Meet Your New DA Custom Adversaries Here

"Hello, My Name Is [Insert Custom Leader Name]"

I absolutely love the new opponent customization feature. Love it! I spent a good two hours futzing around with it in DA Beta the other night, tweaking this and that to create new custom races, thinking about how specific climates and environments might shape bonuses, outlook, and politics, considering the entomology of planet and race names (wow, I can’t believe how geeky that sounds...), and in general spinning stories about how a particular race developed into a spacefaring nasty looking to beat the frack out of me.

Nevertheless, I’m disappointed looking back at my first attempts because most strike me as derivative of things I’ve been reading recently (tip of the hat in particular to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War). In the interest of sharing creative grist with the community, do folks have original custom race creations that they’re particularly proud of and want to post?

On a side note, there is one race customization feature I’m still hoping will be included in the DA race screen – more control of custom race home system. IMHO, the game would benefit by giving players the ability to name the planets in home systems (not just the stars), control their number and quality (of course limited by some sort of total PQ point allotment / slider – maybe linked to the allotment of racial bonus points?), and control the appearance of these stars and planets (e.g., size, texture, moons, rings). If this is a bridge too far for DA, can someone point me to a tutorial on how to make these kinds of changes to the game files?

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I always play a custom races, because I love fiddling around with the bonuses and such. Usually they are taken from various sci-fi I have read, and while playing I always have a continuous sub-text running in my mind of the unfolding story of what they are experiencing and thinking in the GalCiv universe. For me it adds another dimension to the game that makes it seem much richer and complex. For opponents, I usually have a mix of custom civs and premade ones. Some I've made turned out to be pretty horrible and weak, while others turned out to be really nasty to play against!

I dont know how to modify the game files as you mentioned.

Sentient species taste better...

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well for me I think some of the changes would be needed to include in a theoretical GC3

I am talking wish list so most of mine would be GC3 ideas

Several game levels depending on ship type

Galactic level= inter sector FTL only (May require teh to drop ships out of ftl)

Deep Space level FTL/STL Play like fleet Vs fleet ship Vs Ship and the discovery of bonuses mining opertunity and systems

in System level= A map of the solar system locations of asteroids and first level defences

Orbital Level = Planets defences and moons

Ground level= invasions and colonisations

Race customisations

homewold= waterworld, barren, Terestrial (earth like), Gas world.
Gravity = .25, .5, 1g, 1.5g, 2g, 5g, 10g
Atmosphere= O2/N (like earth), CO2, Venusian
Radiation = .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 3,, 5

any world is uncolonisable to you without specials if it is different by 1 point and more tech is needed for each point away from norm

example race human planet stats

homeworld= terestrial
Gravity =1G
Atmosphere= O2/N
rad level = 1

mars =
barren (-1)
Gravity .5 (prox for game use)(-1)
Atmosphere CO2 (-1)
Rad level 1.5 (+1)
total out for mars = +- 4

so in example lets say earth is size 25 perfect we start with 15 tiles and basic terafoprming boosts to 25 by the end
mars = 20 but unless we research master Teraform tech we loose all mut 4 tiles as we need domes all the time

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Cool thread

Over the last month, I've been tinkering away at those .xml files for the races - dicking around w/this and that.

At first

, I simply made a customized Yor race to the point of rediculousness (they were ungodly, 500% bonus to Economy for example) just for fun AND to figure out the last couple 'question/thingies' I needed to figure out.

Now, I have the game completely figured out: the customized Yor race I play w/is very strong.. and my opponents have ALL been beefed up. They're simply modified 'normal' races.

What SUCKs is that I changed the original .xml files for the normal races minus a couple that I haven't touched yet... I'm actually curious if anyone knows how to reset those to default? I should have simply saved the customized 'nomal' races with a slightly different name, but I didn't do that... cuz I'm dumb.

Anyway, the game is WAY more fun playing with a beefed up race going up against beefed up races. I'm still experimenting with my opponents as I haven't gotten the balance down just yet, but it's been fun working at it.

I just finished up a small map with planets on occasional and stars on middle-high, 4 minors, 4 majors, research normal - MAAAAAAAAAAAn, what a FUN game that was... did it in two sittings as well.

Tbh, I think the normal Economy rating for the stock races is WAY too slow - I don't have the patience to sit there for a week playing a medium map with 5+ majors and occasional+ planets (yeah, it was fun when I first started playing the game)when I could be playing a much faster paced, more action oriented game.

I think 100% bonus to Economy should be a standard as it really speeds things up.
Anyhoot, I'm rambling now, but you get the picture: I enjoy customized races just as much as you sir.

Chr*s

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I do also. I have designed several races and used templates to adjust others to my liking. I'm disappointed I haven't been able to get Sentient Data Network to work with the Metaverse, but otherwise, I really like the feature of designing my own races and opponents. Adds endless variety to the game. Frankly, not since Alpha Centauri has my investment in a strategy game paid off so well.

Sentient species taste better...

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Anyway, the game is WAY more fun playing with a beefed up race going up against beefed up races. I'm still experimenting with my opponents as I haven't gotten the balance down just yet, but it's been fun working at it...

Gosh, have i got your poison!!

The whole design of *X-Worlds* MOD is in fact entirely based on the above premise. What was (and still is, btw) hard to find is the "balance ratio" against a number of variable situations people would encounter by playing any different custom races.

As an example, the main protagonist (three X-Com variations) always starts **AT WAR** against the major first Alien race, and **ALLIED or CLOSE** with either the Interceptors, S-H-A-D-O or Thunderbirds. This alone changes the dynamics right at first turn while forcing many races into a Howeworld Planets grab pattern (since, every planets inside their local systems are appealing enough to use as many as four consecutive colony-ships to "protect" their assets!).

Customized Political parties closely tied with "specific features" for a few typed races. Most racial abilities values focused on similar effects, etc.

Generally speaking, the relative boost(s) to some areas makes for a completely new gameplay impression.

- Zyxpsilon.

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Interesting discussion here -- I like in particular the idea that races (at least at the outset) are tied to a certain planetary type (i.e., the type of planet that race has evolved on). For gameplay reasons, perhaps you could allow all races to have colonize two planetary types at the outset of the game: normal/terrestrial and one other. For example, Humans could also colonize barren; an amphibious type could colonize normal and water planets, etc. I'd also like to see another planetary type or two in GC3 (e.g., inferno, ice).

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