FIX NEUTRALITY RESEARCH BASES

Stop it! Stop it! The game is perfect as it is!

Stop it! Stop it! The game is perfect as it is!

Exactly, I'm going to downgrade to 1.0x at once ...



I think unblinded1 is right about that, but WHY DO YOU HAVE TO SHOUT?

wow, this is such an original thought...


is what i would be saying if i hadnt seen at least 15 other threads with this same idea.

because its really frustrating to have to upgrade 50 plus planets at various stages of development to neutrality research centres.

not a major game destroyer. but VERY frustrating and easily fixed. stardock have done an EXCELLENT job thus far i reckon this problem is an easy fix but nessesary for sure.

erdrick . ffs if only one person had one idea that idea would never get done

all i was doing was airing my opinon i wasnt aware that everyone else was equally frustrated at this issue as i was.

I agree that auto upgrading should have been in there for the NLC's. You're also quite correct that it's easy to fix.

Go to your GalCiv2/Data/English folder and copy a backup of PlanetImprovements.XML so you can mess with the original (using the mod folder for this file is currently broken at this time).

Go to the very bottom where they added NLC's and add this line (any text editor will do, Notepad works fine)
{S_UpgradeTarget>Discovery Sphere (replace the { and } with < and > )
Save with UTF-8 encoding. (Notepad can do this)

Simple fix that *should* have been there already, I suspect they overlooked it. For those who can't copy/paste or use a text editor, I guess you'll just have to wait for a patch.
Take control of your gaming experience, modding is available (even if buggy at the moment) for a reason.

I would actually rather upgrade them manually. If it auto upgraded you would loose touch with the flow of the game. There is nothing like the feeling of watching your research planet build those menacing red structures that eventualy allow you to rule the galaxy.

is what i would be saying if i hadnt seen at least 15 other threads with this same idea.

In the posters defence ANY post over 1.5 hours old is hard to find in these forums

because its really frustrating to have to upgrade 50 plus planets at various stages of development to neutrality research centres.

If you already have 50+ planets by the time you get the NLC, well, you sure are wasting a lot of research time.
You should go for the NLC very early to capitalize on it, not waste your time researching everything else first.
I have it by the time I have 10 planets, and no more than a dozen Research Acadamies to upgrade - less if I have several bonus tiles.

Bah, for some reason I can't edit that post ( kinda funny given the context hehe )
The line should be
{S_UpgradeTarget}Discovery Sphere{/S_UpgradeTarget}
replace all those { and }

NLC ?? Neutral Research Base?? What are these strange things you speak of?

In the posters defence ANY post over 1.5 hours old is hard to find in these forums

heh? i searched on the word neutrality and it pulled up some amazing stuff. poster would have had plenty of posts to bump. heck i even click on forums then click on more under that first window cus they are basically all stickies and i can see thousands of posts, even ones that have no responses yet, but people still feel the need to bump their posts so it appears on the recent post list, like that makes it more important or something. maybe its just me but i have had no issues with the forums except them being a little slow every now and then, but the people who live their daily lives on message boards would know better.

StormWeaver,

What the OP calls the Neutrality Research Base is actually called a Neutrality Learning Center in the game.
NLC for short.

They are an option on the research branch just after Research Acadamies, if you have researched Xeno Ethics and chose the Neutral alignment.

They are the most powerful research facility in the game.

Getting them early in the game, and placing enough of them on your planets - especially the planet with the Tech Capital - means that you will pull far, far ahead of any other race in research. You could have an entire weapons branch researched in the time it takes them to research 1/4 of the same branch.

Bah, for some reason I can't edit that post ( kinda funny given the context hehe ) The line should be {S_UpgradeTarget}Discovery Sphere{/S_UpgradeTarget} replace all those { and }

Very nice.

It would still take much longer then necessary though, because you would still have to research Invention Matrix and Discovery Sphere and go through those upgrade processes before it would upgrade to the NLC, wouldn't it?

Having it as a separate branch introduces a complexity, for sure. The way you do it does not conflict with a current upgrade path, it tacks it on to the end. It takes far less time, though much more effort on a single turn, to go through your planets and select each research facility, then the NLC in the build list, and click the upgrade button. Or, if you have the cash, just to buy them outright.

No, actually the upgrade path follows through, which is nice and something that was hardcoded properly as far as I'm concerned (not that a lot of things aren't, it's just nice not to have to create some workaround on this one is all I'm saying). In other words even if you never researched any research techs, and had only basic labs, and then got Neutrality Learning Centers from stealing or trading the tech, your bases will automatically start upgrading from the basic lab to the NLC. The game is coded to check each upgradetarget and if you have something better it will use that. So even though you have only basic labs and neutrality centers the game will go
Basic Lab < Xeno Lab < Research Center < Research Academy < Invention Matrix < Discovery Sphere < Neutrality Learning Center
Effectively skipping all the intervening steps.
Does that make sense?

I'm not sure what would happen if you tried to make it upgrade straight off of research academies as that would create 2 upgrade paths, but I suspect the game would crash if you got say both invention matrix and research academies before everything you had was finished upgrading.
One line is missing from the PlanetaryImprovements.xml. It should be there already but it's not that hard to add it yourself if it bothers people so much they feel the need to yell on the forums.

OK, I didn't know it would make that bridge between levels.