Back with a small update concerning minors. They're not as broken as I thought. What's actually happening is the game removing technology from the minors techtree that is not available to AI players.

Here's how it works:

Say it's you vs the Arceans. The Arceans don't have regular propulsion technology so thats removed from the minors. They also don't have Space Militarisaion (they get war rooms) so that is removed as well. This cripples the minors but prevents the AI from getting unavailable technology by invading minors.

The problem solves itself when, e.g., a major race using the Terran or Minor techtree is in the game.

The only way to fix this would be by giving the minors a separate tree with new IDs for all their weapons and propulsion technology. This would also require new weapons and propulsion technology to be added as well. Quite a headache.

Also be very careful changing the ID of techs. This does effect AI research affinity. For example AIP8 loves Pure Research as a category except when the techs ID is set to Computing.

It makes sense that the minors can't grab up the GAs and TGs, but it's kinda silly that they can't have any unique techs.  Maybe that also explains why my minors couldn't have Neutral History.  Could it be that my tests didn't have any races with that tech?  Don't know, but I guess it's plausible.

You should be making a living from this skill, if you aren't already.  Of course, then it's all work and no fun.  But still.  Maybe Stardock has an opening.  They obviously need you.

In news, I've hit just about everything that you listed, with a few exceptions.  I'm going to leave the IDs of Interstellar Construction and Space Mining where they are.  The AI uses them as intended and I just don't want to change it in every TechTree.

It's down to some balancing and deciding what to do with things like the Omega Research Center, Economic Direction Unit, and Trade Nexus/Freighter Command.

After that, it's off to watch some AIs beat each other up.  Well, I have to get the next quarter of the Kushana Initiative out, too.

No, you may not.

Just know that it'll save me an assload of time of wasted effort. 

Thinking back to mention of there being a lot of morale bonuses, I was wondering about farms . . .

The idea behind giving farms a small morale bonus was to make them useful prior to planets reaching full population, and to help ease the morale crush on high pop planets.  Lately, I've been wondering if I should get rid of it.  Would solve the problem of the AI putting farms up on morale bonus tiles.  Any thoughts on the issue?

On farms, I also considered making them a one-per-planet improvement.  Prevent AI misuse and make those farm bonus tiles really worth something, along with the Food Distribution Center and other +% food improvements.  Could boost AI value of farms to promote higher populations and not feel so bad when the AI researches Xeno Farming III and ends up with that 26-32b max pop.

Any other wacky ideas for v3.1?

Edit to add:

Another thought I had was modifying the political parties.  I fixed the penalty issue, but I was thinking about the Federalists and Technologists.  Conventional wisdom is that players take one or the other and basically never use the rest, right?  That tells me something is wrong.  What if the Feds only had +10% economics and the techies only had +10% research?  Would that tip the scales?

It's been noticeable in playtesting, too.  The choice of political party can have a pretty big impact on how well any given race does.  Especially under my conditions, with custom races that have no bonuses whatsoever.  I've given up on trying to customize races and just give everyone Federalists to level the playing field.

I like the idea of 1 farm per planet. Maybe call them (orbital) farm control centers ? Its rarely worth the trouble to build more than 1 farm and I never use the food bonus tiles because the planet's population tends to get unmanageably large.

I did cut the food output of the Hyperion Matrix to 4, so even when they plunk it on their homeworld it tops at 20b.  Of course, in the first test game they dropped it on a bonus tile, so it was back to 24b.  I do agree that food production is a pretty unnecessary bonus for it.

It would probably take me another five hours to hit every point here, but they are well taken.  I actually did/am doing a fair amount of what you mention.  That or the idea crossed my mind.  For instance, I nixed maintenance on every GA/SP/TG, buffed the Manufacturing Vortex and Distributed Energy Matrix (for the same reasons, sheesh), considered having Drengin/Korath +% manufacturing buildings upgrade, adjusted maintenance-to-output of various lab/factory type improvements, wondered about the Doomsday Generator (really?), boosted the Yor Efficiency Center to +50% and reduced the cost, etc.

Great minds, they say.

Giving Festival of Capitalism an econ bonus is a novel and brilliant idea.  The Korx definitely need a little more help, especially as I just noticed that the FoC is the only morale structure they get.  Well, barring all the new bonuses I doled out like Planetary Defense and various SPs and GAs.

I went ahead and made sure everyone has governments, farms, and planetary defense.  No reason for it to be otherwise.  I also changed Planetary Defense Category from Invasion to Planetary Defense and Requirement to Space Mil.  Rationale is to get an AIP 7 Korath to research it, though I haven't tested that idea yet.

I considered the idea of unique government techs as I was adding them to the Yor.  They would pretty much need to be CanBeTraded/Stolen 0 if I did that.  Wouldn't make much sense for someone to get Distributed Decision Network from the Yor or Autonomous Hives from the Thalans.  It would also take a lot more creative writing than I have time to crunch out, so it's definitely not going to be in 3.1.

Other than all that, I'm pretty close to testing time.

Oh, and on that last comment:

Very interesting.  Remember when I fixed the "problem" of the Franchise Center module - the second in line - not having any requirement?  Wonder if that was Stardock's way of clearing the path for Iconian culture modules.  My new fix is to cram Xeno Business in between Xeno Persuasion and the next tech.

With regard to the farm morale bonuses - one option would be to kick the 5% bonus to the tech instead of the improvement. This should solve the AI bonus tile issue and relieve the early morale pressure at the same time.

One thing I really like about the altered farm is the little pop growth boost. Even if you remove the morale bonus entirely, I know I would build early farms solely for that effect.

On a different note, I've been lurking for a while waiting for Tolmekmod 3.0, and I'm delighted with it so far. I'm playing as the Korx (for the first time in TA) in a Gigantic all random normal tech speed game, and I'm having a blast. Playing with Terrans(human AI), Korath(thalan AI), Altarians(altarian AI), Arceans(arcean AI), Torians(krynn AI), Yor(generic AI), Krynn(krynn AI), Thalans(generic AI), and Iconians(generic AI). Everyone but the Terrans, Altarians, and Torians started out stranded near the edges of the map in their own tiny clusters (the Korath had a smaller gap to the middle than average, and the Yor had a medium cluster).

I forgot to do the quicksave workaround so the minors are stupid. Unfortunate, but not enough to make me restart. The total lack of morale techs in the Korx TA tree was a surprise to me, and my all random gave me very few cash anomalies... ruh roh. I ended up deep in the hole and with a populace considering armed rebellion before I finally stabilized with the galactic stock exchange (lifesaver!). About this time, I made contact with most of the other civilizations and was able to rip off - I mean trade equitably for - xeno entertainment and the thalan 15% morale tech. With the addition of two morale resources, my problems were solved. Except for the fact that I only had four or five planets...

Korx trading power is awesome - my short range routes max at around 100bc, and the longer range ones go to 250 or so, without any starbase help at all. Then, the UP wisely considered an agenda I had bribed - er, lobbied them to propose: doubling trade income permanently. Ka-ching. (disclaimer: the Korx interstellar trading association does not, and has never manipulated the galactic political establishment for its own gain - this was merely happy coincidence)

I then decided to test whether super diplomat chicanery still works in Tolmekian 3.0. Short answer: yes, yes it does. One long round of trading later, and I was down to nearly zero influence but was also the proud owner of nearly all the recently and semi-recently settled planets in the galaxy. The Thalans in particular enjoy Korx-brand beads and trinkets, due to their unfortunate combination of bad diplomacy and slow population growth. This non-hostile takeover effectively cemented my victory, but I'm still durdling around exploring the mod.

Before I bought most of their empires, the Korath, Terrans, and Torians were doing the best, with the Yor and Altarians a close second, and the Thalans and Iconians third. The Krynn and Arceans were screwed by position, their clusters not having the number of planets required to provide a launch base towards the center. I, as the Korx, was somewhere between 2nd and 3rd tier, with a minimal number of planets propped up by strong research and economy.

Post shopping spree, the Yor and the Torians have held onto the core of their empires due to strong pop growth (I gave the Yor 40% in customization), the Terrans were not enveloped completely due to strong diplomacy, and the Altarians held onto 6ish planets because they had research I wanted more than the worlds. The poor Korath and Thalans were both reduced to the minimum three worlds, all in danger of flipping, while the Iconians escaped with their core worlds because I ran out of influence, and decided to leave them all the planets in their cluster.

Takeaway thoughts:

The Korx mercenary academy leaves me feeling meh. I've manipulated everyone but me into war, and my war profits are a measly 102 bc. While this is definitely pays for itself at 5bc maintenance, it leaves me... unexcited. Perhaps a change to 4% rather than 2%, or a downgrade to 1% but one per planet. (I suspect the 4% will work better for the AI) Alternatively (or in addition) a 10%ish soldiering bonus would be thematic and appropriate. I don't think there is a way to make it apply only to troops taken from that planet, which would be ideal.

I realize the AI doesn't exploit super diplomat like I did, but I'm not sure what they actually DO with it. I think a possible change to super manipulator might fit the Korx as well while leaving their traditional weakness to influence unchanged. It could also provide an additional income stream to offset the low tax rates imposed by no morale tech line. I was only able to scrape by early game by trading influence for cash whenever I could, and I am unsure if the AI makes use of this option.

I am saddened at the standardization of the weapons trees, but it's a small price to pay for improved AI effectiveness.

Fusion power plants and other manufacturing bonus improvements: the AI seems to REALLY like these, often building them before any factories (!?!). I try not to trade any off-tree tech to the AI, in hopes of avoiding them building improvements they cannot upgrade, but I thought these were safe. Nope. I guess they are just vital to planetary success and must be built everywhere, despite the fact that they take forever and have high maintenance.

Korx do not have access to the fertility accelerator tech! This surprised me, as I really like jamming one or two of these guys onto a planet if it's below max pop. Sadly for me, nobody else has researched it. I blame all that weapons research they're doing because of the wars I made them start...uh oops.

I adore the PQ bonuses on xeno biology and extreme colonization. Pre mod, I would research biology only reluctantly, and would try to skip extreme colonization altogether via trading. Post mod, these are significantly more valuable to me, as well as the other techs altered to be more than placeholders. Elegantly done, sir.

I managed, with difficulty, to get the Krynn to trade their racial espionage tech to me, then chuckled evilly as I rush-built the Super-spy training center. Later, to my surprise, they built one of their own. The tooltip still says it is a galactic achievement, but its type is now super project. Was this intentional, to prevent players from scooping the Krynn out of their stuff?

Tech trading in general is more difficult, but it's hard to say how much - I'll have to play a non super diplomat game to see. In any case, that's fine by me - non idiotic AI is worth a lot.

Neutral Korx are fun - what with the massive reduction in rush buy costs and increase to their already impressive trading. It bugged me a bit that the trade center and the Korx racial freighter improvement overlapped so completely though, and I ended up going for the trade center because it was clearly superior. Perhaps some tweaking to one or the other? There was some discussion about that earlier in the thread - have you decided anything on that?

Anyways, thanks for reading my minor dissertation if you got through it, and thank you Tolmekian for the impressive and welcome gameplay upgrade

Seconding all three of these - I can see the Drath and Thalan getting very excited about Fertility Acceleration/Aphrodisiac (off-hand, I can't remember if they get FA in their tech trees, but they definitely need it most!)

I seem to remember discussion somewhere about the speed boost from Gravity Accelerators not working when traded - is this the case, and did it turn out to be fixable? If they're going to show up earlier in the game this will be more of an issue.

Going back to Gaunathor's comments about reducing prohibitive costs & maintenance on various morale buildings (thinking here particularly of Torian & Iconian structures, but it also applies to the "main" line) - I would definitely support this, along with removing or reducing some of the morale bonuses on techs. Like ChainsawSchmalz, I'm guilty of going after Xeno Entertainment, Temples, Arenas of Agony, whatever that Thalan tech is called and other techs with those tasty large morale bonuses - by stacking these up I can avoid building morale structures on planets, other than perhaps dual-purpose ones like the Counter-Espionage Center or Space Cannon. I think making morale structures more viable and race-wide bonuses less exploitable would benefit the AI, if only by taking away one advantage the player has over them. Or if that's not workable, then maybe making some of these techs non-tradable would make sense, since apart from the "main" line they're quite race-specific.

Finally - I have never quite got whether the Krynn Morale/Influence structures - the Temple of Krynn and Order of Krynn, I think - are meant to be upgrades of each other, or if it's deliberate to have such similar structures both available as part of the Krynn's influence strategy. Either is fine with me, and either way, the maintenence costs (5/10 bc) seem pretty high, but again, maybe it's deliberate to balance incomes from high taxation & tourism.