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've actually been playing on the 1.1 optin; the mod doesn't appear to be any less stable than vanilla.
Really? Crashed and burned for me.
Sadly, not do-able - SD would have to add that into the schema, which we simply can't do anything about.
Yes, the schema's always a pain. I don't know why (given that a Civ IV Fall from Heaven modder Kael is on their team) Stardock hasn't made the game more amenable to the addition of new resources and yields. In Civilization V it is much simpler to add entirely new sorts of resources.
As another unrelated idea (which I think *can* be done), industrial buildings should provide a negative planet quality yield to represent pollution. All races (Altarians especially) should have technologies and buildings along the Soil Improvement line with which to counter environmentally deleterious yields, and the Soil Improvement projects themselves should become non-unique to deal with continued environmental damage.
I already made terraforming projects repeatable. Not sure how the game would handle a planet losing spaces if they're occupied, so no to negative quality - but a small (-1-2%) negative growth modifier could certainly be considered.
I guess I'll try negative quality out on my own, and see how it works for occupied space. If it works, then great. In the meantime factories should negatively impact growth (the general impression here is that population growth needs to be nerfed.)
Yeah, think I was a little too worried about how hard approval would hit it; that said, with 5 times as much food around growth rates do need to be higher than vanilla anyway, and I'd rather keep it so you can make 1 world growth faster than several provided it has the development level for it. I'm fairly happy for planets to pick up 0.5 growth reasonably early, since late-game planets can manage several hundred population from 5-6 food tiles presently.
AI colonization is actually really dumb.
They send literally ALL of their slow moving colony ships in one general direction.
This might be something Brad has to work on. The whole "sector" concept.
I think that very fast (7+ movement) early-game blueprints ought to be built for AI colony ships. I use them to great effect in order to evade pirates and rapidly colonize my local cluster(s).
The blueprints already stack engines a lot more. I may need to put a bit more weight on engine techs tho. And the sending in one direction thing is largely a matter of the AI only sending colony ships to planets it can see - it won'T try scouting with them.
Sneak Peak at 0.6 (not yet released):
* Ancient races now get +10% research per colony per artifact they own. This should make the benefit a little less impressive. I may need to buff it.* Ascension Crystals now give a global +10% productivity for each one owned, so they're not completely useless in non-crystal victory games.* ArtocarpusViriles bonus reduced into line with other planet resources.* AI will now send transports to attack any war enemy planet within 256 hexes of said transport.* Planets in influence rebellion now suffer from -approval rather than -cash* Added Strategic Repair modifier to hulls to give them 10% repair per turn - with thanks to Sansloi37 for coming up with the methodology for doing this.* Shipyards now give +500% repair rate to ships on the same hex* Starbases now give +200% repair rate to ships on the same hex.* Nerfed Tactical Repair a fair bit.* Tiny ships now logistically cheaper; large and huge hulls now logistically more expensive.* T-1 Ideology buildings produce slightly more ideology points.* T3 Evil and Good buildings now include ideology point per turn multipliers rather than flat bonuses. This means they buff the T1s.* Arbitration center reworked to be much less gash. Is now colony-unique rather than player-unique; now gives fewer ideology points per turn, now adds +100% approval to the planet it's built on (instead of tourism). Still increased Influence.* Military ring for starbases now adds tactical repair to the starbase and increases all of it's military stats by 25%, making it much tougher against small raids.* Luxury trade routes now twice as powerful.* Entrepreneurs now get +25% approval from their trade routes.* Free Trade treaties now give +2 trade licenses.* Most treaties now never expire by default* Allowed paid-for treaties to be broken after 30 turns (down from 50).* Exporters ideology trait now gives +50% trade licenses.* Indispensible ideology trate effect doubled.* Appreciative now gives a flat +10 approval to ALL planets, not 5 for the first 5.* Loyal now increases resistance by 50% - with the increased population, this makes Benevolent planets really hard to take.* Swapped Prominence 3 (take all planets in influence) and Prominence 5 (universal +25% influence).* Changed Prominence 4 from giving +50% influence on starbases to a flat +1* Skilled now gives +50% research to all planets (about 2 research centers worth for worlds that are researching; no effect on planets which are not).* Breakthrough now makes all research buildings 25% cheaper to build.* Quantum Leap now gives +100% research globally rather than a flat 5 research.
Quantum is still too powerful, I think, considering that the other Benevolent lines give +50% of something.
100% research isn't that much by the time you get it, though - it's like 2 free research buildings on planets specialized for research.
Also, how do you remove the Durantium Cost of Large Hulled ships?
The problem is I chose a map with virtually ZERO asteroids, and thus no Durantium.
Once the game's in progress you can't - that savegame will always have them.
Ohhhhh.
Well then. Looks like I have to start another game.
Not that I have a problem with it.
Which raises a question: if I download a new mod version, will it apply to an old saved game?
There is a cheat called "resources" that removes ALL resource costs. Will that also apply to the AI if I use it for myself?
Which means that the OTHER level 5's are underpowered (the ones that give +50% morale and +25% production).
Nope. Only the version of the mod which is active when the game is started.
No idea. On the other hand, I'm gonna upload 0.6 after this soak finishes, so you'll need a new game anyway.
The +25% influence one is now level 3 (the instant-flip of everything in your culture has been swapped with it, because that's by far and away the most powerful thing in the whole line). 50% morale is more useful. with the new population scaling, but might be buffed at some point.
Updated to 0.6.
Damn you. I can't put Colony Modules on Tiny or Small Hulls anymore.
That was an unpleasant surprise. Damn it. Looks like I might have to start PLAYING the game. *%&#&%*%($.
EDIT: AND YOU NERFED HIVES.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
WHAT HAVE YOU CREATED???????
(Set all of the AI to expansionist. THEY'RE OUT EXPANDING ME ON SUICIDAL DIFFICULTY).
How did this happen???? HOW????????? HOW????????????
THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING!!!!! I AM SUPPOSED TO BE INVINCIBLE. INVINCIBLE!!!!!
On suicidal, they get a big boost to production and a flat cash bonus... Oh, and I've not actually fixed their maintenance reduction on higher difficulties yet (they ought to get -50%).
You're being beaten by the AI with one of its vanilla bonuses missing.
How will this mod work on normal-sized maps?
I'm trying to decide between this mod and Vid's Better Wartime AI; I read in that thread that these two were incompatible.
Is it possible to have two mods installed, but select which mod is active in a specific game?
Thanks in advance
No idea how well this will work on normal; I'd imagine you'll be short of durantium for big hulls and the planet-side resources will be a bit rubbish, plus the AI will be trying to expand long after planets have run out.
I imagine most of the other stuff will be OK, but I'd suggest going for Vid's mod for maps under Huge.
This might be a crazy suggestion, but perhaps let military rings be added on in addition to any other single ring? Unless the changes are substantial, and they may very well be, military starbases have always seemed like an utter waste to me.
Already added SBs can have all rings now.
For the next version, I'm removing the durantium cost from hulls and instead quadrupling maintenance. The AI doesn't seem to respect the effect, and it's a bit crippling on low-durantium maps. I've also removed the inherent growth bonus on techs which unlock growth bonus buildings, and I'm going to change the Hyperion buildings to give faction-wide bonuses and change the cheesier adjacency bonuses (no more quadrupling hull space with a level 27 hyperion shrinker).
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