Presenting the Galactic Diversity Custom Race Mod, now available on the Nexus
Galactic Diversity Mod. Updated to v1.6 (This mod is version agnostic and should work regardless of game version.)
Installation:
Simply unzip the file into your “//MyDocuments/My Games/GalCiv3/Mods” directory, it will create a new directory there. Then login to the game, go to Options, select the Gameplay Tab and check the box for Enable Mods.
Next, Exit the game and when you relaunch it the mod will be active.
The goal of this mod is to expand upon the original custom race traits and provide some interesting new choices.
This mod is not strictly balanced, it is presented for fun and many users may find they will need to crank up the AIin order for it to provide some challenge. That being said over time I will attempt to balance the mod internally to itself so that the race traits and abilities are balanced against each other.
I have intentionally created this mod to be version agnostic, meaning it does not matter which version of the game youare running, the mod will neither conflict nor interfere. To this end the mod is built using the append method, theonly exception being the RaceTraitSliderDefs.xml which exists only to display the race traits and in no way changesthem itself. This file is left in overwrite mode simply to provide my new race traits without altering any of theoriginal race traits. All of the original race traits are intact and unchanged any custom race created with the basegame should work just fine with this mod installed. If you choose to publish any custom race made with this modinstalled I would ask that you note that, in the workshop entry, so as to avoid confusion for those persons downloadingfrom the workshop. Being an append style mod Galactic Diversity should play nice with most other mods.
Herein you will find a plethora of new and exciting race traits for your gaming pleasure.
You can choose from traits such as.The Swarm - Its an Ugly planet its a bug planet!Cyborgs - Their big bad and ready to stomp their enemies to a pulpHeir to the Ancients - Who are these minor empires we find ourselves surrounded by? They are as nothing before the Ancients!The AI Collective - Hyper intelligent leaders of an endless machine army.Psionic Masters - What is that you are thinking? No no that just won't do, thats better now you are thinking the "right" way.Nanonic Breakthrough - Lets make everything smaller and faster and better! I'm sure the nanites will behave...And many more!A Note on balancing: All race trait values are positives, there are no negative traits, the lack of a bonus is aseffective as any negative, while negatives just give rise to unbalanced traits which are very weak penalties given the bonuspoints they give. An example would be the Brutal, Popular, or Traders traits, which are very often taken on customraces as they do not offer a strong penalty to match the bonus points they provided. Therefore this mod has nonegatives, instead all the traits presented herein start at the base point the original system left off and go up fromthere. I am well aware the mod needs balancing but cannot play through even partial games with so many variables to testso please do leave me feedback on the traits you like, and which ones seem to be overpowered, or underpowered, "Relativeto each other".
ChangeLog:
V1.6(Fix)Changed the Game Start trait to produce uninhabited worlds in home system, as was originally intended.(Tune)Added the IsAncient Tag to Heirs to the Ancients
V1.5
(Tune)Changed the Ancient Technologies received by the Heirs to the Ancients to use standard weapon and drive modules.This means any AI race with this trait will make use of those techs and they will appear on the automated designs.
V1.4
(Fix) Added restriction on Synthetic races so that you cannot combine Synthetic with Fertile, Farmers, or Speciation.(Fix) Added all original Race traits to the end of the list, this corrects for an error which prevents editing ofpre-mod races. The old traits are listed at the end and can be accessed by mousing over and scrolling, all old traitshave had their costs set to zero to prevent issues, they are not intended for use with GalDiv but are re-included justto fix issues some folks have been having. Also I reiterate do NOT upload GalDiv races to the Workshop! Credit goes to Francofx for catching this one.
V1.3 (first major balance pass)(Tune)Nanonics Ability, Engines -20% mass, Shields -20% mass, Beams -30% mass(Tune)Natural Diplomats, Diplomacy +2, diplomatic value of traderoutes +25%, diplomatic trade offer bonus +25%(Tune)Malleable, bonus colonists on colonize +5, bonus planetary quality when obtained +5-10, bonus quality tohomeworld +10-15(Tune)Psionics, Resistance bonus +25%, traderoute bonus +25%, Influence bonus +10%, Diplomacy +2(Tune)Handy: -20%/-30%/-40%/-50% reduction to all maintenance costs(Tune)The Swarm, +10% to Food(Tune)The Silicoids, removed mining bonuses they were causing crashes, +35% to planetary defense. Credit goes to Moogle65535 for catching that!(Tune)Cyborgs, +30% to invasion, +20% to planetary defenses, +20% Food, +75% social manufacturing, +50% miltary manu.(Tune)AI Collective, +10 to Approval, -50% to maintenance, (Fix)Changed Automated Production Centers used by AI collective to be colony unique. Credit goes to Moogle65535 for catching that one! (Tune)Farmers, reduced food bonuses to +20%/+30%/+40%/+50%(Tune)Fecund, removed Approval bonuses and lowered food bonuses to +10%/+15%/+20%/+25%(Tune)Invaders, +20% Planetary Defense(Tune)Capitalists, +20% trade route value, +20% tourism income, +30% income(Tune)Tough, reduction to defense mass lowered to -10%/-15%/-20%/-25%(Tune)Adventuresome, increased bonuses +25%/+50%/+75%/+100%(Fix)Adjusted all Trade route bonuses to use proper targetype fields as changed in game version 1.1 Hereward_Hills gets all credit for pointing this out!
V1.2
(Fix) Tolerant Trait costs were using old values, updated to current mod cost schedule. Credit goes to Moogle65535 for catching this!
(Fix) Tuned AI Collective, lowered mass reduction on range modules from 75% reduction to 50% reduction.(Fix) Tuned multiple settings on Nanonics for balance and to prevent a divide by zero error that was causing crashes when combined with AI Collective. Mass Reduction: Sensors -40%, Missiles -20%, Ship Range -20%, Ship Engines -30%, Point Defense -20%, Shields -40%, Beam Weapons -40%. Moogle65535 gets full credit for catching this!
V1.1
(Fix) Natural Diplomats, bonus to diplomatic trade multiplier changed from Flat to Multiplier.(Fix) Handy, was adding to maintenance instead of reducing it, this is now fixed.(Fix) Organized, Was adding to maintenance instead of reducing it, this is now fixed.
In case you missed it at the top here is the Link.
P.S. Check out my other mods
http://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/14/?
Before 1.2 you could scroll down and apply as many negatives or positives you wanted from the old traits.
With 1.2 there is a problem with loading saves if you use the old traits and they don't balance out to 5 trait points. I am not sure what causes that or if it can be fixed but if it can be fixed it would be great.
ran into this also .. just adjusted the cost in the sliders so could balance to 5 and still have the custom races play against have 'shall we say' an extra bonus in the game.
I havent run into that problem as yet but I'll get down to some testing, I suspect they have implementd some sort of error checking to make sure races follow the rules. tbh you could create a race previously with an edited set of costs that was totally unbalanced, then turn off mods and play multiplayer with that race and the game wouldnt even notice despite having a race with every possible bonus. In game the diplo details screen only shows 2 abilities and your race traits, you could even give a race all the abilities and a balanced set of traits and it would show up as looking normal in the multiplayer game.
Rather stunned by that myself as one of the first things most MP games do is a CRC style check to make sure all custom assets play by the same rules.
So yeah I'll see what they have changed and fix it if possible, looking at doing a major rewrite of the mod anyway so it should fix any outstanding issues.
Ok I am completely baffled by what you are seeing as unloadable games under 1.2
I have tested with every trait and ability permutation I can think of inlcuding builds with massive amounts of negative traits as well as with all the old traits which are zero cost in GalDiv. I have done this repeatedly including games with and without long soaks and I cannot replicate this problem of games not loading.
Is it possible you are trying to load old save games from pre 1.2 while running the 1.2 version of the game?
I have found some other bugs and so will be releasing an update to address those soonish as well as working on a total overhaul or the trait and ability system.
redid the custom races and save under 1.2 and all worked .. when used some made before had the issue so I have no idea what might be the cause. So think the check as such isn't there but had some issue with the races and how set up under prior versions. So probably just unique to me and what was trying to do with some of these folks to increase the challenge in the game. Sorry fo raising the issue.
No problem, I prefer to stay on top of these things, can't fix em without knowing about em.
DW, I have been having several intermittent problems with GCIII and Steam since 1.2 and going ahead with the Win 10 upgrade.
I was not having any major problems with GCIII and I assumed these little minor annoyances were related to mods. No doubt some were. In any case I recently broke down and used the compatibility fix for GCIII and Steam, since I did this the problems have stopped and I was able to load a game with all the traits active as you described. I am not going to say that something as simple as this has fixed everything because I have thought everything was fixed in the past only to have it return to plague me. I hate intermittent issues. You never know if they are fixed or if you are just lucky.
Now one last question, does the GD mod still conflict with the "unlock" console command?
I'll be honest I have no idea why the unlock command fails, if I load a standard race it works just fine, and I would suspect that some of the traits in GalDiv would not cause issues.
However I believe it is the traits which add access to specific improvements or ship components which cause the crash, presumably the game gags when it tries to add those. The ones that add special access are the Speciation traits and the Society traits.
Because the unlock command works with the mod loaded its not a general issue with the mod but something specific to adding the custom traits, sometimes things break in mysterious ways and since the unlock command still works with a standard race I really cannot offer a fix as there is no clear culprit code. If I had some deeper working knowledge of exactly what the game tries to do when it runs the unlock command I might be able to do more.
Updated to version 1.6
V1.6(Fix)Changed the Game Start trait to produce uninhabited worlds in home system, as was originally intended.(Tune)Added the IsAnctient Tag to Heirs to the Ancients
Im getting a double traits window (about half the normal traits on one side, and another that can be scrolled down), in the race editor window, the only other mod Im using is Gauntlets Race Mod and Im sure the responsible file is RaceTraitSlider, I have this problem with both 1.5 and 1.6
Yeah thats normal.
The right side should be scroll-able, it allows one to scroll down and select from the original non mod traits.
All the original traits are set to zero cost so they don't monkey with my costs and they are only provided because excluding them entirely creates issues any time someone uses a non mod based race and wants to keep some of their stats intact.
Yes it does mean you can add any of the original traits in at no cost but my job isnt to hold peoples hands and prevent cheating, folks are welcome to do so to their hearts content, as it is modding the GalCiv3GlobalDefs.xml is simple as pie so if folks want to give themselves unlimited points who am I to gainsay them. People can play however they like I just provide my mods to give them a broader scope with which to do so.
In fact if there is any desire for it I could include an optional edited defs file in the next release that would do just that.
Let me know your opinions below.
I see, thanks for the answer, what shame nobody knows how to make it a single window, it looks....uncomfortable, but the traits are really interesting so I guess Ill stick with it, thanks.Say out of curiosity, can I insert negative values into your mod by modifying your XML files?
Yep RaceTraitSliderDefs.xml would be the simplest place to make adjustments
Does 1.6 work with the new GC3 1.3ver ? Just checking.
Yep tested fully with both 1.3 optin and live versions, all should be well.
I am having trouble getting your mod to work properly on ver1.2. No matter what I do, it doesn't show up in creation menu.
And yes, I've ticked "enable mods" and put it into mod directory in GalcivIII
This is a problem a handful of people have with the game and it has nothing to do with the mods themselves, it has to do with the game and how it interacts with system permissions on the individual computer. Browse the forums, some folks have found solutions, others have never found a fix, I wish you the best of luck.
I'm curious, I don't seem to have all the available options in your mod. Swarm, and cyborgs, for example. I do have the Scathi DLC.Also, if I may make a suggestion, have a -1 trait option available so that we can downgrade certain aspects to give us extra points elsewhere. You don't have to have everything as a bonus. instead of +4, +3, +2, +1, it could +3, +2, +1, -1, with that -1 option giving a large penalty. Just my 2c ....
Deathwynd this is awesome! I'm going to feature it on a stream I'm doing Monday if you don't mind.
Deathwynd, it seems that the mod is causing a problem with 1.5. The new trait coercive does not appear as a choice and patriotic remains as a choice. When you play the game all new colonies have the planet wheel and you can't focus.
I am assuming it is this mod since everything works fine with no mods and this mod is the only trait mod in my game
Sorry DW it wasn't your mod after all
the mercs expansion seems to have done something to block the terraforming, bonus ships and creation of new planets on game creation. worked fine when I started a game on weds, but not today after adding the xpac.
edit: adding the <scope>Global</scope> tag to each bonus seems to have fixed it.
I noticed that too, right before I started an Insane Map 6 month game.
I apologize I am not a true Modder, but how exactly did you fix that?
Exactly where do you add that tag? I am apparently putting it in the wrong place.
Does anyone know how to fix this awesome Mod so it fully functions again?
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