DA 1.5.057: Why am I playing against "myself?"

Colour confusion is nothing new. In DL look at the Drath, Drengin and Dreadlord colours???

"Similar" is not at all the same problem as "identical."

Are you kidding??? i mean you must be joking rite? Or am i some freak with poor colour recognition abilities??

No, I'm not kidding (here), and I don't necessarily think you have colour vision problems. I've had a few DL maps where color "normal" color similiarties were a bit hard on my eyes (Korx vs. Iconian has always hurt for me).

I posted b/c I thought it was pretty weird to see a map with the "Thalans" on it when I thought I was playing as the Thalans.

Thats perfectly reasonable.

To be perfectly honest, even if you put a gun to my head, there's no way i could tell you which units are drengin, drath or dreadlord going by the minimap.

my point being, they could be the same identical color or they could be slightly different but it makes no difference. either way, i cannot tell them apart.

Um, aren't the Drath brown and the Drengin dark red?

the drath are red on the minimap, same as drengin and dreadlords

It would be nice to be able to tweak race and hull colors (in friendlier fashion than editing an .xml file) on the fly in the game, if you decide you hate your hull colors, or run into a conflict with other race colors being too close to what youve chosen. A minor issue to be sure, but it would still be nice.

I agree wholeheartedly. Even if two empires have a different hue of a secondary colour, it's can still hard to tell them apart when the things being coloured are particularly small. Ships on the mini-map, for instance.

Its nearly impossible to find a color that doesn't look like a default race's color on the minimap, atleast I haven't found one yet. I tried using white once, it looked almost identical to the Korx. Then I tried a very VERY dark green, but I couldn't see my border's at all unless I had the ship range option on.

P.S. The Drengin and Drath colors display properly on the minimap for me. Maybe your settings are off? I've never had problems distinguishing Drath Brown and Drengin Red.

I might have a look tonight and see what i can find.

I like this idea, but I've run into theStormWeaver's problem every time I tried customizing.

Kryo, et al, can I get a response about whether this is a known issue (By Design or on a to-fix list)? I have a save game if I've actually found something new.

Well, I'd imagine that since you changed the name, it got saved as a different .customracexml, so the game doesn't "know" it's the Thalans anymore. Thus the real ones are fair game for random selection (or non-random selection, probably).

Thanks, Kryo.

I guess my stats weakness is showing again. I've played at least 10 or 20 games following that basic setup pattern and this is the first time the Thalans came up in the random drawing. It suprised me, but I can imagine it might make good math sense.

I had a similar situation in my first DA game last night. I was playing on a medium map as the Yor with three random AI opponents and minors turned off. I set my flagship exploring on the first turn and, lo and behold, just a few spaces away from my homeworld I encountered "Dark Yor"? A dark version of me or something?

Also, something seemed strange about the anomalies. I had them set to "occassional" yet there were anomalies everywhere--literally nine within grasp of my homeworld without unclearing any fog of war.

Maybe this is working as intended, but it felt weird...

The 'Dark Yor' are one of the minor races. Sometimes it happens this way. They are placed randomly on the map, and occasionally get bunched up. Once you explore farther into the galaxy, they should become much more of a rare find. Consider this a bit of luck on your part.

Color Chart for people with poor eyes...J/k
Drath- mostly red with a pinch of brown
dregin- koolaid red
dread lords- blood red

I've actually had something similar happen when i created 4 custom AI's I went through and spent about 1/2hr tweaking them to my liking, (Avatars, ship styles, alignment.) but wouldn't you know i forgot to change their colors AND icons! 1 year into a gigantic map madness insues!

Thanks, Mistralok. I am almost certain that Minor races were set to none, but I can't swear by it. I guess I got freaked when they happened to show up right next to me, on the first turn. And then, the anomalies just intensified the strangeness. With it being my first game after installing DA, I must have jumped the gun in thinking there was a problem.

Anyhow, enough yapping here. Time for DA game #2...

This made sense when I first read it, but yesterday I had a diplo message from the Torians that said: "The Thalan have always been friends to our people. The Swarm is gradually destroying our civilization. We plead for any help..." (emphasis added)

The Swarm is the name I use when playing as the Thalans. Because of what Kryo said about the game not "knowing" that I'm trying to play the Thalans, I picked the opponents for my current game and left the (other) Thalans out of the game.

This message came up right after about half the galaxy declared war on my Terran allies (for reasons mysterious to me), so I honored my alliance and declared war on them. Now the Torians are asking me to help protect themselves from me? This has got to be some kind of glitch, even if I'm not naming the problem correctly.

I have a screencap and a save game from just after I finished processing the turn.

Check your custom race's file and see if there are any remaining references to them as the Thalans in it. The dialog you received is most likely a bug at least one way, no matter how you look at it.

If the Thalans appeared as a selectable option in the opponent setup screen, then that right there tells you that the game doesn't know you're them. Normally, if you play as a core race that race will not show up in the list of potential opponents at all.

There's another bug. I designed a race in a prior game then later played as someone else. The race I designed popped up as an opponent (how I wish there was a way you could have random races but NOT a chance to face your own designed races!)... anyway, a while into the game after I'd met them and interacted, they popped up with the standard welcome, nice to meet you sort of message and the major races screen has this race listed twice. The second version seems to be a copy of the first from that point of entry (they have the same techs for trade) but they diverted after that (my relations with each differ).

I've got (ShortEmpireName)Thalan(/ShortEmpireName), Thalans still in the Description, (DialogueTag)Thalan(/DialogueTag), and (ShipStyle)Thalan Empire Style(/ShipStyle).

But those just look like the "normal" bugs I've long seen where my attempt to change my empire name was only partly successful. This weird diplo thing suggests to me that the AIs are somehow getting a "schizophrenic" view of my empire. Wouldn't it take more than misapplied labels to make an AI ask for help from someone who just declared war on them?

p.s. I took a peek at my DL folder. My last game there followed the same basic pattern of setup, but the file there is just called .raceconfig, no mention of "custom," and I never "ran into myself" playing a DL game or during my many beta DA games. I suspect the issue is in the code changes that enabled us to create custom opponents, but that's just guess from the peanut gallery

The race handling was considerably changed in order to allow the greater race customization, and to allow for possible future 'stuff'.