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!
Now there's an idea. Allow several levels of the 'same' tactic. Different prereqs, different costs and effects, more or less the same explanation. Possibly different max levels for different civs.
I think Iconians would not do the robotics thing. Effective warriors would have to be too autonomous, and we saw what happened the last time they went down that path.
Instead, they might engineer non-sentient organic "monsters" (come up with a better name Organic Tank?) that use ferocity and durability instead of coordination. Instead of a Troop Module, a Monster Module for Transports (also carries troops so there is a rationale for a replacement population). Think of Moia the living ship on Farscape. Might need a driver.
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That's interesting but it would quite artificially blow up the Invasion-branch, and I'm not sure that's not something I want. These techs come under the "Weapons"-label and most AIPs pick up that branch on every other pick. That is, the military starbase-branch and the invasion-branch actually throttle down the AIs weapon-progression (the real ship weapons) down, until the AIs are finally finished with them and from that point on, will hasten up to get their MMR high.
Yeah, that's a brilliant idea. Sort of dropping an "Alien"-type of creature on a planet, or perhaps something like the Zerk from Starcraft. Rampaging creatures.
The hard part will be to find a suitable icon that isn't reminiscent of something popular
Okidoki the new invasion techniques got finished, this time I choose to release it as a patch (address in the OP) since the changes did affect only a very few particular files. Good luck & happy invasion
I find the idea of the mega home-systems very good.
Thanks
You're welcome
BTW I'd like to give all races a unique Trade-branch, not really doing things differently mostly for flavour. The Drengin & Korath already have their "Slave"-trade, and Yor distribute energy.
What would be thematically fitting for the other races?
Torians perhaps something related to water, some rare isotope found in the oceans, or something found only in the deep sea?
Drath & Korx maybe weapons or military-related stuff? Arceans perhaps basic ship parts? Iconians biotech... but for the rest?
Is here a Neutral- or Good-aligned player that actually uses Military Starbases and attaches the military ship-support modules? These currently do still cost 500 bcs each, a maxed-out SB demands perhaps around ~7000bcs, ofc not counting the constructor-costs which may be around 2000 production spend.
That seems to be completely out of line. For that amount of money/prod I could have several state-of-the-art warships. Given that SBs are entirely immobile what's their advantage here over conventional ships?
Happy New Year to everyone!
New version is up, involving much too many changes to list them all, but the major ones are outlined in the OP as [NEW]
Much fun playing and best of luck!
Here's a tiny bugfix release; extract the unziped "data"-folder into the "Future Worlds"-folder and accept to overwrite any old(er) files.
http://www.xup.in/dl,18665033/data.7z/
I most play Neutral (why is alignment a factor?), and I sometimes construct MSBs. But I agree: all else being equal I'd rather have a good navy that doesn't have to wait for the enemy to come to them.
But I build high-tech ships. The effects of ship assist modules on few powerful ships is pretty much negligible (+1 when your whack factor is 32 -- big deal!). Someone that builds thousands of small weak ships will get a much bigger boost from a MSB.
Is it possible to do ship assist modules that give a % bonus instead of a fixed factor?
Alignment is a factor because evil nullifies the cost of all SB modules. So they wouldn't be affected by this extreme situation. I've reduced the cost down from 500 to 100 in most instances, but that was done a month ago so it's already included in the latest full release.
In FW I've gotten rid of most <ModuleRequirement>-specifications so it's possible, once a decent amount of technologies has been gathered, to build starbases and start by installing the latest, most strong modules and afterwards, decide whether the old, weaker ones are still attractive enough to reward the loss of buildcosts of a constructor.
Absolutely not. There's not a single instance in the game where this can be done. At least not from the .xml-files...
But I agree what you're having in mind here would be a PERFECT solution to place starbase-power in line with the strength of ship-weapon progression.
But that is sadly not possible, so I went to take other measures to cause this. For example, I distributed more than 30% of all these SB modules (from tech-branches "Starbase Fortification" and "Starbase Militarization - Conquest Strategy") directly into the weapons or defenses tree.
And attributed a requirement of these modules to be the "Battle Stations 1-3" pod which gets unlocked by different techs (mostly the hull branch) so one needs to research, at least, into 3 to 4 different types of branches on the complete techtree to be able to install all the mods. This prevents exploitive specialization on hands of the player and also gives the AI the opportunity to install other available modules. It averages alot of of generic desicisions to the point where it won't appear anymore to do silly things in some situations.
BTW I've just found another small bug and therefore, a new patch is in order.
http://www.xup.in/dl,18126708/FutureWorlds_v0.62.7z/
My current work is also included mainly involving:
- The 'Omega Defense System' now acts as an upgrade to the Planetary Defense-improvement. The power to increase shiphitpoints has been reduced drastically but you can now build it on all your planets.- The Altarian & Drath Techtree saw some massive changes mainly concerning their own unique "Way Of The Arnor/Dread Lord"-branches, also involving more unique improvements. (Precursor Crypt, Adv. Breeding Grounds, Shrines, Healing Pools-line). This is an ongoing endeavour.
Basically I'm currently working on some trees to further diversify them, especially the Drath & Altarian ones.
With the Altarians I had the idea to give them the Shrines exclusively and also, give them another crypt. And let them build the old ones as a 1pp on all planets. Otherwise their planets will look very similar to the standard generic terran one.
The Drath now got a few buildings to fight their inherent starting penalty of having a bad population growth. Their "Hatchling Mounds" serve as un upgrade to the Fertility Clinics. This is even a two-fold unique approach setting FW apart from all other mods. In the CU the Fertility Clinics firstly were thrown out because "the AI can't use them properly" in other words, they didn't overbuild that once planets were fully populated simply because there was no other available building following in line which would do that. So not only can the Drath increase the strength of their FCs from 20% to 30% - later upgrades will subsequently add economic bonuses and the final stage of the line will be a building that incorporates both bonuses from either Banking Center and Fertility Clinic, since it wasn't possible to let the FC being simply overbuild by Banks instead that solution is now even more powerful. 2 consecutive techlines which end up in 1 (the same) building is the second completely unique feature of this approach!
However, it will need some time of doing proper research until the Drath can put these concepts to good use, but that's completely in line with my intention of them being weak early on and much stronger in endgame.
edit:
and before I forget it, this:
[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.
is also new. I'm currently thinking about ways to make the Minor-races more interesting/helpful to give reasons to keep them alive. I've already made them resistant enough to the point where a non-experienced player will not be able to defeat them for a certain passage of time. For this I've also slightly restructured their tree so that certain techs, ie. FleetWarpBubbles, Tier4-6 Asteroid Mining Bases will be accessably more early, because these items are feature that most likely, only the player wants to exploit for his game.
Sorry not to have replied here. I discovered World of Warships and haven't played GC much at all this year. I'll get back to it eventually.
No problem mate all games tend to get boring after a while. I've been playing FW in January with, at least, every Stock Race in order to make some finer adjustments balance-wise and found some issues (mostly with the Minors) but not enough to award a new upload.
Still have a list to work down but currently enjoying soime other games (I think I'll get addicted to FTL^^)
Well, WoW screwed me. They suddenly stopped "supporting" Vista and put some code in the startup that refuses to even run on it. I've moved to Win7, but now my video driver crashes. (It also like to lock up in the GCII Shipyard...)
GCIII runs, but I haven't been able to get into it. So now I'm back with good ole GCII, playing 2.22. (There's a bug: the first paragraph description for Federation on the Government & Ethics screen is "string not found".)
Most recent game is Autumn Twilight 2.11. Late 2232. I'm allied with 4 good, 2 neutral, and 1 evil civ, and the last evil civ is holding out (I'm Good Terran). Not sure whether to kill him, keep working him, or just go for the tech vic.
I'd like to play the latest version of this mod. Please upload. I gather you haven't integrated my work on the text from CU? Maybe something I'll feel motivated to do.
Hey DMF, good to read from you again! How have you been?
I'll get the new version up by the week-end, gonna integrate the latest 2 patches into it as well.
I don't have that "string not found" error in neither 6-2-2 nor 2.20...
I downloaded whatever is posted as of this date. Now let's see what you've done.
Delaying starport construction. Most interesting.
This is very good! I've only played 6 months with two opposing majors, so still a lot to discover. (And yes the English needs a buff in some places. )
Is there supposed to be an initial colony ship design? I had to make one in the shipyard. (Terran)
Well sorry been away for the long weekend and shall start to incorporate the updates to a sole build ASAP.
The starport delay is super-effective AI buff because it prevents most AIs from going broke during the first half of the year. It also gives all colonies established during this time 500m inhabitants right from the getgo. And it also gives the player an additional option to create specialized worlds. It is a crude approach but this method is thrice (or more) effective in preventing the "colony-rush brokeness" than any other method I've tested for. There simply is no alternative.
Indeed. Polishing could be done any time
Of course. There should be around ~30 individual shipdesigns which have been accustomed to the shipparts of FW. You can see them in GC2ships.xml. Most of them are the starting civilian crafts and better versions of these, and they will pop up once sufficient miniaturization has been gathered.
I just started a testgame on FW 0.62 with Terrans and this is what I see on turn1:
In order to see them you'll need to extract this file
"Extract into GalCiv2Ultimate_Twilight_Data_English.7z"
from the root-folder of the Mod into the temporary game's folder. And most preferably, clear out all old data from this folder beforeahead. That folder is located differently depending on your OS. On my machine it's here:
C:\Users\Catburglar\Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor
(You'll have to start over to see it working).
Dear Catburglar,
I see the other designs in the initial shipyard, but not the Colonyship 500. AFAICT the AIs don't have a problem finding colony ships to build. I'll wait until you post the update before I start poking on it. And before I start on the text.
Love the new building icons! Tech trees are quite different, but make sense. I did have a suggestion but forgot what it is.
Now, assuming Tech Victory is enabled, The Terran needs to research the full engine branch to win that way? The tech descriptions imply it, but it's not clear. Might need to add a specific statement to the descriptions of each of these terminal techs. (That can wait.)
The "deadly Triliam rays" (sp?) anomaly was next door to me and killed 80% of the population of Earth! Fortunately I had a recent save, but that's pretty heinous. I suppose that there's no way to modulate the effect by the current conditions when the anomaly is explored? Other bad anomalies are bad, but not killers and generally good counterbalances to the good ones.
What is the "general amnesty" anomaly supposed to do? Add population to my homeworld?
Yeah ok, let's delay that problem with the Colonyship until I post the new version. Let's see if I can do that this night.
The AI will always design its own ships using the same internal routines just like the auto-design feature. It will completely ignore GC2ships.xml and, in many cases, also ignore what's stored in the YourGames-folder ships/templates. There are only a few items which can completely screw that (in GC2Types.xml) but if that happens, they'll only build scouts or nothing at all. I've tested this very thoroughly in order to find ways to manipulate the AIs buildqueue, but not much was possible. Too much hardcoded stuff.
Thank you! Mabye you remember it again. FW is not finished so I may be able to integrate some changes if they make sense and are good to balance. Some of the races still need a more diversified techtree, but I cannot force creativity.
Well, even if Tech Vic is disabled, it will make sense to research down that route at some point of the game. The AI will do so, so I thought it best not to penalize it if it invests into a void Tech Victory in games where Tech Vic has been disabled.
All races' Tech Victory branch is designed that way. Some have it harder some more easy, but I've taken lots of things into account. For example, the Terran's propulsion branch has been slightly shortened because the Stellar Folder supercedes any engine anyway and they'll get lots of base speed later.
Speed is not a too strong for the AI but the Terran AI does generally very well. In the hands of a capable player speed can pose an immense tactical advantage, even against superior enemies. Hit & Run.
And yeah, I didn't have time to write many of the individual descriptions for each of the Tech Vic techs. Especially because of the language barrier and it would also mostly be fake techno babble. A few sentences should suffice if I find the motivation^^
LOOOOOOL that made me laugh. Actually I did nerf that freaking anomaly TWICE so far because I've been hit by that as well. But that is actually exactly like it should be:
That anomaly is supposed to add a random weakening/crippling element to any available faction - it is MOST effective early on: because the targeting is random and in later stages of the game, it just cripples one colony, decreasing your economy a tiny bit, perhaps planet rebels, but nothing really serious.
But if that happens early to a HW, then this faction will suffer tremendously even if it's a strong AI in a good spot. Sometimes really bad things happen by sheer chance and you've simply got to accept the circumstances. Like that asteroid that hit earth and caused the dinosaurs go extinct. Such a thing could happen even now.
I've counterbalanced all negative anomalies with positive ones, also using different chances that these anomalies are created in the first place: The Valoron-planet-killer anomaly is mitigated by the General Amnesty - which will double the population of a random planet (or a planet closest to the anomaly, don't remember which one...)
The Amnesty occurs thrice as often as the Valoron-blast. I've picked this ratio/strength because in a lot of times the Amnesty isn't as strong as it may appear: early on the gain is quite low, and in the later stages of the game, when pop is near the food cap, lots of these settlers will die off once you press turn.
Just to further clarify - if you'd subtract all the negative anomalies from the positive ones and then count what's left - the average amount of gain from anomalies would still be greater than what's left in the base game. This is mostly because I've integrated lots of new stats without any penalty, greatly increased the net amount of bcs that can be gathered (more DL/DA like feeling) and also added some previously unused stuff (like weapons-upgrade, watch out for this!). Alltogether surveying now feels more dynamic, and there is also the tiny risk of a drawback - especially the -1000bc anomaly can cause you to loose a turn of production running (...if you don't plan ahead )
Okilidokili.... new version v0.65 is UP!!!
This build integrates the bugfix and the v0.62 patch into the main v0.60 main version. This should make it easier now to install all the latest stuff without much trouble.
Denis, I've tested this version extensively for bugs, however only on my machine. If you come across anything awkward just forward it, then I'll take a look.
BTW is the forums Karma option broken? I'm receiving a 500 error message....
hmm really strange. According to DMF profile that Karma yesterday did arrive but I'm still getting that error message plus all the "Thumbs Up"-icons on DMF's posts on page 4 are not there. What the hell is going on?
No idea on Karma.
How is the anomaly "You receive +n on all three weapon/defense types" expressed? I got a couple of those, but on a ship with e.g. a single Laser the Beam rating is still 1. Applied directly in combat, thus not visible?
Speed ro0lz! With good speed and good defense/HPs you don't need the latest and greatest weapons - something the AIs don't comprehend.
In this game, all the Minors charged up the Mass Driver branch, and the Altarian followed. Thalan initially started up the branch, then switched to Beam, while I have been doing Missiles (that last Mx tech is awesome, btw). The majors have been doing a fair job of researching counteractive defenses, though not nearly as much as a player would. (That's been a long-time problem in the game.)
Altarian has developed excellent research and influence, something I believe you intended as a racial characteristic. Not sure what the Thalan is up to. His speed is nerfed but his population growth is really high.
Science Congress is great. I always build it, sometimes in place of an Economics tech.
Trading techs is good. Except for weapons, trades are quite doable. It took a lot of compensation to pry Temporal Warfare away from the Thalan, though - as it should be. Where is Information Warfare invasion tactic? (I generally like the new ones.)
Will have to play a many-major game to check out how the other races do...
Oh, and Drones. Drones have a base HP of 1. Barring mods, if a weapon rated 10 fires at a pack of 10 drones, shouldn't it kill them all? (while probably dying in the process)
I understand the purpose of the Fleet Carrier name, but it is just a bubble ship. We'll have to discuss the name...
Maiden, I'm starting to go through TechTree.xml. Did you base yours on the work I did for CU? Some of the words look awfully familiar.
Edit: Never mind. I found the one I submitted. It appears that you used a form of the original CU texts. On re-reading, I did good work. [pats self on back]
This is gonna take a while. If you have changes to the tech tree, please copy them to me. I'll let you know when I move on to other files.
Really, this mod is good! It's worth the effort.
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