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Listing all the tech tree gaps/flaws

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Listing all the tech tree gaps/flaws

from GalCiv2 Forums
Twilight of the Arnor is really cool, and I really dig the new race specific tech trees. But, there are a couple of obvious flaws in the trees, many of which have been talked about before on the forums here.

I wanted to gather together all of the gaps, flaws and bugs in the tech trees into one place, partly so I could work out what was definitely a mistake and what was actually intentional, partly to help out people looking for information, and maybe to help the developers out too!

The issues at present, as I see them:

ISSUES

1) The following races lack the ability to research anything more than the basic Mining Starbase and Strabse Factory modules. This is because they no longer posess the Xeno Indistrial Theory chain of technologies, and the roughly equivalent replacements in each case do not provide starbase techs.

The Yor
The Thalan
The Iconians
The Korath (althought their cousins the Drengin DO get upgrades via an "Industial Starbase Construction" chain that seems to be unique to them)

SOLUTION: a) Give these civs access to the Drengin's "Indutrial Starbase Construction" branch
OR: b) Give these civs the suitable upgrade as part of their branch which is equivalent to Xeno Indutrial Theory:
"Industrial Adaptation" for the Thalan, "Collective Manufacturing" for the Yor, "Industrial Replication" for the Iconians,  and through the Slave Pits branch for the Korath(?)


2) The Thalan lack access to the Battle Stations Mk I starbase module (although they do have acces to Battle Stations Mark II and higher - it's just they can never upgrade to that point owing to the lack of Mark I).

SOLUTION: Give the Thalan access to this module with their "Defense Industries" tech.

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Now for the things where I'm not sure if they're errors or intentional...

3) The Torians, Krynn and Yor lack acces to Hyperwarp drives. Are they compensated for this in some way? (The Arceans lack acces to all drive tech beyond basic hyperdrive, but that I am pretty sure is intentional as they're compensated with their navigation tech).

4) The Thalan have no access to farms or any kind of food boosting building. This makes a certain degree of sense given their backstory, but it also seems kinda harsh.

That's it for now. Please post any other tech tree oddities, bugs, flaws or confusions you have to this thread!

30,011 views 38 replies
Reply #26 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Does the Arcean Cathedral of Valor give any bonus to planetary ground defense? I can't tell, and get the feeling it does not.
Reply #27 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Wow,

I just realized that the Altarian tech tree has a lot of goodies for good alignment. I think there's a soldiering bonus, creative bonus, planet quality bonus, and attack/defense module bonuses. Does Drath also get these??

It's cool, but I wonder if it makes the Altarians harder to play for newer players and the AI. I rarely see the AI research xeno ethics (if ever), so pretty much the Altarian AI is playing without these techs.
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
From what I understand, the devs are very busy finishing Political Machine. The entire GalCiv team have been kidnapped to finish it.
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This is true.  We have all been hard at work finishing Political Machine 2008.  It has been a fun project to work on.  You guys should give it a shot when it comes out, let us know what you think.

While developer interaction is always appreciated, it's only been a few weeks since ToA was formally released, and I'm presently confident that Stardock will get to this stuff in time. In the meantime, I'm trying to be a good citizen by organising the stuff together so that players and developers alike can be aware of it
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Thank you!  Give us time guys, we enjoy reading what our players think and finding ways to implement their ideas.  We also appreciate being informed of issues so that we can make our games the best they can be.

2) The Thalan lack access to the Battle Stations Mk I starbase module (although they do have acces to Battle Stations Mark II and higher - it's just they can never upgrade to that point owing to the lack of Mark I).
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The starbase module "Battle Stations Mk I" requires that you research the "Space Weapons" tech, which is not in the Thalan tech tree.  Since, (as you point out), "Battle Stations Mk II" requires the "Battle Stations Mk I", I went ahead and put the "Space Weapons" tech back into the Thalan tech tree.  I also put the "Space Defenses" tech back in, for consistency.  By doing that, the Thalan now also get access to the "Protection Fields" starbase module.  
Originally, we wanted the Thalans to have a faster route to the weapons/defense techs, so we removed the "Space Weapons" and "Space Defense" initial techs.  Since I have put these two techs back in the tree, I made them cheaper for the Thalans to research in an attempt to keep the route fast but also fix the starbase module issue you pointed out.

4) The Thalan have no access to farms or any kind of food boosting building.
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The Thalans get Industrial Adaptation 1, 2 and 3 instead of the traditional farming techs.  This gives them unique access to "Manufacturing Matrix" improvements instead of farm improvements.

Another point is the when you choose neutral or evil with the altarians they don't get any intresting stuff only when they pick good.
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another disturbing/disappointing thing is that certain race specific tech trees gain no extra bonuses from certain ethic choices...like the Altarians as neutral only get neutral shipping and learning centers, but if you choose good they get a half dozen extra defensive techs as well as some fleet defense and attack modules.
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Also, I can kind-of see the Altarians not getting as much good stuff for neutral and evil as they do for good, given that they are already directed towards good by default... that seems like it might be intentional. I dunno.
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The Altarians lean 99% towards Good by default.  You purposely get extra techs when you choose a Good ethical alignment when playing as them.

3) The Torians, Krynn and Yor lack acces to Hyperwarp drives. Are they compensated for this in some way? (The Arceans lack acces to all drive tech beyond basic hyperdrive, but that I am pretty sure is intentional as they're compensated with their navigation tech).
End of quote


The Torians purposely do not have the "Hyperwarp" techs, because these techs are at the end of the engine line of techs and the Torians are supposed to be less technically-advanced.

The Krynn purposely do not have the "Hyperwarp" techs.  Further down in their tree, they have a race-specific tech called "Hasty Fleets" which unlocks a ship component that increases the speed of fleets.  

The Yor have a race-specific tech called "Stellar Streams" that provides a boost to their speed ability.  They intentionally do not have the "Hyperwarp" techs.

The Arceans (you're right) are intentionally missing some engine techs.  They have race-specific "Navigation" techs instead.

5) The Krynn has Aquatic World Colonization as cheap as the Torians
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And the Krynn version was using the Torian description!  Whoops!  Fixed.

the Iconians are simply not able to get advanced troops
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The Iconians purposely have limited soldiering techs.  They have some race-specific weapon techs to help offset this.  They also have access to Kinetic Streams 123, Scatter Blasters 123, and Seekers 123, that not every race has access to.

The main Yor issue I found was that terror drones I seems to take way too much tech points. Terror drones II and III takes less. It seems backwards.
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If you think about it, coming up with a completely new technology takes the most work.  Simply improving upon it is easier because the groundwork is already there.  This is the reason why Terror Drones 2 and 3 are less research-intensive than Terror Drones 1.

7) wondering why the Drath and Altarians have Healing Pools, and why the Altarians have Drathian Temples in their tech trees.
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The Drath and Altarians have a common history, read up on the tech description for "Divergent Evolution" to learn more.  Both have "Temples" and "Shrine of the Mithrilar" techs, but only the Altarians have a tech for "Shrine of Tandis".  Both have the "Healing Pools" tech, and that is intentional as well.
Reply #29 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Great! Thanks so much for answering these queries directly, that's a big help. Half the time it's just trying to work out what's intentional and what isn't which cause confusion.

The only other thing I would say for definite at this point, since you didn't deal with it in your answer above yet, is to please consider the situation with the mining starbase upgrades if there's time. (Mind you, getting something out for the tech inflation bug asap probably ought to be the priority).

Anyway, thanks for stopping by the thread! After the patch comes out, I'll go through the trees again and post something similar with any other issues I see.
Reply #30 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the responses above - good to know. Any word on when the next patch will be out? :p

Also, I noticed there's an Energy Feeding Centers series of Improvements, which require the Energy Feeding Centers technology line, which I can't find in the Yor tech tree anywhere. Am I missing something?
Reply #31 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
WOW!! lots of INFO !! thanks in deed!! :)

Nasty
Reply #32 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Was just about to ask for a Stardock representative to give us an official response to these problems. Unfortunately for me a representative got there a day before. Bravo.
Reply #33 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1) The following races [Yor, Thalan, Iconians, Korath] lack the ability to research anything more than the basic Mining Starbase and Strabse Factory modules. This is because they no longer posess the Xeno Indistrial Theory chain of technologies, and the roughly equivalent replacements in each case do not provide starbase techs.
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please consider the situation with the mining starbase upgrades if there's time.
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Okay, just so everyone knows, every race will not have the exact same bonuses, starbase modules, abilities from techs, etc... Our intent with TA is to make each race unique to play (ie. Arcean speed penalty).  We're not trying to cripple anyone's favorite race.  Really.  Our hope is that some of the changes will add replayability in that you'll need to come up with a different strategy based on who you are playing with and/or playing against.  You may remember that we kind of tried this with the Super Abilities in DA.  The sweeping changes we've made to each tech tree take us further in that direction.  Couple that with the fact that all players of TA now have 6 editors to mod with, and things can be changed even more.

Having said that, I do recognize the balance problem with the issue that was being pointed out.  Here's what I did:

I created a spreadsheet with a column for every race.  In the rows are all of the starbase modules that that race has access to at some point because of their tech tree.  If they don't have access to a module, it's a blank cell in the spreadsheet.  By having all of the races side-by-side like this, I can quickly see where the holes are.  All of them.  Some of them are intended (Drengin purposely don't have some diplo techs and thus diplo starbase modules), while others are compensated with race-specific modules unlocked by race-specific techs.

There are more than 70 starbase modules.  All races have access to a majority of them, or are compensated in some way.

These are the starbase modules in question - that the Yor, Thalan, Iconians, Korath, don't have access to, and weren't being compensated for:

-Mining HQ (Mining)
-Resource Excavation (Mining)
-Extraction Center (Mining)
-Extraction Complex (Mining)
-Resource Sector (Mining)

-Starbase Factory (ProductionAssist)
-Adv. Starbase Factory (ProductionAssist)
-Massive Scaling Center (ProductionAssist)
-Orbital Replicators (ProductionAssist)
-Interstellar Collectors (ProductionAssist)

Today, I created mining and productionAssist starbase modules that are unique to each of the 4 races in question.  This will help compensate them for not having access to the starbase modules listed above.  Keep in mind that the amounts that each race is compensated are not the same, for the reasons of uniqueness I've already stated. 

Our hope is that this slight addition of modules can keep things unique, but still balanced.  You can look for it in our next update.

~C
Reply #34 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
there's an Energy Feeding Centers series of Improvements, which require the Energy Feeding Centers technology line, which I can't find in the Yor tech tree anywhere
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I'm not sure what the intent of those techs were.  Whoever added them might have replaced them with something else and forgotten to take them out of the file.  I'll ask around the office.

~C
Reply #35 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It's responses from the devs like this that make me love Stardock. You just don't see that with other games.

Thanks for a great game and for listening to us.
Reply #36 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thanks for the responses. Maybe the Energy Feeding Centers were thought up before Charging Stalks...(maybe the Dark Yor use them?).

Any high-level estimate for when the next patch will be out?
Reply #37 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Thank you very much! Great news!
Reply #38 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There's two different techs both named Xeno Anthropology. It's possible to possess both and trade both (I even traded one for the other :lol:), yet you can't tell which is which in the trade menu. Kind of a significant flaw as the one would be important for an influence victory and the other is like a morale bonus.