http://www.xup.in/dl,19679606/FutureWorlds_v0.65.7z/ Filesize: 68.5 MB
Bugfix for version 0.65:
http://www.xup.in/dl,44779613/FW_Bugfix_for_version_0.65.7z/
1. Mega Homesystems:All races start out at a system holding 4 habitable planets averageing a total of base PQ40 (moons & rings count as PQ1) with 2 exceptions - Iconian & Thalan. The idea behind this change is that homesystems now do form a considerable stronghold for every race, and that it's also now possible to start out tiny/small all-rare galaxies with reduced risk to not get completely unlucky esp. on higher difficulty settings. Alot of new graphics with intricate details have been added for this. 2. New Political Parties:4 new parties are available (Automatists, New Colonists, Explorers, Traditionalists) in order to widen the available bonuses presented while all other conventional parties were slightly altered. 3. Advanced Customization:The distribution points spending screen now makes all meaningful ratings accessably including: Miniaturization, Logistics, War Profiteering, Purchase Now Reduction and rebalances many conventional choices. Stock Races do start out with a prefixed selection of these perks - all of those can be undone ingame by a player at the game's setup.4. Divers Anomalies:More than 15 new anomalies now bring previous untouched stats to you, even introducing new mechanisms (which may have been forgotten in vanilla...) while many traditional anomalies have been (slightly) buffed. As a compensation a few anomalies bring penalties to its finders!! This will further diversify galactic development and throttle a player going crazy on surveying.Includes all possible variants of anomalies (Stellar Black Holes, Temporal Rift & Space Junk) with brighter textures to better see them when playing zoomed-in.[NEW] All 8 anomaly-types have their own texture now.
5. Big Asteroids:Some races get additional techniques to mine out Asteroids at the end of the Space-Mining branch. Some of these are locked and require that you trade for the unlocking key-technology from another race...Asteroid-textures/fog have been beefed up to make them less prominent.6. Strong United Planets:Selection has been streamlined to 25 options with most being permanent, and their impact have been dramatically increased in force & numbers. Meaningful votes that are going to make the game less easy for the player should now appear more often (Neutral-ground, End-all-wars, Anomaly-ownership etc). Remember you still have the option to leave the UP!7. Racial Rework:To promote more unique play and balance the stock races versus custom race setups. Rule of thumb all races now have a particular weakness while the positive rating & starting technologies suggest the general strengths of that particular races' techtree. So you know what you can expect right at the start of the game.Furthermore, all Stock Races customization points have been reduced to 5 (which are already preselected) but they've been given some additional -mostly unique- technologies to compensate. In contrast the Custom Race now has 15 points more, so a player has all freedom to generate a faction to his/her own likeing.8. Specialized Hulls:4 new hulls to be used for: Sensory Buoys, Planetary Defenders, Military Starbase Swarms & Fleet-support Ships. To use these hulls look under 'Templates' for already completed pre-designs.The conventional hulls have been slightly rebalanced (Tiny & Small are a little bit boosted).Cargo Hulls -and its capacity-modules- were greatly revamped to keep Cargo's out of fighting business while still retaining functionality.The starting ColonyShip has been defunctionalized to a nonmoving prototype so the AI won't establish low-pop planets. It initially helps getting a glance at near neighbouring systems and later could be decommisioned to get 250bc.[NEW] The Arceans get to build 'Gigantic'-sized starships as part of their Technological Victory.9. Simplified Range:This makes the game more territorial - you won't see constructors zipping halfway through the galaxy for a resource that's already been claimed by some neighbour. The AI will also now build more starbases in own territory and have its fleets more guarding own space.10. Engines Revamp:The purpose of engines is to deliver speed in order to cut down time to reach a destination. But the high costs of engines only increase the buildtime of a ship to such extremes that paradoxically this happens even LATER! So especially starting engines (in early times when production is still low) has been considerably decreased - but you won't be able to stack them at ships that much than before.Secondly, the base-speed increases have been ripped out from the engine-modules and collected into their own branch "Slipstream Technology" - which gives the player the option to choose which method to use in order to have faster ships. As well as giving me the option to incite the AI to get rather base speed (which they can use flawlessly...)11. Resistant Minors:Strong 1pp buildings: To compensate their starting handicapps.Early trade: Tradeing is the very best they can do in order to stay alive longer.Homeplanet PQ increased to 25. This even stays upon conquest.Severely restriced techtree - because many items are useless for them (like Influence), but many techcosts decreased by approx. 25%.They're not helpless victims anymore - their weakness is to only have 1 planet. But if they manage to gain more planets via conquest you may loose that game You could even design a CustomRace using their own techtree - but be warned: You can't colonize anymore: just like a real MinorRace! .[NEW] Stuff you'll get from Minors:-Weather Control & Biosphere Modulator.-All Trade Goods: Minors won't build the improvement themselves but they can still research the technology (which holds some minor bonus for them) and trade that technology away to Major Civs which, in turn, may erect the Trade Good.12. Real Stars:About 400 names of the historically most important and also, most visible stars in the northern hemisphere. If you look up in the nightsky you'll see many of them unknowingly. Most bear a latin or arabic name (some english). See README.txt for additional installation-instruction.13. Enhanced Graphics:Old DL planetary improvements have been doubled in size and beefed up in coloring/contrast to adapt to the TA standard (also their querries). Many did see completely new artwork. Much artwork of ColonizationEvents, MegaEvents, RandomEvents and general infopopup-graphics are now better visible, upped in colour-depth to 32bit (formerly 256 colour) and depixilated/decluttered.Stars now have flares, an add. star-type added (Grey - Dusty Protostar).Both survey- & sensormodules now have an own texture in unique color distinguishing it from shield-mods.The CustomRace now uses another logo + dynamic trade sequences [courtesy of Donfield]14. New Techtrees:All techtrees underwent drastic changes - to better AI play and give a player more interesting choices. This is an ongoing endeavour so there's more to come with each update!Every race now has, at least, a single 1pp building which is indestructible - even staying after conquest. This has done to help bringing a conquered planet faster back up (Efficiency Matrix, Food Distribution Silo...), to prevent exploiting (Weather Control Zenith, Gaia Vortex, Biosphere Modulator...) and simply make the mid- to endgame more interesting, showing that each race will still leave a unique imprint on a planet even after they've been banished there.15. Super-Ability Fixes:SPY - unlocks 3 additional technologies.ISOLATIONIST - 'Barren World Col.' has been significantly increased in costs (which they get for free).ANNIHILATOR - 'Toxic World Col.' has been significantly increased in costs (which they get for free).ADAPTER - 'Aquatic World Col.' has been increased in cost (which they get for free).DOMINATOR - the Corvettes got buffed, carrying now 1*Stinger & 1*ArmorPlating.TRADER - unlocks 2 additional technologies (otherwise unique only to Korx).There are still some other, kinda weak SA (esp. for the player...) like Manipulator, Organizer, Warrior etc but it's not possible to work on these skills directly. I've therefore changed/boosted some of the racial stats or starting technologies of the races which carry these weak SAs to compensate at least the stock races, and to prevent that a more strong Custom setup is possible. For example, WARRIOR/Arcean - runs on AIP8 now to build all-attack ships, MANIPULATOR/Drath run on AIP10 to make use of their immense defense-bonus....
16. Additional Shipdesigns:Around 35 shipdesigns - mostly tight to Tiny & Cargo Hulls - are now prefixed and will automatically appear in the selectable buildqueue once all required technologies have been gathered. Some of these designs may hint vaguely at specific gamemechanisms and thereby exemplify what can be done extraordinairily by combining different functionality modules. One example would be to create Colonyships with surveyability (most likely after its cost's been nullified) in order to pick up anomalies while en route to its destination or trying to cut down travel time by using wormholes...17. Unique Technological Victory:Every race gets unique bonuses/improvements as it researches down their own TechVic-branch. At the end lies usually something that is so powerful that it should win the map for this race - if used correctly. However, if you plan to use this ie. to "play-out" a technological victory - you'll have to disable that victory condition on mapsetup otherwise you'll just get that boring victory-screen.The other reason why these bonuses are there is because the AIs still research down this line even if tech-vic is disabled - so without any bonuses they waste a ton of research for nothing artificially gimping their game. In Future Worlds this cannot happen anymore.
[NEW] To sum it up for each race:-YOR: Miniaturization as a path towards ever smaller robotic sentience.-TORIAN: Morale & Range in their quest to make the whole universe habitable to their physiology (ie. "fluidic").-ARCEAN: Weapons & Hitpoints crowned by the Gigantic Hull-size, in an ongoing effort to become a Super Warrior that fights space battles losslessly.-ALTARIAN: Luck & Creativity as a path to a complete understanding of the universe.-DRENGIN: MP & Logistics to achieve total space supremacy.-TERRAN: Speed in order to be faster than ever before.-KORX: Purchase Now Reduction, under Neutral alignment and/or some more starting bonuses they'll be able to buy anything for free.-DRATH: WarProfiteering & Diplomacy, plus the ability to weaponize a TerrorStar - this will be the ultimate weapon to sell!-THALAN: They're able to reassemble their past technology which is based on 'Expert Gravitronics' which will nullify the limitations of some of their improvements.-ICONIAN: Their Technological Victory gives them the ability to fully colonize all tiles on every planet.-KORATH: MilitaryProduction at the expense of PlanetaryQuality, plus the ability to construct a very cheap TerrorStar regardless of ethical picks.-KRYNN: Tremendous cultural bonuses to sway their neigbours to their creed.18. Easier Techtrade:In the CU both AIValue- & WillingnessToTrade-tags saw (sometimes) huge increases calling for quadruple costs in order to ensure a tradedeal. I've therefore adjusted many of these values to make techtrade much more easy again.Some historically untradeably unique technologies are now tradeable as well, although the specific AI will ask for A LOT in compensation.Many untradeable techs can now be stolen - to ensure that this will happen more frequently many tradeable techs have been rendered unstealably (except Weapons). However, some untradeable techs also remain unstealably most noteably many techs holding buildings.Creativity is made now more generally available but technologies beyond 2000 base costs cannot be affected anymore - except weapons/defenses where every other tech can still be creatively researched.19. Events Debugged:All Colonization- and Random Events do now do exactly what the text states, ie. mechanisms that don't work have been thrown out. Since it's only possible to have negative-good-options and only positive-evil-choices I've nerfed some of the good-penalties & evil-bonuses. To ensure that good isn't always handicapped I've presented them with some additional choices steming from technologies alongside the XenoEthics-techs, which all are also more easier to get than the evil-techs.20. Spying Finetuned:Espionage suffered a roundabout penalty of -50% (to help the AI) but to make the Spy-game more interesting all techs which are easy to get through techtrade cannot be stolen anymore - meaning that your invasive forces or spies only bring home technologies which are either rare or significant.
21. Clever Cost-reductions:Several improvements now reduce specific shipmodules in cost to help the AI:- Freighter Factory --> Trade module (Korx/ Trader SA)- Galactic Guide Book --> Survey module (All)- Stellar Forge --> Constructor module (Arcean)- Space Trucker's Guild --> Mining module (All)The reductions may require a reload to be effective (if the corresponding module was already available before the improvement got built...)
22. New Invasion Techniques:Many additional invasion techniques are now available and the whole field of Invasion/Soldiering/PlanetaryDefense got greatly rebalanced. Every race has now a different mix of techniques at their disposal, some rules of thumb:- One invasion branch deals in destructive invasion which will incapacitate the defendants defense-roll, the trade-off is a penalty to PQ/buildings/influence. At the end of the branch lies usually an uberstrong technique that will most likely guarantee a successful invasionbut greatly damage the planet. This branch is unavailable/incomplete on some good/neutral-races.- The second branch deals mainly with techniques enhance the own advantage (through better soldiers etc) oftentimes not damaging the planet. At the end lies the Adv. Troop Module.- Unique buildings or technologies are placed frontally, usually right after Planetary Invasion so they will have a great impact on that specific race's attitude towards conquest.Sometimes I did heavily alienate from that general design when it either made thematically sense or because of balance. For example, Torians are Breeder and therefore need a sooner access to the Adv. Troop Module, and also less access to general soldiering-bonuses or planetary defense (they simply try to win by sheer numbers). They're also an aquatic race so their preferred technique is "Tidal Disruption" which they get at decreased costs.
[NEW] 23. Weapons-love:All weapons now have their own unique animation, be it either differently in colour or texture or both. The original game only uses about ~30% of what's in its internal folders. I've also used much more soundfiles - and together with the animations applied them in order to make out an evolution in sound/effect (ie. rockets get bigger in size or more in numbers, beams get bigger and nastier, slugs faster or more devastating etc).Further I've applied differently looking explosions (the vanilla game only uses 2 out of 37!). Blue-colored slugs now cause blue explosions and so on...Several new weapons are available (although not to everyone):- Multi-Seekers- Bioforce Thrower- Overcharge Disruptors- Nova Torpedo- Photonic Salvo- Star Sprinkler- Tachyon ShockwavesAdditionally, all Defense-tiers got their uniquely colored textures/lights.
[NEW] 24. Further Techtree-Individuation/Extension: :- Introduced the 'Hyperion Research'-branch to some factions which replaces the (relatively weaker) 'Adv. Laboratories'-branch.- 'Automated Repair Systems'-branch offers up to 45% Repair-ability boost on most trees.- 'Xeno Obedience' & 'Thought Manipulation'-branches may offer up to 50% Loyalty to various selected factions.- 'Secret Service Training' offers up to 40% increased Espionage. [NEW] 25. Trade-Goods distribution:Most tradegoods are now only available in 2 or 3 trees, their bonuses/effectiveness slightly buffed and the tech holding the good gets a minor related bonus as well. This should disable a player from leasebuying all goods once they become available (if this is worthwhile is dependant only on the planet-count...). That is, most tradegoods have to be traded for - or their residing planet taken by force.
*. Latest patch:The mod includes many of the latest (and future) CU patches to Twilight 2.20 - the re-introduction of proper farming, invasionfix, old weapons/defenses and all other bugfixes & changes as well.No Campaign-compatibility! Play only in Sandbox-mode!
HAVE FUN!
See the included README.txt for installation-instructions!
SuperDiplomat or Ally
I agree on this, I couldn't express it in a better way. Maybe putting the additional note at the beginning of the description could help making it more evident.
Yes, and probably you get burned a couple of times, as I did, then you learn it is better to check if your own tech tree includes a better tech, or other civs can trade you a better tech BEFORE you start a trading session with another civ.
So am I at the moment, I'm enjoying playing with them, it feels very different from the CU Humans, more ... alien
Hope to find 0.5 after finishing the actual game, I want to try another civ; which ones will be ready for a play-through?
I just finished the overhaul & rebalancing of the complete ethical-alignment bonuses of all civs, something that is rather incomplete in v0.4. Also, all colonization-events and random events were set straight, ie. removed non-working mechanisms. You can expect some great changes here esp. because I balanced both topics against another - because of the hardcoded limitations imposed at the Events.xml-file I had to let Evil-alignment have their early-advantages but Good-alignment will get compensated for this in the long run by an extensive and thorough list of additional techs.
All bonuses brought by any of the 3 ethical choices are now described in the alignment-selection screen which pops up after researching XenoEthics, ie. no more hidden techs on some civs like previously with Altarian or Thalan.
Also, techtrade is now so much more better and fun its no comparison.
Although there are still some regions which I'd like to finish (eg. most of the stuff I've mentioned in a previous post, eg. Repair-tree, Loyalty-tree, armed Terror Stars etc) the current state of v0.5 is much more complete and finetuned than v0.4 - so just tell me when you expect to start a new game and I'll see to it that v0.5 is up by then.
The techtree which saw the most change for now is definitely Yor & Thalan. Yor will be VERY hard to play because I had to this crazy idea to even further restrict their tree - they don't have spamable labs anymore But their factories actually magnify existing research as well so it's basically a matter of research-bonustile and how many factories you build which decides if you can compete on the technological level. They also got some improvements which are more effective than comparative civs. Guess once you know how to play them they'll be quite strong.
Thalan can become all-powerful because I've even increased their range of unique technologies at their disposal. For the AI it's basically a matter of not falling into one of the traps their unorthodox Fac/Lab-approach offers, or get diplomatically exploited. They also now have a single farm (Gaia Vortex). In FW I intend for them to be swiftly reproductive insectoids resemblant of their original design in DL, not some disfruitful aliens; the powerful-but-few-in-number anthem rather fits the Drath IMO. Perhaps I may even do away with their (idiotic) fac/lab-approach because the AI is simply not clever enough to use it, perhaps I'll integrate what Frogboy hinted at in a previous post that their buildings do all sorts of different stuff altogether, ie. "Hives" that act just like in a BorgCube where basically every place looks similar with no specialization or differentiation whatsoever - which would imply that the strength of their game would simply reflect how many tiles they can muster up.
Furthermore I've spent some time on the Torians, Drengin, Korath & Korx. Torians don't have access to economic improvements anymore and have only 1pp-factories, which, however, are immensely powerful (they errect devastating stripmines on soil while actually living in the water). You need to go high on population with them, just like with Yor. Drengin & Korath had their industry & research overhauled, with farms thrown there in (because they eat their slaves as food). Korx are a bit limited on research and they lack some starbase modules however they can almost double the range of influence coming from economy-starbases which gives you the option to greatly boost your freighter-income. At the end of the day I want that one goes full into an all-econ approach with them, just like (nearly) all-factories with Yor.
Arcean, Terran, Krynn, Drath, Altarian do still play quite similar to the CU I didn't have many ideas to make their trees more unique - although the ethical revamp does indeed greatly affect Drath & Altarians, both which also had their unique Precursor-techline beefed up a bit.
What, you can alter the ZoI of starbases? I'm shocked that no one has exploited that in a mod!
Conceptually, I like what you're doing. Can't wait to get into it.
Maybe because Cari's guide listed it as "not implemented". However, I backchecked all these possibilities and while most turned out to be not working, or crashing the game I got this one working - although the game did display a "String Not Found"-error on the SB mod-dropdown list, but I could create an corresponding entry in (I think) screens.str. Which required to precisely guess the string-name, which required hours of experimental tests would be so much easier for me if I could datamine the .exe
You're welcome - v0.5 just got upped!
There are much too many changes to be listed, and of course I couldn't even halfway integrate everything I had in mind, but I at least spend a good days work to backcheck and pass all my work to clear out bugs or oversights, so this time it's a thorough release.
More information in the OP or INFO.xml
Have Fun!
please delay any downloads for now I just found a severe bug regarding the troops-module I'll host the new rev in 2 hours or so
Didn't expect 0.5 so early. I want to finish my game with 0.4 before I update it, so I'll need some time.
Next weekend I'm also going abroad, and coming back in a month, so I'm not going to finish with 0.4 before Christmas, probably.
But thanks anyway for the new release, it looks promising.
I guess the spell check DMF is doing for CU is still not included right?
Well it's been close to a month and the additional content awarded the new rev. Guess when you're back 0.6 will be up.
Let him finish first, but I'll be having a hard time integrating this... he didn't write a changelog so I need to manually find all places... which could take weeks... the question is if it's even necessary... ultimately I feel I'd like to do away with all those generic standard technologies and have all races have their own complete set of techs... which mustn't necessarily be entirely new techs just the old ones with another name, reworded descriptions and slightly altered bonuses. Which may require me to, basically, undo lots of things DMF did work on so I perhaps should consider to take his changes in in the last finalization of FW.
BTW the corrected version is now up - unfortunately no modding of Troop- or Colony modules is possible (at least not the way I'd like to do it - create additional ones...) because one can't load people in from a planet (that part seems to be hardcoded....)
Nevertheless, I've been busy this day as well so there's even a few changes from v.05 to v.051 mainly the TRADER-superability bonus technologies, the CustomRace-revamp and distinguishable Survey-, Sensor- & Shield-modules.
I'm currently working on to rebalance all invasion techniques alongside general soldiering/planetary defense. From v.05 onward the Cargo Hull is reduced back to a logistics of 6, so one can fleet Troop Transports together again. (the previous logistics of 25 was to prevent the AI to fleet them together with warfleets, but I totally forgot that a clever player could bypass this balancing by using Large Hulls as troop-carriers - completely unfair to the AI since he won't do that...)
However, I'm a bit concerned that invadeing planets is becoming too easy again. According to my tests, using the same level of soldiering and technology, the attacker seems to have a 400% bonus to his advantage roll than the defender, that is, you just need to load in 2b to get a 8b planet, something which is nearly achievably with even the standard troops module at 10% miniaturization. At that point the usage of any invasion-technique is a sure victory (no-brainer).
What are your thoughts on that matter? Since you're still playing v.04 what were the greatest problems to overcome in successfully invadeing planets?
Finally got to the end of TechTree. I'll have to go back over it and PlanetImprovements again before release. But it should be quick.
I don't know that there's an easy way to integrate it into FW, which I gather will be significantly different, with a batch of new techs. I guess just cut and paste the text where the tech is close enough. In cases where the tech or corresponding item has changed significantly, the text may need re-working.
Are you keeping the same backstory and racial histories?
How about giving the Recruiting Center a Planetary Defense bonus? Everybody builds them.
Yes. If any significant variances from the official CU or vanilla game will occur, then over the course of a future technological development, that is the way I understand the ability to research new technologies also may have an impact on the evolution of said race.
And there's still so much unused potential, just half an hour ago I got this idea that the Iconians, who happen to be quite weak in soldiering, should actually have an own set of Biological Warfare (not spore) technologies since they're also using biological assets for their ships, so why not own invasion techniques. So they still would be directly weak in their own soldiering ability but could make up for that with techniques where bio-engineered soldiers/stuff fighting for them...
Not all races in FW do have it, besides it already has enough own bonuses and is quite strong for such an early building. For now, I've given all planets a (hidden) +50% planetary defense bonus by simply applying it to the Initial Colony- and Civilization Capital-building. That's heavy, but according to my tests, it's still easy to take planets with a single transport if you pick a good technique and get some luck on the dice.
Thus, having high-populated planets, or high soldiering, or errecting some buildings giving a planetary defense-bonus, should be one way to protect a planet so it won't be snatched away from a single sneak troop transport. Here, a second transport will be needed, or one with the Advanced Troop module, and if something of this strength comes through a planet should fall.
However, I've also increased the planetary defense bonuses from the few improvements which do act specifically on that, namely Planetary Defense, Space Cannon; and giving all improvements which school/train soldiers also a marginally pl.defense-bonus (such as Mercenary Academy, Cathedral/Church of Valor etc). It seems only logical to me that if a planet has a facility where alot of soldiers are normally present, that these recruits pick up a weapon if under attack.
In one way it would be nice to have the pl. defense-strength more reflected by the size of a planet, ie. have more spamable improvements that also increase this rating by a little, but it just looks too confusing to have this shown everywhere.
I'd need a spamable PD-building again, but TBH I wonder how much good that would actually do? For example, in vanilla I never build the Planetary Defense because it wouldn't do anything else beside it - thus, I reasoned I may instead simply build a factory and thus, gain more the ability to defend that planet with an increased count in ships, which may mean I don't actually need to fear a invasion. Or labs-->stronger ships etc pp. What do you think on this?
I think the defense changes you've made are quite enough for now. Let's not de-emphasize the navy. Any invasion means that your navy has failed. I too build PDs only on those worlds that are under clear threat. Production units to keep up research and ships are much more important everywhere else.
Two suggested tweaks:
* A small defense bonus to Recruiting Centers simply because the description saves that they exist to produce soldiers (putting the equalizing bonus on the City is a better solution for the overall problem).
* Change the PlacementLimit on PDs to 2. This lets a player increase the effective defense of the world, but at a significant cost in treasure and tiles.
Heck, I wonder what the AIs would do if you just took the limit off?
Frankly speaking I'm not at that stage yet. Still on the defensive against a very strong Terran-Torian alliance I'm actually very busy building up a good fleet, and also I was planning a peaceful victory, but if you need an opinion on invasion I can test that instead, no problem.
Generally speaking, if you make planetary conquest more difficult it's a welcome change for me.
Fair enough
PlacementLimit does only work with a value = 1. Another value can be circumvented/exploited by the player, unfortun ately.
They "see" it as a common economic building, just like a bank, and treat is as such. I wouldn't want to cancel the limitation because in terms of relative strength, the RC is as strong as a Stock Market, perhaps even stronger considering early on a PopGrowth-bonus is more precious than flat economic bonuses. However, the RC has very little buildcost and therefore, is greatly superior to everything you'll get to research in the economical branch. As such, this branch would be rendered pointless by such a change.
No, please play out your map just like you normally would do. I don't wanna interfere here. Thing is GC2 offers so much flexibility in terms of how one can achieve the same goals, so it's very important for me that you retain your own personal style of play. But thanks nonetheless
No no, not take the limit off the RC, but the PD. It has no economic or (at least is the CU version) morale effect.
I don't understand. Do you mean that any limit other than 1 is not enforced?
Not really because the game doesn't keep a history/log of what is already build on a planet. So if something has a placement limit of 2 then you can't put 3 of them into the queue at once... BUT you could enqueue 2, then delete 1 - which will reset the ingame counter, so afterwards you could, again, place another 2 of them in the queue where there already is still one (or already built on planet, works both ways).
In other words, you can place them in an unlimited number on your planets.
That's why only a placementlimit of 1 works - which, BTW does also get an own icon, but there are no special icons for other placementlimits so it's fair to say the devs never intended for that to work anyway...
That's how it is in the CU. I prefer the 1pp option. That's giving me the freedom to handle the <AI> tag more liberally, to the point where the AI will indeed build said improvement once it got researched. With an unlimited building that would impose the danger of the AI going overboard with it. The problem is that the AI isn't really adapt to place the PD onto strategically endangered planets, AFAIK this building+its bonuses are void for the AI. So it may as well be that the AI are placing it among their core backworlds thereby stiffling their production or research and via this, potentially weakening their game.
The 1pp option also prevents a Super-Breeder player from exploiting it, for example you could have a high-pop world somewhere exposed to the AI, build some moral improvements and the rest simply PD - such a planet is never going to be taken by the AI and with breeder its pop will be back in no time. Thereby swallowing the AI troop transports. I've done this before, so I know.
Heyho, anyone got a good idea for a few futuristic additional invasion techniques? I'm currently working on those so I'd be all all ears.
So far there are those:
Tactical Beam Barrages - (general)
Tornado/Storms - (Arcean on Weather Control)
Temporal Warfare - (Thalan; perhaps Yor/Terran and some more)
Anti-Matter Bomb - (general but only on destructive civs)
Nukes - (general but only on destructive civs)
EMPs - (general but selectively)
Stealth Combat Suits - (for Espionage/ fitting civs: Drath, Iconian, Krynn, perhaps Terran)
Cyborgs - (Iconian, perhaps some more)
I still need some Biowarfare, most likely incorporating a virus or bacteria, for the Iconians. Or maybe some type of rageing animal?
Aquatic? - Drop or land troops in the ocean and they come ashore unexpected and undetected. Like SEALS. Torian only?
More thoughts later.
That's a good idea, and may also fit in very well with my current Torian outlay. So it would be the Torian version of Stealth-combat, giving them an advantage/surprise-factor. I'll immediately go on the search for a fitting icon, but that will be a hard one... underwater alien soldier...
Weather Control might require a special ship carrying a huge device.
I see a few general categories:
* ruin the planet so no one can live there
- Super Jello - turns all the water into a thick colloid
* kill most of the population, leaving the planet intact
- Spore?
* various forms of mano a mano combat
* surgically degrade the defense so an eventual assault will be easier (may not be supportable)
- special bombardment ship?
- bomb the morale or PD improvements
- then invade
Does it all have to happen in one turn?
the options of what you can do with invasion techniques is somewhat limited to:
Bonus: either [increases own roll] or [decreases defendants roll] or [convince enemy troop to join you]
Tradeoffs: (not mutually exclusive)
Cost in bcs
Influence penalty
Improvement survival penalty
PlanetQuality penalty
negative numbers aren't possible - would've been fun to gain bc per successful invasion ("Plunder") but the game converts the negative value into an integer ("Cost: 133847827412112312 bcs") and it looks downright ugly and would be quite confusing/misleading
A few "ruin the planet" options are already established, namely Anti-Matter, Nukes & also Mass Drivers.
Yeah the Koraths Spore-ability resembles very very much the Bio-War option I had in mind for the Iconians. Nevertheless, I see no good alternative. What do you think would be thematically fitting for the Iconians? They have some versatility in Robotics so maybe Drones, Mechs, Cyborgs, Robots. But they also have this "organic ship type"-thingy, plus I'd like to reserve some robotic techniques to Yor & Thalan.
I don't know if it is possible but it could be nice if the effect of the chosen invasion tactics could be different on different civs.
For example tactics based on weather control or biological weapons could be ineffective on Yor, while the ones based on EMP or similar could be devastating.
If possible, moral choices should also affect the available tactics. If I decide to go evil with Iconians, a powerful and merciless bio weapon could be available, while if I follow the righteous path, mass destruction shouldn't be an option.
If you plan very different strategies for different civs it could be good to represent different levels for the same tactics.
For example Weather Control could be used for storms as you indicated, or global warming, or causing a new ice age.
EMP could be on a small scale, or on a global scale like solar flares.
Regarding the Iconians, as far as I understand they wouldn't go for robot soldiers after the experience with the Yor, maybe an organic shell they could use in combat, but maybe this fits better as a tech improving soldiering rather than an invasion tactic.
A few questions about v.0.4
- Development Aid: this tech says it reduces trade income by 25%. Does this apply only to the 2 new routes? I guess so but ....
- Galactic Guide Book: I don't understand this one. It is just a subset of Eye of the Universe, and considering that you removed sensor ability from the survey module I don't think it is proving to be useful in any case. And ... considering that I never liked the idea of a book as a galactic wonder, what about changing the name in something like "Galactic Knowledge Base" and making it a little more powerful?
- pBrane radar: could you change the name to p-Brane?
Regarding troop transports: I prefer the approach of v.0.5. Give the defending troops a good combat bonus, possibly increased by a few buildings, and affected by the invasion tactics, but do not inhibit the use of several transports in the same fleet.
I agree conquering a planet should be more difficult as it is now in CU, but meaning you should need more troops stacked in the same fleet, not planning waves of consecutive invasions of single troop transports.
Not possible, the game and its mechanisms stay the same for every civ
I could make a few Invasion-tactics morally dependant, that is, you only gain access to them once you've made your choice. Currently there is one linked to each ethical choice, but the concept of it is different; it's that one of the races of the corresponding ethical pool shares its unique invasion-technique with his allies, that is:
Tidal Disruption from Torian for Good
Mechanized Warriors from Thalan for Neutral and
Terror Drones from Yor for Evil.
Which is in line with the current outlay of the ethical revamp where all civs do share, at least, a single of their own unique technology with its ethical allies.
So far I've decided to distribute the invasion-techniques in such a way in each tree that they are thematically fitting and also make sense from the power they bring to the table (ie. once a player researches down the branches he gets stronger ones) but I'm only halfway finished^^
Good point. Guess the Cyborg-approach will fit in here (it's one of the strongest currently)
I've reduced that t -10% in v0.5 already. In order to reflect that an AId is rather a gift (and thereby lossy) and without commercial intentions. It will actually reduce all trade-income. Basically the rationale is that Good doesn't trade solely for selfish commercial reasons but also to have a positive diplomatic relation with other civs - which is what trade does and additional routes help here, but they also gain +10% diplomacy ability from that tech.
In contrast Evil only gets additional routes (which may be rendered useless through the United Planets council) and Neutral gets the conventional package.
A some point I shall introduce more technologies that hold both bonus & penalty so a player can decide whether a certain tradeoff makes sense, esp. on thematically or ethical oriented choices.
The whole sensor-branch is very different in 0.5 and in 0.4, feels rather incomplete or crude. The intended function of the GuideBook is merely to reduce the costs of the Survey-module. So, IF you plan to build more than 4 additional Surveyships, you'll get a reduction in total production spend. It's something for large galaxies with plentyful anomalies, I remember in DL I build more than 20 Surveyships a funded my first-year economy solely through them (at one point I had more than 100.000 bcs in stock...)
The +2 sensors of the Survey-module got scrapped because, with this bonus in place, all the other sensor-modules wouldn't make sense - esp. after the cost of the Survey-module got reduced to 0. So, the Survey-module is only for surveying anomalies, nothing else. There are still some additional intelligent usages for it possible in later stages of the game -"Jumper"-designs help immensely against the Dread Lords (but you need to omit the real wormholes so hey stay on the map longer... and ofc shot down all the AI surveyships on first sight )
Done.
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