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/?
Both of those changes are pretty awesome. For the Hyperion Shrinker, might I recommend it being either reduced to 0.5% or 1%, or the effect being changed to being a minor logistics boost, via the logic that smaller modules are easier to haul around and lighter, thus easing the burden on logistic trains?
I may have expanded a little too much. Now my economy is like Greece's.
Have changed it to a flat +1 bonus mass point per level.
Great work with this mod naselus! Really is fun playing with this mod. It adds a bit more of a challenge for sure
I have only started two games with it so far, first to turn 450ish and second to about 120, on my 3rd try atm. Both restarts due game setting tweaks on my part, increase AI difficulty, adjust galaxy settings a bit. I have noticed that the AI does build starbase's for resources/defence but they do not seem to upgrade them any, everyone I have attacked always seems to have the basic attack/defence values, not sure this is an issue with your mod but more an issue with vanilla as I seem to remember them doing the same thing with the 2 games I played with vanilla.
Also the Thalium Data Archive, Is this intentionaly overpowered? With the 5000 credit starting money and the cheap cost of buying buildings (450 for the Archive) hitting 400+(6-7 Archives, Co-ordination Center and Technology Capital) research on my first research directed planet within 20-30 turns is really easy(Tech every 1-3 turns). Also with the amount of Thalium on offer through out the galaxy the normal repeatable research buildings I never build as it puts me at a disadvantage if I do.
I be-line for Technology Capital then Economic Capital buildings which leads me onto the Promethium Pleasure Park, you can do the same with this for credits as you can with the Thalium Data Archive, although its not as high due to the park only effecting approval on adjacent tiles. I am sure its due to the flat amounts each building provide, the game seems to take flat values first then times that by the percentages. Not sure on the calculations tbh, I have not looked at the modding side of GCiv yet(I have modded Sid Civ games for years), still enjoying the play
On a side note, I use the Federation Faction Mod also, with no issues.
I forgot you could do flat mass modifiers. Yeah that's an even better option.
On the topic of the Promethium Pleasure Park, I wager it's bonus should be changed to morale like in vanilla, or it's adjacency bonus should be changed to wealth.
On starbases - the AI does upgrade them, but absurdly rarely. I'm gonna see if I can dig out the modifier effecting this this week.
Thulium archive (and the others too, tbh) could probably use a nerf; I do want the resource buildings to be some of the only buildings that give +flat resources but they're presently a bit OTT. They are way more expensive than normal ones, though. Partly, this is leftovers from when ships used many strategic resources to build; 1 Thulium archive cost you 5 ship's worth of sensors. Now that's gone I guess they can be nerfed some.
Promethium park is being split to have +25% approval and +3 cash value in the next release.
I've also being doing a lot of stuff with ship balance. Forthcoming patch notes are:
* removed Durantium from ship hulls* Quadrupled ship maintenance costs.* Removed population growth from techs which give pop growth buildings.* Sensors given diminishing returns; going over 10 sensors now makes visibility worse.* Life Support now gets better mass-to-range ratios at higher tech levels; cost more maintenance* All engines given +1 move.* Big ships now need more engines to get the same speed (added -10% move speed for small, -20% for medium, -30% for large and -40% for huge).* Engines no longer get bigger with tech, just faster.* All ship hit points reduced by 40%.* All defense values raised 50%.* AI now uses strat resource-based buildings as hubs rather than standard manufacturing buildings (to prevent it frm spending 17 turns building a Durantium refinery the moment it settles).* Blueprint laser ships now get a second laser before they get more shields* Blueprints prioritize engines a bit more.* Thulium archive bonus halved* Promethium park cash bonus halved; 25% approval bonus added.* Fixed the complete mess that is ShipClasDefs.xml, so that the AI actually upgrades some of it's build choices.* AI war target value reduced from 1000 to 256 (to match the transport distance).* AI's diplomatic trade values tweaked.* 'Slowdown' starbase modules mssively buffed to 100% and 200% increased move cost per tile for the enemy.* Relics nerfed to prodeuce only 1/5th the bonus.* AI should no longer panick-surrender after losing a single planet.
I'm hoping this will make smaller ships more viable, and make ships with multiple defenses better. I don't intend to release it til Thursday or Friday; got some pretty cool ideas to muck about with on that score,
Naselus thanks for a great mod. I can't really play stock it's just too silly...
Any chance for 1.1 compatibility this week with your next version? or should I downgrade to 1.03?
Yes. I agree!
relic nerf should be proportional to map size. 1/5 makes them useless on smaller maps.
And now that we don't need durantium anymore for hulls what should we do with it?
The stuff's all over the place!! ffs...
Any chance of removing the silly tech specializations? Feel free to balance them out.
Also, future techs ala MOO2 should be added, with small bonuses i.e. 5%
You trade them to the AI like junk bonds.
Naselus, tell us where the changes are (make a list- with the appropriate file names) so we can change something back if we want to. That way we can mod your mods to suit our own individual play-styles.
I vote for specializations. What I would like to see is more custom tech trees.
Durantium was a good requirement IMO although the quantities required for each hull size should be cut in half. The need for Durantium is what makes Tiny ships much more viable especially in the late game. The fact that they would otherwise drop off is ridiculous.
Apparently Lavo's been playing the mod successfully on 1.1 already. However, the mod will remain set to the current release version whenever it's published - Beta patches are too unreliable of a code base, and could switch completely seconds before or after I release.
You saw the sign over the door, right? I'm still playing about with it, but somewhere between 2% and 5% is likely to be where they end up. But while I'll try to ensure mechanical changes are scalable this mod will always, always cater to the biggest map sizes first and the smaller ones later, since the developers are presently following the opposite rule - if something doesn't work on big maps, they make big maps smaller.
The resources-for-hulls stuff will be re-added at a later date when the AI actually follows the rules; I'm seeing too many AI players managing to get -111 durantium and flying big fleets of ships that they clearly shouldn't have been able to build.
Work on this is ongoing, but tbh I need to finish fiddling with the mechanics before I get too deep into the techs; expect to start seeing lots of tech work at that point (and some big improvements to AI tech choices, too).
Gods no. I do this for fun, to unwind after a hectic day at work. Admin and documenting is not fun. Just be glad there's a changelog at all, I didn't bother to do one for the first 3-4 months when I was modding Victoria 2.
As above; there'll be more juicy headline stuff like that once the nuts and bolts are where I want them. Til then, it's mostly going to be obscure mechanical tweaks which don't sound exciting, but make the game play much, much better.
The huge maintenance increase on hulls, combined with the speed changes should help to counter that somewhat, and as I say I do want the resources-for-hulls thing back in at some point - but there's hardcode problems with it atm which I don't doubt the devs are already looking to fix.
I did saw the sign on the door, but insane is insane!!! I'm playing on gigantic and the vanila game *needs* your mod.
Yarlen (developer) on steam says 1.1 comes out tomorrow btw...
That's cheating! And once the AI is fixed and doesn't buy the stuff then what?
Then this weekend's release of IAB will be for 1.1.
Just a couple of AI setting bugs...
1) The Genius setting gets a Logistics bonus but the Godlike does not. Logistics bonus should be added to Godlike.
2) Here are the ProductionPoints bonuses given to AI:
Gifted: 0.33
Genius: 0.25
Godlike: 3.0
Seems like it would make more sense for Genius to be above Gifted. Maybe make Genius 1.0?
(Also, is it just me or does the 3.0 bonus for Godlike seem a little crazy? This means AI will have 400% production points of normal, right?)
Anyway, just thought I'd mention these. Seems like a cool mod. Am going to try it now.
I've not really touched those; they're the basic 1.02 or 1.03 settings. I'll rectify it, but I don't play on settings where the AI gets a handicap; I want to know that it can compete fair and square.
You know anyone that wants a mod for lets say large maps like this maybe should make a mod for this.
I like insane though.
That's actually a good Idea!
Btw, are you the same naselus that did the PDM mod in Vicky 2?
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