the game as it was frozen for a very long time). I reloaded the autosave from the previous turn, hit end turn, and had the same freeze.
Debug Message: WARNING: SpawnStarterShipsCallback couldn't find a ship design of blueprint TutorialFrigateStaticBlueprint for player index 26
Not sure if this has anything to do with the mod?
The two preceding messages were:
Debug Message: ImplementShipBlueprints FAILED. Could not find ship class: MegaPirateFrigateDebug Message: ImplementShipBlueprints FAILED. Could not find ship class: MegaPirateOverlord
these did not repeat themselves like the spawnstartershipscallback error.
My current game got to turn 287 before it cannot progress any further. I had no issues prior to 1.3 with this mod or the base game, so now im not sure if the base game introduced a problem in 1.3 (not fixed in todays update) or whether the mod did something to make it unstable. I hate playing vanilla as the AI is still so bad but ill start a new map tonight just to see how its running now.
Those ships are from a mega event,
naselus probably didnt add them to his mod jet
Must of missed them in the pass. Will add for tonight'so release
Naselus, first thank you for the very interesting mod. Secondly, two issues i have noticed that can cripple the AI.
1. Many of the Governor Defs De-emphasize morale. This doesn't matter much in the base game but with how you made morale a significant modifier to a planets production and ability to resist invasion the AI can get stuck with a bunch of planets just sitting there waiting to be taken.
2. The production sliders in the stratdefs combined with the offsets of the planetary governors make the production and research worlds go to 100% military/research. This ends up with the AI planets building up very slowly, and in the end, not amount to much.
With these two combined it is easy for a planet to be stuck with a medium population, low morale, and very few buildings that contributes almost nothing.
Btw is there any way to configure this mod to return minor race status back to default?
The governors all have an approval building for every farm in their listing, and most have an approval building listed as the second or third thing they build - long before they build enough farms to fill it. I've yet to see any AI being outright crippled by approval problems in the mod (they usually average 95-100%). There's been a few instances where individual planet approval dips significantly below 90%; these are almost always a result of farm upgrades being researched and built before the corresponding entertainment ones are developed. Given the way the AI picks techs, it's impossible to prevent that happening from time to time.
That's not entirely accurate; they DO amount to much in the end, much, much more than they would through any other wheel settings. But yes, they build up more slowly than I'd like. But this is hard to do much about with the tools available tbh; the AI is not reactive and won't change the planetary wheel unless it's shifting the global one, so it's either a slow build up to high output or a more rapid build up to terrible output. The AI has become vastly more challenging at normal since the implementation of the offsets, and reducing them is likely to detract from that rather than improve it. For example, if the offsets were at 50% then the AI may set up a little quicker, but would be handicapped on it's good worlds by the need to constantly run social production projects that are basically 1/10th as effective as it would be just going into the primary stat.
That said, the social production from the colony hub means that the AI (and the player) always gets 5 social production regardless of morale or slider settings, so it can always build or upgrade a 'normal' building in 6 turns. Also, the sheer size of the maps which the mod is based around gives the AI a long time to go about building up it's planets (and boy does it build up - I've seen AI cash planets producing 200 per turn, which is middling for a human but astronomically better than the 10 or 20 tops you'd see before), which excuses it's slow rate of increase substantially. I tend to put production on new planets to 100% whatever-its-doing by the midgame myself, and just use the 5 social production to build the improvements, as it cuts down on micromanagement and given the combination of the timescales and the number of planets it doesn't matter to me much if I have to wait 6 turns instead of 4 to get the next lab/market/factory.
It's very, very noticeable on smaller maps - more so the smaller you go - but since I have no means of telling the AI to adapt to map sizes it's largely moot. This AI will be as hopeless on a Small map as the vanilla AI is on an Insane one; there's just no way at present of having one AI script that does both well. The differences are too great. Since SD are more interested in catering to the smaller map sizes - as that's what the audience mostly play - I'm catering to the super-huge; the mod's relative popularity, while flattering, is mostly made up of people playing on map sizes which I'm not really supporting. The fact they've been drawn in by the balance changes is more a reflection of the problems of the base game than the quality or objectives of the mod.
As I say, it's not really that easy. For a planet to have 'medium' population we're talking around 30-40; just getting to that size takes long enough to build a half dozen buildings. Even if it does fall into low morale (which it rarely does), it's not trapped there, since it continues to build at pretty much the same rate it did anyway and will eventually churn out approval upgrades.
Go into factiondefs.xml and set them to minors in there. Personally, I can't really see why anyone would want to. A minor race in my games is anyone with under 20 planets when the empties run out, rather than someone God has declared shalt not build colony ships...
Just noticed the Drengin tech tree Arena (2nd level happiness building) technology fails to load a picture when built (just a black hex). Not sure if its linked to a pic, or just something that will clear itself up when I restart the game.
RE the missing overlord / pirate crash. I started a new game to test drengin tech, if the game spawns the mega pirate event (and we assume I download your latest update with the fix) will the game still hang, or will it be ok?
New versions of the mod will not apply to savegames created before you installed it.
Will check the picture thing - either SD changed a file name or I clipped it with a find/replace.
EDIT: Nope, nothing different in the gfx code between my arena and the base game's - verify your local files.
EDIT 2: Checked it in-game, I get a black hexagon too. Not at all sure why though, because as I say, the code checks out and the graphic is where it's supposed to be. Might be worth checking if the bug exists in vanilla.
Refers to a ship listed in StaticShipBlueprints...which is not a file included in the mod.
Are also Static Blueprints in the same (unaltered) file. The ships were added into the mod's version of shipclassdefs a while back. You playing with any other mods installed? Combined with the graphical issue you report above not being borne out in the code, it suggests that you may have some damaged game files. GC3 seems to cause lots of trouble in that regard - I have to verify every week or two to deal with a recurring issue where all maps generate no stars aside from the ones that the players are at.
It's an upgrade to the social matrix.
To clarify what i meant.
The build order for does have equal numbers of approval and farm buildings, but the order is off.
Approval
Something
Farm
Even if the planet has the space to reach that matching approval building, it is going to take a while to get to it. Especially if it has to upgrade the in between buildings a few times at 5 social production.
As for the sliders, i am definitely not saying it should be 50/50 on turn 300 or something. I am saying it might be worth putting 20-30% of the planets production towards building up the planet for the first 100-200 turns. In late game of a huge map is it worth putting 10-15% of production towards building, or maybe sacrificing one slot to place a flat production building like a power-plant, i don't know. But it does hurt them a lot in the mid range to have less than one half of their planet built upon by turn 150.
naselus
Sorry if i missed this but what is the smallest map you recommend with this mod. I can't believe the amount of work you have put in and i think it look really cool and want to try it. Currently i am only partially stable on large maps but can typical get 150 turns in before issues creep in
Even so, I've played a couple of hundred soaks and I've not really seen an AI falling under 90% approval after turn 100. I don't think it's a major issue in itself. I was thinking of going over the governors again fairly soon, since I've changed a lot of stuff since I did them the first time (tourism is worth having now, for example), but morale control for most of the AIs is, if anything, too easy.
Yeah, I understand that; and I agree it's slow, but as I say, the other options are basically either not really doable (having it change priority) or are worse for the AI in the long run (a production split). Given that SD are removing the wheel and replacing it with god-alone-knows-what in about three weeks, I'm not really that eager to try and figure out a way round it until I know what comes next.
It may be worth perhaps giving the higher-difficulty AIs a social production bonus, though.
It's largely a matter of the AI; it gets dumber the smaller the map. You can play on tiny and enjoy all the balance changes etc... but the AI won't be much cop at that scale.
The AI works kind of the opposite to vanilla - on vanilla, the larger the map size the worse it plays, as it ramps up fairly quickly but it's potential is very low so it gets relatively much weaker as the game progresses. With this mod, the AI's potential is vastly higher than in vanilla... but it takes longer to achieve it, so it needs to have time to build some momentum. Once it has that momentum, however, it becomes extremely powerful; science-y AIs will often out-tech you, productives will out-militarize you handily, and wealth races can become obscenely rich.
Large is probably the smallest I'd consider playing, and that would be for 1v1 or 1v2. You need to be on immense or above to get the real benefit of the mod.
1.3.3 released:
* Added Snathi Star.* Re-added the 1.2 versions of the adjacency level bonus tech texts* Tweaked Diplo modifiers to make AI less pissy.* Added planet Snathi.* Removed Shipdefs.xml, since it's unused.* Added Snathi ship class defs.* Swapped armament of guardian and interceptor fighters.* Reduced the AI's idle ship retirement to 10 turns (from 30) as it's building vast armadas it can't really afford right now.* Diplo rework: * UI now scales diplo to 100, same as the totals do. * Most treaties are now 1-way, so the AI expects to be paid if it opens it's borders for you etc. * Exploration and Open Borders treaties no longer require tech, just relations. * Went through all diplomatic modifiers and altered them to give different AI personalities varying approachs to diplomacy.
I'd recommend completely removing the previous version of the mod to ensure you get rid of shipdefs.xml; it's not used and so it's just overwriting the vanilla file with one from 1.2.
You already have. With all the work you have done on the different culture strats and the planetary governor offsets it is trivially easy to make it spend the first 70 turns with the planets spending 20% of their production building up the planet, then the next 80 turns at 10%, and after that focus entirely on their purpose.
<AIStrategy> <InternalName>70Strat_Trader</InternalName> <TurnStart>70</TurnStart> <TurnEnd>80</TurnEnd> <TurnLifetime>2</TurnLifetime> <PlayerAtWar>Any</PlayerAtWar> <PersonalityTraits>Trader</PersonalityTraits> <Spending>SpendUntilBroke</Spending> <SpendUntilBrokeBuffer>200</SpendUntilBrokeBuffer> <WealthSlider>0.10</WealthSlider> <ManufacturingSlider>0.80</ManufacturingSlider> <ResearchSlider>0.10</ResearchSlider> <MilitarySlider>0.10</MilitarySlider>
Then leave it to the governors to drag the individual planets to where you want them.
That's really not that effective. Think about it. If you have a fully-packed colony ship, then it has 3 population when it lands. That's 1.5 production. 20% of that is just 0.3. Even if that all goes to social production (i.e., no military output), then it's going to be 30+ turns before you even hit a total production that makes building any basic improvement just 1 turn faster - by which point you've already built 5. This early in the game, many planets only have 5-10 tiles, so at the best case scenario the planet is half-built before there's any noticeable difference from no split at all, and in the worst case the planet will have finished building before there's enough social output to make any difference.
To genuinely speed up the AI's growth, it would need to be able to dedicate substantial amounts of raw production to social output - 50%+. That's just not doable, and what IS doable is so minor as to be effectively meaningless.
Hi Naselus, want to thank you again for this Mod. Though I've never played the base game, I'm thoroughly enjoying your interpretation of it!
Just wanted to bring up the Hyperion Shrinker (and the other Military installation that increases HP). This is the 2nd game in a row where I've built one (or both) and seen no effect once built. I seem to remember you saying that you made them Empire wide, but I'm not seeing any increase in hull capacity or HP once I've built the device, so I'm not sure it is working correctly. I have not checked locally yet though, so perhaps the bonus is only for ships built on that planet (which is kinda useless). The Hiperion logistics system works fine though.
Also when you say remove previous version of the mod, do you mean simply deleting your folder in the Mod folder and then installing fresh?
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