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/?
I'll take another look.
And yes, delete the old version of the folder and re-install it from fresh.
Some thoughts - I'm running the version previous to your latest release.
Carriers do feel pretty tough. I (with drengin tech) was handling an AI with Terran tech with casualty rates of about 2.5-1 in my favour. Once the carrier fleets showed up, the AI was mopping the floor with me. It's amazing how much firepower you can pack into a carrier fleet. By hook or by crook, my fleets are largely using kinetics, with balanced defenses. You mentioned kinetics were good for taking down the fighters. AI was balanced for beam attack, with heavy point defense, then shields, then last was armor. So I thought I was in good shape. No dice. Hard to say I'm convinced about it, as this is the first game I 've played with your mod when the AI went so heavy on carriers. Have seen 7 fleets of 8-9 show up in my space in short order. I'll see what I can come up with and report back.
Ship speeds still feel a tad fast. I'm so glad you reduced them. It's not terribly hard to get to 15+ speed, whereas I personally would like to see that as the max if you really pumped engines. In my current game the AI is sending fleets of carriers at me with 17 and 18 speed with plenty of offense + defense to boot.
Can Starbases be changed in practice? They are very strong in the beginning, and absolutely beyond weak mid to late. Considering how much resources we dump into them to make them strong, its sad to see them drop like flies to any sort of pressure. Now that the exclusion range is much higher, I'd love to see them buffed. One way I thought of, which I'm sure you considered, is making modules more like the Starbase Defense systems (1 ring that adds to each mode of attack / defense) rather than the painful one module at a time shenanigans. As it is I can spend 20-30 turns (producing constructors) and have a starbase with equal attack / defense of a medium cruiser (albeit with more hitpoints). I personally like how powerful they are in the beginning (they cant move, so either you can go around them or engage, but its always a tough fight).
If I can salvage my current situation against the carrier fleets I'll continue on with this game, if not I'll start again with your latest version! Tonnes of fun, though!!
PS just some more thoughts on the Hyperion Buildings - The decription for the tech sais it unlocks the logistics building and an ADDITIONAL +10 logistics. I do get the +10 logistics when I unlock the tech, but building the building does nothing as far as I can tell. Same goes for the other ones I mentioned, as far as I can tell.
The carriers will wreck your face if you use anything but carriers to counter them. Nothing else comes close as those fighters will annihilate everything in a single volley. At this point id be happy seeing carriers removed rather than trying to balance them.
Yeah, I'm not a big fan of carriers either. Not sure what the logistics cost is, but it should be reflective of the extra firepower they can bring to the table. Im pretty sure the AI and I were pretty even in logistics, but I'd have to be at my PC to check.
Rebalancing their logistics to be far higher I think would work, otherwise nerfing them substantially is in order. Generally speaking a space faring nation wouldnt have large warships vulnerable to tiny ships attacking them. But as is a fleet of battleships gets annihilated by a fleet of carriers as if this was a WW2 scenario.
Hmm, I'm not sure if it just because the AI is teching weirdly or if it is just how carriers work, but I notice that the AI's fighters have more offense / defense than many of the medium and large ships he's sending at me. I guess it may not be weird (although I argue it is) that a fighter would have more offense/defense than the carrier it is stationed on, but more offense /defense than it's large hulled battleships? Currently the AI's fighters have 40 Beam Attack 27 shields, 36 Point Defense and 19 Armor turn 250 ish. A large hulled battleship accompanying the carrier fleet has 11 kinetic attack 37 shields 36 PD 13 Armor. The battleship is definitely on the weaker side of ships I've seen. The fact that the fighters don't really need engines (his fighters have only 2 moves, which I assume is base without engines) allow him to stack weapons in a pretty unrealistic fashion (at least in the context of the mod where engines cost proportionately more).
The carriers have approximately 10 of each defense and 10 attack (usually beams). Roughly a quarter of the offense / defense of 1 fighter stationed in its carrier bay.
How do carrier bays upgrade with tech? Do they just auto tech up to the highest research, or do they have to built / upgraded in a linear fashion like ship weapons systems? I admit I have not used carriers much, but something seems out of whack.
Carrier fighters auto-tech up. Battleships don't. It's probably an older battleship, though as I pointed out in another thread, due to the lack of engines etc carrier fighters can often have as much weaponry as a ship 2 classes larger.
Also remember that weapons are balanced to have equal damage output accounting for both range and RoF. Kinetics have twice the range of lasers and about twice the rate of fire, so their damage per shot is lower per tier (I've asked SD if they intend to account for this in the relative weapon scores, but have heard nothing back). Roughly speaking, every 1 point of kinetic is worth 2 points of laser and 3 points of missile (the exact amount varies slightly due to tech choices).
So in the example at hand, what you've probably got is a faction which has teched up its lasers a tier or two higher than its kinetics.
Bear in mind - I've actually nerfed assault fighters in the mod. They're half the hull size of vanilla. This is why people tend to feel carriers are unbalanced. I'm looking at it some more for the next release.
I've read through the change log file and looked over much of what you did. Kudos to you. You did a fantastic job. I might want to borrow this and change a few things around to better suit my style of play. As for my question, has this been tested out on the small maps and really big ones? How does it play out for the different sizes?
The AI is scripted for big maps and gets better the bigger the map is. Its performance is significantly weaker on smaller map sizes. The mod's various balance and mechanical changes work well on small maps, but you might want to re-write the AI scripts if you're using anything under Huge.
The AI, for example, assumes that it has about 200 turns before all the empty planets run out and the mid game begins.. It won't build military ships before about turn 50. It presumes that weak AI empires will have 20 planets and strong AIs might have 100+ by the end of the colonization phase. It takes it's time to build up and becomes stronger as the game progresses (unlike the vanilla AI which comes to pieces as the game goes on).
Would your AI have issues on a extreme map where the number of stars planets were about 40% of what they are now?
Some other thoughts/questions. In the change log you mention where you got the AI to specialize planets which is a great thing. But also in the change log it looks like you scaled back on the benefit of doing this. Or am I reading that wrong? For example all worlds seem to need approval buildings more than ever and growth bonus is flat aside from adjacency.
You increase the odds of war but put greater buffs to trade? Ins't that inconsistent in that I spend lots of effort on trade and it gets thrown away since my neighbors want war? It also appears you want to try and limit the size of fleets since you quadrupled maintenance costs of ships. Maybe this is why the AI has to destroy them so fast.
In the standard game we strive to increase population per planet. A production world would be farms and industry for example. Having 10% approval was identical to having 90% as it didn't really matter. Now lower approval hurts production so we need to place a more varied build out of buildings on each planet. I know you changed the soil improvement type techs to be repeatable. How does this impact planets that are 8 or smaller in size? What strategy should be involved in building out a planet?
With defenses nerfed it seems that hit points are now the key factor or jamming techs. Or is it still possible to have the same tech level ships where defense can keep up with offensive power yet still have room left over for other things?
With Thalan hives nerfed (assuming no adjancency bonus now) are they still viable? That was their one advantage in their tree.
Dunno. Try it. I only play on insane with abundant settings at normal difficulty, so that's the optimum settings for the AI. You'd need to see for yourself how it does with other settings, though I suspect you'll be pleasantly surprised.
You need 1 approval building per farm, roughly. Though Tourism buildings now increase approval empire-wide (by 1% per tourism building). You get much lower total output bonus from production buildings, so 500% is quite a high total. This means that building big ships in 1 turn is basically almost impossible until the late game, unless you go for cost reduction techs.
Flat growth bonus means that you get +0.1 per building, which is much more potent than the % bonuses were.
I increased the odds of war in relation to the previous version of the mod, when war was unlikely. The AI is not massively warlike (aside from massively warlike races). You can set up a trade-based empire and not have to worry too much, provided the AI doesn't decide you're weak. In my present game, I've had 3 wars with 1 aggressive civ and none with my other neighbours; the aggressive civ has been passive for the last 100 turns or so and we've been trading for that time. Also, trade is much more worthwhile; it grows faster and caps way higher so you can pay for the freighter faster.
Approval is quite easy atm, so again you really only need 1 approval building per farm. I've been thinking of making it tougher tbh. I generally have 2-4 farms and approvals, depending on how many tiles I have available, and then coat it in output buildings. A class 8 planet will eventually get to be much, much bigger, depending on how many terraforming techs you get.
Defenses keep up with offensive power. The whole weapon v defense system has been given a ground-up re-write to ensure it's balanced (I wrote an excel spreadsheet and everything). Hit points have been nerfed, defenses are smaller as well as less powerful so you can stack more. The idea is to make you actually put a smattering of all defenses on all ships, rather than dumping defenses onto 1 ship alone.
Hives still get adjacency bonuses. They're not really nerfed, either; Hives give +50% food and +50% approval, so by late-game they are vastly more powerful than they are in vanilla. You just don't get front-loaded production from them. The original intention of the Thalans was that they were supposed to take a long time to get powerful, but be really powerful once they'd finished growing. This is exactly not how they work in vanilla, but exactly how they do in IAB.
Ultimately, you'll just have to try it tbh. I don't really know what you'd prefer, so I can only really answer from my own experience, and I enjoy it.
I fully intend to try this starting tonight. I like to play a custom race and am still reading the files to see what was changed there. I guess I can now pick something other than patriotic since LEP is no longer there in it's original form. I also used to reduce trading and popular (tourism) in favor of other things but might have to adjust now. In vanilla trading wasn't worth it at all so better to use those two points elsewhere.
My main change in playing large maps in vanilla was to greatly reduce all the asteroids and other junk in the galaxy. I always felt that these resources should be special and not had 10K starbases mining the map. So I would make them rare and reduce all the stars to give the feeling of empty voids where clear cut borders could be established. It usually resulted in a sentry ship or two spotting an invasion fleet and giving the defender time to shift forces to intercept. And without lots of life support you had to build starbases to expand which meant they were a key target. It had a more strategic feel and a clearer border to all the various empires. Just imagine an immense map with voids bigger than a ship can travel.
The auto tech up for carrier modules is what does it then, and makes them super potent in the hands of the AI. The AI builds tonnes of ships, and rarely has the cash to upgrade them. I wonder why stardock chose that system, it really doesn't make sense. They should have to upgrade just like the rest of the components.
Carriers are the most potent weapon in the AI's arsenal, and if used correctly are probably in the Human players as well.
Any word on the Hyperion buildings? I'm still not getting any noticeable effect from building most of them. This is across several versions of your mod.
As soon as I'm done with this game I'll delete your mod and try a fresh install to see if that changes anything, but a few others did report similar behavior, so I'm not so sure.
I think the shrinker needed a global scope added, so I've added it. There's nothing wrong with the code for any of the others.
EDIT: just tested, and the logistics one already works as intended.
I started a game last night with your mod. I changed a few things around but they were all related to resources as I wanted to tone down how often they appeared on the map.
I'm barely in the game (turn 36 I think) but I noticed a few things. I know you removed the colony event but it might have gone too far. I was only able to get my first ideology pick after I colonized about 10 planets. I then had to pick missionary instead of my normal free colony ships since I may never have another chance. So this was a little disconcerting.
I have game pace on normal but picked slow research. That in hindsight was a big mistake. Research now takes forever. Building things also takes forever. Is this normal? For example I have a world with say 2 factories on it sharing a +1 bonus plus their adjacency bonus. Your changes have a base 5 production but with the 2 factories I get just 7 production maybe 8? This sort of also explains why research is so slow. Even research planets with 3 or 4 labs is producing a very small amount compared to vanilla.
So far I'm liking it. Just a little confused on how it plays out or more accurately how it's supposed to play out.
EDIT: one last thing. I researched soil enhancement and on many planets I can't add add anything. Is this land bound? Will future enhancements allow building over water or partial land?
@jju57 - research picks up pretty fast once you get a big empire. If you are playing on insane normal difficulty 30 + planets is solid. If you are playing on incredible or above 50+ planets and you will still be on your heels. In any case, mid/late game research is pretty fast, but very slow at the beginning (i play with research on very slow).
On incredible I can usually match the AI's score somewhat, but not their military power, have to win with better tactics and ship designs, however the carrier dominance is throwing a wrench in my plans right now. Godlike in my current game is absolutely insane. I made one godlike power, and they are currently 10-13 times better score than the next 3 powers (2 incredible AI's and myself).
It does take quite a while to get ideology rolling, but hey they are pretty powerful perks. Forget about filling more than one branch. I would like to see some of the perks rebalanced though, as some are pretty weak, and others (-25% to morale can be devastating).
Soil enhancement has been toned down, often it won't net you many tiles. The later techs are much better. I was hesitant about the change at first, but I think it makes the game flow better.
@ Naselus. Not sure if it was your intent, but I'm at war with 2 equally sized empires now (same size as me). They are throwing almost nothing at me but carriers. Occasional large hulled ship in the mix, but other than that all carriers all the time. One faction I've been at war with for a very long time, so I've seen probably 40+ of their carrier fleets enter my space, usually in groups of 3 or 4. I've resorted to cheating to stay alive, just because I want to see how this plays out. They do seem to build other ships, but carriers are what they send to do the fighting.
tbh, I'm wondering if Froggy did something in the C. I've not altered the AI's build preferences for warships in months.
Sneak peak at 1.3.4 changelog:
1.3.4 * Added a global scope to hyperion logistics system.* Hyperion Shipyard now gives +100% military manu for the planet it's built on.* All defenses now have a flat Mass of 2.* AI builds more transports when at war.* Removed min relations requirements for treaties.* Tweaked AI's willingness to accept said treaties.* Hyperion buildings now correctly target ships.* Basic Carrier modules are now only 35 mass (down from 50), but only carry 1 fighter each.* Escort carrier module now carry 1 of each type of fighter, weighs 100 mass.
I've not had a chance to play this myself yet, but will give it a test today and tomorrow and let you guys know how it's looking. After this one, I think it's gonna be a dedicated push to update all the text file etc, so that 1.3.5 is a basically 'complete' mod experience. That should allow people to take a backup of the full game with the mod and play it while we're trying to recover from whatever happens with the removal of the planet wheel; I'm hoping that SD are good enough to provide us with the ability to mod in 100% focuses, but given the near total lack of useful information about what's replacing it, and the less-than-stellar performance of various other systems on their first emergence, I'm not putting money on it.
Got to play some more. Nearing the end of the colony phase and have seen the constructor rush going on. Seems only one empire is building military ships in any numbers which is a good thing as the techs just aren't there for anyone to go offensive at this point.
I saved and removed FOW to see how the 15 other empires are doing. The former minor AI's seem to lag behind even when they have a decent starting position. Out of the normal main's only the Yor appear to be lagging. This should be a very exciting game as my starting position was probably the 5th or 6th best, even though I'm near the middle of the map.
Money is tighter than usual and for this phase of the game it seems I need slightly more wealth worlds over vanilla. But I'm liking it.
But youre assuming the player will survive in their nerfed state long enough to get powerful eventually. In all my playthroughs that has never been the case because as soon as you fall behind one ship size youre essentially toast. Ive had one large enemy ship take out four medium ships and one starbase all by itself. If you cant keep up at that stage it doesnt matter what theoretical awesomeness youre destined to achieve.
You're not weaker for having the nerfed hives when the other races haven't got them at all. Frankly, the Hive giving raw production and massed adjacnecy for 30 manu is imbalanced as hell and relying on it is not necessary.
If you're having trouble keeping up with the AI, drop a difficulty. It really doesn't need bonuses to keep up with a player now.
In most of my games the AI keeps up until I get a ship to hit the graveyards then since game allows me to create construc/colony ships based on tiny - small platforms and can convert ships get from the graveyard for 100 creds or less I explode.
Would be nice if game restricted this feature ... have raised the mass myself on the 2 modules so can't place on the ships until later and later in the game. Oh well I know can just not use .. but it is there and I am weak ...
Overall the mod does make the early game a lot more challenging and competitive, now if the AI would just steal my ship designs and build them I would be more challenged, and yes have raised diff but being able to explosively expand after hit the graveyards leaves the AI way way behind.
So my base empire was 48 worlds. I had 16 industry based, 16 research and 16 wealth. By turn 250 I think I got it won. I'm leading in everything and have a 1000 gain in money each turn even without any trading. I'm now starting to gobble up three smaller empires. Or I just may restart the game. This one was on normal difficulty.
Does the mod work well with higher difficulties? Should I just restart at a higher difficulty level?
I also think I have to go with very slow tech. I played with slow tech and it was fine but then I reached critical mass and techs are falling left and right. I think the game needs even more costs to research.
I know you put into play the terraforming to help smaller empires get great planets. But I have 30 of my 48 planets at 18 or more tiles. May I suggest that you limit the terraforming to 2-3 per tech instead of unlimited. With economic SB's I'm cranking out the tech and ships while still increasing my wealth balance every turn.
BTW I have anomalies turned way down so I wasn't getting ahead due to graveyard. Vanilla needs to do away with pirates guarding these things because the AI never ever goes there. In fact I stopped going to any that are beyond my empire's border and SB areas to make it more fair.
In the end its sort of like vanilla in that once you get positive cash flow, and once you get equal ships you will win. I even stopped building the armor escorts and capital glass cannon type ships.
Hey jju57, yes it works well on higher difficulties. I'm playing on Incredible right now after winning my last game on Genius difficulty.
fair warning that godlike is pretty ridiculous The level below that (i think its incredible) generally feels about even for where I'm at. OFC all of this depends on start locations etc. I usually set multiple difficulties in game, so several incredible, many gifted, some genius, and maybe one or two godlike if I'm feeling adventurous.
@naselus - you've made all defense components weigh the same, and I'm assuming the same defense? Personally I'd prefer if they were somewhat different from one another, just for immersion's sake
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